HERE’S HOPING: |
| Both the election dynamics and the reports of a drowsy commander-in-chief are tests of hope, that essential, but painful emotion that confronts us, both as spectators and players, in the struggle for democracy. The election results teases us by suggesting that our hope that democracy will endure is not wishful thinking. But the fear is that it will turn out to be a false hope. Meanwhile, for me, Trump’s diminished capacity challenges my hope that Trump will finish his term, so that he can earn the public and political rebuke that may be his greatest fear. Fading away would be too easy an escape for such a wicked man. THE NOV. 4 ELECTION was a delicious political feast. Take New Jersey, where the pre-election surveys showed a “tightening” race. Except that Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic candidate for governor, won a stunning victory, with 56.5 percent of the vote. | THE DEMOCRATS’ INEVITABLE SHUTDOWN DEFEAT The capitulation by Democratic Senators last night to end the government shutdown is clearly a disappointment and possibly a betrayal of their party and its millions of supporters. At the same time, I never thought the shutdown made sense, because there was no clear path to “success,” how the tactic would force Republicans to agree to ease health care costs. As to people who said this was a rare, necessary choice for the minority party to flex its muscles, I think screwing up the machinery of government would never turn out to be true leverage. Now, the Democrats are double losers: millions have been hurt by having their pay disrupted, food benefits upended; and the Democrats have gained nothing but humiliation and division. It was always going to end this way. |
Slightly bigger ( but still hugely), was the win by Abigail Spanberger in her Virginia governor’s race, 57.1 percent.
Zohran Mamdani organized a huge, enthusiastic turnout in New York City, hopefully driving the despicable Andrew Cuomo and his horror-movie mug off the public stage for good.
On the Other Coast, the complicated, brazen effort, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, to jury-rig California voting districts, captured 63.9 percent vote to create new Democratic U.S. House seats. The plot was to checkmate the Trump-GOP effort to invent five new Republican seats in Texas.
And in Pennsylvania, three Democratic state Supreme Court justices held their posts by 27-point margins.
So last Tuesday was a Big, Beautiful Day for truth, justice and the American way.
All of which put the lie to widespread anxiety about a dispirited, ineffective resistance to Donald Trump by a defective, damaged Democratic Party.
Again the question, a week after the election, why don’t I feel the joy?
SUPERSTITION is part of the answer.
I have mixed feelings about religion, but am devoted to idiotic superstitions about Friday the 13th, wandering under ladders, and jinxing no-hitters by declaring no-hitter -in-the-making before the final out. So the jubilation that followed the election seems to me downright treacherous by tempting evil spirits.
Think of all the awful things that can happen with an election still a full year away.
Trump could – and probably will – try to hijack or monkeywrench the voting process.
He could – and probably will - try to declare martial law.
He might designate the Democratic Party a terrorist organization. And so forth.
Meanwhile, the Democrats might do what they sometimes seem to do best: self-destruct.
The Democrats could splinter, declare war on progressives, bore the nation with ineffectual centrists' righteousness.
Mamdani could turn out to be the inept, inexperienced, foot-in-the-mouth twerp that the New York Times and the rest of the media have made him out to be, dragging the actual Democratic Party down with him.
Democratic Doom and its scenarios are endless, and we are well warned that paranoia is both obligatory and well-founded.
BUT HERE’S THE THING. In the election’s wake, Donald Trump seems strangely diminished.
I don’t know whether this is a consequence of the election, or whether Trump at long last is beginning to seem mortal. He is months away from turning 80 – an age where death lurks as a reality everyday, instead of somewhere in the vague future.
He seems more vulnerable – politically and physically.
For the first time, members of Congress are showing spasms of resistance – for example dismissing Trump’s call for the Senate to abandon its 60 vote rule that gives the minority party veto power over much legislation.
He’s doing poorly in the polls. The public blames Republicans for the shutdown, even though the Democrats are full partners (See the above sidebar). The election is widely believed to have been about “affordability,” high prices being something that Trump promised to end, but cannot control or wish away.
And maybe the man is simply wearing out.
My wife pointed out a weekend article in the Washington Post that I missed, and I bet you did to, because Post seemed to downplay it, at least on its website, and the rest of the media ignored it, maybe because of fear of Trump, maybe due to professional jealousy, maybe both.
The Post’s article reported that Trump “seemed” variously to be trying not to fall asleep and actually falling asleep in a widely observed Oval Office event. CLICK HERE to follow the link (the Post has a pay wall) to the article.
The piece was about the occasion on Nov. 6 when Trump announced that pharmaceutical companies agreed to lower prices for weight-loss drugs. The Post wrote:
“Sitting behind the Resolute Desk on Thursday, the president displayed a constellation of movements familiar to anyone who has attempted to stay awake during a work meeting. He closed his eyes. He put his hand to his temple. He slouched in his chair.”
Personally, I hope that this is not going to be how justice comes for Donald Trump.
I don’t want him to fade away, succumb to a fatal disease, trip on the Air Force One ramp or to be assassinated.
Instead, I want him to hang around to be renounced, rebuked and rejected.
Impeachment would be perfect, but won’t happen. Instead, it would be nice if the voters turned on him. It would be great if the Democrats took the House next year and checkmated his campaign of terror.
The best outcome would be for his administration to fail, for the nation to vote against the party that has sustained him and return the political system to working condition, so that the word “Trump” becomes a universal slur.
Last week’s election showed us that that’s possible, even if it’s a long shot and a long way off.
So, here’s hoping Donald Trump won’t simply nod off without giving the public a chance to understand and condemn the many ways he’s damaged their lives and their country.
Rejection is Donald Trump’s nightmare; but for the rest of us, it’s an American dream.
Zohran Mamdani organized a huge, enthusiastic turnout in New York City, hopefully driving the despicable Andrew Cuomo and his horror-movie mug off the public stage for good.
On the Other Coast, the complicated, brazen effort, led by Gov. Gavin Newsom, to jury-rig California voting districts, captured 63.9 percent vote to create new Democratic U.S. House seats. The plot was to checkmate the Trump-GOP effort to invent five new Republican seats in Texas.
And in Pennsylvania, three Democratic state Supreme Court justices held their posts by 27-point margins.
So last Tuesday was a Big, Beautiful Day for truth, justice and the American way.
All of which put the lie to widespread anxiety about a dispirited, ineffective resistance to Donald Trump by a defective, damaged Democratic Party.
Again the question, a week after the election, why don’t I feel the joy?
SUPERSTITION is part of the answer.
I have mixed feelings about religion, but am devoted to idiotic superstitions about Friday the 13th, wandering under ladders, and jinxing no-hitters by declaring no-hitter -in-the-making before the final out. So the jubilation that followed the election seems to me downright treacherous by tempting evil spirits.
Think of all the awful things that can happen with an election still a full year away.
Trump could – and probably will – try to hijack or monkeywrench the voting process.
He could – and probably will - try to declare martial law.
He might designate the Democratic Party a terrorist organization. And so forth.
Meanwhile, the Democrats might do what they sometimes seem to do best: self-destruct.
The Democrats could splinter, declare war on progressives, bore the nation with ineffectual centrists' righteousness.
Mamdani could turn out to be the inept, inexperienced, foot-in-the-mouth twerp that the New York Times and the rest of the media have made him out to be, dragging the actual Democratic Party down with him.
Democratic Doom and its scenarios are endless, and we are well warned that paranoia is both obligatory and well-founded.
BUT HERE’S THE THING. In the election’s wake, Donald Trump seems strangely diminished.
I don’t know whether this is a consequence of the election, or whether Trump at long last is beginning to seem mortal. He is months away from turning 80 – an age where death lurks as a reality everyday, instead of somewhere in the vague future.
He seems more vulnerable – politically and physically.
For the first time, members of Congress are showing spasms of resistance – for example dismissing Trump’s call for the Senate to abandon its 60 vote rule that gives the minority party veto power over much legislation.
He’s doing poorly in the polls. The public blames Republicans for the shutdown, even though the Democrats are full partners (See the above sidebar). The election is widely believed to have been about “affordability,” high prices being something that Trump promised to end, but cannot control or wish away.
And maybe the man is simply wearing out.
My wife pointed out a weekend article in the Washington Post that I missed, and I bet you did to, because Post seemed to downplay it, at least on its website, and the rest of the media ignored it, maybe because of fear of Trump, maybe due to professional jealousy, maybe both.
The Post’s article reported that Trump “seemed” variously to be trying not to fall asleep and actually falling asleep in a widely observed Oval Office event. CLICK HERE to follow the link (the Post has a pay wall) to the article.
The piece was about the occasion on Nov. 6 when Trump announced that pharmaceutical companies agreed to lower prices for weight-loss drugs. The Post wrote:
“Sitting behind the Resolute Desk on Thursday, the president displayed a constellation of movements familiar to anyone who has attempted to stay awake during a work meeting. He closed his eyes. He put his hand to his temple. He slouched in his chair.”
Personally, I hope that this is not going to be how justice comes for Donald Trump.
I don’t want him to fade away, succumb to a fatal disease, trip on the Air Force One ramp or to be assassinated.
Instead, I want him to hang around to be renounced, rebuked and rejected.
Impeachment would be perfect, but won’t happen. Instead, it would be nice if the voters turned on him. It would be great if the Democrats took the House next year and checkmated his campaign of terror.
The best outcome would be for his administration to fail, for the nation to vote against the party that has sustained him and return the political system to working condition, so that the word “Trump” becomes a universal slur.
Last week’s election showed us that that’s possible, even if it’s a long shot and a long way off.
So, here’s hoping Donald Trump won’t simply nod off without giving the public a chance to understand and condemn the many ways he’s damaged their lives and their country.
Rejection is Donald Trump’s nightmare; but for the rest of us, it’s an American dream.
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The No Kings Protest, Part 2
A DEMONSTRATION OF DEMOCRACY & KINDNESS
Locally, A Helping Hand. Nationally, A Street Party
THE RHODE ISLAND STATE HOUSE
The State House steps. I GOT TO THE NO KINGS RALLY EARLY, and everything was going swimmingly until I reached the cascade of marble steps leading down from the State House to the plaza below, where the protest was forming.
The Rhode Island Capitol is an elegant structure, fitting for a tiny state that has an oversupply of visual wonders, including its rugged coast and more than a few Colonial-era homes.
My problem was that the sea of marble steps below me came without handrails. As I’ve entered my 80s, I have found it difficult, and lately, impossible, to navigate downward stairs without something to hold onto.
At first, I seemed to be doing okay; one foot, both feet; one foot, then the other. But I began to feel dizzy; the family member I’d come with was too far ahead for me to signal; and I wondered if this little section of public marble was suddenly about to become a personal puddle of blood and skull.
“May I help you?” asked a woman somewhere below me. “I have balance problems sometimes, too.”
“Well, actually, that would be nice,” I said.
The woman bounded up the five or six steps between us, locked one of her arms firmly onto one of mine – I’m pretty sure she’d had done this before – and led me to the safety of ground zero.
I didn’t see her again as the crowd swelled into the many thousands – 15,000 is a common estimate of the Providence gathering – but her rescue perfectly captured the spirit of the afternoon.
She saw someone in trouble. She acted. And did so in the nicest possible way, which is to say she was both kind and competent.
Which is what it will take to reverse the terrifying, dizzying course that Donald Trump is laying out for the country.
My theory is that we cannot – nor should we – try to match his brand of cruelty with a version of our own guile. Instead, we must trust our resources of kindness, compassion and caring to sustain our communities and our country.
If we are to win back our democracy, we must not become a more successful copy of Donald Trump, we must champion a better alternative. Or, why does it matter?
And secondly, we must be skilled and proficient in our democratic undertaking. We must master the mechanics of politics, understand the levers of power and perfect the arts of communication.
The Rhode Island Capitol is an elegant structure, fitting for a tiny state that has an oversupply of visual wonders, including its rugged coast and more than a few Colonial-era homes.
My problem was that the sea of marble steps below me came without handrails. As I’ve entered my 80s, I have found it difficult, and lately, impossible, to navigate downward stairs without something to hold onto.
At first, I seemed to be doing okay; one foot, both feet; one foot, then the other. But I began to feel dizzy; the family member I’d come with was too far ahead for me to signal; and I wondered if this little section of public marble was suddenly about to become a personal puddle of blood and skull.
“May I help you?” asked a woman somewhere below me. “I have balance problems sometimes, too.”
“Well, actually, that would be nice,” I said.
The woman bounded up the five or six steps between us, locked one of her arms firmly onto one of mine – I’m pretty sure she’d had done this before – and led me to the safety of ground zero.
I didn’t see her again as the crowd swelled into the many thousands – 15,000 is a common estimate of the Providence gathering – but her rescue perfectly captured the spirit of the afternoon.
She saw someone in trouble. She acted. And did so in the nicest possible way, which is to say she was both kind and competent.
Which is what it will take to reverse the terrifying, dizzying course that Donald Trump is laying out for the country.
My theory is that we cannot – nor should we – try to match his brand of cruelty with a version of our own guile. Instead, we must trust our resources of kindness, compassion and caring to sustain our communities and our country.
If we are to win back our democracy, we must not become a more successful copy of Donald Trump, we must champion a better alternative. Or, why does it matter?
And secondly, we must be skilled and proficient in our democratic undertaking. We must master the mechanics of politics, understand the levers of power and perfect the arts of communication.
YESTERDAY’S SECOND NO KINGS DAY protest in Rhode Island was both civilized and practical, and, from what I’ve seen and read, the same could have been said for demonstrations throughout the country.
The Providence protest had a serene, comfortable, at-home feel. Sure, anger and fear drove people to concoct colorful signs, dress up as inflatable creatures, write clever slogans. But they did all of this in a way that made you happy to be among friends, neighbors at a barn-raising, volunteers cleaning up after the flood.
But numbers absolutely count. It was good that people turned out by the thousands in my state, and by the millions across the nation. The battle for democracy depends on numbers. It’s not enough for one or two of us to vote; what matters is how many millions vote and do so in enough numbers to win.
WHY WAS THIS PROTEST SO SUCCESSFUL? On a practical level, at least in our New England neck of the woods, the weather couldn’t have been nicer for mid-October. Temperatures in the 60s, just a whisper of wind, deliciously blue skies. It put you in a mood.
Further, participants were determined to be peaceful, glad to show how that’s done. And none of this was an accident or unique.
A relative lives outside Philadelphia, and he wrote me this in an email:
The Providence protest had a serene, comfortable, at-home feel. Sure, anger and fear drove people to concoct colorful signs, dress up as inflatable creatures, write clever slogans. But they did all of this in a way that made you happy to be among friends, neighbors at a barn-raising, volunteers cleaning up after the flood.
But numbers absolutely count. It was good that people turned out by the thousands in my state, and by the millions across the nation. The battle for democracy depends on numbers. It’s not enough for one or two of us to vote; what matters is how many millions vote and do so in enough numbers to win.
WHY WAS THIS PROTEST SO SUCCESSFUL? On a practical level, at least in our New England neck of the woods, the weather couldn’t have been nicer for mid-October. Temperatures in the 60s, just a whisper of wind, deliciously blue skies. It put you in a mood.
Further, participants were determined to be peaceful, glad to show how that’s done. And none of this was an accident or unique.
A relative lives outside Philadelphia, and he wrote me this in an email:
| I spent a joyful hour and a half at a No Kings rally near me. It was one of those side of the road with lots of signs and a bit of chanting things, and it made me grin the entire time. (No speakers.) People honked when they went by. OK, there was one pickup truck that said Support ICE, and they were laughing, and someone ran by brandishing a Trump flag. But it was a chill experience. When I left the throng of thousands, I drove along the route, honking my horn. And I ran into several people from our church, and a lot of others were planning to go to a different neighborhood one. |
In its countrywide wrap up, the Associated Press described the mood nationally as that of a street fair:
| Trump’s Republican Party disparaged the demonstrations as "Hate America" rallies. But in many places the events looked more like a street party. There were marching bands, huge banners with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The People” preamble that people could sign, and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance in Portland, Oregon. |
The Rhode Island edition featured a “march,” from the State House down a slight bill to the Providence City Hall, then back for speeches.
A friend, who helped organize the event, said there was one unpleasant mini-clash, with a group trying stir emotions over transsexual rights. She described it this way:
A friend, who helped organize the event, said there was one unpleasant mini-clash, with a group trying stir emotions over transsexual rights. She described it this way:
| The only sour note came as people were leaving — RI Turning Point, the Charlie Kirk org, set up tables on Francis Street across from the mall to hold a “debate” on why trans women shouldn’t be able to compete in women’s sports. About 20 very offended trans activists began screaming and yelling at them, despite our best attempts to de-escalate. They weren’t having it. The police, who are so roundly denounced by some, were fabulous. They just stood calmly between the groups and waited for it to die down. |
IN THE AFTERMATH, the worrywarts, the scolds and the Monday Morning crabby coaches will say that big, peaceful, block party protests aren’t enough to back down the ICE agents and other storm-troopers-in-training, or to counter a Republican Congress that won’t do its Constitutional duty in restraining the president, or to scare a criminal president into going straight.
Of course, that’s all true. It will take more than a protest in June and another in October to turn the country around. But yesterday’s demonstration was a solid step forward and one to be cheered and celebrated. Just think if there were no mass demonstrations, no protests, no rallies. What would the worrywarts and the scolds be saying then?
What took place this weekend was both joyous and profound.
Personally, it was a moment to be cherished, when a stranger acted like a friend and offered me her helping hand, maybe one that was lifesaving.
Of course, that’s all true. It will take more than a protest in June and another in October to turn the country around. But yesterday’s demonstration was a solid step forward and one to be cheered and celebrated. Just think if there were no mass demonstrations, no protests, no rallies. What would the worrywarts and the scolds be saying then?
What took place this weekend was both joyous and profound.
Personally, it was a moment to be cherished, when a stranger acted like a friend and offered me her helping hand, maybe one that was lifesaving.
 |  |  |
THE “NO KINGS 2” PROTESTS
The Good, Bad & Ugly. Mostly the Good.
THE FIRST "No Kings'" rally in Middletown, RI, June 14, 2025
AS 2025 DRAWS TO ITS SAD, soul-shattering close, nothing I will do this year will be more important – at least to me – than showing up for this Saturday’s No Kings protest.
If it all works out as planned, my participation will be immensely insignificant.
That is, if the turnout exceeds the 5 million headcount that sponsors estimated for the first No Kings Day back on June 14, whether I’m present or not will be of no consequence.
A drop of water in the ocean, one seat in a sold-out soccer stadium, a kernel of corn on a vast Midwestern farm.
And, let’s be honest, if the day produces the largest demonstration in American history, that might have no practical effect in stopping Donald Trump’s evolving dictatorship.
Critics will say that it was just one day, so what the heck. No practical impact. Nobody got elected. Or un-elected. No legislation was enacted. Nothing happened. Nothing changed.
Or that, in one city, in one state, maybe in several places, the protests will turn ugly and produce enough head-banging, shots-fired viral video to accelerate Trump’s continuing campaign to turn American soldiers against American citizens.
Or, maybe the whole thing it will be a flop. Just thousands, not millions, nationwide.
Or, regardless of size, big, small or medium, it will provide fodder for to rightwing lies and distortions.
House Speaker Mike Johnson got a head start on the smear campaign, according to Politico, by describing a planned No Kings event in Washington, as a “hate America rally.”
HERE’S ANOTHER THING. I really don’t like big protests or even bite-sized ones.
For one thing, I’m pretty sure that somebody is going to say something stupid. They’ll say something that I completely, totally don’t agree with. But lots of people will cheer. And by being present, it will seem like I’m in solidarity, one-for-all/all-for-one. It’s guaranteed.
I’ll give you an example that still rankles. Back in the Black Lives Matter days, egregious, vicious racist police conduct generated this slogan: “Defund the Police!”
I know enough about government that if you want to reform some out-of-control public service, you have to spend MORE money, not less, such as bigger salaries for police, more money for training, and lots of cash for added mental health professionals and others to help police do non-police work.
So, on Saturday, I don’t want to hear an antisemitic chant like “From the river to the sea,” or some anti-Palestinian slurs or “This time, don’t just shoot his ear.”
For that matter, my ideal protest is an event with no-speeches, no music, no chanting, no sloganeering, and which lasts no more than 15 minutes, just long enough to get a credible headcount and maybe some drone photos to prove it. And that’s a wrap.
WHICH IS NOT HOW DEMOCRACY WORKS.
Democracy is messy, imperfect, mixed-up, noisy, infuriating and disorganized. People have to put up with all sorts of companions, buddies and fellow travelers, including misanthropes like yours truly.
And if ever our country needed a humongous day of protest, it is now, nearly 10 months into the most dangerous, cruelest, despotic, corrupt presidential administration in history.
We need every single body possible to say “no” to Donald J. Trump. No to savage roundups of immigrants, no to troops on American streets, no to absurd health policies, no to acceleration of climate destruction, no to bullying professors, no to racism, no to desecration of a great country.
So thanks for the people who are planning No Kings Day 2 in thousands of cities and towns across American. It is our privilege to protest. Our duty to protest. it’s the least we can do.
Just don’t ask me to chant, chat or sing during the bus ride from Newport to Providence for the hopefully biggest-ever, most fantastic rally ever held at the Rhode Island State House.
I may try to make a small sign.
HARVARD:
The Ideal Deal Is No Deal;
But 2nd Best Would Be . . .
YET ANOTHER CHILLING ANNOUNCEMENT came this week from the White House, suggesting that Harvard University has agreed to a deal with the Trump Administration.
The only glimmer of hope is that the statement came from Trump himself, since the president almost never tells the truth.
Still, that Harvard and the Trump autocracy are even talking is dispiriting, since the university’s resistance has been a rare moment of hope that the Trump juggernaut can be stopped.
The stakes are enormous. If Harvard, the nation’s oldest and arguably most important university can be bullied, how likely is it that lesser colleges, to say nothing of other kinds of institutions, will be willing or able to fight back?
That’s why its so important to mortals who’ve never set foot in Harvard Yard that the university should make no deal.
No. Nyet. Nope. Nada. Nein. Zero.
The symbolism is important: Eggheads, 1 / Knuckleheads, 0.
More critical is the lesson that every schoolyard scholar learns the hard way: there’s no such thing as a deal with a bully. The tormentor always wants more. And more.
The Trump administration, falsely claiming egregious antisemitism at Harvard, withheld billions in federal research dollars and demanded severe control over campus governance.
A 2nd BEST DEAL
Trump said on Sept. 30 that Harvard would agree to finance $500 million to operate “trade schools.” What other concessions might be on the table wasn’t clear.
But if Harvard ends up making a deal, I have some thoughts that might help Harvard – and the rest of us.
HARVARD’S FUTURE
There’s no question that Harvard has much at stake if the Trump Administration succeeds in extracting concessions, or if Harvard fights and loses its legal challenges.
Indeed, although Harvard has enormous resources - $53 billion in endowment funds, nearly 25,000 students, 20,700 faculty and staff, the federal government has far more financial and legal (illegal) firepower.
Harvard wins on the merits.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled in favor of the university, cancelling funding cuts.
“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote.
But who knows how an appeals court, or the Trump-compliant Supreme Court would rule.
A loss could mean a far diminished Harvard, and in the worst case, maybe a failed institution.
But in settling with Trump, and the precedent that sets, Harvard has to ask itself this question:
What’s more important: Harvard University’s survival? Or continuation of the United States as a democracy?
The only glimmer of hope is that the statement came from Trump himself, since the president almost never tells the truth.
Still, that Harvard and the Trump autocracy are even talking is dispiriting, since the university’s resistance has been a rare moment of hope that the Trump juggernaut can be stopped.
The stakes are enormous. If Harvard, the nation’s oldest and arguably most important university can be bullied, how likely is it that lesser colleges, to say nothing of other kinds of institutions, will be willing or able to fight back?
That’s why its so important to mortals who’ve never set foot in Harvard Yard that the university should make no deal.
No. Nyet. Nope. Nada. Nein. Zero.
The symbolism is important: Eggheads, 1 / Knuckleheads, 0.
More critical is the lesson that every schoolyard scholar learns the hard way: there’s no such thing as a deal with a bully. The tormentor always wants more. And more.
The Trump administration, falsely claiming egregious antisemitism at Harvard, withheld billions in federal research dollars and demanded severe control over campus governance.
A 2nd BEST DEAL
Trump said on Sept. 30 that Harvard would agree to finance $500 million to operate “trade schools.” What other concessions might be on the table wasn’t clear.
But if Harvard ends up making a deal, I have some thoughts that might help Harvard – and the rest of us.
- ABJECT APOLOGY – The administration will issue an apology – signed personally by Trump with his trademark scrawl, like the one he used on the Epstein “birthday drawing.” The document admits the government’s violations of the university’s First Amendment free speech rights, and apologize for the strain it has put on the university’s students, faculty and administrators.
- FINANCIAL TERMS – The government agrees to pay the university a penalty of $500 million, in addition to court-approved legal and administrative costs resulting from the government’s abuse of its powers.
- DEMOCRACY INITIATIVE – The university intends to use some of the above-cited penalty payments to establish a Harvard University School of Democracy, to study defense of democratic governments against becoming dictatorships. The Administration agrees to make its officials available for symposia, research and other initiatives.
- FOREIGN STUDENTS – The government acknowledges foreign students have been demonized and disadvantaged by the administration’s false or exaggerated antisemitism claims. The government, at its cost, will undertake remedial measures to make these students whole. Select students, who need transportation from their home countries to the Cambridge, Mass. campus, will be offered free passage aboard Air Force One and Marine One aircraft.
- TRANSSEXUAL RESEARCH – The federal Department of Health and Human Services agrees to provide Harvard and its partner universities sufficient grants for comprehensive research and teaching initiatives into the experience of individuals experiencing and seeking gender change.
HARVARD’S FUTURE
There’s no question that Harvard has much at stake if the Trump Administration succeeds in extracting concessions, or if Harvard fights and loses its legal challenges.
Indeed, although Harvard has enormous resources - $53 billion in endowment funds, nearly 25,000 students, 20,700 faculty and staff, the federal government has far more financial and legal (illegal) firepower.
Harvard wins on the merits.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled in favor of the university, cancelling funding cuts.
“A review of the administrative record makes it difficult to conclude anything other than that Defendants used antisemitism as a smokescreen for a targeted, ideologically-motivated assault on this country’s premier universities,” Burroughs wrote.
But who knows how an appeals court, or the Trump-compliant Supreme Court would rule.
A loss could mean a far diminished Harvard, and in the worst case, maybe a failed institution.
But in settling with Trump, and the precedent that sets, Harvard has to ask itself this question:
What’s more important: Harvard University’s survival? Or continuation of the United States as a democracy?
THE 'SUPINE' COURT --
IS THIS WHERE JUSTICE COMES TO DIE?
IN A PREVIOUS BLOG POST, I proposed that we duplicate Trump’s move in changing the name of the Department of Defense to the "Department of War. " We could re-name other agencies or departments. Among my suggestions: The White House would become “The Gold House,” and the Department of Justice the “Department of Injustice.” Etc.
A clever reader later suggested a new name for the Supreme Court – proposing “The Supine Court,” reflecting the high court’s practice of affirming Donald Trump’s excesses and abuses.
I admire that title change. But it got me to wondering whether I and others are being unfair to the Supreme Court, automatically writing off its Trump rulings simply because we don’t like the president.
So, I decided to take a look at an actual Supreme Court ruling, taking the bold, outrageous and astonishingly courageous step of actually reading one them – all 31 pages.
What I hoped to find is that the Supreme Court is not always the callous, arbitrary bunch of judicial autocrats that misread and misstate the Constitution in service of politics.
Many people wish the same: that the court acts as a fair interpreter of the laws and Constitution – even to the point where, if we disagree with this or that ruling, we can trust that all nine justices make an sincere effort to get things right.
ONE CASE: RACIAL PROFILING?
You may have seen headlines: about the case which the Supreme Court appeared to endorse racial profiling by allowing the Trump immigration officers to continue using Latino-based identifying tactics in rounding up suspected undocumented immigrants in Los Angeles.
On Sept. 8, the Supreme Court “stayed,” or put on hold an earlier, federal District Court order that told the administration stop using four kinds of profiling that targeted people with Latino indicators.
Put a different way, the Supreme Court allowed the government to continue business as usual, pending the outcome of a Court of Appeals review (a hearing in that court was scheduled, yesterday, Sept. 24).
The Supreme Court ruling sure smelled bad – as if the nation’s highest court was blessing a detestable practice: racial profiling. And in the process, the court seemed to weaken the Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which protects citizens from unfair searches and seizures.
What makes this ruling fairly easy for an amateur un-judge like me to understand is that two justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Brett Kavanaugh, wrote opposing positions, and they did so in relatively clear language.
 | Sotomayor, in a seething objection to the ruling, which allowed profiling of Latinos, puts it this way: We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent. |
 | Kavanaugh, defending the ruling, excuses the government’s tactics as having minimal impact on legal citizens, while dismissing objections to the tactics as little more than a lawbreaker’s attempt to avoid capture. He writes: The interests of individuals who are illegally in the country in avoiding being stopped by law enforcement for questioning is ultimately an interest in evading the law. That is not an especially weighty legal interest. |
THE ORDER WAS PART of the Supreme Court’s “emergency docket,” in which the orders usually aren’t signed or explained.
But Kavanaugh decided to give it a try, writing a “concurring” opinion. Whether his fellow conservatives – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – agreed with his reasoning isn't clear, since they wrote nothing.
Whether it was her need to counter Kavanaugh’s statement, or the weight of the issues themselves, Sotomayor wrote a dissent, which was signed by fellow liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
After reading both statements Un-Judge Jones boils things down to two items:
1. The terms of the Fourth Amendment, which says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
2. The meaning of the word “reasonable,” as when it’s okay to “search” or “seize” people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Un-Judge Jones was surprised by one element of the case: Federal law does allow immigration officers to stop and question an “alien’ or “suspected alien” about his or her legal status. But the catch is that an officer has to have a “reasonable suspicion,” based on specific facts, to do so.
Which is where the troubling profiling questions come in.
PROFILING
In their writings, the two justices largely agreed that that immigration agents had been using four factors in their hunt for undocumented immigrants:
To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion. Under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.
So the racial appearance alone isn't sufficient, he said. But heck, the way you look, combined with the other factors, and agents have got a suspicious character.
Sotomayor isn't buying that:
The Government, and now the concurrence (Kavanaugh) has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.
WHATS THE BIG DEAL?
Kavanaugh describes the stops by immigration agents as being no major problem for those involved, even people who turned out to have legal status, because, at worst, the stops were momentary inconveniences. He puts it this way:
If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal.
But Sotomayor cites actual examples, including those involving U.S. citizens, that were more brutal and disruptive than Kavanaugh described.
Such activities in “Operation At Large,” have caused “panic and fear” in the city and surrounding communities, she writes, with some people afraid to go to work or pick up their children from school.
BY THE NUMBERS
Kavanaugh notes that illegal immigration is a huge problem in the U.S., especially in Los Angeles, where he says 10 percent of the population, or 2 million persons, are “illegal immigrants.”
Not surprisingly, given those extraordinary numbers., U .S. immigration officers have prioritized immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.
So having lots of undocumented people around validates the use the four profiling factors to locate and question individuals.
But it doesn’t take a math wizard to consider the “extraordinary numbers” from a different point of view: that if 10 percent of the LA population is believed to be undocumented, then 90 percent are authorized to be in the U.S.
So it’s logical that a good many of the people are being stopped for no good reason.
Sotomayor says other LA numbers argue against using the profile factors as a way to zero in on illegal immigrants.
Never mind that nearly 47 percent of the Central District's population identifies as Hispanic or Latino . . . Never mind that over 37 percent of the population of Los Angeles County speaks Spanish at home,and over 55 percent speak at language other than English.
WHAT’S “REASONABLE?”
In order to stop someone for questioning, Kavanaugh writes, immigration officials must have “a reasonable suspicion” that a person is illegally in the U.S.
So, a combination of factors does that job, he says, including the “high number” of undocumented persons in LA; the belief that undocumented folks “tend to gathering in certain locations;” that “they often work in certain kinds of jobs;” and that many “come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English.” Kavanaugh writes:
Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal residents in the United States.
Not so fast, Sotomayor counters.
It’s not reasonable to suspect individual persons of wrong doing if the factors “describes a very large category of presumably innocent people,” she writes, quoting previous cases.
In one past case, Mexican ancestry “alone did not constitute reasonable suspicion to support stops by Border Patrol agents," because large numbers of authorized persons near the border look like people with Mexican backgrounds.
She says:
The Fourth Amendment thus prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individual based solely on a set of facts that ‘describes a very large category of presumably innocent’ people.
THE PROPER ROLE OF THE COURT
Kavanaugh goes to some length to say that he isn’t trying to set immigration policy, just uphold the courts’ role as fair enforcers of the Constitution and the law, as the Supreme Court has done in the past.
. . . We now likewise must decline to step outside our constitutionally assigned role to improperly restrict reasonable Executive Branch enforcement of the immigration laws.
Consistency and neutrality are hallmarks of good judging and in my view, we abide by those enduring judicial values in this case by granting the stay.
But Kavanaugh sure sounds like a policy maven, with strong views on immigration, and not positive ones, noting that "millions" of people are here illegally, and that the big numbers cause a "myriad" of social and economic problems, quoting a previous case.
Kavanaugh does take a moment to show that he's a nice guy:
To be sure, I recognize and fully appreciate that many (not all, but many) illegal immigrants come to the United States to escape poverty and the lack of freedom and opportunities in their home countries, and to make better lives for themselves and their families.
But he puts on his judicial face, noting sternly that illegal immigrants cause problems for immigrants who are doing things the right way:
. . . they are not only violating the immigration laws, but also jumping in front of those non-citizens who follow the rules and wait in line to immigrate into the United States through the legal immigration process.
Sotomayor, on the other hand, isn't debating immigration policy, but concentrates on the court’s role in enforcing the Constitution and immigration laws. The District Court’s order banning the profiling factors, she says:
. . . does not preclude the Government from enforcing the immigration laws, so long as in doing so, it stops individual based on additional facts on top of the four factors listed.
She writes that actual cases showed that legal as well as undocumented persons suffered, despite Kavanaugh’s assurances that stop were only mildly inconvenienced and that Kavanaugh’s reasoning:
. . . improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to provide that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.
She continues with this damning statement:
Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.
CONCLUSION
Un-Judge Jones, having read the two opinions, thinks Sotomayor out-classes Kavanaugh, certainly from a debating perspective.
Kavanaugh trivializes the harm caused to legal citizens, in the frightening nature of the experience of being stopped, in time lost from work and in the sheer worry about being intercepted by immigration officials, with some people feeling the need to carry documents proving their citizenship.
On the surface, at Kavanaugh's arguments sound like "common sense," one of the phrases he uses in his opinion, but actually they seem reckless, leaving citizens unprotected from overbearing government agents.
If someone looks like an undocumented person, talks like one, shows up in places where undocumented people supposedly frequent and if they perform jobs that many undocumented persons work - well, what the heck, why not? Ignoring the majority of people who fit the profile, but are legal citizens.
I find Kavanaugh's sympathy for immigrants, and his professed commitment to judicial impartiality, to be superficial and hypocritical - but that may be unfair to him.
Sotomayor, on the other hand, seems hard-headed and properly focused on the plain reading of the Fourth Amendment in protecting all of us from improper stops. I also like her emphasis on what happens in actual cases, as opposed to what's supposed to happen. She writes:
Immigration agents are not conducting "brief stops for questions," as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence and warehouse detentions.
Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government's conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.
What jumped out at me was that the ruling on profiling tactics is proably not about “illegal immigrants” but about people who are U.S. citizens.
Sotomayor emphasizes that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect everyone, and in this case, thousands of people are being brutalized, many of them legal U.S. citizens.
Think of profiling in a different context, let's say locating potential assassins.
The criteria might include factors such as: *gun owners, *registered voters, *young males, *consumers of social media, *people with valid drivers' licenses, *folks who wear baseball caps, *weirdos who lately have been acting even more strangely than usual, *video gamers, *guys living in their parents' basements, and * people who weren't popular in school.
Rounding up thousands, even millions, of people meeting those criteria might land one or two possible assassins; or, maybe not. But, for sure you'd be bothering lots of innocent people.
Sadly, though, I don't think words matter all that much in today's Supreme Court
The ultimate decision, when the profiling case completes the appeals level and returns to the Supreme Court for a final opinion, what's "reasonable" and what's not will depend on the whims of the individual justices.
And I'm betting the justices have already made up their minds, and they'll dress up their conclusions in courtly, legal language.
Then what will matter won't be words, but numbers.
Six to three; five to four.
All of this, of course,is just Un-Judge Jones' opinion.
He very much would like to be overruled - and surprised - by the nation's highest court.
* * *
NOTE: If you'd like to read the case, here's the PDF that includes the Kavanaugh and Sotomayor opinions.
But Kavanaugh decided to give it a try, writing a “concurring” opinion. Whether his fellow conservatives – Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett – agreed with his reasoning isn't clear, since they wrote nothing.
Whether it was her need to counter Kavanaugh’s statement, or the weight of the issues themselves, Sotomayor wrote a dissent, which was signed by fellow liberal justices, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
After reading both statements Un-Judge Jones boils things down to two items:
1. The terms of the Fourth Amendment, which says:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
2. The meaning of the word “reasonable,” as when it’s okay to “search” or “seize” people suspected of being undocumented immigrants.
Un-Judge Jones was surprised by one element of the case: Federal law does allow immigration officers to stop and question an “alien’ or “suspected alien” about his or her legal status. But the catch is that an officer has to have a “reasonable suspicion,” based on specific facts, to do so.
Which is where the troubling profiling questions come in.
PROFILING
In their writings, the two justices largely agreed that that immigration agents had been using four factors in their hunt for undocumented immigrants:
- What did immigrant suspects look like, based on their racial and ethnic appearances?
- Did they speak English and, if so, how well?
- What places where undocumented persons were likely to gather, perhaps looking for work, like a big box store parking lot, a car wash or a bus stop?
- What kinds of jobs did undocumented workers seek, such as landscaping, construction, agriculture and day labor.
To be clear, apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion. Under this Court’s case law regarding immigration stops, however, it can be a ‘relevant factor’ when considered along with other salient factors.
So the racial appearance alone isn't sufficient, he said. But heck, the way you look, combined with the other factors, and agents have got a suspicious character.
Sotomayor isn't buying that:
The Government, and now the concurrence (Kavanaugh) has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction.
WHATS THE BIG DEAL?
Kavanaugh describes the stops by immigration agents as being no major problem for those involved, even people who turned out to have legal status, because, at worst, the stops were momentary inconveniences. He puts it this way:
If the officers learn that the individual they stopped is a U.S. citizen or otherwise lawfully in the United States, they promptly let the individual go. If the individual is illegally in the United States, the officers may arrest the individual and initiate the process for removal.
But Sotomayor cites actual examples, including those involving U.S. citizens, that were more brutal and disruptive than Kavanaugh described.
- Jason Gavidia, “a Latino U.S. citizen,” was working on his car in a tow yard, when a masked agent asked three times whether he was an American, to which he said yes. But when Gavidia couldn’t remember the name of the hospital in which he was born, agents “racked a rifle,” took his phone, pushed him against a fence, and twisted his arm. He was released only when Gavidia produced a REAL identification, (which was not returned to him).
- *Jorge Viramontes, a citizen, managed a car wash, which immigrant agents went to four times over nine days. One of those times, an agent refused to accept Viramontes' driver’s license as proof of citizenship and drove him to a “warehouse” for 30 minutes before verifying his status and driving him back to the car wash.
Such activities in “Operation At Large,” have caused “panic and fear” in the city and surrounding communities, she writes, with some people afraid to go to work or pick up their children from school.
BY THE NUMBERS
Kavanaugh notes that illegal immigration is a huge problem in the U.S., especially in Los Angeles, where he says 10 percent of the population, or 2 million persons, are “illegal immigrants.”
Not surprisingly, given those extraordinary numbers., U .S. immigration officers have prioritized immigration enforcement in the Los Angeles area.
So having lots of undocumented people around validates the use the four profiling factors to locate and question individuals.
But it doesn’t take a math wizard to consider the “extraordinary numbers” from a different point of view: that if 10 percent of the LA population is believed to be undocumented, then 90 percent are authorized to be in the U.S.
So it’s logical that a good many of the people are being stopped for no good reason.
Sotomayor says other LA numbers argue against using the profile factors as a way to zero in on illegal immigrants.
Never mind that nearly 47 percent of the Central District's population identifies as Hispanic or Latino . . . Never mind that over 37 percent of the population of Los Angeles County speaks Spanish at home,and over 55 percent speak at language other than English.
WHAT’S “REASONABLE?”
In order to stop someone for questioning, Kavanaugh writes, immigration officials must have “a reasonable suspicion” that a person is illegally in the U.S.
So, a combination of factors does that job, he says, including the “high number” of undocumented persons in LA; the belief that undocumented folks “tend to gathering in certain locations;” that “they often work in certain kinds of jobs;” and that many “come from Mexico or Central America and do not speak much English.” Kavanaugh writes:
Under this Court’s precedents, not to mention common sense, those circumstances taken together can constitute at least reasonable suspicion of illegal residents in the United States.
Not so fast, Sotomayor counters.
It’s not reasonable to suspect individual persons of wrong doing if the factors “describes a very large category of presumably innocent people,” she writes, quoting previous cases.
In one past case, Mexican ancestry “alone did not constitute reasonable suspicion to support stops by Border Patrol agents," because large numbers of authorized persons near the border look like people with Mexican backgrounds.
She says:
The Fourth Amendment thus prohibits exactly what the Government is attempting to do here: seize individual based solely on a set of facts that ‘describes a very large category of presumably innocent’ people.
THE PROPER ROLE OF THE COURT
Kavanaugh goes to some length to say that he isn’t trying to set immigration policy, just uphold the courts’ role as fair enforcers of the Constitution and the law, as the Supreme Court has done in the past.
. . . We now likewise must decline to step outside our constitutionally assigned role to improperly restrict reasonable Executive Branch enforcement of the immigration laws.
Consistency and neutrality are hallmarks of good judging and in my view, we abide by those enduring judicial values in this case by granting the stay.
But Kavanaugh sure sounds like a policy maven, with strong views on immigration, and not positive ones, noting that "millions" of people are here illegally, and that the big numbers cause a "myriad" of social and economic problems, quoting a previous case.
Kavanaugh does take a moment to show that he's a nice guy:
To be sure, I recognize and fully appreciate that many (not all, but many) illegal immigrants come to the United States to escape poverty and the lack of freedom and opportunities in their home countries, and to make better lives for themselves and their families.
But he puts on his judicial face, noting sternly that illegal immigrants cause problems for immigrants who are doing things the right way:
. . . they are not only violating the immigration laws, but also jumping in front of those non-citizens who follow the rules and wait in line to immigrate into the United States through the legal immigration process.
Sotomayor, on the other hand, isn't debating immigration policy, but concentrates on the court’s role in enforcing the Constitution and immigration laws. The District Court’s order banning the profiling factors, she says:
. . . does not preclude the Government from enforcing the immigration laws, so long as in doing so, it stops individual based on additional facts on top of the four factors listed.
She writes that actual cases showed that legal as well as undocumented persons suffered, despite Kavanaugh’s assurances that stop were only mildly inconvenienced and that Kavanaugh’s reasoning:
. . . improperly shifts the burden onto an entire class of citizens to carry enough documentation to provide that they deserve to walk freely. The Constitution does not permit the creation of such a second-class citizenship status.
She continues with this damning statement:
Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents and the fact they make a living by doing manual labor. Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.
CONCLUSION
Un-Judge Jones, having read the two opinions, thinks Sotomayor out-classes Kavanaugh, certainly from a debating perspective.
Kavanaugh trivializes the harm caused to legal citizens, in the frightening nature of the experience of being stopped, in time lost from work and in the sheer worry about being intercepted by immigration officials, with some people feeling the need to carry documents proving their citizenship.
On the surface, at Kavanaugh's arguments sound like "common sense," one of the phrases he uses in his opinion, but actually they seem reckless, leaving citizens unprotected from overbearing government agents.
If someone looks like an undocumented person, talks like one, shows up in places where undocumented people supposedly frequent and if they perform jobs that many undocumented persons work - well, what the heck, why not? Ignoring the majority of people who fit the profile, but are legal citizens.
I find Kavanaugh's sympathy for immigrants, and his professed commitment to judicial impartiality, to be superficial and hypocritical - but that may be unfair to him.
Sotomayor, on the other hand, seems hard-headed and properly focused on the plain reading of the Fourth Amendment in protecting all of us from improper stops. I also like her emphasis on what happens in actual cases, as opposed to what's supposed to happen. She writes:
Immigration agents are not conducting "brief stops for questions," as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence and warehouse detentions.
Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government's conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.
What jumped out at me was that the ruling on profiling tactics is proably not about “illegal immigrants” but about people who are U.S. citizens.
Sotomayor emphasizes that the Fourth Amendment is supposed to protect everyone, and in this case, thousands of people are being brutalized, many of them legal U.S. citizens.
Think of profiling in a different context, let's say locating potential assassins.
The criteria might include factors such as: *gun owners, *registered voters, *young males, *consumers of social media, *people with valid drivers' licenses, *folks who wear baseball caps, *weirdos who lately have been acting even more strangely than usual, *video gamers, *guys living in their parents' basements, and * people who weren't popular in school.
Rounding up thousands, even millions, of people meeting those criteria might land one or two possible assassins; or, maybe not. But, for sure you'd be bothering lots of innocent people.
Sadly, though, I don't think words matter all that much in today's Supreme Court
The ultimate decision, when the profiling case completes the appeals level and returns to the Supreme Court for a final opinion, what's "reasonable" and what's not will depend on the whims of the individual justices.
And I'm betting the justices have already made up their minds, and they'll dress up their conclusions in courtly, legal language.
Then what will matter won't be words, but numbers.
Six to three; five to four.
All of this, of course,is just Un-Judge Jones' opinion.
He very much would like to be overruled - and surprised - by the nation's highest court.
* * *
NOTE: If you'd like to read the case, here's the PDF that includes the Kavanaugh and Sotomayor opinions.
THE COLLIE & THE CROW
Raising again, our enduring, elusive vision of an America united.
MEEKO AND RUSSELL, border collie and crow, in their Oregon backyard. PHOTO CREDIT: Autumn Buck, via the Washington Post
IT WAS ONE OF THOSE QUIRKY ANIMAL STORIES meant to distract us from the despair and distress of the normal news. And, now, in today's harsh political moment, it's especially welcome.
The border collie and the crow. The bird and the dog. Fast friends in the grassroots of the American Northwest.
Maybe you saw the story in last week’s Washington Post.
A young crow was injured this past June when its nest fell from an 80-foot-tall tree into the backyard of Autumn Buck and her husband, Tedd Simmons, in Portland, Oregon.
Autumn and Tedd fashioned a homemade nest for the crow, raising it six feet from the ground, and then feeding their young patient typical hospital gruel: mashed bananas and soggy kibble.
Enter Meeko, the couple’s 5-year-old border collie. With no sheep to superintend, Meeko took charge of recovery nest security, chasing away errant cats and standing guard.
The bird – now Christened “Russell” after the actor, Russell Crowe – healed, getting back use of his land legs, then learning fly.
In the meantime, a bond between bird and dog evolved and matured.
Russell took to sleeping on Meeko’s tail.
They played fetch: somebody would throw a tiny crocheted “cake;” Russell would grab it, then drop it for Meeko to retrieve. Toss Meeko a Frisbee, and Russell raced to get there first. They played “chase.” Together, they greeted the mail carrier. And in their spare time, they just hung out.
In the morning, the crow, who slept in a chestnut tree, would come to a glass door of the house, persistently pecking at the glass demanding that Meeko be let out to play.
REALLY? DID THIS HAPPEN? Is the story true? Sound too good?
Reasonable questions, and mine, too. Autumn Buck, as you can see if you can access the Post story, supplied the newspaper with bird-dog photo; and there's even some video of the duo in action.
But in today’s untamed and unreliable internet, now made even less reliable by fast-evolving artificial intelligence, who knows?
I’m choosing to believe it. Border collies are protective; crows are among the world's smartest birds.
But as far as seeing the tale as a cutesy, escapist story, I see it as a modern Aesop’s Fable, a parable about America’s long and continuing aspiration to become a nation for all of us.
GETTING ALONG IS ACTUALLY A BIBLICAL CONCEPT.
It's that lion lying down with the lamb business. The actual wording is from the Book of Isaiah, 11-6:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
OF COURSE, THERE ARE THE COUNTRY'S FOUNDING DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence put it this way in 1775:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
THE MOST MOVING AND ENDURING STATEMENT of American unity comes from Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, which, on Aug. 28, 1963, defined the civil rights movement.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
* * *
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day, right down in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and
brothers.
I have a dream today.
A little more than four years later, King was assassinated, perhaps as much as punishment and rejection for his vision, as from the impact of his murder’s bullet.
ANOTHER MAN NAMED KING took up the theme more that two decades later.
Rodney Glen King wondered why people from different backgrounds and viewpoints couldn’t see eye to eye.
King had been stopped by Los Angeles police for drunk driving and was videotaped as he was savagely beaten. Officers were charged, never convicted, and that outcome produced six days of riots, in which 63 people were killed.
On May 1, 1992, Rodney King made a TV appeal that the rioting stop:
I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
* * *
It's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. And, I mean, please, we can, we can get along here. We all can get along. We just gotta. We gotta. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's, you know, let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it, you know. Let's try to work it out.
Rodney King, who had confronted substance abuse throughout his life, drowned in his swimming pool in 2012, his death ruled accidental, with drugs and alcohol said to be contributing factors.
THE UNITY THEME WAS PICKED UP AGAIN, when Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July 27, 2004.
In his version of a common community, Obama rejected political, racial and cultural divisions.
. . . there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.
There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats.
But I've got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States, and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States.
The speech propelled Obama into the presidency, the first person of color to hold the nation’s highest office. Obama served two terms, from 2009 to 2017. And it seemed as if Obama’s vision and those of the two Kings and of the Bible’s prophets, and of the Founders, finally had been realized.
My opinion is the opposite – that America could not countenance a Black man in the White House, and savagely, that formed the basis for Donald Trump, a racist, to be elected president. Twice.
Trump, a man of unbounded hatred, now is tearing the country to pieces by setting all of us apart – Black, White, girl, boy, liberal, conservative, red state, blue state, rich, poor, college graduate, high school graduate, urban, rural, Native American, immigrant American.
Never have we been more divided since the Civil war, and maybe the divisions today are even deeper than during a period when our differences were so profound: slave versus free man/woman.
But I also think the prophecy, the dream, the vision, the plea for unity will live on until they become a fact, in practice as well as in principle.
We can get along. Our superficial differences do not define us. At a time of environmental collapse, in fact, we creatures have the same interest in our mutual survival, and more in common, than our remarkable differences.
I mean, if the bird and the dog, the collie and the crow, can do it, why can't the rest of us do the same?
The border collie and the crow. The bird and the dog. Fast friends in the grassroots of the American Northwest.
Maybe you saw the story in last week’s Washington Post.
A young crow was injured this past June when its nest fell from an 80-foot-tall tree into the backyard of Autumn Buck and her husband, Tedd Simmons, in Portland, Oregon.
Autumn and Tedd fashioned a homemade nest for the crow, raising it six feet from the ground, and then feeding their young patient typical hospital gruel: mashed bananas and soggy kibble.
Enter Meeko, the couple’s 5-year-old border collie. With no sheep to superintend, Meeko took charge of recovery nest security, chasing away errant cats and standing guard.
The bird – now Christened “Russell” after the actor, Russell Crowe – healed, getting back use of his land legs, then learning fly.
In the meantime, a bond between bird and dog evolved and matured.
Russell took to sleeping on Meeko’s tail.
They played fetch: somebody would throw a tiny crocheted “cake;” Russell would grab it, then drop it for Meeko to retrieve. Toss Meeko a Frisbee, and Russell raced to get there first. They played “chase.” Together, they greeted the mail carrier. And in their spare time, they just hung out.
In the morning, the crow, who slept in a chestnut tree, would come to a glass door of the house, persistently pecking at the glass demanding that Meeko be let out to play.
REALLY? DID THIS HAPPEN? Is the story true? Sound too good?
Reasonable questions, and mine, too. Autumn Buck, as you can see if you can access the Post story, supplied the newspaper with bird-dog photo; and there's even some video of the duo in action.
But in today’s untamed and unreliable internet, now made even less reliable by fast-evolving artificial intelligence, who knows?
I’m choosing to believe it. Border collies are protective; crows are among the world's smartest birds.
But as far as seeing the tale as a cutesy, escapist story, I see it as a modern Aesop’s Fable, a parable about America’s long and continuing aspiration to become a nation for all of us.
GETTING ALONG IS ACTUALLY A BIBLICAL CONCEPT.
It's that lion lying down with the lamb business. The actual wording is from the Book of Isaiah, 11-6:
The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.
OF COURSE, THERE ARE THE COUNTRY'S FOUNDING DOCUMENTS
The Declaration of Independence put it this way in 1775:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
THE MOST MOVING AND ENDURING STATEMENT of American unity comes from Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, which, on Aug. 28, 1963, defined the civil rights movement.
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.
* * *
I have a dream that one day down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day, right down in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and
brothers.
I have a dream today.
A little more than four years later, King was assassinated, perhaps as much as punishment and rejection for his vision, as from the impact of his murder’s bullet.
ANOTHER MAN NAMED KING took up the theme more that two decades later.
Rodney Glen King wondered why people from different backgrounds and viewpoints couldn’t see eye to eye.
King had been stopped by Los Angeles police for drunk driving and was videotaped as he was savagely beaten. Officers were charged, never convicted, and that outcome produced six days of riots, in which 63 people were killed.
On May 1, 1992, Rodney King made a TV appeal that the rioting stop:
I just want to say – you know – can we, can we all get along? Can we, can we get along? Can we stop making it horrible for the older people and the kids?
* * *
It's just not right, because those people will never go home to their families again. And, I mean, please, we can, we can get along here. We all can get along. We just gotta. We gotta. I mean, we're all stuck here for a while. Let's, you know, let's try to work it out. Let's try to beat it, you know. Let's try to work it out.
Rodney King, who had confronted substance abuse throughout his life, drowned in his swimming pool in 2012, his death ruled accidental, with drugs and alcohol said to be contributing factors.
THE UNITY THEME WAS PICKED UP AGAIN, when Barack Obama, then an Illinois state senator, addressed the Democratic National Convention in Boston, July 27, 2004.
In his version of a common community, Obama rejected political, racial and cultural divisions.
. . . there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America.
There is not a black America and a white America and Latino America and Asian America — there's the United States of America.
The pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats.
But I've got news for them, too: We worship an awesome God in the Blue States, and we don't like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States, and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the Red States.
The speech propelled Obama into the presidency, the first person of color to hold the nation’s highest office. Obama served two terms, from 2009 to 2017. And it seemed as if Obama’s vision and those of the two Kings and of the Bible’s prophets, and of the Founders, finally had been realized.
My opinion is the opposite – that America could not countenance a Black man in the White House, and savagely, that formed the basis for Donald Trump, a racist, to be elected president. Twice.
Trump, a man of unbounded hatred, now is tearing the country to pieces by setting all of us apart – Black, White, girl, boy, liberal, conservative, red state, blue state, rich, poor, college graduate, high school graduate, urban, rural, Native American, immigrant American.
Never have we been more divided since the Civil war, and maybe the divisions today are even deeper than during a period when our differences were so profound: slave versus free man/woman.
But I also think the prophecy, the dream, the vision, the plea for unity will live on until they become a fact, in practice as well as in principle.
We can get along. Our superficial differences do not define us. At a time of environmental collapse, in fact, we creatures have the same interest in our mutual survival, and more in common, than our remarkable differences.
I mean, if the bird and the dog, the collie and the crow, can do it, why can't the rest of us do the same?
DEPARTMENT OF NAMES
Get out your erasers and Sharpies as we align titles and names with our nation’s goals and philosophies.
 THE WHITE HOUSE |  THE GOLD HOUSE |
ON JUNE 5, PRESIDENT TRUMP signed an executive order moving to change the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War.
The text of the order said that change “… demonstrates our ability and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our Nation at a moment’s notice, not just to defend.”
In comments at the signing, Trump said the move actually restores a title that had been used until after World War II, when, in his telling, the country “decided to go woke” and stopped winning wars.
That version of history would have surprised the only man who has ordered the destruction of two cities with atomic bombs, President Harry Truman, who later went on to change “war” to “defense.”
“We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or wokey, and we just fight forever.” said Trump, who has long been suspected of dodging the draft during his student years.
My wife points out another irony, since among the honors that Trump seems to covet is the Nobel Peace Prize, a concept that seems at war with the military department's new title.
In any case, the War Department designation got me thinking – and I’m sure a lot of people, too – about other changes that better fit with Trump’s vision for America.
HERE’S A FEW OF MY SUGGESTIONS. Some need just a syllable or two added or subtracted; others. a word or two, here or there.
CURRENT NAME: The White House.
PROPOSED NAME: The Gold House.
This would fit in with Trump’s executive mansion makeover, plastering gold leaf over the Oval Office and other historic areas, converting the Rose Garden to a patio, adding a convention wing, with the goal of recreating a Washington version of the original American Dream home, Mara-a-Logo
CURRENT NAME : Department of Health and Human Services
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Death and Inhumane Services
Carries out Director R. F. Kennedy’s vision of how to make America sick again by discouraging vaccine use and by cutting cutting-edge medical research, while implementing the Big Beautiful Bill’s reductions to Medicaid, which are sure to be followed by reductions in Medicare and Social Security benefits to both able and disabled Americans of all ages. A political question: will people who are sick and dying be allowed to vote?
CURRENT NAME: Department of Energy
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Fossil Fuels
Implements the president’s vision of a nation free of wind and solar power in favor of oil and natural gas, along with the Great Coal Revival. “Our planet got started with a Big Bang," the president said, reading from prepared remarks. "Let’s see if it ends the same way.”
CURRENT NAME: Harvard University
PROPOSED NAME: Trump University
“I ask you,” the president exclaimed at a signing of an agreement between the Administration and the nation’s most esteemed university, “shouldn’t higher education reform be about more than money? Of course not: money trumps everything. But the 'Art of the Deal' says if you can get all of Harvard’s endowment, plus a meaningful name change, go for it. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that the president of the Trump University and the United States of America WILL BE ONE IN THE SAME. Thank you for your attention.”
CURRENT NAME: Environmental Protection Agency
PROPOSED NAME: Environmental Pollution Agency
(See Department of Fossil Fuels)
CURRENT NAME: Department of Housing and Urban Development
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Unhousing and Urban Disparagement
“I would have preferred 'The Department of Homelessness,'" Trump said at the signing. "But I wanted to keep the gullible liberals guessing about whether I’m going woke. But don’t you worry, whether we increase the number of homeless people or number of unhoused people, we'll need to call out more of the National Guard to protect our wretched cities from the poorest and most helpless.”
CURRENT NAME: Department of Homeland Security
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Homeland Insecurity
No explanation needed. Masked, unidentified thugs with dubious police powers snatching people off the streets and stuffing them into unmarked SUVs and sending them to secret detention centers before deporting them to countries with names most of us can’t spell: Makes it hard to get good night’s sleep, then to wake up to a nightmare that turns out not to be a dream.
CURRENT NAME: Department of Justice
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Injustice
Another no explanation needed. On his first day in office, Trump granted pardons and/or clemency to about 1,600 people convicted or suspected of taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol in 2021. Later, his DOI went after people involved in those prosecutions or who otherwise offended the president. Bringing criminals to justice in America has always been iffy; now, it's that much harder to tell the bad guys from the good guys, assuming there still are good guys.
CURRENT NAME: Department of Labor
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Unorganized Labor
“I mean, how stupid does a union guy (or gal) have to be to have voted for me, and any other Republican,” Trump said while signing the executive order. “Talk about un-enlightened self interest.”
CURRENT NAME: Federal Bureau of Investigation
PROPOSED NAME: Federal Bureau of Intrusion
(See Department of Injustice, Department of Homeland Insecurity).
CURRENT NAME: Central Intelligence Agency
PROPOSED NAME: Central Ignorance Agency
The CIA has long been a mixed blessing. We need spies to know what other countries are up to; but the agency has long been a mechanism for international meddling. "Now, the perceived danger is that in the past, the CIA came up with actual facts. Trust me, facts no longer matter.”
CURRENT NAME: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
PROPOSED NAME: Bureau for the Promotion of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
“It’s time we accelerated the development, possession and use of substances and mechanisms that maim and kill and that generally are bad for the human body,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This change reflects core values of this Administration.”
CURRENT NAME: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
PROPOSED NAME: Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts
But you knew that was coming.
CURRENT NAME: National Portrait Gallery
PROPOSED NAME: National Portrait Gallery
Same name, but a new Permanent Exhibit: Featuring photographs, paintings and Time magazine covers of Donald J. Trump through the 20th and 21st Centuries.
CURRENT NAME: Library of Congress
PROPOSED NAME: None
We closed the place.
CURRENT NAME: United States of America
PROPOSED NAME: Disunited States of America
The text of the order said that change “… demonstrates our ability and willingness to fight and win wars on behalf of our Nation at a moment’s notice, not just to defend.”
In comments at the signing, Trump said the move actually restores a title that had been used until after World War II, when, in his telling, the country “decided to go woke” and stopped winning wars.
That version of history would have surprised the only man who has ordered the destruction of two cities with atomic bombs, President Harry Truman, who later went on to change “war” to “defense.”
“We could have won every war, but we really chose to be very politically correct, or wokey, and we just fight forever.” said Trump, who has long been suspected of dodging the draft during his student years.
My wife points out another irony, since among the honors that Trump seems to covet is the Nobel Peace Prize, a concept that seems at war with the military department's new title.
In any case, the War Department designation got me thinking – and I’m sure a lot of people, too – about other changes that better fit with Trump’s vision for America.
HERE’S A FEW OF MY SUGGESTIONS. Some need just a syllable or two added or subtracted; others. a word or two, here or there.
CURRENT NAME: The White House.
PROPOSED NAME: The Gold House.
This would fit in with Trump’s executive mansion makeover, plastering gold leaf over the Oval Office and other historic areas, converting the Rose Garden to a patio, adding a convention wing, with the goal of recreating a Washington version of the original American Dream home, Mara-a-Logo
CURRENT NAME : Department of Health and Human Services
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Death and Inhumane Services
Carries out Director R. F. Kennedy’s vision of how to make America sick again by discouraging vaccine use and by cutting cutting-edge medical research, while implementing the Big Beautiful Bill’s reductions to Medicaid, which are sure to be followed by reductions in Medicare and Social Security benefits to both able and disabled Americans of all ages. A political question: will people who are sick and dying be allowed to vote?
CURRENT NAME: Department of Energy
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Fossil Fuels
Implements the president’s vision of a nation free of wind and solar power in favor of oil and natural gas, along with the Great Coal Revival. “Our planet got started with a Big Bang," the president said, reading from prepared remarks. "Let’s see if it ends the same way.”
CURRENT NAME: Harvard University
PROPOSED NAME: Trump University
“I ask you,” the president exclaimed at a signing of an agreement between the Administration and the nation’s most esteemed university, “shouldn’t higher education reform be about more than money? Of course not: money trumps everything. But the 'Art of the Deal' says if you can get all of Harvard’s endowment, plus a meaningful name change, go for it. And I’m sure you won’t be surprised to know that the president of the Trump University and the United States of America WILL BE ONE IN THE SAME. Thank you for your attention.”
CURRENT NAME: Environmental Protection Agency
PROPOSED NAME: Environmental Pollution Agency
(See Department of Fossil Fuels)
CURRENT NAME: Department of Housing and Urban Development
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Unhousing and Urban Disparagement
“I would have preferred 'The Department of Homelessness,'" Trump said at the signing. "But I wanted to keep the gullible liberals guessing about whether I’m going woke. But don’t you worry, whether we increase the number of homeless people or number of unhoused people, we'll need to call out more of the National Guard to protect our wretched cities from the poorest and most helpless.”
CURRENT NAME: Department of Homeland Security
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Homeland Insecurity
No explanation needed. Masked, unidentified thugs with dubious police powers snatching people off the streets and stuffing them into unmarked SUVs and sending them to secret detention centers before deporting them to countries with names most of us can’t spell: Makes it hard to get good night’s sleep, then to wake up to a nightmare that turns out not to be a dream.
CURRENT NAME: Department of Justice
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Injustice
Another no explanation needed. On his first day in office, Trump granted pardons and/or clemency to about 1,600 people convicted or suspected of taking part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol in 2021. Later, his DOI went after people involved in those prosecutions or who otherwise offended the president. Bringing criminals to justice in America has always been iffy; now, it's that much harder to tell the bad guys from the good guys, assuming there still are good guys.
CURRENT NAME: Department of Labor
PROPOSED NAME: Department of Unorganized Labor
“I mean, how stupid does a union guy (or gal) have to be to have voted for me, and any other Republican,” Trump said while signing the executive order. “Talk about un-enlightened self interest.”
CURRENT NAME: Federal Bureau of Investigation
PROPOSED NAME: Federal Bureau of Intrusion
(See Department of Injustice, Department of Homeland Insecurity).
CURRENT NAME: Central Intelligence Agency
PROPOSED NAME: Central Ignorance Agency
The CIA has long been a mixed blessing. We need spies to know what other countries are up to; but the agency has long been a mechanism for international meddling. "Now, the perceived danger is that in the past, the CIA came up with actual facts. Trust me, facts no longer matter.”
CURRENT NAME: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
PROPOSED NAME: Bureau for the Promotion of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives
“It’s time we accelerated the development, possession and use of substances and mechanisms that maim and kill and that generally are bad for the human body,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “This change reflects core values of this Administration.”
CURRENT NAME: John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
PROPOSED NAME: Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts
But you knew that was coming.
CURRENT NAME: National Portrait Gallery
PROPOSED NAME: National Portrait Gallery
Same name, but a new Permanent Exhibit: Featuring photographs, paintings and Time magazine covers of Donald J. Trump through the 20th and 21st Centuries.
CURRENT NAME: Library of Congress
PROPOSED NAME: None
We closed the place.
CURRENT NAME: United States of America
PROPOSED NAME: Disunited States of America
AN EPOCH OF MISERY
Engineered by the nation’s criminal-at-the-top
THE NATIONAL GUARD at Washington D.C.'s Union Station. CREDIT: Department of Defense
IN ALASKA, seasoned dictator with apprentice dictator. CREDIT: White House video I’M NOT GIVING UP, and I hope the rest of us aren’t, either.
But these are miserable times. They are hard, painful, exhausting and relentless.
We are ensnared in Donald Trump’s Epoch of Misery.
Every day, no matter the time and day of the week,there’s a new barrage of cruel, destructive and shattering assaults on the American character, our experiment in democracy, our aspiration to be just, creative, decent and loving.
It’s because there’s a criminal in charge of an entire country – our country, our America, our United States of America – and that crook at the top is out to get us – all of us.
We are in a moment when a merciless, murderous, malevolent mind is stalking our collective and individual lives.
It never sleeps, never takes a day off, never goes on vacation, never misses a beat in its ceaseless crusade to ravage the sacred mystery of what makes us decent, good and human.
August, the last full chapter of summer, has been particularly savage.
There was the red carpet meeting in Alaska between the seasoned dictator and the apprentice dictator that pretended to be focused on ending the Ukraine war, but was really just a chance for two mean guys to be mean together.
There's the still evolving invasion of Washington by the National Guard, plus agents of “law” enforcement, dispatched on the pretext of cleaning up crime in Washington, D.C. – orchestrated by the criminal-at-the-top.
Imagine, soldiers, military vehicles, patrolling the streets and parks of our capital city. The National Guard is supposed to protect citizens from enemies aboard, and rescue them from disasters at home. The Guard is populated by our neighbors, our brothers and sisters, our friends and work colleagues.
Now, these folks are dispatched on a new mission: to terrify us, to arrest us, maybe shoot us, but for the time being, to get us used to the idea that if we get out of line – protest, express our freedom of speech rights, display a sign with the wrong picture or slogan – that Guard will follow orders and do whatever it takes to shut us up.
Next deployment, Chicago. But maybe Baltimore is closer. Then onto New York. Any place that votes Democratic, and better still, has a Black mayor and lots of Black citizens, because the criminal-at-the-top, in addition to being a bully, an extortionist, a cheat and a liar, is, at heart, a racist.
BY NOW WE KNOW THE WORST PART OF ANY DAY is waking up to nightmare headlines about the fresh Miseries engineered the previous day by the criminal-at-the-top.
But a couple of mornings ago, Misery got off to a particularly early, “breaking news” start, with live video of the FBI searching the home of one of the people the criminal-at-the-top hates the most (which is saying something), John Bolton.
JOHN BOLTON CREDIT: Gage Skidmore
Bolton is the man with the funny mustache who is disliked throughout the spectrum of good and evil, who was once Trump’s national security advisor, but later turned out to be an eloquent and compulsive Trump critic.
The 7 a.m. searches of Bolton’s home and his office were both a smack down of a Trump enemy, but more importantly, a demonstration that no man or woman is beyond the reach of the criminal-at-the-top.
Indeed, a onetime Trump White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, joked that when he learned of the Bolton search, “I went down and locked my door.”
To prove the point, Trump over the weekend suggested that maybe his Department of Injustice should take a look at another friend-turned-enemy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Christie’s perceived crime was the moldy Bridgegate Scandal, which is too old and complicated to go into here. But Christie’s actual offense was mouthing off on the TV Sunday talk shows, suggesting that the Bolton searches could be a result of Trump’s politicized Department of Justice. Later, Trump got in the last word, noting that Christie is a “slob” and “everybody knows it.”
AN EXAMPLE OF PROLONGED TRUMPIAN MISERY was yesterday’s chapter in the saga of Kilmar Armando Ábrego Garcia.
He’s the immigrant illegally sent to a notorious El Salvadoran prison, eventually returned to the U.S., subsequently imprisoned, freed for several days, then scooped up again yesterday when he checked in – as he was required to – with federal officials. The new plan, deport him to Uganda, a move put on hold – last we heard – by a federal judge. The lesson being, if not “resistance is futile,” at least “you better have a lawyer or a whole bunch of lawyers on speed dial.”
Closer to home for me in tiny Rhode Island, the Misery Epoch last Friday halted construction of a big ocean wind farm off the coast. Forty-five of Revolution Wind’s 65 turbines already have been completed.
The project is supposed to produce enough power to light up 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and is a big part of the littlest state’s effort to limit climate change and create jobs.
But the criminal-at-the-top doesn’t like “windmills,” preferring energy from climate-wrecking fossil fuels. State and federal officials were fighting to reverse the stop-work order.
Moving from the tiniest state to one of the biggest, Texas, Republicans, like all Republicans everywhere, did as they were told by the criminal-at-the-top. The don’t mess with Texans moved to prevent a Democratic takeover of the House in the mid-term elections by creating five new Republican-heavy House districts.
This morning’s wake-up news was that Trump says he’s moving to fire Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, part of his drive to take over the supposedly independent central bank. Note that she is Black and a woman, two categories detested by the criminal-at-the-top.
ENOUGH, YOU ARE SAYING. Just stop. Too much. Shut up. Zip it, please.
Indeed, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know – which is that August isn’t over and neither is the Epoch of Misery. There’s always September and then the next three years.
The point is, and I expect that you know this, too, is that the criminal-at-the-top is only getting started and that the Misery Epoch will get worse, much, much worse.
In D.C., for example, I think Trump is trying ratchet up the Misery, trying to create “an incident” in which he can really crack down, maybe declare martial law and maybe not just in Washington.
My guess is that’s why the National Guard is now carrying guns; why Trump issued an executive order make burning the American flag a crime even though the Supreme Court once said it isn’t; why Trump is suggesting removal of no-cash bail - anything to make the DC crackdown more tense, more unstable, more explosive.
The 7 a.m. searches of Bolton’s home and his office were both a smack down of a Trump enemy, but more importantly, a demonstration that no man or woman is beyond the reach of the criminal-at-the-top.
Indeed, a onetime Trump White House lawyer, Ty Cobb, joked that when he learned of the Bolton search, “I went down and locked my door.”
To prove the point, Trump over the weekend suggested that maybe his Department of Injustice should take a look at another friend-turned-enemy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Christie’s perceived crime was the moldy Bridgegate Scandal, which is too old and complicated to go into here. But Christie’s actual offense was mouthing off on the TV Sunday talk shows, suggesting that the Bolton searches could be a result of Trump’s politicized Department of Justice. Later, Trump got in the last word, noting that Christie is a “slob” and “everybody knows it.”
AN EXAMPLE OF PROLONGED TRUMPIAN MISERY was yesterday’s chapter in the saga of Kilmar Armando Ábrego Garcia.
He’s the immigrant illegally sent to a notorious El Salvadoran prison, eventually returned to the U.S., subsequently imprisoned, freed for several days, then scooped up again yesterday when he checked in – as he was required to – with federal officials. The new plan, deport him to Uganda, a move put on hold – last we heard – by a federal judge. The lesson being, if not “resistance is futile,” at least “you better have a lawyer or a whole bunch of lawyers on speed dial.”
Closer to home for me in tiny Rhode Island, the Misery Epoch last Friday halted construction of a big ocean wind farm off the coast. Forty-five of Revolution Wind’s 65 turbines already have been completed.
The project is supposed to produce enough power to light up 350,000 homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut, and is a big part of the littlest state’s effort to limit climate change and create jobs.
But the criminal-at-the-top doesn’t like “windmills,” preferring energy from climate-wrecking fossil fuels. State and federal officials were fighting to reverse the stop-work order.
Moving from the tiniest state to one of the biggest, Texas, Republicans, like all Republicans everywhere, did as they were told by the criminal-at-the-top. The don’t mess with Texans moved to prevent a Democratic takeover of the House in the mid-term elections by creating five new Republican-heavy House districts.
This morning’s wake-up news was that Trump says he’s moving to fire Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, part of his drive to take over the supposedly independent central bank. Note that she is Black and a woman, two categories detested by the criminal-at-the-top.
ENOUGH, YOU ARE SAYING. Just stop. Too much. Shut up. Zip it, please.
Indeed, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know – which is that August isn’t over and neither is the Epoch of Misery. There’s always September and then the next three years.
The point is, and I expect that you know this, too, is that the criminal-at-the-top is only getting started and that the Misery Epoch will get worse, much, much worse.
In D.C., for example, I think Trump is trying ratchet up the Misery, trying to create “an incident” in which he can really crack down, maybe declare martial law and maybe not just in Washington.
My guess is that’s why the National Guard is now carrying guns; why Trump issued an executive order make burning the American flag a crime even though the Supreme Court once said it isn’t; why Trump is suggesting removal of no-cash bail - anything to make the DC crackdown more tense, more unstable, more explosive.
ENGINEER of the Epoch of Misery, the criminal-at-the-top. CREDIT: Gage Skidmore
Trump eventually, maybe sooner than eventually, will try to militarize more Democratic cities.
Trump will try to use that militarization to quell protests.
Trump will try to use facilities created for deportable immigrants to lock up national security risk protesters.
Trump will try use the Internet, AI and so forth to track what we write, what we read, what we say, and criminalize all three.
Which is why it is so important to keep speaking out, to go to rallies and protests, to support the John Boltons, the Kilmar Garcias and the Chris Christies, not because we like them, but because, like them, we are all at the same risk of a government under control of a criminal-at-the-top.
The only way to bring an end to the Epoch of Misery is for people of good will to bring it to an end. I don’t know how, don’t know exactly what to do. I can’t tell you what will work and what won’t.
It’s not an easy fight. But it’s ours.
Trump will try to use that militarization to quell protests.
Trump will try to use facilities created for deportable immigrants to lock up national security risk protesters.
Trump will try use the Internet, AI and so forth to track what we write, what we read, what we say, and criminalize all three.
Which is why it is so important to keep speaking out, to go to rallies and protests, to support the John Boltons, the Kilmar Garcias and the Chris Christies, not because we like them, but because, like them, we are all at the same risk of a government under control of a criminal-at-the-top.
The only way to bring an end to the Epoch of Misery is for people of good will to bring it to an end. I don’t know how, don’t know exactly what to do. I can’t tell you what will work and what won’t.
It’s not an easy fight. But it’s ours.
Guest Essay
TAKING TO THE STREETS
HOW EFFECTIVE ARE REGULAR PROTESTS
AT COUNTERING TRUMP'S WAR ON AMERICA?
ONE OF THE COMPLAINTS I hear most often is that Americans aren’t standing up to the cruel and destructive policies cascading from Donald Trump’s second administration.
“Why are people ignoring the fill-in-the-blank outrage of the moment: Medicare cuts, food stamp curbs, immigrant kidnappings and deportations, extortion of colleges, law firms and other institutions?”
Of course, millions of people are turning to the streets.
In my hometown, Newport, R.I., a “Bridge Brigade” is sponsored by the Newport Democratic City Committee and allies at the big Newport Bridge interchange every other week. There was a big turnout on “No Kings Day” back in June. There are, in fact, lots of demonstrations.
But do they have an impact? Have they become so common that they are little more than barely noticed wall paper? Do they feature the same folks, mostly elderly? In short, what's the point?
A friend, Maria Johnson, of Middletown, Conn., examines the plusses and minuses of regular protests in an essay published recently in the Hartford Courant. She’s given me permission to reprint it here.
Why We March
By Maria Johnson
I AM WRITING THIS exactly six months into Donald J. Trump’s presidency. That means – I did the math – there are still three and a half years left to go. Sigh. How are we gonna make it?
My unscientific survey – basically, of my friends and myself – reveals that four out of four people have had it, man. We’re tired, cranky, restless. Fed up.
We avoid the news, gripe to each other about whatever news seeps out, and share snarky posts.
And still, we suffer.
Nothing left to do but take to the streets. Put our bodies on the line. We make protest signs, some of them serious, referencing Germany in the ’30s; some of them funny (“Only Elvis is King”), and we stand at busy intersections, where passing cars mostly honk their support.
Are we saving democracy? That’s doubtful. Are we saving ourselves? More likely.
“I do it for myself,” said my art teacher friend Mary who protests weekly in Burlington, VT. “I cannot do nothing.”
Ed McKuen, one of the organizers of the weekly protests here in Middletown, said the aim is “to make people think. When they see their neighbors standing on the corner to protest what’s going on in Washington and when they see the messages people are holding up, we hope that they will think about it, maybe join us or get involved.”
Another fellow protester said she’s out there “because otherwise I fall into despair. It’s good to be around people who think and act the way I do. It kind of keeps you going.”
I get it. I protest to feel better, too, but I fear the serotonin may be wearing off. At yesterday’s protest, for example, I got into a dustup with a regular pedestrian at the crosswalk. Our exchange began benignly enough when he observed how consistently our group shows up. How long have we been doing this? he asked.
I’d joined the movement when it was already months in progress, so I wasn’t sure, but I pointed out Ed McKuen – “He would know.”
“Oh, the communist?” said the guy, and I, so brimming with the Kumbaya spirit of the sunny morning, mistakenly believed he was making a joke about what the other team thinks of us.
“Yep, we’re all communists,” I said.
Then the man made himself better understood. He said that, admittedly, Trump can be hard to take, but “at least he’s getting things done.”
Uh-oh. Getting things done?! That’s it, I told him, we’re done talking.
“Oh, because we disagree?”
Well, since he put it that way, yes.
What I couldn’t think to say in the moment is that what Trump’s “getting done” is dismantling democracy, cruelly depriving people of health care and a secure retirement, enlisting masked goons to pull innocent people off the street and deporting them to foreign jails, gutting or eliminating the government agencies that keep us safe and our children well-educated, turning on our allies, including Canada – Canada! – and generally making America a laughingstock around the world.
Disgusted, I said, “Why don’t you talk to my friend over here who has patience with people like you?” I pointed to my optimistic pal, Phoebe, who, unlike myself, actually believes she can change MAGA minds through the power of a civil conversation.
“Or else,” I said, changing the subject, “we can admire these lovely flowers here,” and I took a step toward a concrete planter abounding with pink and yellow petunias.
“Don’t come at me!” the guy said, as if I wielded a knife.
Come at him? And they call us libs snowflakes. I was seething with anger as he finally walked away down the sidewalk.
There was yet more drama to come – and from someone on our side!
I had approached a woman standing alone apart from the group. I told her I was going to write an essay about our protests and asked why she was out here today.
“It’s an opportunity to get …” she began, then stopped. “Are you recording me?”
It seemed an odd question considering I was holding my cellphone an inch from her mouth and had no notebook in which to record her response. I said yes, I was, and she gave me a good scolding for not saying so ahead of time.
What the …? O-kay, I said, backing away. Fine. I won’t use you. And I headed across the street, inwardly repeating my new mantra: “Fewer people, more painting.”
“Why are people ignoring the fill-in-the-blank outrage of the moment: Medicare cuts, food stamp curbs, immigrant kidnappings and deportations, extortion of colleges, law firms and other institutions?”
Of course, millions of people are turning to the streets.
In my hometown, Newport, R.I., a “Bridge Brigade” is sponsored by the Newport Democratic City Committee and allies at the big Newport Bridge interchange every other week. There was a big turnout on “No Kings Day” back in June. There are, in fact, lots of demonstrations.
But do they have an impact? Have they become so common that they are little more than barely noticed wall paper? Do they feature the same folks, mostly elderly? In short, what's the point?
A friend, Maria Johnson, of Middletown, Conn., examines the plusses and minuses of regular protests in an essay published recently in the Hartford Courant. She’s given me permission to reprint it here.
Why We March
By Maria Johnson
I AM WRITING THIS exactly six months into Donald J. Trump’s presidency. That means – I did the math – there are still three and a half years left to go. Sigh. How are we gonna make it?
My unscientific survey – basically, of my friends and myself – reveals that four out of four people have had it, man. We’re tired, cranky, restless. Fed up.
We avoid the news, gripe to each other about whatever news seeps out, and share snarky posts.
And still, we suffer.
Nothing left to do but take to the streets. Put our bodies on the line. We make protest signs, some of them serious, referencing Germany in the ’30s; some of them funny (“Only Elvis is King”), and we stand at busy intersections, where passing cars mostly honk their support.
Are we saving democracy? That’s doubtful. Are we saving ourselves? More likely.
“I do it for myself,” said my art teacher friend Mary who protests weekly in Burlington, VT. “I cannot do nothing.”
Ed McKuen, one of the organizers of the weekly protests here in Middletown, said the aim is “to make people think. When they see their neighbors standing on the corner to protest what’s going on in Washington and when they see the messages people are holding up, we hope that they will think about it, maybe join us or get involved.”
Another fellow protester said she’s out there “because otherwise I fall into despair. It’s good to be around people who think and act the way I do. It kind of keeps you going.”
I get it. I protest to feel better, too, but I fear the serotonin may be wearing off. At yesterday’s protest, for example, I got into a dustup with a regular pedestrian at the crosswalk. Our exchange began benignly enough when he observed how consistently our group shows up. How long have we been doing this? he asked.
I’d joined the movement when it was already months in progress, so I wasn’t sure, but I pointed out Ed McKuen – “He would know.”
“Oh, the communist?” said the guy, and I, so brimming with the Kumbaya spirit of the sunny morning, mistakenly believed he was making a joke about what the other team thinks of us.
“Yep, we’re all communists,” I said.
Then the man made himself better understood. He said that, admittedly, Trump can be hard to take, but “at least he’s getting things done.”
Uh-oh. Getting things done?! That’s it, I told him, we’re done talking.
“Oh, because we disagree?”
Well, since he put it that way, yes.
What I couldn’t think to say in the moment is that what Trump’s “getting done” is dismantling democracy, cruelly depriving people of health care and a secure retirement, enlisting masked goons to pull innocent people off the street and deporting them to foreign jails, gutting or eliminating the government agencies that keep us safe and our children well-educated, turning on our allies, including Canada – Canada! – and generally making America a laughingstock around the world.
Disgusted, I said, “Why don’t you talk to my friend over here who has patience with people like you?” I pointed to my optimistic pal, Phoebe, who, unlike myself, actually believes she can change MAGA minds through the power of a civil conversation.
“Or else,” I said, changing the subject, “we can admire these lovely flowers here,” and I took a step toward a concrete planter abounding with pink and yellow petunias.
“Don’t come at me!” the guy said, as if I wielded a knife.
Come at him? And they call us libs snowflakes. I was seething with anger as he finally walked away down the sidewalk.
There was yet more drama to come – and from someone on our side!
I had approached a woman standing alone apart from the group. I told her I was going to write an essay about our protests and asked why she was out here today.
“It’s an opportunity to get …” she began, then stopped. “Are you recording me?”
It seemed an odd question considering I was holding my cellphone an inch from her mouth and had no notebook in which to record her response. I said yes, I was, and she gave me a good scolding for not saying so ahead of time.
What the …? O-kay, I said, backing away. Fine. I won’t use you. And I headed across the street, inwardly repeating my new mantra: “Fewer people, more painting.”
 "NO KINGS DAY," June 14, Middletown, Conn. |  "NO KINGS DAY," June 14, Middletown, R.I. |
BECAUSE WHAT WAS I EVEN DOING HERE? I thought of Colin McEnroe, the Connecticut Public Radio host who on his Monday call-in show said he thinks there are “too many protests, frankly.” Asked by a caller to expand, he said he fears they’re becoming “background noise.”
“In West Hartford,” he noted, “there’s a bunch of people who protest every Saturday morning, every single Saturday morning. That’s fine, and good on them, and God bless all those guys in their gray ponytails. I think at a certain level that’s good.”
(The “gray ponytails” crack struck me as a little mean, but there’s no denying that our Resistance movement does trend older. “I never thought at my age I’d be protesting again,” said a 74-year-old woman on the corner with me. But that’s an essay for another day.)
McEnroe praised, by contrast, the “really effective” No Kings protest of a few weeks earlier, the wildly popular nationwide one that coincided with Trump’s bust of a birthday military parade.
He shared an anecdote about a particularly heartbreaking situation, in which a woman declined to seek medical treatment for fear of bankrupting her family, and he mused that maybe protests can somehow be joined to educating the public -- “and then maybe when you’ve learned a few new things, you can think more about what your next protest would be…so it’ll be a sonic boom instead of a pop gun.”
Like myself, and unlike my optimistic friend Phoebe, McEnroe despairs of MAGA types ever changing their minds, because “people’s existential identity is wrapped up in their hatred of the other side.”
That’s true. I barely recognize myself wearing this new existential identity.
And as with the most primitive forms of reptilian consciousness, McEnroe went on, it would “go against survival” to concede the merest point to the enemy.
That’s true, too. And it is about survival.
Survival of the country, survival of our personal happiness, our peace of mind, our ability, even willingness, to get along with one another, our hope in the future. That’s what’s so at risk.
So. Will I drag my sorry-ass self and my sign back onto the sidewalk, where people will very likely annoy me, next week and the week after that for the next three and a half years? I guess I will. Because short of voting the bums out in the midterms, what else can I do?
My friend Patty thinks I’m playing into MAGA’s hands by being ready to give up because of the unrelenting bad news out of Washington and two unpleasant encounters. My crankiness, she said, is blinding me to the loveliness of the protests, the new friends made, and the sense of solidarity, all of which does us good.
Plus, “it’s exposure,” said another fellow protester over the encouraging honking of horns, “and any exposure we can provide – everything’s needed now.”
* * *
Maria Johnson lives with her husband in Middletown, Conn., where she paints, writes, and, okay, protests.
“In West Hartford,” he noted, “there’s a bunch of people who protest every Saturday morning, every single Saturday morning. That’s fine, and good on them, and God bless all those guys in their gray ponytails. I think at a certain level that’s good.”
(The “gray ponytails” crack struck me as a little mean, but there’s no denying that our Resistance movement does trend older. “I never thought at my age I’d be protesting again,” said a 74-year-old woman on the corner with me. But that’s an essay for another day.)
McEnroe praised, by contrast, the “really effective” No Kings protest of a few weeks earlier, the wildly popular nationwide one that coincided with Trump’s bust of a birthday military parade.
He shared an anecdote about a particularly heartbreaking situation, in which a woman declined to seek medical treatment for fear of bankrupting her family, and he mused that maybe protests can somehow be joined to educating the public -- “and then maybe when you’ve learned a few new things, you can think more about what your next protest would be…so it’ll be a sonic boom instead of a pop gun.”
Like myself, and unlike my optimistic friend Phoebe, McEnroe despairs of MAGA types ever changing their minds, because “people’s existential identity is wrapped up in their hatred of the other side.”
That’s true. I barely recognize myself wearing this new existential identity.
And as with the most primitive forms of reptilian consciousness, McEnroe went on, it would “go against survival” to concede the merest point to the enemy.
That’s true, too. And it is about survival.
Survival of the country, survival of our personal happiness, our peace of mind, our ability, even willingness, to get along with one another, our hope in the future. That’s what’s so at risk.
So. Will I drag my sorry-ass self and my sign back onto the sidewalk, where people will very likely annoy me, next week and the week after that for the next three and a half years? I guess I will. Because short of voting the bums out in the midterms, what else can I do?
My friend Patty thinks I’m playing into MAGA’s hands by being ready to give up because of the unrelenting bad news out of Washington and two unpleasant encounters. My crankiness, she said, is blinding me to the loveliness of the protests, the new friends made, and the sense of solidarity, all of which does us good.
Plus, “it’s exposure,” said another fellow protester over the encouraging honking of horns, “and any exposure we can provide – everything’s needed now.”
* * *
Maria Johnson lives with her husband in Middletown, Conn., where she paints, writes, and, okay, protests.
AN INSPIRED VOICE FROM
- AND FOR - HIGHER-ED
"Ransom" and "protection money:" What Wesleyan's Michael Wolf says Trump is demanding from the nation's universities and colleges.
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY'S campus in Middletown, Conn. CREDIT: Wesleyan University
IN MY LAST DANGEROUS TIMES POST, I featured a broadcast interview with an academic veteran, M. Lee Pelton, whom I thought gave voice to the worst arguments that higher education officials are using as they give in to President Trump’s extortion and shake-downs demands.
Pelton, former president of Willamette University and Emerson College, argued on a Boston radio talk show that the government’s financial hold over universities is so vast that “. . .you find yourself in a position of having to capitulate.”
But there are more inspired collegiate voices, and an eloquent one is that of Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
He appeared on a recent PBS News Hour broadcast, and described a settlement Columbia University made with the Trump administration as equivalent to paying "ransom" to a kidnapper. And that paying "protection money" to Trump compromises not only the independence of colleges and universities, but many other American institutions.
My own view is that no college or university – no law firm, no media organization – should ever let themselves be bullied by Trump. I like how Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha put it after Brown University in Providence announced a settlement with Trump
“I think he’s a blackmailer, frankly,” Neronha said of Trump to the Boston Globe. “My overall view is to fight, not give in, even if it requires sacrifice.”
As I did with Pelton’s statements, I’m copying the Roth interview transcript.
I don’t think transcripts make for great reading, but they do put the speakers’ views in context. You can follow this link to the archived News Hour broadcast.
THE NEWS HOUR INTERVIEW
Pelton, former president of Willamette University and Emerson College, argued on a Boston radio talk show that the government’s financial hold over universities is so vast that “. . .you find yourself in a position of having to capitulate.”
But there are more inspired collegiate voices, and an eloquent one is that of Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.
He appeared on a recent PBS News Hour broadcast, and described a settlement Columbia University made with the Trump administration as equivalent to paying "ransom" to a kidnapper. And that paying "protection money" to Trump compromises not only the independence of colleges and universities, but many other American institutions.
My own view is that no college or university – no law firm, no media organization – should ever let themselves be bullied by Trump. I like how Rhode Island Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha put it after Brown University in Providence announced a settlement with Trump
“I think he’s a blackmailer, frankly,” Neronha said of Trump to the Boston Globe. “My overall view is to fight, not give in, even if it requires sacrifice.”
As I did with Pelton’s statements, I’m copying the Roth interview transcript.
I don’t think transcripts make for great reading, but they do put the speakers’ views in context. You can follow this link to the archived News Hour broadcast.
THE NEWS HOUR INTERVIEW
MICHAEL ROTH, president of Wesleyan University. CREDIT: Wesleyan University
| AMNA NAWAZ, of the News Hour: Columbia University and the Trump administration have reached a deal that restores federal funding and research grant money to the university. As part of the agreement, Columbia will pay $200 million to the federal government over three years and an additional $21 million to resolve alleged civil rights violations against Jewish employees. The university agreed to suspend, expel, or revoke degrees from some 70 students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and it will issue a report to a monitor to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion is not promoted on campus. Columbia, which was at risk of losing billions of dollars from the government, says it retains its academic freedom. For a closer look at this agreement and what it means for a higher education in the U.S., I'm joined by Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University. President Roth, welcome back to the "News Hour." Thanks for joining us. MICHAEL ROTH: Thanks for having me. NAWAZ: So let's just start with your initial reaction. When you heard the news and the details of this settlement, what did you think? ROTH: Well, I felt like one must feel when you have paid a ransom in a kidnapping situation and the person who's been kidnapped is returned safely. You think, thank goodness, the kid's OK, or the person kidnapped is OK. But I wouldn't praise the agreement that led to the liberation of the kidnapped person. And so, in this case, I was pleased that this particular moment of assault on higher education by the Trump administration has been resolved, at least for now, although who knows? These agreements come and go with this White House. I was and I am distressed that, in this country today, the executive branch of the federal government wants to be able to dictate terms to private universities, law firms, newspapers, TV stations. And so all of these things are evidence that the current administration is trying to erode support for institutions in civil society. NAWAZ: Let me put to you, if I may, what the acting president of Columbia University, Claire Shipman, said in an interview on CNN this morning defending the terms of the deal. Claire Shipman, Acting President, Columbia University: "I think there are a couple of really important things about this agreement from our point of view. One, it doesn't cross the red lines that we laid out. It protects our academic integrity. That was, of course, essential to us. "And, two, it does reset our relationship with the federal government in terms of research funding. And it's not just money for Columbia. I mean, this is about science. It's about curing cancer, cutting-edge, boundary-breaking science that actually benefits the country and humanity." NAWAZ: President Roth, do you believe that, after this deal, Columbia can move forward with full academic freedom, as President Shipman there is saying? And what do you believe the downstream effects of making a deal like this are for other universities? ROTH: Well, it's very clear that if you annoy the White House in this regime, you could get sucked into a process of litigation or fines that bear no relation to the facts of the matter, but just become a way of expressing loyalty, of conforming to the wishes of the government. We saw it at UVA (University of Virginia) just a week or two ago. You see it now at George Mason (University). This is an effort to tell universities, as they have told law firms, as they're telling newspapers and as they have done with TV stations, telling these organizations, you are not independent. If you contract with the federal government, we have a — we, the government, has the right to tell you what to do. This agreement does protect many things at Columbia. And, again, I'm not criticizing them for signing it. I don't criticize the parent for paying a ransom to get their kids back. They're getting their science back. But they're also telling the federal government, you can tell us how to run our Middle East studies program, telling the federal government, you can tell us how many police officers we should have at a minimum on campus or how students should be disciplined. The White House has determined how students should be disciplined at a private university. This is massive overreach. This is an assault on the independence of civil society in America. And conservatives, liberals, moderates, they should all be concerned when a White House tells you how to run your private associations. NAWAZ: So you're saying they should be concerned. As you note, Columbia is not the only university that's been targeted by this administration. Harvard, as we have been covering, has actually been fighting the administration in court, but we know there's also settlement talks going on. Do you believe universities and colleges will have no other choice but to make some kind of deal in order to move forward? ROTH: Well, I do think that, when you're dealing with a very, very powerful entity like the federal government, especially when it doesn't obey its own laws — I mean, there are no findings of fact here about what the specific actions of anti-Semitism were — or discrimination against white people. There's no findings of facts there. It's just, you give us $221 million, and then we allow you to compete for grants. I mean, it's a very old-fashioned game. You pay the powerful figure so that you can go along and continue to operate. Now, you operate in a way, of course, that you don't want to annoy that powerful figure or that powerful organization. And it sends a chilling message across America that, if you have a late-night comedy show, if you have a law firm, if you are working in an educational institution or a library, or, as we read today, in a museum like the Smithsonian, if you don't please the president, you are at risk. And, again, I don't blame them for trying to make the best of that situation, but, as Americans, I'm not worried about Columbia. I'm not worried about Wesleyan. I'm worried about the country, where we are being subject to a White House that thinks it could tell us what to do at every turn. NAWAZ: As you know, the administration has long argued that this was about combating antisemitism on campus. This was a deal welcomed by Columbia's Hillel Jewish organization. The executive director said in part: "The announcement's an important recognition of what Jewish students and families have expressed with increasing urgency. Anti-Semitism at Columbia is real. It has a tangible impact on Jewish students' sense of safety, belonging, and their civil rights." I guess the question, President Roth, is if it makes Jewish students and staff feel safer, did the administration pressure and the deal do what it intended to do? ROTH: How does paying the government $220 million to do basic science make Jews safer? As a Jew, I find this horrific. I know anti-Semitism is real, and I know it was real and is real at Columbia, as it is in Congress, as it is in most places in the United States. But the idea that you pay off the government in order to get them off your back so you can do cancer research, and that's good for the Jews, I think it's ridiculous. We don't need the White House to tell us anti-Semitism is real two weeks after the Defense Department contracts with Grok, Elon Musk's artificial intelligence entity after it praised Hitler. This is an administration that is not concerned with Jewish welfare. I am concerned with Jewish welfare as a Jew, as a professor, as a college president. I think it's really important to call out anti-Semitism. But to pay up basically protection money in a way that's supposed to make Jews safer, I think, in the long run, it's — as we say in my community, it's not good for the Jews. NAWAZ: That is Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, joining us tonight. President Roth, thank you for your time. ROTH: Thank you for having me. |
A COMMENTATOR to my previous post, D. Neale Adams, (See it below) noted that I overstated the case in asserting that Lee Pelton speaks for all campus officials in rationalizing a devil's bargain with Trump.
Adams is right - the academic barrel is not completely rotten, and, in fact, I had planned today's Roth interview as a follow up and contrast to Pelton.
What led to my exaggeration is the worry that unless enough campus institutions fight back as a group, Trump-the-bully will have a greater chance of success. I should be more careful as a writer - as should the campus quislings.
In short, bullies can be beaten - but only if enough would-be victims stand up to them.
As the cliche/ slogan goes ( not necessarily from Ben Franklin):
'We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'
The following links were used in preparation of this post:
Adams is right - the academic barrel is not completely rotten, and, in fact, I had planned today's Roth interview as a follow up and contrast to Pelton.
What led to my exaggeration is the worry that unless enough campus institutions fight back as a group, Trump-the-bully will have a greater chance of success. I should be more careful as a writer - as should the campus quislings.
In short, bullies can be beaten - but only if enough would-be victims stand up to them.
As the cliche/ slogan goes ( not necessarily from Ben Franklin):
'We must all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.'
The following links were used in preparation of this post:
A VOICE OF CAMPUS CAPITULATION
What it sounds like when higher-ed
kowtows to the schoolyard bully
BROWN UNIVERSITY's campus. Brown recently reached a "settlement" with the Trump administration: CREDIT: Brown University
STUPID ME. It’s taken me years to figure out what’s wrong with our country, or, more to the point, who is wrong with the country.
And it’s not Donald Trump, the psychopath and the most accomplished extortionist-gangster-bully president in American history; nor, for that matter, is it one of the slavish, suck-up enablers of Trump's Republican cult; nor is it one of the Trump whisperers, like the loathsome aide Stephen Miller, the presumed architect of Trump's racist immigration pogrom.
The people who are undermining the country are outwardly the most respectable, admired and upright people among us. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call this convocation of thugs, traitors and turncoats by their official titles: college presidents and trustees.
What a disgusting, repugnant bunch.
While the rest of us are wringing our hands and self-flagellating about “what can we do” to reverse Trump’s assault on America and democracy, we are being double-crossed by this supposedly articulate, well-dressed, highly credentialed, and probably decent-smelling gang of academic betrayers.
They are allowing Trump to extort their institutions of higher education by reaching “settlements” that are nothing more than shakedown demands in which power, not money, is the extorter-in-chief’s most favored kind of tribute.
By caving in to Trump to protect their own interests, the compliant campuses trigger a chain reaction of capitulation throughout the educational eco-system, which then extends to businesses, non-profit organizations, religious institutions and other sectors in the rest of the country.
You’d think that the university and college royalty would be in the best position – due to its vast intellectual and institutional resources – to confront the most common kind of educational outlaw: the schoolyard bully.
But instead of teaching the rest of us about how to neuter and defeat the schoolyard bully, the higher-ed crowd is conducting a national seminar in capitulation and humiliation, empowering the bully to succeed beyond his wildest expectations.
Recently, I actually heard an actual Voice of Capitulation, spelling out the rationalizations, defeatism and doublespeak that threatens not only the leafy campuses of academia, but the country itself.
The forum was the weekday midday radio program, “Boston Public Radio,” (*see correction at end) produced by GBH, the Boston public broadcasting superpower and featuring long-time co-hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braudy, who have an engaging sweet-and-sour chemistry and a relentless liberal focus.
One of their interviewees this day – July 29 – was a regular guest of the show, M. Lee Pelton, former president at two campuses, Willamette University in Oregon and Emerson College in Massachusetts and, since 2021, CEO of the Boston Foundation.
I don’t know anything about Pelton, who may have a personal history of educational accomplishment and social heroism, but on this day, he gave a shocking, if candid, rationale for kowtowing to Trump.
What follows is a transcript I made of a portion of the interview, which you can hear for yourself on the station’s podcast, at this link: https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/boston-public-radio/bpr-full-show-7-29-such-as-it-is
I apologize in advance for the awkwardness of translating a verbal exchange into a printed format. And I’ve edited some of Braude’s typically long-winded question/lectures.
The co-hosts were concerned about a report in the New York Times that Harvard University may be edging toward a huge financial settlement with the Trump administration. They were obviously worried that Harvard might follow the lead of Columbia University, which earlier had caved into Trump’s demands for tribute to correct alleged anti-Semitism.
And it’s not Donald Trump, the psychopath and the most accomplished extortionist-gangster-bully president in American history; nor, for that matter, is it one of the slavish, suck-up enablers of Trump's Republican cult; nor is it one of the Trump whisperers, like the loathsome aide Stephen Miller, the presumed architect of Trump's racist immigration pogrom.
The people who are undermining the country are outwardly the most respectable, admired and upright people among us. For the purposes of this discussion, let’s call this convocation of thugs, traitors and turncoats by their official titles: college presidents and trustees.
What a disgusting, repugnant bunch.
While the rest of us are wringing our hands and self-flagellating about “what can we do” to reverse Trump’s assault on America and democracy, we are being double-crossed by this supposedly articulate, well-dressed, highly credentialed, and probably decent-smelling gang of academic betrayers.
They are allowing Trump to extort their institutions of higher education by reaching “settlements” that are nothing more than shakedown demands in which power, not money, is the extorter-in-chief’s most favored kind of tribute.
By caving in to Trump to protect their own interests, the compliant campuses trigger a chain reaction of capitulation throughout the educational eco-system, which then extends to businesses, non-profit organizations, religious institutions and other sectors in the rest of the country.
You’d think that the university and college royalty would be in the best position – due to its vast intellectual and institutional resources – to confront the most common kind of educational outlaw: the schoolyard bully.
But instead of teaching the rest of us about how to neuter and defeat the schoolyard bully, the higher-ed crowd is conducting a national seminar in capitulation and humiliation, empowering the bully to succeed beyond his wildest expectations.
Recently, I actually heard an actual Voice of Capitulation, spelling out the rationalizations, defeatism and doublespeak that threatens not only the leafy campuses of academia, but the country itself.
The forum was the weekday midday radio program, “Boston Public Radio,” (*see correction at end) produced by GBH, the Boston public broadcasting superpower and featuring long-time co-hosts Margery Eagan and Jim Braudy, who have an engaging sweet-and-sour chemistry and a relentless liberal focus.
One of their interviewees this day – July 29 – was a regular guest of the show, M. Lee Pelton, former president at two campuses, Willamette University in Oregon and Emerson College in Massachusetts and, since 2021, CEO of the Boston Foundation.
I don’t know anything about Pelton, who may have a personal history of educational accomplishment and social heroism, but on this day, he gave a shocking, if candid, rationale for kowtowing to Trump.
What follows is a transcript I made of a portion of the interview, which you can hear for yourself on the station’s podcast, at this link: https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/boston-public-radio/bpr-full-show-7-29-such-as-it-is
I apologize in advance for the awkwardness of translating a verbal exchange into a printed format. And I’ve edited some of Braude’s typically long-winded question/lectures.
The co-hosts were concerned about a report in the New York Times that Harvard University may be edging toward a huge financial settlement with the Trump administration. They were obviously worried that Harvard might follow the lead of Columbia University, which earlier had caved into Trump’s demands for tribute to correct alleged anti-Semitism.
LEE PELTON CREDIT: The Boston Foundation
| MARGERY EAGAN: . . . Now, shortly after closing their diversity offices at Harvard that serve minority students, LGBTQ students and women, they've closed that over there at Harvard, now, they may be open to spending up to $500 million to get Trump off their back and making some concessions to the president. So what do you think? JIM BRAUDE: Can I break up your questions? So I’m interested to hear first what you think of the done deal of the Columbia thing and then we can move on to what we're reading in the New York Times this morning, what do you think about what happened? LEE PELTON: Well, you know, when Bart Giamatti stepped down as the president of Yale, he said that being a college president is no way for an adult to make a living. And this is especially true these days. So the paradigm shift, which has been in existence for quite a while, but which the Trump administration has taken advantage of, is it's private universities are really not private anymore. EAGAN: Right. PELTON: They're not private, because they're beholden to federal funding of, you know, the billions of dollars, that's for Columbia, that's for Harvard. And so you find yourself in a position of having to capitulate and, you know, I think unfortunately that's just where we are. And they're just, they're, they're not the beginning, but they're one of several private universities that I think will not be able to survive with the withdrawal of billions of dollars in federal funding to support their research and other aspects of the university. BRAUDE: So would you've done the same thing – you were president of Emerson – if you were confronted with the same situation… you're being accused by somebody who hangs out with neo Nazis, the President United States, of anti-Semitism? We know there is is anti-Semitism being dealt with; we know he blows it out of proportion. And they say to you, not only do we want money from you, not only are we gonna limit your academic freedom, you have to agree to a monitor, an outside monitor to oversee your compliance. Would you agree to that? PELTON: I don't know. I mean, I can't speak . . . . BRAUDE: I think you do know. PELTON: No, I know I can't because I can't speak to the particulars of this, of this, only what I read in the press, so I don't know what else, what are some of the other aspects of this. But you know, we live in an authoritarian, of the authoritarian federal government. BRUADE: So you give into authoritarianism. Is that what? Because you have no choice? Because they . . . . PELTON: Maybe, yeah, maybe. I don't, I don't know. I don't know what I would do in that situation, because I'm not confronted with it. I don't know all the facts, the details and so on and so forth. I think it's unfortunate. It, it upsets me to no end. And, but, should I be upset with the fact that they capitulated, or should I be upset because we have this authoritarian regime that is using all of its tools to bring colleges and universities to their knees? BRAUDE: This may be totally naive, because I've never had a job at that level of responsibility like you did when you ran Emerson or (Claire) Shipman (acting president at Columbia) or (President Alan) Garber over there at Harvard. But it's, there's no question that if you don't cut a deal and you lose – well, you know, even if you win the litigation, it's about short term funding – Trump legally will probably deny billions in the future . . . . PELTON: Right. But it's not just money that – this is not money. This is about people. And so, you know, dozens, hundreds of people will no longer be able to work there. Or be able to do their, you know, the lifesaving research that we all depend on. So it's not, you know, we can talk about it in terms of, of, you know, monetary perspective, but it's, it's much more than that, it's really about, it's really about people. EAGAN: But you know what? You're, you're much more of an historian than I am. You're certainly much more of an expert on civil rights struggles than I am. It seems to me that in every kind of struggle, particularly in the civil rights struggle, there were people that were willing to say “No, I'm not . . . . I’m gonna to stand up . . . “ at risk of their own lives, and people lost their lives, never mind their jobs,. And it seems like that's sort of, I mean I'm quite a coward myself, so I'm not, you know, (if) I could stand up to this kind of pressure. Do you know what I'm saying? But this doesn't; this doesn't work. PELTON: Yeah, but it's, maybe it doesn't, we'll see. But it's a massive, massive scale, and it involves hundreds of thousands of people. It involves giving up the search to do lifesaving research for millions of people. So you know…. EAGAN: So you don’t think he won’t back down? You don't think he’ll get his capitulation, and then he’ll say: Ha, ha, ha? PELTON: I don't know. I, I, I have no idea whether or not he will back down. We'll, we'll see. The history is, of course, he will change his mind and some quixotic moment. So you know, we'll just, we’ll see, so . . . . BRAUDE: Can I ask you one more thing here on this deal, and by the way, I, I… It's very hard to say what you're saying. I know it is, because I know you, and I know how you feel about fights, and you are a guy who fights. But you've also been a university president . . . . If the most powerful university in the world gets accused of anti-Semitism. They think they have a legal case against what Trump is doing; they decide to drop it to make a settlement that at least in part gives in to Trump. Then it seems to me that the message to Donald Trump is that you should send a letter to every single college and university that gets a dollar in federal funding, accuse them of anti-Semitism – no hearings, no nothing, no due process – and say, if it turns out you don't cut a deal with me like Harvard and Columbia did, next week, you're never getting another federal dollar. I mean, that's not a ridiculous extrapolation from the Columbia and potentially the Harvard situation. Is it? PELTON: No, it's not. But this is not just about anti-Semitism, this is about the erasure of DEI. BRAUDE: Exactly! Exactly! And the anti-Semitism thing is the cover. PELTON: Yeah, this is what this is about and it's, it's – the scale it, of the encroachment of it is really frightening and disturbing. BRAUDE: You talk to some of these presidents; you talk, you talk to some of these people, I assume, is that right? PELTON: No, not so much. BRAUDE: Really, is that true? You're not making eye contact with me? PELTON: No, no, I know, I mean, I've got my own gig. . . . (They all laugh at Pelton’s joke that his current job is running the community foundation, not a college or university.)  JIM BRAUDY & MARGERY EAGAN in screenshot from a 2022 video CREDIT: GBH |
I THINK EAGAN AND BRAUDY asked the right questions, and Pelton gave the wrong answers.
Most distressing was Pelton’s defeatism.
He deemed that the fight is over and that, as the saying goes, resistance is futile; that the universities are out-gunned by the federal government; that the bully has all the cards.
Further, Pelton says there’s simply too much to lose to warrant resistance – billions of dollars, vital research, hundreds and thousands of employees and their jobs..
And that complexity confounds a solution: the “problem” has deep historical roots; the facts, unknown and known, differ from place to place.
All of which is nonsense.
Bullies, whether they haunt the schoolyard or the White House, succeed when the rest of us let them.
If enough universities stand up to Trump, he cannot succeed. But if one university after another makes an individual “deal” with Trump, it encourages the rest to fall into line.
As of this writing, the latest cave-in is Rhode Island’s homegrown member of the Ivy League.
Brown University announced a “settlement” that doesn’t seem as egregious as Columbia’s. But Brown still gave Trump his due: spending money that’s in short supply at the university for Rhode Island workforce development. Brown also agreed not to do something it doesn’t do anyway: provide medical treatment to transsexual minors. But, by failing to robustly defend transsexuals, the agreement opens the door to Trumpian scapegoating of other minorities.
Still, the details of the Brown agreement aren’t as important as that fact that the university agreed to a settlement in the first place. That betrayed the rest of us and encourages others to follow its example.
In dealing with bullies, what counts is what the crowd does: stand up to the bully or give in.
Lee Pelton, of course, is not the source of the problem. He’s not promoting Trump; he’s not currently a college president.
But, chillingly, he gives voice to the quisling mentality that is empowering the schoolyard bully.
His voice is what capitulation sounds like.
The following links were used in preparation of this post:
* Correction: The original version of this post wrongly identified the program on which Lee Pelton appeared as "Greater Boston." The correct title is "Boston Public Radio."
Most distressing was Pelton’s defeatism.
He deemed that the fight is over and that, as the saying goes, resistance is futile; that the universities are out-gunned by the federal government; that the bully has all the cards.
Further, Pelton says there’s simply too much to lose to warrant resistance – billions of dollars, vital research, hundreds and thousands of employees and their jobs..
And that complexity confounds a solution: the “problem” has deep historical roots; the facts, unknown and known, differ from place to place.
All of which is nonsense.
Bullies, whether they haunt the schoolyard or the White House, succeed when the rest of us let them.
If enough universities stand up to Trump, he cannot succeed. But if one university after another makes an individual “deal” with Trump, it encourages the rest to fall into line.
As of this writing, the latest cave-in is Rhode Island’s homegrown member of the Ivy League.
Brown University announced a “settlement” that doesn’t seem as egregious as Columbia’s. But Brown still gave Trump his due: spending money that’s in short supply at the university for Rhode Island workforce development. Brown also agreed not to do something it doesn’t do anyway: provide medical treatment to transsexual minors. But, by failing to robustly defend transsexuals, the agreement opens the door to Trumpian scapegoating of other minorities.
Still, the details of the Brown agreement aren’t as important as that fact that the university agreed to a settlement in the first place. That betrayed the rest of us and encourages others to follow its example.
In dealing with bullies, what counts is what the crowd does: stand up to the bully or give in.
Lee Pelton, of course, is not the source of the problem. He’s not promoting Trump; he’s not currently a college president.
But, chillingly, he gives voice to the quisling mentality that is empowering the schoolyard bully.
His voice is what capitulation sounds like.
The following links were used in preparation of this post:
- https://www.wgbh.org/podcasts/boston-public-radio/bpr-full-show-7-29-such-as-it-is
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/nyregion/columbia-trump-funding-deal.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/23/nyregion/columbia-trump-settlement-what-to-know.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/us/politics/trump-harvard-payment.html
- https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/07/30/metro/brown-university-deal-trump-research-federal-funding/
- Go to brown.edu, then "news."
* Correction: The original version of this post wrongly identified the program on which Lee Pelton appeared as "Greater Boston." The correct title is "Boston Public Radio."
IF TRUMP CALLS SOMEONE 'VERY EVIL' & 'BAD,' IS HE TALKING ABOUT HIMSELF?
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, in white hat, speaking in Texas; First Lady Melania Trump is at left, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. PHOTO CREDIT: White House video screenshot
IF DONALD TRUMP TOLD THE WORLD that you were “a bad person” and “a very evil person” should you take a day – maybe an entire week – to think about that assessment and consider the implications?
Because if there’s one subject in which Trump is truly expert, it’s what goes into being "very evil" and "bad."
Last Friday, Trump made that kind of a diagnosis during the visit he and the First Lady made to the Hill Country of Texas, where nearly 300 people may have died in the catastrophic July 4 flood.
It happened this way:
Wearing a “USA” baseball cap, Trump presided over a “round table” of Texas and federal officials, who variously mourned the tragedy and praised the ongoing rescue and recovery operations.
At one point, the session was opened to reporters, one of whom asked this question:
“Several families we heard from are obviously upset because they say those warnings, those alerts didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?”
Trump’s first reply:
“Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances.”
And then, instinctively, the president of the United States remembered that Job One is not reflection about how well government serves the country, but character assassination, public humiliation and reputation destruction.
Like a judge pronouncing the death penalty, Trump intoned:
“Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
A Texas Congressman, Republican Rep. Chip Roy, chimed in, according to The Daily Beast:
“For all of the media clamoring to ask that ridiculous first question and try to point fingers, the governor (Greg Abbott) said it best when he said pointing fingers is for losers.”
None of the news stories I ran across took Trump’s assessment of the reporter’s character to heart, noting that his attack was one of his standard “distraction” ploys, saying something personal and mean about someone, instead of addressing the question.
Indeed, most stories didn’t name the journalist at all, identifying her simply as “the reporter,” since it’s no longer news that any media type who asks a bothersome question could get that kind of response from the one person in America capable of blowing the world to bits.
But I wondered how the reporter – any reporter – would feel to be labeled “bad” and “very evil” on national television.
Because if there’s one subject in which Trump is truly expert, it’s what goes into being "very evil" and "bad."
Last Friday, Trump made that kind of a diagnosis during the visit he and the First Lady made to the Hill Country of Texas, where nearly 300 people may have died in the catastrophic July 4 flood.
It happened this way:
Wearing a “USA” baseball cap, Trump presided over a “round table” of Texas and federal officials, who variously mourned the tragedy and praised the ongoing rescue and recovery operations.
At one point, the session was opened to reporters, one of whom asked this question:
“Several families we heard from are obviously upset because they say those warnings, those alerts didn’t go out in time, and they also say that people could have been saved. What do you say to those families?”
Trump’s first reply:
“Well, I think everyone did an incredible job under the circumstances.”
And then, instinctively, the president of the United States remembered that Job One is not reflection about how well government serves the country, but character assassination, public humiliation and reputation destruction.
Like a judge pronouncing the death penalty, Trump intoned:
“Only a bad person would ask a question like that, to be honest with you. I don’t know who you are, but only a very evil person would ask a question like that.”
A Texas Congressman, Republican Rep. Chip Roy, chimed in, according to The Daily Beast:
“For all of the media clamoring to ask that ridiculous first question and try to point fingers, the governor (Greg Abbott) said it best when he said pointing fingers is for losers.”
None of the news stories I ran across took Trump’s assessment of the reporter’s character to heart, noting that his attack was one of his standard “distraction” ploys, saying something personal and mean about someone, instead of addressing the question.
Indeed, most stories didn’t name the journalist at all, identifying her simply as “the reporter,” since it’s no longer news that any media type who asks a bothersome question could get that kind of response from the one person in America capable of blowing the world to bits.
But I wondered how the reporter – any reporter – would feel to be labeled “bad” and “very evil” on national television.
MARISSA ARMAS PHOTO CREDIT: Armas' Facebook page
A SUPERFICIAL SEARCH of the Internet found one story that identified “the reporter” – aired by the Texas TV station she’s worked for since earlier this year, KTVT Dallas-Fort Worth, which refers to itself as “CBS News Texas.”
She’s Marissa Armas.
According to a Texas blogger, Armas has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s in journalism from Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado.
She’s worked as an anchor and reporter at stations in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, and at NBC Digital and Latino. At Columbia, she was chapter president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She’s a native of Denver.
My quick scan of the Internet found no journalist defending her, nor any echoing Trump’s smear.
Armas posted a short mention of the incident on her Facebook page:
“Friday, I asked President Trump about whether there were sufficient warnings to people in Kerr County before the devastating floods, and this was his response.”
She posted a video clip of Trump’s comment.
Later, Armas was back at being her “bad” and “very evil” self, covering a vigil a week after the flood.
“With flowers and candles, in front of a large wooden cross, the Kerry County community mourned,” she said, and held up a microphone to Ava Vanwinkle, who said: “It’s very devastating to happen to such a small town; nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“As tears streamed down their faces,” Armas' narration continued, “community members looked at the photos attached to a growing memorial wall, showing the faces of the dozens of people who were killed and are still missing, a week later.”
So, Armas did what journalists are supposed to do, just kept on doing her job, while letting Trump’s rudeness speak for itself, Maybe she took Trump’s attack as a badge of honor, the way people used to brag about finding their names on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”
BUT HURTFUL WORDS have meaning and real-world effects.
If reporters seem to laugh off Trump’s attacks, are they still wounded? I also wonder whether some reporters – the real ones, not the sycophants who also roam the White House press room these days – tone down or even skip pointed questions, not wanting to trigger the commander-in-chief’s venom.
And more to the point, how many people who respect and follow Trump have added “the reporter” to their own encyclopedic lists of people to despise and disparage?
Trump’s long war against the press is far more serious than his schoolyard taunts against Melissa Armas.
He’s seeking to defund NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), with a House-passed bill pulling back money for two of the nation’s most trusted news sources. The measure could reach a critical Senate vote this week.
He’s bullied ABC and CBS into offering spurious “settlements,” hurting both organizations' bottom lines and credibility, while Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, seems determined to weaken that great newspaper, ostensibly to cozy up to Trump.
BECAUSE TRUMP SEEMS TO BE A NARCISSIST, thereby thinking of himself first , it’s possible that when he calls people names, he’s really talking about Donald J. Trump, and not you, me or Marissa Armas.
A case can be made that he’s at least a second-hand murderer.
By canceling most of the USAID program, he’s condemning millions of foreigners to early deaths from treatable diseases; his big, beautiful bill will cause millions of Americans to lose medical care, and some will die early.
His pull back on efforts to combat climate change could devastate the planet. His immigration “policies” rip apart families and deport people to dangerous countries. His tariffs threaten the economy and the well-being of people in our own and other countries. His foul, mean and dehumanizing language increases the possibility of political and cultural violence.
Talk about bad and very evil.
The following sites were used in this posting:
She’s Marissa Armas.
According to a Texas blogger, Armas has a master’s degree in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s in journalism from Metropolitan State University in Denver, Colorado.
She’s worked as an anchor and reporter at stations in Colorado, New Mexico and Texas, and at NBC Digital and Latino. At Columbia, she was chapter president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. She’s a native of Denver.
My quick scan of the Internet found no journalist defending her, nor any echoing Trump’s smear.
Armas posted a short mention of the incident on her Facebook page:
“Friday, I asked President Trump about whether there were sufficient warnings to people in Kerr County before the devastating floods, and this was his response.”
She posted a video clip of Trump’s comment.
Later, Armas was back at being her “bad” and “very evil” self, covering a vigil a week after the flood.
“With flowers and candles, in front of a large wooden cross, the Kerry County community mourned,” she said, and held up a microphone to Ava Vanwinkle, who said: “It’s very devastating to happen to such a small town; nothing like this has ever happened before.”
“As tears streamed down their faces,” Armas' narration continued, “community members looked at the photos attached to a growing memorial wall, showing the faces of the dozens of people who were killed and are still missing, a week later.”
So, Armas did what journalists are supposed to do, just kept on doing her job, while letting Trump’s rudeness speak for itself, Maybe she took Trump’s attack as a badge of honor, the way people used to brag about finding their names on President Richard Nixon’s “enemies list.”
BUT HURTFUL WORDS have meaning and real-world effects.
If reporters seem to laugh off Trump’s attacks, are they still wounded? I also wonder whether some reporters – the real ones, not the sycophants who also roam the White House press room these days – tone down or even skip pointed questions, not wanting to trigger the commander-in-chief’s venom.
And more to the point, how many people who respect and follow Trump have added “the reporter” to their own encyclopedic lists of people to despise and disparage?
Trump’s long war against the press is far more serious than his schoolyard taunts against Melissa Armas.
He’s seeking to defund NPR (National Public Radio) and PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), with a House-passed bill pulling back money for two of the nation’s most trusted news sources. The measure could reach a critical Senate vote this week.
He’s bullied ABC and CBS into offering spurious “settlements,” hurting both organizations' bottom lines and credibility, while Jeff Bezos, owner of the Washington Post, seems determined to weaken that great newspaper, ostensibly to cozy up to Trump.
BECAUSE TRUMP SEEMS TO BE A NARCISSIST, thereby thinking of himself first , it’s possible that when he calls people names, he’s really talking about Donald J. Trump, and not you, me or Marissa Armas.
A case can be made that he’s at least a second-hand murderer.
By canceling most of the USAID program, he’s condemning millions of foreigners to early deaths from treatable diseases; his big, beautiful bill will cause millions of Americans to lose medical care, and some will die early.
His pull back on efforts to combat climate change could devastate the planet. His immigration “policies” rip apart families and deport people to dangerous countries. His tariffs threaten the economy and the well-being of people in our own and other countries. His foul, mean and dehumanizing language increases the possibility of political and cultural violence.
Talk about bad and very evil.
The following sites were used in this posting:
- https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/president-trump-answers-questions-about-warnings-before-central-texas-floods/
- https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-insults-evil-reporter-who-dares-to-ask-about-floods/
- https://www.facebook.com/marissaearmas/
- https://mikemcguff.blogspot.com/2025/04/marissa-armas-joins-cbs-news-texas.html
- https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/kerrville-texas-floods-memorial-vigil-kerr-county-people-killed-missing/
AS TRUMP TRIUMPHS,
SOUNDS OF HOPE
FROM A SMALL STATE
FADED and tattered, the flag is ready for another Fourth of July
ARE YOU FEELING AS OVERWHELMED as I am by Donald Trump’s string of “successes” in his hideous crusade to destroy our country – drowning the rest of us in his sewer of misery and shame?
At the same time, because I live in the nation’s smallest state, I'm inspired that such a tiny place has a loud and eloquent voice, encouraged, perhaps by the state's motto, “Hope." More about this later.
First, let me acknowledge that the nation is at a truly awful place, and that it’s possible that we are actually doomed.
For example, Trump today gets to play Robin Hood in reverse, with the Republican Congress passing his hideous mega-bill that will take away food and health care from millions of Americans, while tossing a few extra bucks to the ultrawealthy.
Trump had wanted – and got – the legislation enacted just in time for this year’s Fourth of July – turning the holiday into perverse betrayal of its noble founding principles.
You’d think the president’s enablers would have been wary of the timing, since somebody might actually read the Declaration, and discover the contrast between its eloquent vision of democracy and Trump’s racist, cruel and authoritarian agenda.
At the same time, because I live in the nation’s smallest state, I'm inspired that such a tiny place has a loud and eloquent voice, encouraged, perhaps by the state's motto, “Hope." More about this later.
First, let me acknowledge that the nation is at a truly awful place, and that it’s possible that we are actually doomed.
For example, Trump today gets to play Robin Hood in reverse, with the Republican Congress passing his hideous mega-bill that will take away food and health care from millions of Americans, while tossing a few extra bucks to the ultrawealthy.
Trump had wanted – and got – the legislation enacted just in time for this year’s Fourth of July – turning the holiday into perverse betrayal of its noble founding principles.
You’d think the president’s enablers would have been wary of the timing, since somebody might actually read the Declaration, and discover the contrast between its eloquent vision of democracy and Trump’s racist, cruel and authoritarian agenda.
| We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. |
Trump’s just getting started: pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists, along with a bunch of other criminals; sending masked thugs to round up immigrants and tossing them into a growing gulag of detention centers; bullying universities, law firms, media companies and other countries; accelerating the destruction of the environment; betraying Ukraine freedom fighters and declaring war on scientists.
IS THERE NO END OF IT?
There must be. After all, Donald Trump, however repulsive, is merely human, so there be limits, counterforces,the same mortal vulnerabilities that frustrate and ultimately trip up the rest of us.
But it doesn’t seem to be working that way.
Everything we’ve learned about justice and fairness seems broken. None of the inspirational phrases and clichés seem to be working:
DISPIRITING AND DISCOURAGING as Trump’s successes have been in his first five-plus months, I cannot accept that the future is as hopeless and bleak as it feels this Independence Day.
Yes, we could be hurtling toward our own version of the Fall of the Roman Empire. And just because we won the Revolution, the War of 1812, survived World War II, the Cold War, Watergate, McCarthyism and all the other contests of good over evil, there's no guarantee of a safe landing this time.
But I am inspired by my perspective from my tiny corner of the cosmos, Rhode Island.
Really, it’s a nothingburger as a state, which almost doesn’t deserve to be one. Rhode Island is almost impossible to find on a national map, measuring only 37 miles wide and 48 miles long, with just over a million-plus souls.
IS THERE NO END OF IT?
There must be. After all, Donald Trump, however repulsive, is merely human, so there be limits, counterforces,the same mortal vulnerabilities that frustrate and ultimately trip up the rest of us.
But it doesn’t seem to be working that way.
Everything we’ve learned about justice and fairness seems broken. None of the inspirational phrases and clichés seem to be working:
- What goes around, comes around.
- The pendulum swings both ways.
- The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
- Live by the sword, die by the sword.
- The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
DISPIRITING AND DISCOURAGING as Trump’s successes have been in his first five-plus months, I cannot accept that the future is as hopeless and bleak as it feels this Independence Day.
Yes, we could be hurtling toward our own version of the Fall of the Roman Empire. And just because we won the Revolution, the War of 1812, survived World War II, the Cold War, Watergate, McCarthyism and all the other contests of good over evil, there's no guarantee of a safe landing this time.
But I am inspired by my perspective from my tiny corner of the cosmos, Rhode Island.
Really, it’s a nothingburger as a state, which almost doesn’t deserve to be one. Rhode Island is almost impossible to find on a national map, measuring only 37 miles wide and 48 miles long, with just over a million-plus souls.
RHODE ISLAND is the little red dot. CREDIT - Wikipedia
But here's the thing, which I do mention a lot in these posts: the state’s motto is “Hope.” It was one of the original 13 colonies; and 249 years ago, two Rhode Islanders signed the Declaration of Independence.
These days, tiny Rhode Island has lots of big mouths, and during The Dark Times, they keep making me proud.
For example, Rhode Island has an exceptional Congressional delegation, including Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a U.S. Senator, a former U.S. attorney, and a former state attorney general, and who understands a thing or two about corruption.
In a floor speech while the Senate was debating the awful bill in the Capitol, Whitehouse said :
These days, tiny Rhode Island has lots of big mouths, and during The Dark Times, they keep making me proud.
For example, Rhode Island has an exceptional Congressional delegation, including Sheldon Whitehouse, who is a U.S. Senator, a former U.S. attorney, and a former state attorney general, and who understands a thing or two about corruption.
In a floor speech while the Senate was debating the awful bill in the Capitol, Whitehouse said :
| This place feels to me, today, like a crime scene. Get some of that yellow tape and put it around this chamber. This piece of legislation is corrupt. This piece of legislation is crooked. This piece of legislation is a rotten racket. This bill, cooked up in back rooms, dropped at midnight, cloaked in fake numbers with huge handouts to big Republican donors. It loots our country for some of the least deserving people you could imagine. When I first got here, this chamber filled me with awe and wonderment. Today, I feel disgust. |
Another eloquent "local" voice is Tom Nichols, who is a writer for the Atlantic magazine, and formerly was on the faculty of the Naval War College in Newport.
Nichols lives in the town next to us, and he wrote this recently about Trump’s sour view of America, which often depicts our country as being no better than Russia and other bad actors:
Nichols lives in the town next to us, and he wrote this recently about Trump’s sour view of America, which often depicts our country as being no better than Russia and other bad actors:
| … when Trump depicts America as an unending nightmare of crime and carnage, he’s not only trying to trigger a cortisol rush among his followers; he’s also creating a narrative of despair. It’s a clever approach. He tells Americans that because the world is nasty, all that “shining city on a hill” talk is just stupid and all that matters is making some deals to get them stuff they need... ... some people support Trump because they want certain policies on immigration or taxes or judges. Others enjoy his reality-TV approach to politics. Some of his critics reject his plans; others reject everything about the man and his character. But none of us, as Americans, have to accept Trump’s calumnies about the United States. We are a nation better than the dictatorships in Moscow and Beijing; we enjoy peace and prosperity that predated Trump and will remain when he is gone. We live in an America governed by Trump. But we do not have to accept that we live in Trump’s America. |
EVERY OTHER WEDNESDAY, during the afternoon commuter rush, the Newport Democratic City Committee and other groups hold a “Bridge Brigade” demonstration at the intersection connecting the ramps to and from the Newport Bridge.
It’s largely an older group – some people are there with canes, others bring chairs – but they are boisterous, waving U.S. and Ukraine flags, with homegrown signs, big “RESIST” and “NO KINGS” banners, and they ring cow bells and yell and wave a lot.
The inspiring part is how many cars honk their horns when they see the group, which this past Wednesday numbered 35 people. With every blast of a car or truck horn, the demonstrators went crazy, shaking their flags and signs and hooting and hollering.
And maybe it was just me, but I felt that this past week, the exchanges between the demonstrators and drivers were louder, more joyful and more inspired, despite – or maybe because of – all the terrible successes Trump is enjoying.
Hey, it was just one protest in a small place – but the voices and horns were loud, happy and full of hope.
And maybe that’s how democracies are saved.
It’s largely an older group – some people are there with canes, others bring chairs – but they are boisterous, waving U.S. and Ukraine flags, with homegrown signs, big “RESIST” and “NO KINGS” banners, and they ring cow bells and yell and wave a lot.
The inspiring part is how many cars honk their horns when they see the group, which this past Wednesday numbered 35 people. With every blast of a car or truck horn, the demonstrators went crazy, shaking their flags and signs and hooting and hollering.
And maybe it was just me, but I felt that this past week, the exchanges between the demonstrators and drivers were louder, more joyful and more inspired, despite – or maybe because of – all the terrible successes Trump is enjoying.
Hey, it was just one protest in a small place – but the voices and horns were loud, happy and full of hope.
And maybe that’s how democracies are saved.
DOES NO NEWS SIGNAL BAD NEWS
IN THE FIGHT TO SAVE NPR & PBS?
CLICK ON the above image to go to the "Protect My Public Media" campaign to save NPR and PBS
WITH TIME RUNNING OUT to protect two of the nation’s most important journalism powerhouses, there’s an alarming lack of news about any meaningful rescue effort.
On June 12, the House moved to take back federal support for NPR (National Public Radio) and TV’s PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), sending the defunding question to the Senate.
The Senate has until July 18 to act, and you’d expect a fierce battle by public broadcasting advocates to convince the Republican-dominated chamber to reverse the House vote.
But since the House voted – it was close, just a two-vote margin – I haven’t seen any news stories about what’s being done to save the $1.1 billion needed to help fund NPR and PBS.
Now, maybe there’s a fierce lobbying effort aimed at the Republican-controlled Senate, a masterful behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at friendly legislators who will save the day.
But it doesn’t feel like it.
I’m sure broadcasting officials ARE lobbying senators.
And there is an organized campaign – “Protect My Public Media” which urges viewers, listeners and grassroots advocates to contact legislators.
But what’s missing is passion, imagination, urgency and grit.
Every day, I search the Internet for stories about the “battle,” and the silence is chilling, especially given the enormous stakes.
No calls for demonstrations; no sloganeering; no questioning by news outlets – commercial and public – of what Republicans are up to as to when they’ll take up the measure and how.
It’s all too polite. too bloodless and too courteous.
GRANTED, THIS ISN’T AN EASY LIFT, especially for the more than 1,000 NPR affiliated stations and the 330 PBS outlets.
On the one hand, they have a powerful megaphone to raise alarms and rally supporters. But they can’t use the systems to influence a political campaign. I’m sure there are a slew of legal reasons for that. And it’s just plain unfair for them to use their nationwide reach to promote their self interest.
Meanwhile, other news outlets have dropped the ball. How many stories about funds for NPR and PBS can readers of the New York Times or the Washington Post tolerate, when they are wondering whether Donald Trump is going to bomb the bejeezus out of Iran or whether Homeland Security thugs are going to arm wrestle yet another Democratic lawmaker to the floor of a federal building?
Day in and day out, there are a lot more compelling heart-wrenching, life-and-death and an occasional good news yarns for any news organization to serve up, rather than inflicting listeners and viewers with yet another boring battle-of-the-budget snoozer.
Also, federal funds are hardly the only source of support for public broadcasters: the systems are already master fundraisers, extracting donations through periodic, insufferably pompous on-air campaigns pleading for donations.
So, NPR and PBS and its excellent PBS News Hour newscast won’t necessarily go silent immediately if the $1.1 billion for the next two years is lost. But many small stations, especially in rural areas, may go out of business, and the overall public broadcasting effort will be terribly weakened.
AND WHY GAMBLE?
NPR and PBS are high quality, professional, seasoned journalistic operations – among the few surviving sources of credible information at a time when the Internet is a cesspool of misinformation, fed by the Trump government's sewer of lies.
Further, the news ecosystem remains weakened. There’s no guarantee that the Washington Post will survive as a robust source of hard-hitting political coverage as readership slumps because of self-inflicted restrictions on its opinion pages.
There’s simply no reason to allow NPR and PBS to be weakened and left to die.
This is the second time I’ve written about this – I had a long-winded post May 3. Which should alert you to the fact that I don’t have the solutions.
But I can imagine a hard-hitting advertising campaign, grassroots-protests, organized phone banking, email and text campaigns, SAVE NPR and PROTECT OUR PUBLIC TV signs at anti-Trump rallies.
Still, the Senate effort is really one in which residents of Republican states will be the most effective boosters. I’m sure that no GOP Senator wants to hear from a Rhode Island/ Blue State resident like me. And I don’t personally know many individuals in Red States I could persuade to take up the cause.
One of the exasperating aspects of the Trump and GOP drive to cripple NPR and PBS is that the lawmakers – from personal experience – know better.
"Don't spend money on stupid things and don't subsidize biased media," Rep. Jim Jordan, a Ohio Republican said during the House debate to kill the funding.
But I’m guessing that Jordan and fellow lawmakers are only too happy to be interviewed by NPR and PBS News Hour reporters, who are invariably civil, fair and certainly not “stupid.”
As to the charge that the public broadcasters are biased, that’s not necessarily the judgement of news consumers.
A YouGov poll earlier this year asked Americans which of 52 news “sources” they considered the most trusted.
PBS came in 3rd in the most-trusted list, and NPR ranked 9th.
Admittedly, surveys like this are problematic. Americans have always had a love-hate relationship with their media outlets. And reporters, especially in fiction, are portrayed as a suspect cast – sneaky, troublesome, opportunistic and unheroic.
So “trust” in media is hard to measure.
In the YouGov poll itself the Number 1 most trusted news “source” was … The Weather Channel!
The Number 2 spot went to the BBC, the British broadcasting behemoth, generally available in the U.S. on NPR and PBS stations, which use BBC segments to fill out their programming schedules.
(If you’re curious, Fox News was the most-watched outlet; but it ranked 39th on the trust list).
I’d like to think this poll does reflect generally high regard that millions of Americans have for their public broadcasters, which are available in every nook and corner of the country.
You’d think politicians would care, if for no more patriotic motives than public stations are credible platforms for themselves, and that they’re popular with their constituents.
But as of today, no news about the crisis facing NPR and PBS means that America is in danger of losing two of its best sources of news and information simply because we didn’t try hard enough.
What I do know is if NPR and PBS disappear, the larger fight to save democracy will be far more difficult: how do we fight Trump hooligans if if we don’t know what they’re doing?
Give it a try. Declare tomorrow your personal No News Day.
No media, period. No social media. No streaming your favorite commentators. No New York Times, No Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Guardian. No Associated Press.
Hands off the remote!
No PBS.
No NPR.
On June 12, the House moved to take back federal support for NPR (National Public Radio) and TV’s PBS (the Public Broadcasting Service), sending the defunding question to the Senate.
The Senate has until July 18 to act, and you’d expect a fierce battle by public broadcasting advocates to convince the Republican-dominated chamber to reverse the House vote.
But since the House voted – it was close, just a two-vote margin – I haven’t seen any news stories about what’s being done to save the $1.1 billion needed to help fund NPR and PBS.
Now, maybe there’s a fierce lobbying effort aimed at the Republican-controlled Senate, a masterful behind-the-scenes campaign aimed at friendly legislators who will save the day.
But it doesn’t feel like it.
I’m sure broadcasting officials ARE lobbying senators.
And there is an organized campaign – “Protect My Public Media” which urges viewers, listeners and grassroots advocates to contact legislators.
But what’s missing is passion, imagination, urgency and grit.
Every day, I search the Internet for stories about the “battle,” and the silence is chilling, especially given the enormous stakes.
No calls for demonstrations; no sloganeering; no questioning by news outlets – commercial and public – of what Republicans are up to as to when they’ll take up the measure and how.
It’s all too polite. too bloodless and too courteous.
GRANTED, THIS ISN’T AN EASY LIFT, especially for the more than 1,000 NPR affiliated stations and the 330 PBS outlets.
On the one hand, they have a powerful megaphone to raise alarms and rally supporters. But they can’t use the systems to influence a political campaign. I’m sure there are a slew of legal reasons for that. And it’s just plain unfair for them to use their nationwide reach to promote their self interest.
Meanwhile, other news outlets have dropped the ball. How many stories about funds for NPR and PBS can readers of the New York Times or the Washington Post tolerate, when they are wondering whether Donald Trump is going to bomb the bejeezus out of Iran or whether Homeland Security thugs are going to arm wrestle yet another Democratic lawmaker to the floor of a federal building?
Day in and day out, there are a lot more compelling heart-wrenching, life-and-death and an occasional good news yarns for any news organization to serve up, rather than inflicting listeners and viewers with yet another boring battle-of-the-budget snoozer.
Also, federal funds are hardly the only source of support for public broadcasters: the systems are already master fundraisers, extracting donations through periodic, insufferably pompous on-air campaigns pleading for donations.
So, NPR and PBS and its excellent PBS News Hour newscast won’t necessarily go silent immediately if the $1.1 billion for the next two years is lost. But many small stations, especially in rural areas, may go out of business, and the overall public broadcasting effort will be terribly weakened.
AND WHY GAMBLE?
NPR and PBS are high quality, professional, seasoned journalistic operations – among the few surviving sources of credible information at a time when the Internet is a cesspool of misinformation, fed by the Trump government's sewer of lies.
Further, the news ecosystem remains weakened. There’s no guarantee that the Washington Post will survive as a robust source of hard-hitting political coverage as readership slumps because of self-inflicted restrictions on its opinion pages.
There’s simply no reason to allow NPR and PBS to be weakened and left to die.
This is the second time I’ve written about this – I had a long-winded post May 3. Which should alert you to the fact that I don’t have the solutions.
But I can imagine a hard-hitting advertising campaign, grassroots-protests, organized phone banking, email and text campaigns, SAVE NPR and PROTECT OUR PUBLIC TV signs at anti-Trump rallies.
Still, the Senate effort is really one in which residents of Republican states will be the most effective boosters. I’m sure that no GOP Senator wants to hear from a Rhode Island/ Blue State resident like me. And I don’t personally know many individuals in Red States I could persuade to take up the cause.
One of the exasperating aspects of the Trump and GOP drive to cripple NPR and PBS is that the lawmakers – from personal experience – know better.
"Don't spend money on stupid things and don't subsidize biased media," Rep. Jim Jordan, a Ohio Republican said during the House debate to kill the funding.
But I’m guessing that Jordan and fellow lawmakers are only too happy to be interviewed by NPR and PBS News Hour reporters, who are invariably civil, fair and certainly not “stupid.”
As to the charge that the public broadcasters are biased, that’s not necessarily the judgement of news consumers.
A YouGov poll earlier this year asked Americans which of 52 news “sources” they considered the most trusted.
PBS came in 3rd in the most-trusted list, and NPR ranked 9th.
Admittedly, surveys like this are problematic. Americans have always had a love-hate relationship with their media outlets. And reporters, especially in fiction, are portrayed as a suspect cast – sneaky, troublesome, opportunistic and unheroic.
So “trust” in media is hard to measure.
In the YouGov poll itself the Number 1 most trusted news “source” was … The Weather Channel!
The Number 2 spot went to the BBC, the British broadcasting behemoth, generally available in the U.S. on NPR and PBS stations, which use BBC segments to fill out their programming schedules.
(If you’re curious, Fox News was the most-watched outlet; but it ranked 39th on the trust list).
I’d like to think this poll does reflect generally high regard that millions of Americans have for their public broadcasters, which are available in every nook and corner of the country.
You’d think politicians would care, if for no more patriotic motives than public stations are credible platforms for themselves, and that they’re popular with their constituents.
But as of today, no news about the crisis facing NPR and PBS means that America is in danger of losing two of its best sources of news and information simply because we didn’t try hard enough.
What I do know is if NPR and PBS disappear, the larger fight to save democracy will be far more difficult: how do we fight Trump hooligans if if we don’t know what they’re doing?
Give it a try. Declare tomorrow your personal No News Day.
No media, period. No social media. No streaming your favorite commentators. No New York Times, No Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Guardian. No Associated Press.
Hands off the remote!
No PBS.
No NPR.
PROTESTS
NEVER PERFECT; NEVER OPTIONAL
THIS MUCH I KNOW ABOUT GROUPS: I don’t want to belong to one. And I assume that the feeling is mutual, at least on the part of some members of any group I might try to sign onto.
But I also know that in the fight to defend democracy, joining together with other people is not optional. Lone wolves, hermits and soloists simply cannot get the job done.
Here’s the problem: no matter what the group, or how noble its purpose or how vital its mission, there will always be people sure to spoil some of the experience.
In any group, there will be jerks, know-it-alls, weirdos, loud-mouths, hot-heads, odd-balls, people who are too old, too annoying, too loud, too young, too hairy, too short, too meek and, sometimes, too violent.
And it’s possible there will provocateurs: people determined to make trouble, whose presence is meant to undermine the purposes of the group, to give it a bad name. Maybe they’ll have been embedded by the group’s opponents; sometimes they’ll show up as freelance spoilers.
THIS BECOMES IMPORTANT in the still-unfolding demonstrations in Los Angeles, protesting protest detentions of undocumented people or anyone whom the “authorities” decide are not the “right” people.
And nationally, it will be an issue on June 14 for what hopefully will be the thousands of “No Kings” rallies throughout the country, as a counterpoint to Trump’s military parade/birthday celebration in Washington, D.C.
It’s obvious that Trump wants trouble both in L.A., at similar protests, because it gives him the pretext to federalize state National Guards and to call in federal troops.
The obvious counter strategy is for the perfect protest – an absolutely peaceful demonstration in which there is no excuse for police or the military to “restore” order.
The columnist Tom Nichols, who writes for The Atlantic magazine and a former professor at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. envisioned such a tactic in a June 8 piece.
“… the most dramatic public action the residents of Southern California could take right now would be to ensure that Trump’s forces arrive on calm streets,” Nichols wrote.
“Imagine the reactions of the Guard members as they look around and wonder what, exactly, the commander in chief was thinking. Why are they carrying their rifles in the streets of downtown America? What does anyone expect them to do? Put another way: What if the president throws a crackdown and nobody comes?”
WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
I wish it were otherwise.
But Nichols’ fantasy is simply asking too much
Indeed, as I write this, there’s been enough “trouble” – cars set afire, highways blocked, things thrown at police – to give the thuggish administration an excuse to militarize policing of dissent.
The news reports I’ve seen so far as that the “disorderly” aspects of the LA demonstration have been the work of a minority of protesters – most have been peaceful.
But powerful emotions are at work. The federal roundup of undocumented persons have been brutal, frightening, infuriating and unfair. How can large-scale protests be as carefully executed as envisioned by Nichols and others for whom Trump’s opportunistic motives are so clear?
It just seems to me impossible. There are simply too many people, coming from too many perspectives, to assure the rest of us that the protests will be calm, orderly and precisely executed.
But the alternative is likewise unacceptable – to have no protests, to call off demonstrations, to cancel the only way millions of people have to voice their concerns for fear they will be misconstrued and abused.
IT’S THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY that none of us can find a group of people with whom we are completely compatible. Democracy demands that we learn to get along with all sorts of people and not be overly choosy; we cannot demand everyone agree with us on every point; it’s hard to find common ground as to our personal beliefs and our guess about which tactics are effective.
Sometimes, the group simply blunders. I’m thinking back to the Black Lives Matter protests in which a devastatingly wrong-headed slogan took hold – “Defund the Police.”
You could understand the reasoning – police power was abusive, so starve its budget and redirect some of the money into non-lethal responses to mental health and other crises that didn’t need a police response.
But it seems to me that you rarely reform a government agency by reducing its income. Usually in effective reform, you have spend more money for more resources, new approaches, higher caliber people, etc.
And that’s my problem with “belonging” to a group – that I fear being associated with particular approaches, platforms and slogans with which I disagree, even though I support the group’s overall goals.
When it comes to genuinely bad actors, the people who elect violence and other counterproductive approaches, I do think the majority of us we have an obligation to call them out and somehow stop their destructive actions.
We also don’t have to join or remain in groups that turn out to be inherently violent and lawless or which violate our key moral and ethical standards.
LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS, there’s no simple solution to the dilemma of blending our individual standards with those of a group or a movement.
We have to accept that no group is made up of people just like us, people with whom we agree with on every point and with whom we would be pals if we didn’t have to.
Having said that, I’ve found most of the folks I’ve come across in the effort to preserve democracy since Trump declared war on American traditions are inspiring, both as individuals and as members of communities devoted to a cause that’s both noble and essential.
The worst thing that could happen at this time of great peril in America, is that we fail to come together, fail to stick together and fail to fight together to rescue our country.
We can try hard to do things right – in my case, I believe that nonviolence is both a strategic as well as a moral superpower.
But I have to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect protest, and that the greater danger is that – seeking perfection – we decide to do nothing at all.
But I also know that in the fight to defend democracy, joining together with other people is not optional. Lone wolves, hermits and soloists simply cannot get the job done.
Here’s the problem: no matter what the group, or how noble its purpose or how vital its mission, there will always be people sure to spoil some of the experience.
In any group, there will be jerks, know-it-alls, weirdos, loud-mouths, hot-heads, odd-balls, people who are too old, too annoying, too loud, too young, too hairy, too short, too meek and, sometimes, too violent.
And it’s possible there will provocateurs: people determined to make trouble, whose presence is meant to undermine the purposes of the group, to give it a bad name. Maybe they’ll have been embedded by the group’s opponents; sometimes they’ll show up as freelance spoilers.
THIS BECOMES IMPORTANT in the still-unfolding demonstrations in Los Angeles, protesting protest detentions of undocumented people or anyone whom the “authorities” decide are not the “right” people.
And nationally, it will be an issue on June 14 for what hopefully will be the thousands of “No Kings” rallies throughout the country, as a counterpoint to Trump’s military parade/birthday celebration in Washington, D.C.
It’s obvious that Trump wants trouble both in L.A., at similar protests, because it gives him the pretext to federalize state National Guards and to call in federal troops.
The obvious counter strategy is for the perfect protest – an absolutely peaceful demonstration in which there is no excuse for police or the military to “restore” order.
The columnist Tom Nichols, who writes for The Atlantic magazine and a former professor at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I. envisioned such a tactic in a June 8 piece.
“… the most dramatic public action the residents of Southern California could take right now would be to ensure that Trump’s forces arrive on calm streets,” Nichols wrote.
“Imagine the reactions of the Guard members as they look around and wonder what, exactly, the commander in chief was thinking. Why are they carrying their rifles in the streets of downtown America? What does anyone expect them to do? Put another way: What if the president throws a crackdown and nobody comes?”
WHICH WILL NEVER HAPPEN.
I wish it were otherwise.
But Nichols’ fantasy is simply asking too much
Indeed, as I write this, there’s been enough “trouble” – cars set afire, highways blocked, things thrown at police – to give the thuggish administration an excuse to militarize policing of dissent.
The news reports I’ve seen so far as that the “disorderly” aspects of the LA demonstration have been the work of a minority of protesters – most have been peaceful.
But powerful emotions are at work. The federal roundup of undocumented persons have been brutal, frightening, infuriating and unfair. How can large-scale protests be as carefully executed as envisioned by Nichols and others for whom Trump’s opportunistic motives are so clear?
It just seems to me impossible. There are simply too many people, coming from too many perspectives, to assure the rest of us that the protests will be calm, orderly and precisely executed.
But the alternative is likewise unacceptable – to have no protests, to call off demonstrations, to cancel the only way millions of people have to voice their concerns for fear they will be misconstrued and abused.
IT’S THE NATURE OF DEMOCRACY that none of us can find a group of people with whom we are completely compatible. Democracy demands that we learn to get along with all sorts of people and not be overly choosy; we cannot demand everyone agree with us on every point; it’s hard to find common ground as to our personal beliefs and our guess about which tactics are effective.
Sometimes, the group simply blunders. I’m thinking back to the Black Lives Matter protests in which a devastatingly wrong-headed slogan took hold – “Defund the Police.”
You could understand the reasoning – police power was abusive, so starve its budget and redirect some of the money into non-lethal responses to mental health and other crises that didn’t need a police response.
But it seems to me that you rarely reform a government agency by reducing its income. Usually in effective reform, you have spend more money for more resources, new approaches, higher caliber people, etc.
And that’s my problem with “belonging” to a group – that I fear being associated with particular approaches, platforms and slogans with which I disagree, even though I support the group’s overall goals.
When it comes to genuinely bad actors, the people who elect violence and other counterproductive approaches, I do think the majority of us we have an obligation to call them out and somehow stop their destructive actions.
We also don’t have to join or remain in groups that turn out to be inherently violent and lawless or which violate our key moral and ethical standards.
LIKE EVERYTHING ELSE IN THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS, there’s no simple solution to the dilemma of blending our individual standards with those of a group or a movement.
We have to accept that no group is made up of people just like us, people with whom we agree with on every point and with whom we would be pals if we didn’t have to.
Having said that, I’ve found most of the folks I’ve come across in the effort to preserve democracy since Trump declared war on American traditions are inspiring, both as individuals and as members of communities devoted to a cause that’s both noble and essential.
The worst thing that could happen at this time of great peril in America, is that we fail to come together, fail to stick together and fail to fight together to rescue our country.
We can try hard to do things right – in my case, I believe that nonviolence is both a strategic as well as a moral superpower.
But I have to acknowledge that there is no such thing as a perfect protest, and that the greater danger is that – seeking perfection – we decide to do nothing at all.
TRUMPISM & ITS ABSURDITIES:
* Should we save the ostriches, but not the people?
* Can a ‘big magnificent, free airplane’ be too big?
* What good is health care if we all die, anyway?
IN THE CRUSADE to confront the evil Donald Trump is inflicting upon the country, it is useful to recognize how often the daily assaults of terror and cruelty are also silly and absurd.
I don’t mean to suggest that Trump’s attacks aren’t consequential, because the harm is real. Our lives, and those of our neighbors, are at constant risk because of Trump’s mischief.
But acknowledging the absurdity that undergirds much of what Trump and the Republicans do exposes the flaws in the Trumpian schemes, making them manageable and remedial.
SAVE THE OSTRICHES; BUT THE FOLKS?
Flightless, with long spindly necks and longish twin legs, ostriches are said to the earth’s largest birds and the fastest on land, achieving speeds of more than 40-miles-per-hour.
But being birds, they are also susceptible to bird flu, and 300 of them are on a death watch at a farm in British Columbia, part of a Canadian government program to curb spread of the virus.
Enter the birds’ would-be rescuers, two of the Trump administration’s top health officials: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Kennedy and Oz have proposed saving the birds, with one option, bringing them to the United States, where Oz has offered lodgings on his ranch in Florida.
You heard this right.
As concern grows about the spread of bird flu, not only among livestock, but crossing over to humans, the nation’s leading health “experts” are proposing to keep potentially sick Canadian birds alive – and importing them to the U.S.
It's not certain that the ostriches in question have the virus – although nearly 70 similar birds at the farm have died from the flu, hence the order to kill the rest.
Kennedy wrote to the Canadian government asking officials to reconsider; Oz told the New York Post that he and Kennedy are “sticking our necks out” for the birds, saying “it doesn’t help anyone to kill the birds.”
What about another species?
It is not a stretch to ask whether the compassion Kennedy is showing to the birds in Canada extends to the humans he supposed to protect in his day job in the U.S.
Earlier this week, Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services canceled a contract meant to protect the U.S. population against bird flu.
The $600 million contract was to have financed development of a bird flu vaccine by the Moderna drug company, using technology the firm used in its successful Covid vaccine program.
The deal was part of a plan to react to a potential bird flu pandemic, should one develop, with the government able to purchases vaccines ahead of time.
Kennedy, famously skeptical of vaccines, has questioned Moderna technology in developing vaccines.
Thus, the secretary’s two-pronged program:
Bring ostriches, which might carry bird flu, to the United States.
Cancels steps that might protect human beings should a bird flu pandemic develop.
Save the ostriches. But the people…?
* * *
CAN ANYTHING BE TOO BIG?
“Frankly, it’s much too big.”
Who said that?
Was it a Democrat, questioning Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” which is rolling through Congress, threatening healthcare for millions of Americans, but promising tax cuts benefiting the wealthy?
Nope.
It was Trump.
He was lamenting the size of the controversial jet which the government of Qatar is trying to give to the United States, and which might later end up in Trump’s presidential library.
Trump has been wildly enthusiastic about the Boeing 747-8, despite all sorts of ethical alarms raised by the deal, in which the plane would be converted into an official Air Force One carrier of presidents.
It’s a “beautiful, big magnificent, free airplane for the United States Air Force,” Trump gushed.
But could the jet be too big, even for Trump?
Measuring 18-feet longer than current pair of Air Force One’s, the jetliner suddenly seeming a little biggish for the commander in chief for whom size matters
Indeed, Trump was sounding a little ungrateful, should we say even peevish?
Or, maybe he was realizing that the sheer size of the plane made it impractical for a post-presidency passenger.
Trump “clarified” the matter as only he can, musing at midweek:
“They tried to say: “’Oh, it’s Trump’s airplane.’ Oh, yeah, sure. It’s too big, frankly, it’s much too big.”
Whatever that means.
As of this writing (with Trump, any story is ever-shifting and never finished), the deal had not yet been finalized, as the administration fussed over the legal details.
There are problems aplenty with the Qatar airship. For one thing, it hasn’t been well maintained; and it could take years to convert into a true Air Force One – which has been Trump’s hope, since he’s impatient to find a replacement for the current set of planes.
So whether he’s souring on the gift; or trying to deflect the ethics issues, who knows?
But as of now: “It’s too big, frankly, it’s much too big.”
* * *
TO YOUR GOOD HEALTH; AND CERTAIN DEATH
“We all are going to die.”
Yes, it’s a fact.
But is the inevitability of death a good defense Republicans can use to explain away the possibility that 10 million people could lose their government health coverage?
Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa gave the idea a test run last Friday during one of those fraught “town hall” meetings that politicians, especially Republicans, have been warned against holding with constituents.
The “conversation” at this Butler County forum turned to the mega-bill in which Republicans are planning to drive millions off the Medicaid roles to save money that can be used to lower taxes for the rich.
Someone in the audience shouted that the impact of service cuts could be dire:
“People are going to die.”
To which Senator Ernst retorted:
“Well, we all are going to die.”
The comment drew loud disapproval from the audience.
“For heaven’s sakes, folks,” Ernst said.
Maybe it wasn’t best idea to mention heaven, either.
* * *
The following links are to articles used as source material for this piece:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/rfk-jr-oz-canadian-ostriches-avian-flu
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/health/us-cancels-contract-with-moderna-to-develop-bird-flu-vaccine.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/trump-qatar-plane-gift-boeing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/28/trump-qatar-air-force-one/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/politics/medicaid-cuts-joni-ernst-iowa-town-hall.html
I don’t mean to suggest that Trump’s attacks aren’t consequential, because the harm is real. Our lives, and those of our neighbors, are at constant risk because of Trump’s mischief.
But acknowledging the absurdity that undergirds much of what Trump and the Republicans do exposes the flaws in the Trumpian schemes, making them manageable and remedial.
SAVE THE OSTRICHES; BUT THE FOLKS?
Flightless, with long spindly necks and longish twin legs, ostriches are said to the earth’s largest birds and the fastest on land, achieving speeds of more than 40-miles-per-hour.
But being birds, they are also susceptible to bird flu, and 300 of them are on a death watch at a farm in British Columbia, part of a Canadian government program to curb spread of the virus.
Enter the birds’ would-be rescuers, two of the Trump administration’s top health officials: Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and Mehmet Oz, director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.
Kennedy and Oz have proposed saving the birds, with one option, bringing them to the United States, where Oz has offered lodgings on his ranch in Florida.
You heard this right.
As concern grows about the spread of bird flu, not only among livestock, but crossing over to humans, the nation’s leading health “experts” are proposing to keep potentially sick Canadian birds alive – and importing them to the U.S.
It's not certain that the ostriches in question have the virus – although nearly 70 similar birds at the farm have died from the flu, hence the order to kill the rest.
Kennedy wrote to the Canadian government asking officials to reconsider; Oz told the New York Post that he and Kennedy are “sticking our necks out” for the birds, saying “it doesn’t help anyone to kill the birds.”
What about another species?
It is not a stretch to ask whether the compassion Kennedy is showing to the birds in Canada extends to the humans he supposed to protect in his day job in the U.S.
Earlier this week, Kennedy’s Department of Health and Human Services canceled a contract meant to protect the U.S. population against bird flu.
The $600 million contract was to have financed development of a bird flu vaccine by the Moderna drug company, using technology the firm used in its successful Covid vaccine program.
The deal was part of a plan to react to a potential bird flu pandemic, should one develop, with the government able to purchases vaccines ahead of time.
Kennedy, famously skeptical of vaccines, has questioned Moderna technology in developing vaccines.
Thus, the secretary’s two-pronged program:
Bring ostriches, which might carry bird flu, to the United States.
Cancels steps that might protect human beings should a bird flu pandemic develop.
Save the ostriches. But the people…?
* * *
CAN ANYTHING BE TOO BIG?
“Frankly, it’s much too big.”
Who said that?
Was it a Democrat, questioning Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill” which is rolling through Congress, threatening healthcare for millions of Americans, but promising tax cuts benefiting the wealthy?
Nope.
It was Trump.
He was lamenting the size of the controversial jet which the government of Qatar is trying to give to the United States, and which might later end up in Trump’s presidential library.
Trump has been wildly enthusiastic about the Boeing 747-8, despite all sorts of ethical alarms raised by the deal, in which the plane would be converted into an official Air Force One carrier of presidents.
It’s a “beautiful, big magnificent, free airplane for the United States Air Force,” Trump gushed.
But could the jet be too big, even for Trump?
Measuring 18-feet longer than current pair of Air Force One’s, the jetliner suddenly seeming a little biggish for the commander in chief for whom size matters
Indeed, Trump was sounding a little ungrateful, should we say even peevish?
Or, maybe he was realizing that the sheer size of the plane made it impractical for a post-presidency passenger.
Trump “clarified” the matter as only he can, musing at midweek:
“They tried to say: “’Oh, it’s Trump’s airplane.’ Oh, yeah, sure. It’s too big, frankly, it’s much too big.”
Whatever that means.
As of this writing (with Trump, any story is ever-shifting and never finished), the deal had not yet been finalized, as the administration fussed over the legal details.
There are problems aplenty with the Qatar airship. For one thing, it hasn’t been well maintained; and it could take years to convert into a true Air Force One – which has been Trump’s hope, since he’s impatient to find a replacement for the current set of planes.
So whether he’s souring on the gift; or trying to deflect the ethics issues, who knows?
But as of now: “It’s too big, frankly, it’s much too big.”
* * *
TO YOUR GOOD HEALTH; AND CERTAIN DEATH
“We all are going to die.”
Yes, it’s a fact.
But is the inevitability of death a good defense Republicans can use to explain away the possibility that 10 million people could lose their government health coverage?
Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa gave the idea a test run last Friday during one of those fraught “town hall” meetings that politicians, especially Republicans, have been warned against holding with constituents.
The “conversation” at this Butler County forum turned to the mega-bill in which Republicans are planning to drive millions off the Medicaid roles to save money that can be used to lower taxes for the rich.
Someone in the audience shouted that the impact of service cuts could be dire:
“People are going to die.”
To which Senator Ernst retorted:
“Well, we all are going to die.”
The comment drew loud disapproval from the audience.
“For heaven’s sakes, folks,” Ernst said.
Maybe it wasn’t best idea to mention heaven, either.
* * *
The following links are to articles used as source material for this piece:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/rfk-jr-oz-canadian-ostriches-avian-flu
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/29/health/us-cancels-contract-with-moderna-to-develop-bird-flu-vaccine.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/28/trump-qatar-plane-gift-boeing
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/28/trump-qatar-air-force-one/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/us/politics/medicaid-cuts-joni-ernst-iowa-town-hall.html
FIRST, THEY CAME FOR
THE ‘DUDES IN DRESSES,’
THEN ...
The Supreme Court clears the way for bigotry, starting with transgender soldiers
EMILY SHILLING Credit: US Navy THE NATION’S HIGHEST COURT, among its many obligations, is supposed to protect individuals and groups that are often small and unpopular.
But the U.S. Supreme Court on May 6 did the opposite: the justices said that President Trump could go ahead with his ugly, unfair, bigoted attack against transsexual soldiers.
Specifically, the high court halted a lower court’s order that had stopped Trump and his underlings from wrecking the careers and lives of military men and women who have changed genders.
Earlier that day, the buffoon, Pete Hegseth, who is Trump’s secretary of defense, outlined the mission of the world’s most powerful military force this way.
“We are leaving wokeness and weakness behind” Hegseth boasted at a special operations forces conference in Florida.
“No more pronouns,” Hegseth crowed. “No more climate change obsession. No more emergency vaccine mandates. No more dudes in dresses, we’re done with that shit.”
The quotes are from the official Department of Defense transcript, which made sure it spelled out “shit” and noted that the audience applauded and cheered Hegseth.
Maybe a lot of us are out of patience with this transsexual nonsense.
Maybe we believe Democrats lost last year’s election because they were lured into political sideshows that turn off most voters, who worry about the Big Picture issues like inflation, the border and turning the Oval Office into a gold-leaf throne room.
But prejudice is not trivial.
Trump won the election because he has a weird charisma that I don’t understand; and because Joe Biden looked, sounded and acted his age; and because Kamala Harris didn’t have enough time to make her case; and, not incidentally, because she is the wrong sex and the wrong color.
So, we can try say that transsexuals – athletes, soldiers and other trans folks – who are an annoying minority that’s too small and too out-of-step with mainstream America to matter.
But bigotry is America’s – and humankind’s – original sin. We fought a terrible war because we rationalized that Black slaves, economically useful were subhuman. Later, we hoped the civil rights movement of 1960s had finished the human rights job the nation abandoned after the Civil War. And in the 21st Century, we hoped anew that the Black Lives Matters movement would, this time, actually finish the work.
But bigotry hadn't gone away and never does.
Prejudice is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is now bigot-in-chief, elected on a platform of hatred that started with immigrants and transsexual students and soldiers but ultimately will find new and larger targets.
THE SUPREME COURT’S ORDER on Trump’s transsexual ban got what seems to me too little media attention when the story broke, and I haven’t seen any news stories following up in the several days since.
Part of the reason, as with any Trump outrage, is that there are too many Trump outrages to cover adequately.
And it could be the nature of the courts, which often seems to delay final word about what they are up to. In this case, the Supreme Court said the Trump administration could proceed to discriminate against military transsexuals while the legal issues are thrashed out at the lower-level Court of Appeals.
But it seems to me that the justices left plenty of time for even the incompetent Hegseth to get rid of every one of the 4,200 transsexuals that the Department of Defense knows about, a group that makes up less than 1 percent of the nation’s more than 2-million soldiers.
* * *
UPDATE: The Guardian reported May 9 that the Department of Defense began the process of forcing transgender soldiers to “voluntarily” leave military service, estimating that 1,000 would be expelled initially. The Pentagon said it would scour health records of transgender soldiers who do not “self-identify.”
* * *
IT’S WORTH MENTIONING something about the people involved in the total of three court cases challenging the Trump policy.
Take the seven plaintiffs in the federal District Court suit in the state of Washington, which happens to be the case that the high court acted on and in which a judge declared a nationwide halt to the attack on trans soldiers.
“Throughout their 115 years of collective military service,” wrote Judge Benjamin H. Settle in his March 27 order, “they have been awarded over 70 medals for their honorable service and distinctive performance – in many instances after coming out as transgender.”
Judge Settle singled out Commander Emily “Hawking” Shilling, whom he said had transitioned during the period when former President Joe Biden allowed transgender people to serve. A Navy pilot, Shilling had flown 60 combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan, earning three medals during a 19-year career.
Judge Settle wrote:
“There is no claim and no evidence that she is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service. There is no claim and no evidence that Shilling herself is dishonest or selfish, or that she lacks humility or integrity.”
Those mentions of unit cohesion and potential character flaws were not random literary flourishes – they are among the reasons that Trump and his goons claimed that transsexuals threaten military functioning.
The Trump smear on transgender soldiers is that they are liars – men pretending to be women and vice versa; that their medical care wastes taxpayer money; that fellow soldiers can’t work alongside them.
Not true, the judge wrote of Shilling, saying that “Yet, absent an injunction, she will be promptly discharged solely because she is transgender.”
SO WHAT?
The point is not that Commander Shilling is a war hero; it's that her performance, not her transsexual self, should determine her military career.
According to Judge Settle, worries about character flaws, unit cohesion that were bigoted excuses that had been disproved during the real-life four-year experiment which Biden allowed transsexuals to serve.
Shilling and her comrades in the Washington court case had proved themselves, and it does matter that the these people be allowed to succeed on their merits.
Equallys important is that banning transsexuals in the military is a first step in the resurgence of prejudice as national policy.
Biogtry, as we've said, often starts small, with one unpopular group, then extends to the next, until it metastisizes into apartheid, a Jim Crow system of legalized discrimination, always with the potential to become outright genocide in a new Holocaust.
It's a cliché, that prejudice is a “slippery slope.”
Starts small, and grows.
But does the fact that we’ve heard this all before make it irrelevant?
That we have been warned of the danger over and over, is the danger any less true?
Which is why It's worth repeating, once again, the progression outlined by Martin Niemoller, the pastor, who had witnessed what had happened in Nazi Germany:
| First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a socialist. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me. |
Mocking “dudes in dresses” is a slur, not a military special operation.
Human “rights” are not optional.
When we marginalize anyone’s rights – as the Supreme Court has done in the short run and seems likely to do overall in the cases of transgender soldiers – we put everyone's future in peril, our own and our country's.
Human “rights” are not optional.
When we marginalize anyone’s rights – as the Supreme Court has done in the short run and seems likely to do overall in the cases of transgender soldiers – we put everyone's future in peril, our own and our country's.
WANT TO STOP TRUMP?
DEFEND NPR AND PBS:
DONATE, LOBBY & LISTEN
ON HIS 101st DAY IN OFFICE, Donald Trump handed an easy answer to the question millions of Americans have been asking since he won the 2024 election: “What can I do to stop Donald Trump?”
It’s simple: Defend NPR and PBS.
Trump on May 1 moved to destroy the country’s two public broadcasters, National Public Radio and the TV equivalent, the Public Broadcasting Service.
Which gives ordinary citizens the opportunity they’ve been craving: to really do something that will count, perhaps the most important action they can take to counter Trump’s hideous second term.
Two reasons.
* Send money.
* Call, write and lobby ( preferably in person) Senators and Representatives in Congress
* Tune in – perhaps the most crucial step of all.
HEAR ME OUT, because I know that many of us have been feeling, if not helpless, not as effective as we’d like with the available tactics to counter the sacrilege of Trump’s second presidency.
Yes, millions have turned out for massive street demonstrations, putting our bodies and souls on the line for big, noisy turnouts. Big crowds have overwhelmed Congressional town halls. People have constructed clever signs; braved the cold; rung cowbells and waved flags. All of which has been inspiring and necessary and must continue..
People have sent money to support progressive Democratic candidates in special elections, and they’ve won.
We’ve been on the phone to our members of Congress and sent letters and emails. We’ve told pollsters that we consider Trump a disgrace.
And it’s all vital if we are to weather the next horrible weeks and months until the November, 2026 midterm elections, our next chance to turn the House of Representatives Democratic and thus put the brakes on the Trump madness.
But in the meantime, nothing that we can do as ordinary individuals will have the enormous effect in preserving democracy than to keeping NPR and PBS as the nation’s robust truth-tellers.
TRUMP THE AUTHORITARIAN, Trump the psychopath, and Trump the bully is at war with the truth.
Trump doesn’t want us to know what’s going on, and what he’s up to.
That’s what’s behind his attack on the universities. It’s not that they are too liberal, too woke, too anti Semitic. It ‘s that the professors, the students, the researchers know too much about what’s going on.
It’s what is behind his drive to hollow out of federal government: getting rid legions of smarty-pants bureaucrats who know if the air will make you sick, whether the weather is killing us and if tariffs make sense.
It's why he doesn't like the Weather Bureau, the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Institutes of Health.
But nothing scares Trump more than the champions of the First Amendment -- the press, the media, the newspapers, the broadcasters, the news services -- whose business is the truth.
So for Trump, nothing is more important than curbing NPR and PBS.
PBS connects with 354 TV stations; NPR interacts with 1,024 local stations, with a weekly audience of nearly 30 million people.
As a lifelong liar, Trump cannot abide these kinds of information systems. As a dictator in the making, nothing is more perilous for him than such an enormous, accessible and credible combined source of trustworthy information.
So, Trump issued his gazillionth executive order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” in which he ordered the independent Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funneling a half-billion in federal dollars a year to NPR and PBS.
Trump, whom I’m betting has never spent a day without telling a lie, told a bunch in the executive order, including the proposition that in the Internet era, federally supported broadcasters are an anachronism.
It’s not true that there are many alternatives to trustworthy media. Most newspapers have failed because of changed financial and cultural underpinnings, leaving the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal as the only credible major survivors. Much of the remaining media is one-sided, like Fox News and MSNBC.
But his main point is that public broadcasters, even if they aren't needed, are biased. The executive order states:
"At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize. The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of impartiality: the CPB may not “contribute to or otherwise support any political party.” 47 U.S.C. 396(f)(3); see also id. 396(e)(2).
The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS. Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens."
Trump is absolutely wrong about bias at NPR and PBS. Their reports are exemplary for their professionalism and efforts at fairness - sometimes infuriatingly so.
An example, the PBS News Hour, the network’s flagship TV news program, began its broadcast Friday evening with the latest economic news, when, in fact, Trump’s attack on PBS and NPR was the bigger story, at least in my opinion. But you could see the editors struggling to figure what most impacted its audience, and maybe the national jobs report, rather than the attack on their own survival, came first.
NPR, in its website story about Trump’s attack on the public broadcasters - headlined "Trump says he's ending federal funding for NPR and PBS. They say he can't" - appended this endnote to explain that the news judgements were left to the journalists, not the corporate bosses:
"Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp, Managing Editor Gerry Holmes and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly."
Indeed, I suggest you read the story – at this link – as an example of the fairness and depth which underlies NPR’s journalism, day in and day out.
Which brings me to Trump’s main charge – long a Republican talking point – that NPR and PBS have a liberal orientation.
It’s true. Just like the Times is a “liberal” newspaper, and the Wall Street Journal is a "conservative" rag, NPR and PBS are more blue than red.
That does not mean that the remaining big newspapers or the public broadcasters slant their news stories, or focus on only reports that reinforce the political and cultural viewpoints of their staffs. Indeed, as I said, both bend over backwards, too much so to my liking, to achieve fairness and balance.
It’s simple: Defend NPR and PBS.
Trump on May 1 moved to destroy the country’s two public broadcasters, National Public Radio and the TV equivalent, the Public Broadcasting Service.
Which gives ordinary citizens the opportunity they’ve been craving: to really do something that will count, perhaps the most important action they can take to counter Trump’s hideous second term.
Two reasons.
- 1: NPR and PBS are absolutely state-of-the-art news and information sources. When it comes to journalism, they are as good as it gets. They are available – for free – in every corner of the United States. It’s like having the New York Times delivered to any doorstep, whether you live in a big city, or a rural village. The only difference is that when NPR and PBS are really cooking, they can be better than the world’s greatestnewspaper
- 2: The rescue of NPR and PBS is something that every one of us can absolutely do, regardless of our income, location, physical condition and available time. And here’s the best part, what we do will really matter
* Send money.
* Call, write and lobby ( preferably in person) Senators and Representatives in Congress
* Tune in – perhaps the most crucial step of all.
HEAR ME OUT, because I know that many of us have been feeling, if not helpless, not as effective as we’d like with the available tactics to counter the sacrilege of Trump’s second presidency.
Yes, millions have turned out for massive street demonstrations, putting our bodies and souls on the line for big, noisy turnouts. Big crowds have overwhelmed Congressional town halls. People have constructed clever signs; braved the cold; rung cowbells and waved flags. All of which has been inspiring and necessary and must continue..
People have sent money to support progressive Democratic candidates in special elections, and they’ve won.
We’ve been on the phone to our members of Congress and sent letters and emails. We’ve told pollsters that we consider Trump a disgrace.
And it’s all vital if we are to weather the next horrible weeks and months until the November, 2026 midterm elections, our next chance to turn the House of Representatives Democratic and thus put the brakes on the Trump madness.
But in the meantime, nothing that we can do as ordinary individuals will have the enormous effect in preserving democracy than to keeping NPR and PBS as the nation’s robust truth-tellers.
TRUMP THE AUTHORITARIAN, Trump the psychopath, and Trump the bully is at war with the truth.
Trump doesn’t want us to know what’s going on, and what he’s up to.
That’s what’s behind his attack on the universities. It’s not that they are too liberal, too woke, too anti Semitic. It ‘s that the professors, the students, the researchers know too much about what’s going on.
It’s what is behind his drive to hollow out of federal government: getting rid legions of smarty-pants bureaucrats who know if the air will make you sick, whether the weather is killing us and if tariffs make sense.
It's why he doesn't like the Weather Bureau, the National Science Foundation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the National Institutes of Health.
But nothing scares Trump more than the champions of the First Amendment -- the press, the media, the newspapers, the broadcasters, the news services -- whose business is the truth.
So for Trump, nothing is more important than curbing NPR and PBS.
PBS connects with 354 TV stations; NPR interacts with 1,024 local stations, with a weekly audience of nearly 30 million people.
As a lifelong liar, Trump cannot abide these kinds of information systems. As a dictator in the making, nothing is more perilous for him than such an enormous, accessible and credible combined source of trustworthy information.
So, Trump issued his gazillionth executive order, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media,” in which he ordered the independent Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funneling a half-billion in federal dollars a year to NPR and PBS.
Trump, whom I’m betting has never spent a day without telling a lie, told a bunch in the executive order, including the proposition that in the Internet era, federally supported broadcasters are an anachronism.
It’s not true that there are many alternatives to trustworthy media. Most newspapers have failed because of changed financial and cultural underpinnings, leaving the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal as the only credible major survivors. Much of the remaining media is one-sided, like Fox News and MSNBC.
But his main point is that public broadcasters, even if they aren't needed, are biased. The executive order states:
"At the very least, Americans have the right to expect that if their tax dollars fund public broadcasting at all, they fund only fair, accurate, unbiased, and nonpartisan news coverage. No media outlet has a constitutional right to taxpayer subsidies, and the Government is entitled to determine which categories of activities to subsidize. The CPB’s governing statute reflects principles of impartiality: the CPB may not “contribute to or otherwise support any political party.” 47 U.S.C. 396(f)(3); see also id. 396(e)(2).
The CPB fails to abide by these principles to the extent it subsidizes NPR and PBS. Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter. What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens."
Trump is absolutely wrong about bias at NPR and PBS. Their reports are exemplary for their professionalism and efforts at fairness - sometimes infuriatingly so.
An example, the PBS News Hour, the network’s flagship TV news program, began its broadcast Friday evening with the latest economic news, when, in fact, Trump’s attack on PBS and NPR was the bigger story, at least in my opinion. But you could see the editors struggling to figure what most impacted its audience, and maybe the national jobs report, rather than the attack on their own survival, came first.
NPR, in its website story about Trump’s attack on the public broadcasters - headlined "Trump says he's ending federal funding for NPR and PBS. They say he can't" - appended this endnote to explain that the news judgements were left to the journalists, not the corporate bosses:
"Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR Media Correspondent David Folkenflik and edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp, Managing Editor Gerry Holmes and Managing Editor Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR's protocol for reporting on itself, no corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly."
Indeed, I suggest you read the story – at this link – as an example of the fairness and depth which underlies NPR’s journalism, day in and day out.
Which brings me to Trump’s main charge – long a Republican talking point – that NPR and PBS have a liberal orientation.
It’s true. Just like the Times is a “liberal” newspaper, and the Wall Street Journal is a "conservative" rag, NPR and PBS are more blue than red.
That does not mean that the remaining big newspapers or the public broadcasters slant their news stories, or focus on only reports that reinforce the political and cultural viewpoints of their staffs. Indeed, as I said, both bend over backwards, too much so to my liking, to achieve fairness and balance.
WHICH BRINGS ME BACK to the triple threat of actions every one of us can take to defend public broadcasting.
SEND MONEY. If every individual or family that listens to and watches NPR or PBS sends even a small amount to their local stations, that can quickly replace the relatively modest subsidy Trump wants to confiscate.
Both NPR and PBS already rely on public and other non-government giving for most of their funding. Indeed, there is nothing more tedious than the periodic fundraisers that they air for contributions. But as obnoxious as their fundraising is, it also provides an easy mechanism to weather the Trump attack.
So hold your nose, cover your ears and eyes and give what you can to the local stations.
(Regular or “sustainer” amounts are preferred, and giving through bank accounts rather than credit cards is considered a cost-effective payment mechanism).
Don’t wait to be asked.
LOBBY CONGRESS. Republicans have long complained about NPR and PBS. But in the past, defunding threats have been thwarted because many Senators and House members realize outlets in their states are popular.
Things likely are different this time. Republicans are in charge of both congressional chambers, and so far the party is totally under Trump's control and are not inclined to stand up to him on any issue.
Still, with the House within reach of a Democratic takeover next year, enough Red State members may still be listening to their constituents, especially because the money at risk is relatively small.
TUNE IN. As I said, perhaps the most important step that anyone can take is to watch and listen.
If you are not, as I am, addicted to NPR, try it out the next time you’re in in your car, or at your computer, or have a radio handy at home.
If you watch network news on TV, give the PBS News Hour a try. You’ll be amazed at the depth and the scope of the 50 minutes of reporting, minus the horrible drug ads clogging the end of the skimpy newscasts of the commercial networks.
The more you listen and watch, the more appreciation you'll have for what the public broadcasters do.
The bigger their audiences, the more likely that the public networks will survive.
FINALLY, DON'T EXPECT PERFECTION. PBS and NPR in the Age of AI are still operated by people, not saints. They can be as obnoxious, off-the-wall and fallible as the rest of us. So cut them some slack.
Nothing any of us will do in the next year and a half will be as important to the survival of the country as we know it as our support for NPR and PBS.
Donate.
Call.
Listen & watch.
Save democracy.
SEND MONEY. If every individual or family that listens to and watches NPR or PBS sends even a small amount to their local stations, that can quickly replace the relatively modest subsidy Trump wants to confiscate.
Both NPR and PBS already rely on public and other non-government giving for most of their funding. Indeed, there is nothing more tedious than the periodic fundraisers that they air for contributions. But as obnoxious as their fundraising is, it also provides an easy mechanism to weather the Trump attack.
So hold your nose, cover your ears and eyes and give what you can to the local stations.
(Regular or “sustainer” amounts are preferred, and giving through bank accounts rather than credit cards is considered a cost-effective payment mechanism).
Don’t wait to be asked.
LOBBY CONGRESS. Republicans have long complained about NPR and PBS. But in the past, defunding threats have been thwarted because many Senators and House members realize outlets in their states are popular.
Things likely are different this time. Republicans are in charge of both congressional chambers, and so far the party is totally under Trump's control and are not inclined to stand up to him on any issue.
Still, with the House within reach of a Democratic takeover next year, enough Red State members may still be listening to their constituents, especially because the money at risk is relatively small.
TUNE IN. As I said, perhaps the most important step that anyone can take is to watch and listen.
If you are not, as I am, addicted to NPR, try it out the next time you’re in in your car, or at your computer, or have a radio handy at home.
If you watch network news on TV, give the PBS News Hour a try. You’ll be amazed at the depth and the scope of the 50 minutes of reporting, minus the horrible drug ads clogging the end of the skimpy newscasts of the commercial networks.
The more you listen and watch, the more appreciation you'll have for what the public broadcasters do.
The bigger their audiences, the more likely that the public networks will survive.
FINALLY, DON'T EXPECT PERFECTION. PBS and NPR in the Age of AI are still operated by people, not saints. They can be as obnoxious, off-the-wall and fallible as the rest of us. So cut them some slack.
Nothing any of us will do in the next year and a half will be as important to the survival of the country as we know it as our support for NPR and PBS.
Donate.
Call.
Listen & watch.
Save democracy.
WHAT IF GOD TELLS DONALD TRUMP TO GO NUCLEAR?
THE NAGASKI atomic bomb, Aug. 9, 1942
Donald Trump is killing us.
That’s not in dispute. The only question is how many of us will die too early, when and how.
A doctor friend reminded me recently of the predicted death toll that could result from Trump’s early moves to stop funding health programs in foreign countries.
Many of us have probably forgotten Trump’s attack on USAID and similar programs because there’s so much else going on now. I know I’d put that out of my mind.
But my friend pointed me to a Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times last month that predicted 1,650,000 million people might die annually without continued U.S. funding for HIV prevention and treatment. He noted other outcomes – such as a half-million annual deaths from lack of vaccines.
We know that two children have died in Texas of measles, and both were unvaccinated. We can’t blame Trump for those deaths, but we know that he appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, to oversee public health. Without vaccines, children will die.
We know that the Trump is trying to end programs meant to slow, stall and reverse climate change. Our tortured environment already is producing catastrophic firestorms, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, heat spells and floods. Unchecked, a wounded climate could make the earth unlivable.
The nation’s attention currently is on Trump’s assault on the economy – our own and the world’s – by imposing high tariffs, resulting in stunning shifts in stock and bond markets.
For days, Trump vowed to stay the course until he sort of didn’t, "pausing" ” most big tariffs hikes, but leaving in place 10 percent tariffs on most countries and boosting China’s levies to 145 percent.
Markets rose joyfully at first. Then they fell. Who knows what they’ll do next Monday morning or on Thursday afternoon, as financial wizards undertake a fool's mission - trying to make sense of what Trump is thinking .
Which brings me to the most serious danger of all – Trump’s singular ability to activate the United States' nuclear arsenal.
LIKE EVERY PRESIDENT since Harry Truman okayed two atomic attacks on Japan in 1945 to end World War II, Trump can launch a nuclear strike and no one can stop him. It's a vestige of the Cold War, when deterrence – fear of retaliation – was supposed to keep the Soviet Union from attacking the U.S.; the president needed to act quickly if the “other side” moved first.
But Donald Trump would never be that reckless.
Even Trump would never unleash an unprovoked nuclear holocaust.
That’s what we all believe. The Trump “base” thinks he’d never, for one reason or another, fire off a nuclear missile. Democrats, progressives and Independents and apolitical citizens of all sorts, really can’t imagine that.
But here’s something that the great horror writer Stephen King said about Trump during his first term:
“That this guy has his finger on the nuclear trigger is worse than any horror story I ever wrote.”
That’s not in dispute. The only question is how many of us will die too early, when and how.
A doctor friend reminded me recently of the predicted death toll that could result from Trump’s early moves to stop funding health programs in foreign countries.
Many of us have probably forgotten Trump’s attack on USAID and similar programs because there’s so much else going on now. I know I’d put that out of my mind.
But my friend pointed me to a Nicholas Kristof column in the New York Times last month that predicted 1,650,000 million people might die annually without continued U.S. funding for HIV prevention and treatment. He noted other outcomes – such as a half-million annual deaths from lack of vaccines.
We know that two children have died in Texas of measles, and both were unvaccinated. We can’t blame Trump for those deaths, but we know that he appointed Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic, to oversee public health. Without vaccines, children will die.
We know that the Trump is trying to end programs meant to slow, stall and reverse climate change. Our tortured environment already is producing catastrophic firestorms, tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, heat spells and floods. Unchecked, a wounded climate could make the earth unlivable.
The nation’s attention currently is on Trump’s assault on the economy – our own and the world’s – by imposing high tariffs, resulting in stunning shifts in stock and bond markets.
For days, Trump vowed to stay the course until he sort of didn’t, "pausing" ” most big tariffs hikes, but leaving in place 10 percent tariffs on most countries and boosting China’s levies to 145 percent.
Markets rose joyfully at first. Then they fell. Who knows what they’ll do next Monday morning or on Thursday afternoon, as financial wizards undertake a fool's mission - trying to make sense of what Trump is thinking .
Which brings me to the most serious danger of all – Trump’s singular ability to activate the United States' nuclear arsenal.
LIKE EVERY PRESIDENT since Harry Truman okayed two atomic attacks on Japan in 1945 to end World War II, Trump can launch a nuclear strike and no one can stop him. It's a vestige of the Cold War, when deterrence – fear of retaliation – was supposed to keep the Soviet Union from attacking the U.S.; the president needed to act quickly if the “other side” moved first.
But Donald Trump would never be that reckless.
Even Trump would never unleash an unprovoked nuclear holocaust.
That’s what we all believe. The Trump “base” thinks he’d never, for one reason or another, fire off a nuclear missile. Democrats, progressives and Independents and apolitical citizens of all sorts, really can’t imagine that.
But here’s something that the great horror writer Stephen King said about Trump during his first term:
“That this guy has his finger on the nuclear trigger is worse than any horror story I ever wrote.”
That line was posted on Twitter, now X, which was cited in a 2017 Esquire magazine article.
Two years later, King was interviewed about a character in his 1979 novel, “The Dead Zone,” which imagined an emerging demagogue, who had eyes on the White House. The video interview appeared in a “Rolling Stone” magazine article.
“Do you think that the Trump presidency is scarier than a Stephen King novel?” the interviewer asked.
“Short answer to that is yes, I do,” King replied. “I do think it’s scarier.”
Two years later, King was interviewed about a character in his 1979 novel, “The Dead Zone,” which imagined an emerging demagogue, who had eyes on the White House. The video interview appeared in a “Rolling Stone” magazine article.
“Do you think that the Trump presidency is scarier than a Stephen King novel?” the interviewer asked.
“Short answer to that is yes, I do,” King replied. “I do think it’s scarier.”
STEPHEN KING
Those 2017 and 2019 comments seem to have been blended into a inaccurate quote that’s widely attributed to King: “Donald Trump is worse than any horror story I’ve written.”
You can find this wording easily in a Google search. But if it's not a literal quote, it is an apt paraphrase of King’s insight into both Trump, as well as the public’s appetite for a charismatic, dangerous politician.
King long has had a feel for leaders who go off the rails. I’ve read two of his novels, “The Stand,” published in 1978, and “Under the Dome,” 2009, that feature dangerous characters who have sway with groups of citizens.
I haven’t read “The Dead Zone,” the novel discussed in the 2019 piece in Rolling Stone , but book summaries describe a rising politician, Greg Stillson, whom another character envisions triggering a nuclear war if he makes it to the White House.
King, in his interview, says that his Stillson character, like Trump, wasn't taken seriously as a politician at first, but gained a following and that there were other similarities between the imagined and the real.
“I know that American voters have always had a real attraction to outsiders with the same kind of right-wing ‘America First’ policy,” King told his interviewer. “And if that reminds people of Trump, I can’t be sorry, because it was a character that I wrote. It was a boogeyman of mine, and I never wanted to see him actually on the American political scene. But we do seem to have a Greg Stillson as president of the United States.”
Happily in "The Dead Zone," the fictional Stillson’s political career was cut short and the envisioned nuclear launch never took place.
IN REAL LIFE, United States finds itself in the grip of a president who is as frightening as any in American memory
And as, King suggests, actual, historical monsters – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – are far scarier than those who are made up.
Donald Trump has many disturbing attributes. He's racist; he’s cruel, a liar, abusive, vengeful and unpredictable.
On occasion, Trump has alluded to the use of nuclear weapons.
Sparing verbally with North Korea during his first term, Trump issued this warning:
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf club in 2017. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
MOST DISTURBING to me is that Trump says he’s God’s instrument, meant to guide the United States into a new era, the proof being his narrow escape from an assassination attempt during last year’s campaign.
Trump put it this way in his inaugural address:
"Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again."
This is a man who has carelessly, recklessly brought the country to the edge of a recession, who has arbitrarily shipped immigrants to a dangerous foreign prison, moved to abandon life-saving health programs, mused about taking over Canada and extorted universities and law firms with financial and legal threats.
So much is worse today in America and the world, so many lives put in jeopardy, than was was the case just a few months ago, all because of one man.
It makes me wonder what Donald Trump might do – now or in the future – should he get a signal from God.
You can find this wording easily in a Google search. But if it's not a literal quote, it is an apt paraphrase of King’s insight into both Trump, as well as the public’s appetite for a charismatic, dangerous politician.
King long has had a feel for leaders who go off the rails. I’ve read two of his novels, “The Stand,” published in 1978, and “Under the Dome,” 2009, that feature dangerous characters who have sway with groups of citizens.
I haven’t read “The Dead Zone,” the novel discussed in the 2019 piece in Rolling Stone , but book summaries describe a rising politician, Greg Stillson, whom another character envisions triggering a nuclear war if he makes it to the White House.
King, in his interview, says that his Stillson character, like Trump, wasn't taken seriously as a politician at first, but gained a following and that there were other similarities between the imagined and the real.
“I know that American voters have always had a real attraction to outsiders with the same kind of right-wing ‘America First’ policy,” King told his interviewer. “And if that reminds people of Trump, I can’t be sorry, because it was a character that I wrote. It was a boogeyman of mine, and I never wanted to see him actually on the American political scene. But we do seem to have a Greg Stillson as president of the United States.”
Happily in "The Dead Zone," the fictional Stillson’s political career was cut short and the envisioned nuclear launch never took place.
IN REAL LIFE, United States finds itself in the grip of a president who is as frightening as any in American memory
And as, King suggests, actual, historical monsters – Hitler, Stalin, Mao – are far scarier than those who are made up.
Donald Trump has many disturbing attributes. He's racist; he’s cruel, a liar, abusive, vengeful and unpredictable.
On occasion, Trump has alluded to the use of nuclear weapons.
Sparing verbally with North Korea during his first term, Trump issued this warning:
“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf club in 2017. “They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”
MOST DISTURBING to me is that Trump says he’s God’s instrument, meant to guide the United States into a new era, the proof being his narrow escape from an assassination attempt during last year’s campaign.
Trump put it this way in his inaugural address:
"Just a few months ago, in a beautiful Pennsylvania field, an assassin’s bullet ripped through my ear. But I felt then and believe even more so now that my life was saved for a reason. I was saved by God to make America great again."
This is a man who has carelessly, recklessly brought the country to the edge of a recession, who has arbitrarily shipped immigrants to a dangerous foreign prison, moved to abandon life-saving health programs, mused about taking over Canada and extorted universities and law firms with financial and legal threats.
So much is worse today in America and the world, so many lives put in jeopardy, than was was the case just a few months ago, all because of one man.
It makes me wonder what Donald Trump might do – now or in the future – should he get a signal from God.
THE WAR AGAINST EMPATHY
 RUMEYSA OZTURK, in white parka, Tufts University doctoral student, is captured by masked federal agents on a street in Somerville, Mass., March 25, and whisked away to Louisiana. Donald Trump hopes that most people won't care. |
I SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN SURPRISED. And neither should you.
The story I heard last weekend on NPR seemed so preposterous that I thought at first it must have been a satire, a spoof, or maybe I just heard it wrong.
So I went to the online archives of “Weekend Edition,” found the segment, and listened again.
Yup. I heard it right the first time. It was a story about empathy. And it wasn’t good. Not the story; the story was okay. The problem was empathy – empathy, it turns out, is bad.
Empathy has been added to the Right Wing's enemies list.
HOW COULD THIS BE, I WONDERED? Doesn’t the Right have enough to do without picking a fight with empathy?
Aren’t there enough college students to deport? Aren’t there millions of people my age to be impoverished by undermining Social Security? And what of the campaign against Canada? There's so much history to distort. So much climate to change. And so many hungry school children to make hungrier. It's a long list.
So why pick on empathy? Sweet little old empathy, which is the harmless – should I even say it, virtuous – practice of understanding what someone else is going through or thinking? You know, that "Walk in the other person's shoes" sort ofthing.
The problem for the Right Wing, it turns out, is that empathy has been hijacked by the Left Wing. The liberals have weaponized empathy as an underhanded way of advancing their nefarious causes.
Headlined, “How empathy came to be seen as weakness in conservative circles,” the NPR story included soundbites from the front lines. One went like this:
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
Turns out that the speaker isn’t just any Joe Blow spouting off at the neighborhood bar.
It’s none other than the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, the rocket guy, the electric car guy, the satellite guy, the guy who’s tearing the bejezzus out of the entire U.S. government.
Elon was talking in February on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the most-listened to podcasts of our moment.
Elon and Joe were chatting about immigration and how it can get out of hand, imperiling a country’s politics and culture, and empathy was part of the problem.
“There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself,” Elon says.
“Yeah,” says Joe.
NPR seems to have picked up the idea for its story from David French, a New York Times columnist, who explained the basics in an essay “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy.”
French mentioned other Right Wing “thinkers,” who are so bothered by empathy they’ve written books about it. Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcaster, authored “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” And Joe Rigney, a theologian, turned out “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.”
One chilling fact about empathy: women.
Women are empathy’s fall guys. The girls are easily led astray by the empathy lure. NPR found a soundbite from Stuckey on a podcast, “Family Talk,” explaining how liberals exploit the ladies:
“They’ll use emotional, compassionate, kind-sounding language in order to get a woman to think, ‘Well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro-open borders, I have to be pro- LGBTQ, I have to be pro-choice.’”
AS I SAID, there’s nothing here that should surprise us as we head into the fourth month of the Trump nightmare.
Cruelty, the opposite of empathy, is essential to the Trump agenda.
I don’t know why the president is so angry, so savage, so sadistic and so determined to inflict pain, terror and fear on friend and foe alike.
But it turns out that he is.
Most people aren't. At least, I don't think most people are like are like Donald Trump.
Most people are kind. They care about other people, and they want others to care about them. Most of us don’t want each other to be hungry, homeless, to live in poverty, to be sick without medical care, to suffer in pain, or to be scared out of our minds every day when we tune into the news.
For Trump to succeed in whatever it is he’s up to, he has to change the fundamentals of being human, to warp the national character.
Compassion must be turned into disgust, love into hate, empathy into revulsion.
The story I heard last weekend on NPR seemed so preposterous that I thought at first it must have been a satire, a spoof, or maybe I just heard it wrong.
So I went to the online archives of “Weekend Edition,” found the segment, and listened again.
Yup. I heard it right the first time. It was a story about empathy. And it wasn’t good. Not the story; the story was okay. The problem was empathy – empathy, it turns out, is bad.
Empathy has been added to the Right Wing's enemies list.
HOW COULD THIS BE, I WONDERED? Doesn’t the Right have enough to do without picking a fight with empathy?
Aren’t there enough college students to deport? Aren’t there millions of people my age to be impoverished by undermining Social Security? And what of the campaign against Canada? There's so much history to distort. So much climate to change. And so many hungry school children to make hungrier. It's a long list.
So why pick on empathy? Sweet little old empathy, which is the harmless – should I even say it, virtuous – practice of understanding what someone else is going through or thinking? You know, that "Walk in the other person's shoes" sort ofthing.
The problem for the Right Wing, it turns out, is that empathy has been hijacked by the Left Wing. The liberals have weaponized empathy as an underhanded way of advancing their nefarious causes.
Headlined, “How empathy came to be seen as weakness in conservative circles,” the NPR story included soundbites from the front lines. One went like this:
“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”
Turns out that the speaker isn’t just any Joe Blow spouting off at the neighborhood bar.
It’s none other than the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, the rocket guy, the electric car guy, the satellite guy, the guy who’s tearing the bejezzus out of the entire U.S. government.
Elon was talking in February on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” one of the most-listened to podcasts of our moment.
Elon and Joe were chatting about immigration and how it can get out of hand, imperiling a country’s politics and culture, and empathy was part of the problem.
“There’s so much empathy that you actually suicide yourself,” Elon says.
“Yeah,” says Joe.
NPR seems to have picked up the idea for its story from David French, a New York Times columnist, who explained the basics in an essay “Behold the Strange Spectacle of Christians Against Empathy.”
French mentioned other Right Wing “thinkers,” who are so bothered by empathy they’ve written books about it. Allie Beth Stuckey, a podcaster, authored “Toxic Empathy: How Progressives Exploit Christian Compassion.” And Joe Rigney, a theologian, turned out “The Sin of Empathy: Compassion and Its Counterfeits.”
One chilling fact about empathy: women.
Women are empathy’s fall guys. The girls are easily led astray by the empathy lure. NPR found a soundbite from Stuckey on a podcast, “Family Talk,” explaining how liberals exploit the ladies:
“They’ll use emotional, compassionate, kind-sounding language in order to get a woman to think, ‘Well, in order to be a good person, in order to be kind, in order to even love my neighbor, then I have to be pro-open borders, I have to be pro- LGBTQ, I have to be pro-choice.’”
AS I SAID, there’s nothing here that should surprise us as we head into the fourth month of the Trump nightmare.
Cruelty, the opposite of empathy, is essential to the Trump agenda.
I don’t know why the president is so angry, so savage, so sadistic and so determined to inflict pain, terror and fear on friend and foe alike.
But it turns out that he is.
Most people aren't. At least, I don't think most people are like are like Donald Trump.
Most people are kind. They care about other people, and they want others to care about them. Most of us don’t want each other to be hungry, homeless, to live in poverty, to be sick without medical care, to suffer in pain, or to be scared out of our minds every day when we tune into the news.
For Trump to succeed in whatever it is he’s up to, he has to change the fundamentals of being human, to warp the national character.
Compassion must be turned into disgust, love into hate, empathy into revulsion.
SO THAT WHEN WE WATCH that video showing the capture of the Tufts University doctoral student, Rumeysa Ozturk, by masked federal agents on a street in Somerville, Mass., on March 25, and see her hustled away in an unmarked SUV, we must not care.
We must not care that Ms. Ozturk ends up in Louisiana, where, lacking her medications, she has an asthma attack. We must not care that her apparent “offense” is co-authoring an op-ed essay in a student newspaper. We must not care that a former classmate, Jennifer Ruth Hoyden, tells the Boston Globe that Ms. Ozturk is “an extremely gentle human being, who could not use a swear word if you paid her.” We must not care that Ms. Ozturk, is 30 years old, from Turkey, enrolled in Tufts’ doctoral program for child study and human development.
Because empathy has no place in Donald Trump's America.
We must not care that Ms. Ozturk ends up in Louisiana, where, lacking her medications, she has an asthma attack. We must not care that her apparent “offense” is co-authoring an op-ed essay in a student newspaper. We must not care that a former classmate, Jennifer Ruth Hoyden, tells the Boston Globe that Ms. Ozturk is “an extremely gentle human being, who could not use a swear word if you paid her.” We must not care that Ms. Ozturk, is 30 years old, from Turkey, enrolled in Tufts’ doctoral program for child study and human development.
Because empathy has no place in Donald Trump's America.
DONALD TRUMP'S "bad picture" at the Colorado State House before he pleaded for its removal.
THERE'S AN EMPATHY EXEMPTION, of course, because nothing is straight forward with Donald Trump.
Trump demands empathy for Donald Trump.
An example is Trump’s recent complaint about his portrait in the Colorado State House, which he described this way on his social network platform:
Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before. The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one ….
By March 25, the day on which Ozturk was, in effect, kidnapped by Trump’s goons, empathetic Coloradans had taken taken down the hurtful painting, which produced a sort of win-win outcome: Trump got his wish; State House visitors no longer had to look at him.
BUT FOR TRUMP TO SUCCEED, empathy must seen as a fool’s errand, too naïve, so wrong-headed and dangerously foolish.
Which suggests one way to counter the horror Trump is inflicting on our country and on our world.
Maybe we can’t make it to the next big protest.
Maybe an inspiring Democratic leader has yet to emerge. Maybe we can’t contribute to every email demanding campaign money. Maybe we don’t own a a Tesla that we can trade in as a rebuke to Musk. And for sure none of us can speed up the calendar to get to the 2026 midterm elections.
But we can do one simple thing.
We can care.
We can be kind.
We can empathize.
We can do that every day.
Trump demands empathy for Donald Trump.
An example is Trump’s recent complaint about his portrait in the Colorado State House, which he described this way on his social network platform:
Nobody likes a bad picture or painting of themselves, but the one in Colorado, in the State Capitol, put up by the Governor, along with all other Presidents, was purposefully distorted to a level that even I, perhaps, have never seen before. The artist also did President Obama, and he looks wonderful, but the one on me is truly the worst. She must have lost her talent as she got older. In any event, I would much prefer not having a picture than having this one ….
By March 25, the day on which Ozturk was, in effect, kidnapped by Trump’s goons, empathetic Coloradans had taken taken down the hurtful painting, which produced a sort of win-win outcome: Trump got his wish; State House visitors no longer had to look at him.
BUT FOR TRUMP TO SUCCEED, empathy must seen as a fool’s errand, too naïve, so wrong-headed and dangerously foolish.
Which suggests one way to counter the horror Trump is inflicting on our country and on our world.
Maybe we can’t make it to the next big protest.
Maybe an inspiring Democratic leader has yet to emerge. Maybe we can’t contribute to every email demanding campaign money. Maybe we don’t own a a Tesla that we can trade in as a rebuke to Musk. And for sure none of us can speed up the calendar to get to the 2026 midterm elections.
But we can do one simple thing.
We can care.
We can be kind.
We can empathize.
We can do that every day.
CAN WE HAVE ANOTHER WORD?
Readers have suggested more words to define Trump. The hunt continues.
A DEMONSTRATION ORGANIZED by the Newport Democratic City Committee at the interchange to the Newport Bridge March 19 featured American and Ukrainian flags and signs saying “No kings,” “Stand for democracy/ Stand with Ukraine,” and “Protect democratic rights.”
EARLIER THIS MONTH, when it was still winter, and as Trump was deporting people for speaking their minds, openly defying court orders and continuing to betray Ukraine, I wondered if there was a single word that described the president.
I threw out a couple of my own – CRACKPOT and BONKERS.
Acknowledging their flaws, I invited suggestions. I proposed ground rules: no swears; no comparisons to animals; none that would degrade people with mental illness; no compound phrases; the choices should suggest meanness, racism and depravity.
“I like MALIGNANT,” wrote one friend from the Other Coast. She said that her husband calls Trump “THE FERAL HOG. But,noting the contest rules against animals comparisons, she suggested just “FERAL.”
“I vote for MANIACAL,” said another respondent, who included a fragment of a dictionary definition: “Afflicted with extreme mental derangement … wildly irresponsible.
“And DEMENTED,” this person continued. “It’s a word I use a lot about Trump.”
Still another also supplied two words, averring both were “probably not good for reaching a wide enough constituency. I chose them because my Gut reacted when people said them to me.”
BASE
NARCISSISTIC
ARSONIST
I PARTICULARLY LIKED ANOTHER SUGGESTION, finding it chilling in its depth and intimations of malevolence:
SADISTIC
“It’s a word that comes to mind when I think of Trump (and I think of him way too often).
“I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to understand the moving parts beneath behavior, and “sadistic” comes as close as any to suggesting Trump’s animating dynamic.
“He’s all about ‘getting even’ with the original sin against him, rooted in his personal history. It’s ‘getting even’ with a bullet.
“He’s addicted to the satisfaction of his own cruelty, and those cruelties, large and small, play out, over and over again.”
I threw out a couple of my own – CRACKPOT and BONKERS.
Acknowledging their flaws, I invited suggestions. I proposed ground rules: no swears; no comparisons to animals; none that would degrade people with mental illness; no compound phrases; the choices should suggest meanness, racism and depravity.
“I like MALIGNANT,” wrote one friend from the Other Coast. She said that her husband calls Trump “THE FERAL HOG. But,noting the contest rules against animals comparisons, she suggested just “FERAL.”
“I vote for MANIACAL,” said another respondent, who included a fragment of a dictionary definition: “Afflicted with extreme mental derangement … wildly irresponsible.
“And DEMENTED,” this person continued. “It’s a word I use a lot about Trump.”
Still another also supplied two words, averring both were “probably not good for reaching a wide enough constituency. I chose them because my Gut reacted when people said them to me.”
- CRUEL – “This is the word used by animal rights advocates in ads destined to get us incensed and motivated to donate to ASPCA”
- GREEDY – “I was struck when a Scottish immigrant told me that when he told his college professor colleagues he was moving to the USA, they said to him: ‘Just remember, you are going to a country that can be described in one word, GREED.”
BASE
NARCISSISTIC
ARSONIST
I PARTICULARLY LIKED ANOTHER SUGGESTION, finding it chilling in its depth and intimations of malevolence:
SADISTIC
“It’s a word that comes to mind when I think of Trump (and I think of him way too often).
“I’ve spent a large part of my life trying to understand the moving parts beneath behavior, and “sadistic” comes as close as any to suggesting Trump’s animating dynamic.
“He’s all about ‘getting even’ with the original sin against him, rooted in his personal history. It’s ‘getting even’ with a bullet.
“He’s addicted to the satisfaction of his own cruelty, and those cruelties, large and small, play out, over and over again.”
A HEADLINE IN THE ATLANTIC magazine purported to echo the same idea I had raised: “One Word Describes Trump.”
“Wow,” I exclaimed, “a Vulcan mind-meld just in the nick of time, and I began to devour the piece by writer Jonathan Rauch:
He wrote:
“Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
“There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism – nor is it is autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy,” Rauch continued. “Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.”
That’s it? The elusive last word in defining Trump?
I despaired . I never heard of the word, had no idea how to pronounce it, much less the foggiest idea about what it meant.
PATRIMONIALISM ?
That’s supposed to go on my bumper sticker? Or my next protest placard? No wonder the forces of truth, justice and the American way lost last year’s election.
Rauch explained that a German sociologist, Max Weber, wrote that the word refers to a ruler who considers himself the “father of the people – the state’s personification and protector.”
Such regimes, he said, have two self-destructive flaws: they are incompetent and corrupt, and democracy advocates can use both weaknesses to undermine and defeat them.
Maybe PATRIMONIALISM fits Trump just like his fake hairdo and orange skin, maybe it provides political strategists with the secrets of turning back the Trump assault on democracy.
But it’s not the word that I and many Americans are looking for.
SO THE HUNT GOES ON.
Lately, CRIMINAL lately is working for me, both as a noun and an adjective.
Trump literally is a CRIMINAL. Remember, he was convicted last May of falsifying business records in hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
And Trump’s manic campaign to destroy America is CRIMINAL in its lawlessness, heartlessness and thoughtlessness, with equal parts savagery and selfishness mixed in.
So today, the second day of spring, I thank responders for their suggestions. But the work is not done.
Defining Trump – which will help in his undoing – remains a continuing and important pursuit.
The suggestion box remains open and hungry.
“Wow,” I exclaimed, “a Vulcan mind-meld just in the nick of time, and I began to devour the piece by writer Jonathan Rauch:
He wrote:
“Even those who expected the worst from his reelection (I among them) expected more rationality. Today, it is clear that what has happened since January 20 is not just a change of administration but a change of regime—a change, that is, in our system of government. But a change to what?
“There is an answer, and it is not classic authoritarianism – nor is it is autocracy, oligarchy, or monarchy,” Rauch continued. “Trump is installing what scholars call patrimonialism.”
That’s it? The elusive last word in defining Trump?
I despaired . I never heard of the word, had no idea how to pronounce it, much less the foggiest idea about what it meant.
PATRIMONIALISM ?
That’s supposed to go on my bumper sticker? Or my next protest placard? No wonder the forces of truth, justice and the American way lost last year’s election.
Rauch explained that a German sociologist, Max Weber, wrote that the word refers to a ruler who considers himself the “father of the people – the state’s personification and protector.”
Such regimes, he said, have two self-destructive flaws: they are incompetent and corrupt, and democracy advocates can use both weaknesses to undermine and defeat them.
Maybe PATRIMONIALISM fits Trump just like his fake hairdo and orange skin, maybe it provides political strategists with the secrets of turning back the Trump assault on democracy.
But it’s not the word that I and many Americans are looking for.
SO THE HUNT GOES ON.
Lately, CRIMINAL lately is working for me, both as a noun and an adjective.
Trump literally is a CRIMINAL. Remember, he was convicted last May of falsifying business records in hush money payments to Stormy Daniels.
And Trump’s manic campaign to destroy America is CRIMINAL in its lawlessness, heartlessness and thoughtlessness, with equal parts savagery and selfishness mixed in.
So today, the second day of spring, I thank responders for their suggestions. But the work is not done.
Defining Trump – which will help in his undoing – remains a continuing and important pursuit.
The suggestion box remains open and hungry.
INTERLUDE
A joyful parade reminds us of cherished traditions worth defending
OVER THE WEEKEND, my neighborhood was invaded by federal troops, State Police with K-9 units, sword-wielding militias, demonstrating university students, scores of local cops on the march and a truck loaded with rugby toughs.
Taking all of this in was a crowd numbering in the thousands lining both sides of more than a mile of city streets, shouting and waving and hollering.
The occasion was the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, an institution in Newport, R.I., with the march ending conveniently at the end of my street.
For more than an hour, what might be symbols and mechanisms of oppression in an America now struggling to defend its democratic roots and commitment to the rule of law, instead helped celebrate one of this community’s most cherished traditions.
The military units included a marching band from the nearby Newport naval base, along with a free-spirited National Guard groups, outfitted in camouflage uniforms, playing jazz and dancing and swaying as they played.
The State Police K-9 units strolled the parade route, encouraging bystanders to pat the friendliest pooches. Firefighters rode on the back of their red trucks, holding on with one hand, and waving frantically with the other.
The student “demonstration” broke out spontaneously at an approaching float sponsored by Salve Regina University, whose ocean-side campus was only a few blocks from the reviewing stand.
The “militias” were traditional groups hearkening back to the country’s founding, with classic uniforms and "guns," plus a crew of bearded, grouchy and aging pirates.
There were men in skirts. And a St. Patrick "cleric" more than willing to pose for selfies with his pastoral flock.
Taking all of this in was a crowd numbering in the thousands lining both sides of more than a mile of city streets, shouting and waving and hollering.
The occasion was the annual St. Patrick’s Day parade, an institution in Newport, R.I., with the march ending conveniently at the end of my street.
For more than an hour, what might be symbols and mechanisms of oppression in an America now struggling to defend its democratic roots and commitment to the rule of law, instead helped celebrate one of this community’s most cherished traditions.
The military units included a marching band from the nearby Newport naval base, along with a free-spirited National Guard groups, outfitted in camouflage uniforms, playing jazz and dancing and swaying as they played.
The State Police K-9 units strolled the parade route, encouraging bystanders to pat the friendliest pooches. Firefighters rode on the back of their red trucks, holding on with one hand, and waving frantically with the other.
The student “demonstration” broke out spontaneously at an approaching float sponsored by Salve Regina University, whose ocean-side campus was only a few blocks from the reviewing stand.
The “militias” were traditional groups hearkening back to the country’s founding, with classic uniforms and "guns," plus a crew of bearded, grouchy and aging pirates.
There were men in skirts. And a St. Patrick "cleric" more than willing to pose for selfies with his pastoral flock.
Heading the line of march were the state’s top political leaders: Gov. Dan McKee, Atty. Gen. Peter Neronha, U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo and the state’s two U.S. Senators, Jack Reed and Sheldon Whitehouse.
But you hardly would have known the big shots from the spectators and other marchers mingling at the end of the route as the parade broke up. The governor posed with some Cub Scouts; Senators Reed and Whitehouse – among their chamber’s leading members – chatted with folks in silly green hats and other “Irish” trappings who happened to wander by.
But you hardly would have known the big shots from the spectators and other marchers mingling at the end of the route as the parade broke up. The governor posed with some Cub Scouts; Senators Reed and Whitehouse – among their chamber’s leading members – chatted with folks in silly green hats and other “Irish” trappings who happened to wander by.
It occurred to me that this was a rare moment in our national life.
An hour or two to wave at the cops, and for the cops to wave back; to clap for the local high school bands; to smile at Shriners scooting around in their ridiculous mini-cars; to sing along with flat-bed trucks loaded with musicians belting out live music; to stare at the a guy on stilts and to say “Hello” to Elmo.
If felt like a huge weight was lifted, if just for a moment.
Gone was the oppressive, scary, cruel, monstrous assault by Donald Trump, determined to tear apart the United States by crippling its agencies and departments, thumbing his nose at the courts, reversing civil rights, setting one group of citizens against another, betraying foreign allies and getting chummy with the nation's enemies.
Instead, hundreds of marchers and thousands of spectators gathered in a common purpose stretching back decades – honoring the folklore and traditions of a once-oppressed immigrant group, determined that this edition of the parade would deliver the friendliest, excessively exuberant and most exhilarating edition ever.
Don’t get me wrong.
The St. Patrick’s Day parade did nothing to stop or slow the Trump onslaught.
But it did provide a welcome interlude – a moment to cheer and to wave and to share the comic, friendly, silly and profound symbolism of a united community.
It was a reminder of the kind of traditions that we may have taken for granted in America, but now find ourselves in an urgent life-and-death struggle to defend and preserve.
An hour or two to wave at the cops, and for the cops to wave back; to clap for the local high school bands; to smile at Shriners scooting around in their ridiculous mini-cars; to sing along with flat-bed trucks loaded with musicians belting out live music; to stare at the a guy on stilts and to say “Hello” to Elmo.
If felt like a huge weight was lifted, if just for a moment.
Gone was the oppressive, scary, cruel, monstrous assault by Donald Trump, determined to tear apart the United States by crippling its agencies and departments, thumbing his nose at the courts, reversing civil rights, setting one group of citizens against another, betraying foreign allies and getting chummy with the nation's enemies.
Instead, hundreds of marchers and thousands of spectators gathered in a common purpose stretching back decades – honoring the folklore and traditions of a once-oppressed immigrant group, determined that this edition of the parade would deliver the friendliest, excessively exuberant and most exhilarating edition ever.
Don’t get me wrong.
The St. Patrick’s Day parade did nothing to stop or slow the Trump onslaught.
But it did provide a welcome interlude – a moment to cheer and to wave and to share the comic, friendly, silly and profound symbolism of a united community.
It was a reminder of the kind of traditions that we may have taken for granted in America, but now find ourselves in an urgent life-and-death struggle to defend and preserve.
CAN WE HAVE A WORD?
What word best describes Trump and the awful country he is crafting? How about “crackpot?” Maybe “absurd?” Perhaps “demented,” “bonkers?”
WE NEED A WORD.
Just one that describes what Trump – and so many of our fellow citizens – are doing to our country.
I’ve been puzzling about this for a while.
We need a word – one, in Trump-speak, that’s “perfect.” A word that captures the outlandish, abnormal, cruel, bizarre, destructive and just plain stupid changes in the national character that have evolved since Trump took office in January.
A word that describes his unfunny joke of annexing Canada. Or expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, so it can be turned into a beach resort. Betraying Ukraine. Reviving America’s racist roots. Breaking the government. Imperiling the economy. Snuffing out scientific and medical research. Accelerating climate destruction. Replacing truth with lies. Playing the bully.
The various actions that Trump has undertaken as an individual are ludicrous, lethal, silly, absurd and hurtful, and need a word to define them.
The same applies to the country – our country – when it likewise becomes ludicrous, lethal, silly, absurd and hurtful. Because the new America is not just one man - it's all of us.
Is there a unique word that will describe all of these dreadful individual and national betrayals? Here are some ground rules:
We already know the damage, which Trump is inflicting and which many people are mimicking, actively or passively. So, screw the semantics, and let’s concentrate our limited resources on the practical challenges of resistance, reform and recovery.
My answer is that language is a weapon beyond all others.
If we can somehow divine the right word, one that puts Trump in his place, while doing the same for a Trumpified America, we will clarify our goals in defending democracy, while increasing our chances of success.
HERE’S A LIST of some of the words I’ve come up with.
I’m not at all satisfied with the list. For one thing, it's too short. And none of the words completely hits the spot. So consider this just as a starting point:
Just one that describes what Trump – and so many of our fellow citizens – are doing to our country.
I’ve been puzzling about this for a while.
We need a word – one, in Trump-speak, that’s “perfect.” A word that captures the outlandish, abnormal, cruel, bizarre, destructive and just plain stupid changes in the national character that have evolved since Trump took office in January.
A word that describes his unfunny joke of annexing Canada. Or expelling the Palestinians from Gaza, so it can be turned into a beach resort. Betraying Ukraine. Reviving America’s racist roots. Breaking the government. Imperiling the economy. Snuffing out scientific and medical research. Accelerating climate destruction. Replacing truth with lies. Playing the bully.
The various actions that Trump has undertaken as an individual are ludicrous, lethal, silly, absurd and hurtful, and need a word to define them.
The same applies to the country – our country – when it likewise becomes ludicrous, lethal, silly, absurd and hurtful. Because the new America is not just one man - it's all of us.
Is there a unique word that will describe all of these dreadful individual and national betrayals? Here are some ground rules:
- We need just one word. No cheating with hyphenated concoctions. No phrases. No subtitles.
- The word must apply to both Trump and the country.
- However tempting and fitting, the word must not be salacious or profane.
- The word must not compare humans to animals, especially when that is meant to degrade people, while simultaneously insulting the creatures.
- It should not belittle people with mental illness or physical disabilities.
- It must convey the cruelty, malice and sadism in which Trump thrives.
- The word should suggest betrayal of American ideals and traditions.
- It should note the racism that is Trump’s only core principle.
- It’s probably an adjective.
We already know the damage, which Trump is inflicting and which many people are mimicking, actively or passively. So, screw the semantics, and let’s concentrate our limited resources on the practical challenges of resistance, reform and recovery.
My answer is that language is a weapon beyond all others.
If we can somehow divine the right word, one that puts Trump in his place, while doing the same for a Trumpified America, we will clarify our goals in defending democracy, while increasing our chances of success.
HERE’S A LIST of some of the words I’ve come up with.
I’m not at all satisfied with the list. For one thing, it's too short. And none of the words completely hits the spot. So consider this just as a starting point:
- CRACKPOT
- MALEVOLENT
- BONKERS
- DEMENTED
- CRAZY
- MAD
- ABSURD
- VINDICTIVE
- MANIACAL
- MALICIOUS
- MALIGNANT
- EVIL
| Donald J. Trump, America’s _________ president, today declared a “Freedom to Drive” program, the latest in a series of __________ proposals, programs and “ideas” announced since he took office. Under the --------- executive order, individual drivers will decide on which side of the road to drive, and whether or not to be guided by traffic signals and signage at intersections. Trump is considering imposing more ____________ tariffs on countries that penalize visiting American drivers who operate vehicles under ________________Freedom to Drive principles. |
I’M PARTIAL TO “CRACKPOT.”
CRACKPOT president.
CRACKPOT country.
But it’s not a winner. As one friend noted, CRACKPOT conveys a charm and zaniness that you might associate with a favorite uncle who invents things in his backyard shack. CRACKPOT lacks the serial-killer menace that infuses Trump’s activities.
Still, the word does imply danger. Who knows what the CRACKPOT uncle is actually up to in his shack. And it does convey silliness, stupidity and recklessness of a president and country, neither of which are firing on all cylinders.
It also works nicely in our test sentences.
CRACKPOT president.
CRACKPOT country.
But it’s not a winner. As one friend noted, CRACKPOT conveys a charm and zaniness that you might associate with a favorite uncle who invents things in his backyard shack. CRACKPOT lacks the serial-killer menace that infuses Trump’s activities.
Still, the word does imply danger. Who knows what the CRACKPOT uncle is actually up to in his shack. And it does convey silliness, stupidity and recklessness of a president and country, neither of which are firing on all cylinders.
It also works nicely in our test sentences.
| the Donald J. Trump, America’s CRACKPOT president, today declared a “Freedom to Drive” program, the latest in a series of CRACKPOT proposals, programs and “ideas” announced since he took office. Under the CRACKPOT executive order, individual drivers will decide on which side of the road to drive, and whether or not to be guided by traffic signals and signage at intersections. Trump is considering imposing more CRACKPOT tariffs on countries that penalize visiting American drivers who operate vehicles under the CRACKPOT Freedom to Drive principles. |
Another favorite is BONKERS. While it lacks the fire of some of the others on the list, it does capture the ridiculousness of Trump and his presidency.
Strangely, it seems to me more judgmental than I would like, since I’m searching for word that’s objective and descriptive.
But BONKERS also works in the test case, and has a nice cumulative effect:
Strangely, it seems to me more judgmental than I would like, since I’m searching for word that’s objective and descriptive.
But BONKERS also works in the test case, and has a nice cumulative effect:
| Donald J. Trump, America’s BONKERS president, today declared a “Freedom to Drive” program, the latest in a series of BONKERS proposals, programs and “ideas” announced since he took office. Under the BONKERS executive order, individual drivers will decide on which side of the road to drive, and whether or not to be guided by traffic signals and signage at intersections. Trump is considering imposing more BONKERS tariffs on countries that penalize visiting American drivers who operate vehicles under the BONKERS Freedom to Drive principles. |
I INVITE SUGGESTIONS.
As noted, my list is imperfect. It’s distressingly short, and there’s a problem with every word.
Some of the words stray into prohibited mental health area. For example, CRAZY, while not an approved medical term, implies discomfort with mental illness, although its meaning is broader than that.
Another favorite is ABSURD, but someone knocked that one down, because it lacks fire, and it seems a little too happy when there’s nothing happy about Donald Trump or the cloud smothering democracy and its citizens.
At one time, I hoped that TRUMP itself would the perfect word, that it would enter the language as its own universal pejorative, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao or any of the other monsters of history.
So far, however, TRUMP is a word that won the last election, has mesmerized the Republican Party, intimidated business leaders, frightened much of academia and so far seems to be holding its own in the polls.
If anyone has a nomination, I’d invite you – no, I beg you - to suggest it.
Proposals can be submitted to the comments section of the blog, or as replies to emails that alert readers to new blog posts.
If there are enough suggestions, I'll include them in a new post.
Should this treasure hunt be successful, the terrible times in which America finds itself will be closer to ending, heralding a day when we've written the last word on Donald Trump.
As noted, my list is imperfect. It’s distressingly short, and there’s a problem with every word.
Some of the words stray into prohibited mental health area. For example, CRAZY, while not an approved medical term, implies discomfort with mental illness, although its meaning is broader than that.
Another favorite is ABSURD, but someone knocked that one down, because it lacks fire, and it seems a little too happy when there’s nothing happy about Donald Trump or the cloud smothering democracy and its citizens.
At one time, I hoped that TRUMP itself would the perfect word, that it would enter the language as its own universal pejorative, like Hitler, Stalin, Mao or any of the other monsters of history.
So far, however, TRUMP is a word that won the last election, has mesmerized the Republican Party, intimidated business leaders, frightened much of academia and so far seems to be holding its own in the polls.
If anyone has a nomination, I’d invite you – no, I beg you - to suggest it.
Proposals can be submitted to the comments section of the blog, or as replies to emails that alert readers to new blog posts.
If there are enough suggestions, I'll include them in a new post.
Should this treasure hunt be successful, the terrible times in which America finds itself will be closer to ending, heralding a day when we've written the last word on Donald Trump.
FIVE (5) BULLETS
TO SAVE MY JOB –
EVEN IN RETIREMENT
BEN, Acting Manager for purposes of our version of the Five-bullet Memo ordered by the Musk Administration from federal workers
IN SOLIDARITY WITH FEDERAL WORKERS targeted for intimidation, humiliation and firing by the Musk Administration, I began on what is now yesterday with a vow to justify my existence.
My plan: write a memo, cc'd to my “manager,” similar to that demanded of government employees in two directives that surfaced over the weekend and that amounted to asking the workers to dig their own career graves.
One was a posting by Elon “Chainsaw” Musk on his social media platform known as X, but if Chainsaw knows what's good for him, might sometime be renamed “T”. The other was an email from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Workers were ordered to highlight what they had done on the job during the past week.
The OPM email said workers should detail in "approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to NPR. Replies were due 1 minute before midnight, Monday Feb. 24.
Confusion abounded. The OPM email omitted Chainsaw’s threat on X that "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Thus, the OPM version sounded a tad kinder; or was it a trick, lulling a procrastinating worker into thinking his or her job was not in jeopardy, while unwittingly providing clear grounds for immediate dismissal?
There was further uncertainty after some workers were told not to respond to the directive at all, with outfits like the FBI apparently worried about security breeches. Other agencies took a middle of the road approach, advising workers to draft replies – but not send them, pending further instructions.
MY FIRST HURDLE in drafting a personal version of a work worthiness memo was the matter of the “5 bullets.”
What, I asked, was the meaning of “bullets?”
A survival-minded federal worker might turn to an official manual for guidance. Finding, of course, no guidance, he or she might take the next logical step, consulting the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.
My plan: write a memo, cc'd to my “manager,” similar to that demanded of government employees in two directives that surfaced over the weekend and that amounted to asking the workers to dig their own career graves.
One was a posting by Elon “Chainsaw” Musk on his social media platform known as X, but if Chainsaw knows what's good for him, might sometime be renamed “T”. The other was an email from the federal Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
Workers were ordered to highlight what they had done on the job during the past week.
The OPM email said workers should detail in "approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager,” according to NPR. Replies were due 1 minute before midnight, Monday Feb. 24.
Confusion abounded. The OPM email omitted Chainsaw’s threat on X that "Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.” Thus, the OPM version sounded a tad kinder; or was it a trick, lulling a procrastinating worker into thinking his or her job was not in jeopardy, while unwittingly providing clear grounds for immediate dismissal?
There was further uncertainty after some workers were told not to respond to the directive at all, with outfits like the FBI apparently worried about security breeches. Other agencies took a middle of the road approach, advising workers to draft replies – but not send them, pending further instructions.
MY FIRST HURDLE in drafting a personal version of a work worthiness memo was the matter of the “5 bullets.”
What, I asked, was the meaning of “bullets?”
A survival-minded federal worker might turn to an official manual for guidance. Finding, of course, no guidance, he or she might take the next logical step, consulting the online Merriam-Webster dictionary.
As you can see, this turns out not to be that simple, with the dictionary giving multiple definitions of “bullet. To wit:
1: a round or elongated missile (as of lead) to be fired from a firearm
2-a : something resembling a bullet (as in curved form);
2: b : a large dot placed in printed matter to call attention to a particular passage
Common sense (a virtue promoted by the Assistant to the President) argues that you consider using the first definition first, bcause it's first. So, in this case, we should go with the "elongated missile."
But how to obtain five (5) elongated missiles in a hurry? I’m pretty sure there aren’t any ammo shops in my neighborhood. And even if I’m able to obtain said elongated missiles, how to deliver them to my manager before midnight?
Worse, what if the OPM email, defying common sense, intended that the respondent use Merriam-Webster's definition 2-b, “a large dot,” and a total of five (5) large dots?
In which case, sending sending five (5) elongated missiles, instead of five (5) large dots, might reasonably cause the manager to conclude that the worker was making some sort of melodramatic warning, or worse, a terrorist threat, warranting immediate transport to Guantanamo.
Arresting the worker would serve the Musk Administration's twin goals by a) reducing the workforce and b) supporting the renewed mission of the notorious Cuban prison, soon to be named Camp Musk, or Camp Trump, or Camp Musk-Trump or Camp Trump-Musk.
THEN THERE WAS A SECOND PITFALL, finding a “manager” to whom I would cc my five (5) arguments for continued employment.
Being retired, I not only have no job, but I have no manager.
With our "children" grown and moved out of the family homestead, there’s just me and my wife. She is highly organized and mission-driven, but not inclined to manage her husband unless in emergencies, such as reminding him that this is the week to move the compost bin to the curbside for pickup, or that with February coming to an end, maybe it's time to consider taking down some of the Christmas decorations. And I’m pretty sure that she would turn down the managerial job even on a one-time basis, because anything to do with the Musk Administration, in her judgment, certainly would be loathsome, but hardly urgent.
Which leaves Ben.
1: a round or elongated missile (as of lead) to be fired from a firearm
2-a : something resembling a bullet (as in curved form);
2: b : a large dot placed in printed matter to call attention to a particular passage
Common sense (a virtue promoted by the Assistant to the President) argues that you consider using the first definition first, bcause it's first. So, in this case, we should go with the "elongated missile."
But how to obtain five (5) elongated missiles in a hurry? I’m pretty sure there aren’t any ammo shops in my neighborhood. And even if I’m able to obtain said elongated missiles, how to deliver them to my manager before midnight?
Worse, what if the OPM email, defying common sense, intended that the respondent use Merriam-Webster's definition 2-b, “a large dot,” and a total of five (5) large dots?
In which case, sending sending five (5) elongated missiles, instead of five (5) large dots, might reasonably cause the manager to conclude that the worker was making some sort of melodramatic warning, or worse, a terrorist threat, warranting immediate transport to Guantanamo.
Arresting the worker would serve the Musk Administration's twin goals by a) reducing the workforce and b) supporting the renewed mission of the notorious Cuban prison, soon to be named Camp Musk, or Camp Trump, or Camp Musk-Trump or Camp Trump-Musk.
THEN THERE WAS A SECOND PITFALL, finding a “manager” to whom I would cc my five (5) arguments for continued employment.
Being retired, I not only have no job, but I have no manager.
With our "children" grown and moved out of the family homestead, there’s just me and my wife. She is highly organized and mission-driven, but not inclined to manage her husband unless in emergencies, such as reminding him that this is the week to move the compost bin to the curbside for pickup, or that with February coming to an end, maybe it's time to consider taking down some of the Christmas decorations. And I’m pretty sure that she would turn down the managerial job even on a one-time basis, because anything to do with the Musk Administration, in her judgment, certainly would be loathsome, but hardly urgent.
Which leaves Ben.
Ben is our Bengal-like cat, who, along with several litter-mates, spent his early kittenhood under a porch in Florida, before being whisked off to a shelter in Rhode Island. Through no fault of his own, his next assignment was to “keep up with the Joneses.” This was not a particularly exciting move in a young cat's life, but neither was it exceptionally difficult.
At 17-pounds, Ben devotes most of his daily activity to deciding which couch, unmade bed, pile of blankets or collection of pillows offers the softest, warmest, sunniest coziest radiator-adjacent place to get his obligatory 23.6 hours of daily sleep.
So, for this one day, Ben would be The Man.
TO: Ben, Acting Manager
FROM: Brian C. Jones, Acting Worker
SUBJECT: Career-ending memo
DATE: Feb. 24, 2025.
Sir: Herewith and as instructed, my five (5) bullets detailing my accomplishments during the past day. Or maybe the past week. Hard when you are (hopefully) more than halfway through one's early 80s to tell the difference.
ADDENDUM. It is now 12:02 a.m. Feb. 25, 2025, meaning what? I missed the deadline.
My only excuse is that I was working so gosh darn hard all day on the memo, along with my regular duties, that I just worked too (2) gosh darn hard, which the President and his Assistant might do well to factor into their assessment, presuming that my Acting Manager performed HIS duties in presumably analyzing the five (5) bullets, although, in his defense, the Manager's duties were not explained in the OPM email.
I would like to add - and I realize that I'm risking my own non-job in providing excess perspective - that no cat, just like no federal worker, deserves to be part of in a degrading, punitive and humiliating make-work debacle.
As for the rest of us, it remains my hope that, as unlikely as it seems at the moment, we will all get through this. Somehow.
-- bcj
At 17-pounds, Ben devotes most of his daily activity to deciding which couch, unmade bed, pile of blankets or collection of pillows offers the softest, warmest, sunniest coziest radiator-adjacent place to get his obligatory 23.6 hours of daily sleep.
So, for this one day, Ben would be The Man.
TO: Ben, Acting Manager
FROM: Brian C. Jones, Acting Worker
SUBJECT: Career-ending memo
DATE: Feb. 24, 2025.
Sir: Herewith and as instructed, my five (5) bullets detailing my accomplishments during the past day. Or maybe the past week. Hard when you are (hopefully) more than halfway through one's early 80s to tell the difference.
- TO-(2)-DO LIST. I find it useful to organize my day with a daily To-(2)-Do list of things I’m determined to accomplish on any given day/week/month/year. Today, however, given the massive assignment of listing five (5) job accomplishments, I never did get around to completing the To-(2)-Do list, on which my work accomplishments would take the Number One (1) placeholder. In my defense, I thought about this a lot.
- MORNING NAP. Given the furious pace of the day’s events, not only was I unable to complete the To-(2)-Do list, I could not arrange my usual pre-lunch nap.
- AFTERNOON NAP. See the preceding Number Two (2) bullet, which describes the same circumstances, just in a different time period, this being the post-lunch work-nap slot. Busy as I was, I noticed that you, Mr. Acting Manager, were able to squeeze in a “cat nap” or two (2).
- DOOM-SCROLLING. Continued to scour five (5) online legacy news sites to track the latest outrages and betrayals of our democracy by the Musk Administration and its Assistant to the President, while searching for signs that the forces of democracy will come to life and find ways to save an imperiled nation. Silly me.
- BEDTIME. What a hectic day! Had to stay up late to finish this memo in case the Assistant President gave the thumbs up to the Actual President to automatically fire workers who failed to (2) file the memo by 1 (one) minute before midnight.
ADDENDUM. It is now 12:02 a.m. Feb. 25, 2025, meaning what? I missed the deadline.
My only excuse is that I was working so gosh darn hard all day on the memo, along with my regular duties, that I just worked too (2) gosh darn hard, which the President and his Assistant might do well to factor into their assessment, presuming that my Acting Manager performed HIS duties in presumably analyzing the five (5) bullets, although, in his defense, the Manager's duties were not explained in the OPM email.
I would like to add - and I realize that I'm risking my own non-job in providing excess perspective - that no cat, just like no federal worker, deserves to be part of in a degrading, punitive and humiliating make-work debacle.
As for the rest of us, it remains my hope that, as unlikely as it seems at the moment, we will all get through this. Somehow.
-- bcj
VICTORY AT THE
GRASSROOTS - WHERE
IT REALLY COUNTS
MY HOMETOWN CHALKED UP A GENUINE VICTORY yesterday – the kind that gives us reason for optimism as Donald Trump seeks to crush American democracy.
It happened in Newport, R.I., and it won’t make the national news.
But it serves as an inspiring, practical example of what people can do when they get the chance, especially at the local level, where democracy in its most basic form is tested.
The issue was a proposal by the Newport School Committee to “rescind” a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policy, which the school board had approved only a few months earlier.
The reason for trying to “rescind” the policy remains murky.
The committee chair, who proposed the move, maintained it was strictly procedural. When the board had approved the six-page policy last October, he said, it had not been reviewed by the committee’s lawyer.
The presumption was that by rescinding the policy, the subcommittee that drafted the document and a lawyer would have a chance to tidy up any legal slights, after which the policy would be reinstated.
But community and political activists smelled a rat.
Why “rescind” the policy, meaning it wouldn’t be in force while it was being reviewed?
Instead, was this really a sneaky way of deep-sixing the policy altogether, given the ugly national attack by President Trump to eliminate diversity programs in government, as well as those in corporate and academic organizations?
Indeed, the Trump campaign is widely seen as racist – because of its argument that people (Blacks, women, gay, transsexual and disabled individuals) who benefit from DEI programs are unqualified and therefore crowd out more talented folks (White, straight boys and men).
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT was textbook American democracy.
First, word spread fast, helped by an online news service, What’s Up Newp (WUN), which decoded the school board’s obscure agenda item: “Request to rescind Policy 1050 -Student Excellence and Success.”
WUN quoted the committee chair as saying the concern was procedural, just to review legal issues. WUN also printed the text of Policy 1050.
Secondly, people acted.
It happened in Newport, R.I., and it won’t make the national news.
But it serves as an inspiring, practical example of what people can do when they get the chance, especially at the local level, where democracy in its most basic form is tested.
The issue was a proposal by the Newport School Committee to “rescind” a DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) policy, which the school board had approved only a few months earlier.
The reason for trying to “rescind” the policy remains murky.
The committee chair, who proposed the move, maintained it was strictly procedural. When the board had approved the six-page policy last October, he said, it had not been reviewed by the committee’s lawyer.
The presumption was that by rescinding the policy, the subcommittee that drafted the document and a lawyer would have a chance to tidy up any legal slights, after which the policy would be reinstated.
But community and political activists smelled a rat.
Why “rescind” the policy, meaning it wouldn’t be in force while it was being reviewed?
Instead, was this really a sneaky way of deep-sixing the policy altogether, given the ugly national attack by President Trump to eliminate diversity programs in government, as well as those in corporate and academic organizations?
Indeed, the Trump campaign is widely seen as racist – because of its argument that people (Blacks, women, gay, transsexual and disabled individuals) who benefit from DEI programs are unqualified and therefore crowd out more talented folks (White, straight boys and men).
WHAT HAPPENED NEXT was textbook American democracy.
First, word spread fast, helped by an online news service, What’s Up Newp (WUN), which decoded the school board’s obscure agenda item: “Request to rescind Policy 1050 -Student Excellence and Success.”
WUN quoted the committee chair as saying the concern was procedural, just to review legal issues. WUN also printed the text of Policy 1050.
Secondly, people acted.
PART OF THE CROWD at the Feb. 11, 2025 meeting of the Newport School Committee to discuss a DEI policy. SCREENSHOT frin a school system video
I’M NO EXPERT ON ESTIMATING CROWDS, but I’m guessing that between 50 to 75 people showed up for the school board meeting a few evenings later at an elementary school named for the late U.S Sen. Claiborne Pell, a much-cherished Newport resident.
I can also tell you, after a journalism career of covering too many city and town councils, boards and commissions, nothing focuses the attention of municipal leaders like an actual audience of disgruntled “citizens.”
Before too much time had passed, school committee members proposed changing the word “rescind” to “abeyance” – as in placing Policy 1050 in limbo pending its review.
And then a final change in the resolution, to keep the policy in force while it was sent to a policy subcommittee for a legal review.
Before the school board voted, 13 speakers variously questioned the use of the original word “rescind,” with some wondering how long any review would take, since time itself might bury the policy.
When each of the speakers had their three-minutes of talking time, it was clear that the DEI defenders had won – and won big.
Every speaker was cheered – and there were some eloquent statements about how important equity efforts are to a school system in which diversity itself is not in dispute: Whites make up 33 percent of the student body; Hispanics 39 percent; and Blacks 10 percent.
One speaker identified as a transgender leader of a Girl Scout troop, said the scouts included gay, Latino and other Newport students, who came from a variety of economic backgrounds:
When I see them after school, and they already have a smile on their faces, it is because they spent the day in a classroom where they were welcomed and supported . . . This policy keeps a supportive and engaging learning environment possible, and it protects my kids' well-being.
If there were any DEI opponents in the crowd, they remained silent.
The final vote, directing that a legal review be made of the policy, was 6 to 1, and the committee member who voted no did not explain his vote.
THIS IS A TIME when many people across the country are desperate to stop Trump’s demented and cruel campaign to wreck democracy and crush our souls.
GOP acolytes hold both chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court leans toward Trump, leaving few places where the Constitutional system seems to be working.
Thus, there is a national chorus asking: “What can I do?" Calls overwhelm Congressional phone systems – at least for Democratic offices. Pundits endlessly wonder where “The Resistance” has gone.
But let’s state this as a fact, because the contrary is unacceptable: it is not too late to rescue democracy, which begins not in Washington, but always in the communities where we all actually live.
The obvious venues are town halls and school cafeterias, where simply showing up can make a difference.
And last night’s school committee meeting was an inspiring example that, at least in one seaside community, this kind of activism really worked.
I can also tell you, after a journalism career of covering too many city and town councils, boards and commissions, nothing focuses the attention of municipal leaders like an actual audience of disgruntled “citizens.”
Before too much time had passed, school committee members proposed changing the word “rescind” to “abeyance” – as in placing Policy 1050 in limbo pending its review.
And then a final change in the resolution, to keep the policy in force while it was sent to a policy subcommittee for a legal review.
Before the school board voted, 13 speakers variously questioned the use of the original word “rescind,” with some wondering how long any review would take, since time itself might bury the policy.
When each of the speakers had their three-minutes of talking time, it was clear that the DEI defenders had won – and won big.
Every speaker was cheered – and there were some eloquent statements about how important equity efforts are to a school system in which diversity itself is not in dispute: Whites make up 33 percent of the student body; Hispanics 39 percent; and Blacks 10 percent.
One speaker identified as a transgender leader of a Girl Scout troop, said the scouts included gay, Latino and other Newport students, who came from a variety of economic backgrounds:
When I see them after school, and they already have a smile on their faces, it is because they spent the day in a classroom where they were welcomed and supported . . . This policy keeps a supportive and engaging learning environment possible, and it protects my kids' well-being.
If there were any DEI opponents in the crowd, they remained silent.
The final vote, directing that a legal review be made of the policy, was 6 to 1, and the committee member who voted no did not explain his vote.
THIS IS A TIME when many people across the country are desperate to stop Trump’s demented and cruel campaign to wreck democracy and crush our souls.
GOP acolytes hold both chambers of Congress, and the Supreme Court leans toward Trump, leaving few places where the Constitutional system seems to be working.
Thus, there is a national chorus asking: “What can I do?" Calls overwhelm Congressional phone systems – at least for Democratic offices. Pundits endlessly wonder where “The Resistance” has gone.
But let’s state this as a fact, because the contrary is unacceptable: it is not too late to rescue democracy, which begins not in Washington, but always in the communities where we all actually live.
The obvious venues are town halls and school cafeterias, where simply showing up can make a difference.
And last night’s school committee meeting was an inspiring example that, at least in one seaside community, this kind of activism really worked.
NOTES:
- Here's a link to What's Up Newp (WUN's) first story: https://whatsupnewp.com/2025/02/newport-school-committee-to-vote-on-rescinding-equity-policy/)
- You can read WUN’s final school board story, and watch a video of the meeting at this link: https://whatsupnewp.com/2025/02/equity-policy-debate-draws-crowd-at-newport-school-committee-meeting/
- I used to write for WUN, but haven't recently.
BRIAN C. JONES
I'VE BEEN a reporter and writer for 61 years, long enough to have learned that journalists don't know very much, although I've met some smart ones.
Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about their answers.
This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, 2022, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
Occasionally, I think about trying to reach her via cell phone.
Mainly, what reporters know comes from asking other people questions and fretting about their answers.
This blog is a successor to one inspired by our dog, Phoebe, who was smart, sweet and the antithesis of Donald Trump. She died Feb. 3, 2022, and I don't see getting over that very soon.
Occasionally, I think about trying to reach her via cell phone.
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