Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label truth. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 25, 2025

Whistleblower: Trump judge nominee told DOJ lawyers to ignore court orders; Axios, June 24, 2025

 

"Why it matters: The official in question, Emil Bove, is Trump's former personal attorney and a current Trump nominee for a federal appeals court judge.

Driving the news: DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni and the whistleblower, identified as a fired DOJ lawyer, told the DOJ's internal watchdog and members of Congress in a letter that Bove told attorneys to consider telling judges "f––k you" in order "to implement the administration's removal priorities."


Those removal priorities include the Trump admin's efforts to deport immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act, which the Supreme Court blocked in March.


Bove, during a March 14 meeting with the whistleblower, Reuveni and others in the department, "stressed to all in attendance that the planes [carrying the immigrants] needed to take off no matter what," per the letter.


"Mr. Reuveni, almost immediately after receiving notice of his promotion to serve as Acting Deputy Director of OIL, became aware of the plans of DOJ leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens, and further became aware of the details to execute those plans," the letter states.

The letter comes as multiple federal judges have said that the DOJ has failed to comply with court orders and as the DOJ antagonizes judges who run afoul of the Trump administration."

Monday, June 23, 2025

Pope: Intelligence is seeking life's true meaning, not having reams of data; United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, June 20, 2025

Carol Glatz , United States Conference of Catholic Bishops; Pope: Intelligence is seeking life's true meaning, not having reams of data

"Access to vast amounts of data and information is not the same thing as having intelligence, which is uniquely human and requires being open to truth, goodness and the real meaning of life, Pope Leo XIV told AI experts and executives.

"Authentic wisdom has more to do with recognizing the true meaning of life than with the availability of data," he said in a written message released by the Vatican June 20.

"Acknowledging and respecting what is uniquely characteristic of the human person is essential to the discussion of any adequate ethical framework for the governance of AI," he wrote.

The message, written in English, was addressed to people attending the second annual Rome conference on AI, Ethics and the Future of Corporate Governance being held in Rome and at the Vatican June 19-20.

The conference "brings together executives from leading AI companies as well as large enterprises using AI with policymakers, scholars, ethicists and lawyers to consider in a holistic way the challenges facing the ethics and governance of AI, both for companies developing this revolutionary technology as well as the enterprises incorporating AI into their businesses," according to the event's website."

Sunday, June 22, 2025

‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage; Government Executive, June 18, 2025

 Eric Katz, Government Executive; ‘Censorship:’ See the National Park visitor responses after Trump requested help deleting ‘negative’ signage

The administration asked for help erasing language on park displays that failed to emphasize American grandeur, but visitors have not identified any examples.


[Kip Currier: Trump 2.0's Interior Department initiative inviting National Park visitors to "snitch" on anything they see at a national park that they think presents America in "negative" or "inappropriate" ways is an affront to the complexities of history.

It's also an affront to us: as free-thinking individuals with the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

There are many aspects of America and our history that are exceptional, uplifting, and inspiring. There are also aspects of America and our history that are not. Recognizing that duality does not diminish America or us. It actually strengthens us. It acknowledges that we are imperfect but are always striving to be better and do better.

Moreover, we can handle the grey complexity of parts of our history. We don't need government to sanitize and erase the parts of our history that are messy or which don't depict us at our best or listening to our better angels.

This Government Executive article gives me hope. Hope that more Americans will continue to share their voices and say that we can handle the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of our history. And hope that our government will leave their "HANDS OFF" of our collective history: if more people are willing to speak up.]


[Excerpt]

"The Trump administration recently began posting signs on federal parks and historic sites asking for help from visitors in identifying language that negatively discussed America’s past or present and launched a process for federal agencies to remove, cover or replace flagged materials. 

In the responses submitted by visitors to National Park Service sites, however, which were obtained by Government Executive, no single submission pointed to any such examples. Instead, in the nearly 200 submissions NPS received in the first days since the solicitations were posted, visitors implored the administration not to erase U.S. history and praised agency staff for improving their experiences.  

The new request at NPS and other Interior Department sites followed an executive order from President Trump dubbed “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History” that called for federal lands to remove information that could “improperly minimize or disparage certain historical figures or events.” That in turn led to an order from Interior Secretary Doug Burgum that department staff solicit public feedback to flag “any signs or other information that are negative about either past or living Americans or that fail to emphasize the beauty, grandeur, and abundance of landscapes and other natural features.” The reviews should include exhibits, brochures, films, waysides and signs, the secretary said. 

In instructions to staff also obtained by Government Executive, NPS employees were told to review feedback from visitors weekly but not yet remove any materials. For each comment, staff can either mark it as received but not requiring action, requiring action but not related to the signage issue or flagged for review by NPS leadership in Washington. Parks will receive follow up information in August. 

In the meantime, NPS said, the agency’s Harpers Ferry Center is currently “developing standard protocols and templates to assist with expedited removal, covering, or temporary replacement of any media that does not comply with” Burgum's order. It added a “long-term plan for permanent replacement is also under development for affected media.” 

So far, NPS is not getting the help it was hoping for from those scanning the QR codes now posted around park sites soliciting assistance in identifying language in violation of Trump and Burgum’s orders. Instead, visitors accused the Trump administration of seeking to erase the nation’s history.

“There shouldn't be signs about history that whitewash and erase the centuries of discrimination against the people who have cared for this land for generations,” a visitor to Indian Dunes National Park said.

A visitor to Independence Hall in Philadelphia called the new signs “censorship dressed up as customer service.” 

“What upset me the most about the museum—more than anything in the actual exhibits—were the signs telling people to report anything they thought was negative about Americans,” the visitor said. “That isn't just frustrating, it's outrageous. It felt like an open invitation to police and attack historians for simply doing their jobs: telling the truth.” 

Several visitors to the Stonewall National Monument in New York lamented changes there the park’s website that removed mention of transgender individuals in the Stonewall Uprising. 

“Put them back,” the visitor said. “Honor them. There would be no Stonewall without trans people.”

A visitor at Yellowstone National Park said the information presented there should challenge people. 

“The executive order to asking for feedback is ****,” the message read. “Parks already do an amazing job telling stories that contain hard truths and everyone is entitled to the truth to make better decisions in our lives. So what if people feel bad?” 

Without factual information, the person added, “everything is just a pretty facade with no real substance.”

At Manzanar National Historical Site, one of the internment camps that held Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans during World War II, a visitor said the site existed to present information about the costly errors in U.S. history. 

“The entire purpose of parks like this one is to learn from the mistakes of the past so we can avoid repeating them,” the visitor said. “Please do not water down the reality of the experience for future visitors.”

A visitor at the Natchez National Historical Park had a similar takeaway. 

“Slavery was a dark time in our history and we need to come to terms with that,” the individual said, “not gloss it over and romanticize the Antebellum South.” 

Only one visitor—at Petersburg National Battlefield, a Civil War site—noted they read signs that “didn’t sit right,” though the individual did not specify any materials that needed changing. Instead, the person requested a “second look” to potentially identify “more balance.” A Grand Canyon National Park visitor said the site should change its signs, but added “signed, Elon,” suggesting the comment was left in jest. 

Many of the comments asked NPS to include more information that highlighted the U.S. government’s discriminatory practices toward Native Americans. A bevy of visitors also asked for increased staffing and complimented the steps existing employees took to improve their experiences. 

Theresa Pierno, president of the National Parks Conservation Association, called the directive requiring park staff to post the new signs with accompanying QR codes “an outrage” that shows the “deep contempt for their work to preserve and tell American stories.”   

“If our country erases the darker chapters of our history, we will never learn from our mistakes,” Pierno said. “These signs must come down immediately.”

An Interior Department spokesperson said in response to a request for comment that leaks “will not be tolerated.”

“It is a true shame that employees are spending their time leaking to the media instead of doing work for the American people, the spokesperson said. “The same American people who fund their paychecks.”

Trump, in his executive order, said federal lands should display materials that amplify American greatness. 

ark materials should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people or, with respect to natural features, the beauty, abundance, and grandeur of the American landscape,” Trump said. 

The Independence Hall visitor suggested that line of thinking would not effect the desired result. 

“Putting up signs like that doesn't protect anyone, [it] just tells visitors that the truth is a problem,” the visitor said. “And I can't think of anything more offensive than that.”"

Sunday, June 15, 2025

It’s not a genuine apology’: Spanish women reject Catholic attempt to redress Franco incarceration; The Guardian, June 15, 2025

 , The Guardian; It’s not a genuine apology’: Spanish women reject Catholic attempt to redress Franco incarceration

"As the members of the Catholic organisation wrapped up their speech with an appeal for forgiveness, the auditorium in Madrid exploded in rage. For decades, many in the audience had grappled with the scars left by their time in Catholic-run institutions; now they were on their feet chanting: “Truth, justice and reparations” and – laying bare their rejection of any apology – “Neither forget, nor forgive”.

It was an unprecedented response to an unprecedented moment in Spain, hinting at the deep fissures that linger over one of the longest-running and least-known institutions of Francisco Franco’s dictatorship: the Catholic-run centres that incarcerated thousands of women and girls as young as eight, subjecting them to barbaric punishments, forced labour and religious indoctrination.

The centres operated under the direction of the Women’s Protection Board, a state-run institution revived in 1941 and helmed by Franco’s wife, Carmen Polo. They aimed to rehabilitate “fallen women”, aged 15 to 25, as well as others deemed to be at risk of deviating from the narrow path marked out for women during the dictatorship.

Survivors, however, describe a reality that was far more brutal. “It was the greatest atrocity Spain has committed against women,” said Consuelo García del Cid, who was drugged by a doctor at her home in Barcelona and taken to a centre in Madrid at the age of 16."

Wednesday, June 11, 2025

Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic; The New York Times, June 5, 2025

Ken Jennings , The New York Times; Ken Jennings: Trivia and ‘Jeopardy!’ Could Save Our Republic

"How do we understand the seeming anachronism of “Jeopardy!”? In a dark time, my secret optimism is that our viewers’ love for quiz games is a sign of what can eventually save us: a practical belief in fact and error that is more fundamentally American than the toxic blend of proud ignorance and smarter-than-thou skepticism that’s brought us to this point.

It stands to reason, then, that making government run more like a quiz show can only be a step in the right direction. In May at a congressional hearing, Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire asked Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to define habeas corpus, a bedrock common-law protection under fire from the administration.

Ms. Noem wasn’t even close. “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country,” she answered.

“That’s incorrect,” noted Ms. Hassan, sounding as much like a quizmaster as a senator.

Later that week on “Jeopardy!” a category, “definitions of legal terms,” happened to pop up in the first round. The game was taped months in advance, so it was by sheer coincidence that one of the five clues concerned the definition of, yes, habeas corpus.

The “Jeopardy!” contestant, you’ll be relieved to hear, responded correctly."

Tuesday, June 10, 2025

Shoemaker Clarks is turning 200. Its Quaker roots made it a pioneer of ethical business; The Conversation, June 9, 2025

Professor, Department of Leadership and Human Resource Management, Northumbria University, Newcastle , The Conversation; Shoemaker Clarks is turning 200. Its Quaker roots made it a pioneer of ethical business

"The Quakers – more formally known as the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) – have a history of nearly 400 years in Britain and the US. While Quakerism has Christian foundations, Quakers also emphasise moral commitments to peace, truth, integrity, simplicity and equality – the five testimonies in Quaker theology. These came to define how Quakers approach the world, and their businesses.

As early Quakers were deemed radical and challenged the established church, they became persecuted by the state during the 17th century. They were excluded from political and public life, as well as from universities. Perhaps as a direct consequence, Quakers became highly active entrepreneurs and came to dominate many industries through a combination of their testimonies and outward entrepreneurial action. 

This led to the reputation that Quaker firms had for trustworthiness and integrity. Their impact was perhaps so acute as to represent a distinctive form of ethical entrepreneurship."

Sunday, June 8, 2025

They are not good at this: Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.; The Washington Post, June 6, 2025

 , The Washington Post; They are not good at this: Nearly five months into Trump’s new reign of error, his administration’s mistakes are multiplying.

"Nearly five months into this reign of error, the mistakes are multiplying. It becomes more obvious each week that Trump and his aides are just not good at this governing thing...

Trump, at a town hall this spring, was asked what mistakes he had made in his first 100 days. He was silent for a moment, then said, “I’ll tell you, that’s the toughest question I can have because I don’t really believe I’ve made any mistakes.” The audience laughed.

Even by then, the administration had already racked up an impressive catalogue of maladministration. (Mother Jones published an entertaining list of them.)"

Friday, June 6, 2025

If Trump cuts funding to NPR and PBS, rural America will pay a devastating price; The Guardian, June 6, 2024

 , The Guardian; If Trump cuts funding to NPR and PBS, rural America will pay a devastating price

"With the sharp decline of the local newspaper business over the past 20 years, many parts of America have turned into what experts refer to as “news deserts”. These are places that have almost no sources of credible local reporting.

As local newspapers have shuttered or withered – at a rate of more than two every week – news deserts have grown. The effects are sobering. People who live in news deserts become more polarized in their political views and less engaged in their communities.

One of the foundations of democracy itself – truth – begins to disappear. People turn to social media for information and lies flow freely with nothing to serve as a reality check.

Right now, many small and rural communities that are on the brink of becoming news deserts do still have access to public media – particularly to National Public Radio’s network of member radio stations, which employ dedicated local reporters.

But the Trump administration’s new effort targeting public radio and television is a serious threat...

Voters – especially those in rural areas, small towns and red states – should let their elected representatives know that they need public radio and television to continue. That public media may even be their lifeline."

Monday, June 2, 2025

Parks, libraries, museums: here’s why Trump is attacking America’s best-loved institutions; The Guardian, June 2, 2025

 , The Guardian; Parks, libraries, museums: here’s why Trump is attacking America’s best-loved institutions

"Why would any politician – especially one as hungry for adulation as Donald Trump – go after such cherished parts of America?

It seems counterintuitive, but this is all a part of a broad plan that the great 20th century political thinker Hannah Arendt would have understood all too well.

Take away natural beauty, free access to books and support for the arts, and you end up with a less enlightened, more ignorant and less engaged public. That’s a public much more easily manipulated.

“A people that can no longer believe in anything cannot make up its mind,” said Arendt, a student of authoritarianism, in 1973. Eventually, such a public “is deprived … of its ability to think and judge”, and with people like that, “you can then do what you please”.

That’s what Trump and company are counting on."

Friday, May 23, 2025

The future of history: Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous US president; Associated Press, May 18, 2025

Will Weissert , Associated Press; The future of history: Trump could leave less documentation behind than any previous US president


[Kip Currier: Every information center (e.g. libraries, archives, museums) and cultural heritage and higher education institution should think hard about the questions raised in this article. Like this glaring one the reporter raises:

"How will experts and their fellow Americans understand what went on during Trump’s term when those charged with setting aside the artifacts documenting history refuse to do so?"]


[Excerpt]

"For generations, official American documents have been meticulously preserved and protected, from the era of quills and parchment to boxes of paper to the cloud, safeguarding snapshots of the government and the nation for posterity. 

Now, the Trump administration is scrubbing thousands of government websites of history, legal records and data it finds disagreeable. 

It has sought to expand the executive branch’s power to shield from public view the government-slashing efforts of Elon Musk’s team and other key administration initiatives. Officials have used apps such as Signal that can auto-delete messages containing sensitive information rather than retaining them for recordkeeping. And they have shaken up the National Archives leadership and even ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution.

To historians and archivists, it points to the possibility that Trump’s presidency will leave less for the nation’s historical record than nearly any before it and that what is authorized for public release will be sanitized and edited to reinforce a carefully sculpted image the president wants projected, even if the facts don’t back that up.

How will experts and their fellow Americans understand what went on during Trump’s term when those charged with setting aside the artifacts documenting history refuse to do so?"

Saturday, April 19, 2025

Trump turns a COVID information website into a promotion page for the lab leak theory; THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 18, 2025

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; Trump turns a COVID information website into a promotion page for the lab leak theory

[Kip Currier: Click on covid.gov webpage and assess for yourself the accuracy and judgment of placing "a photo of President Donald Trump walking between the words “lab” and “leak” under a White House heading", adjacent to the words "The True Origins of Covid-19".

Many of the purported claims on this webpage constitute disinformation and propaganda that lack conclusive empirical scientific evidence.

The cherry-picked information about Dr. Anthony Fauci is intentionally misleading. Former Pres. Joe Biden pardoned Fauci on January 20, 2025 because of fears that the incoming Trump 2.0 administration would pursue baseless legal actions against him. The photo of Fauci used on the revamped covid.gov webpage by the current Trump administration depicts Fauci "face-palming". The face-palming picture is placed directly next to Biden's pardon of Fauci, implying that Fauci is face-palming because of shame about the pardon. In truth, Fauci famously face-palmed nearly 5 years earlier, on March 20, 2020, during a live Covid-19 briefing with Donald Trump. As The Independent reported

A leading expert assisting Donald Trump’s administration in its response to the coronavirus pandemic appeared to face palm during an extraordinary press briefing at the White House as the president lambasted “the Deep State Department”. 

Video of the moment showed Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, seemingly reacting to Mr Trump’s bizarre rant in real-time, standing just behind the president as he spoke about his administration’s latest efforts to slow the spread of the virus. 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronavirus-trump-briefing-dr-anthony-fauci-face-palm-a9416111.html

Watch video evidence -- available on many platforms representing diverse political perspectives -- and evaluate the face-palming for yourself.]


[Excerpt]

"A federal website that used to feature information on vaccines, testing and treatment for COVID-19 has been transformed into a page supporting the theory that the pandemic originated with a lab leak.

The covid.gov website shows a photo of President Donald Trump walking between the words “lab” and “leak” under a White House heading. It mentions that Wuhan, China, where the coronavirus first began spreading, is home to a research lab with a history of conducting virus research with “inadequate biosafety levels.”

The web page also accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, of pushing a “preferred narrative” that COVID-19 originated in nature.

The origins of COVID have never been proven. Scientists are unsure whether the virus jumped from an animal, as many other viruses have, or came from a laboratory accident. A U.S. intelligence analysis released in 2023 said there is insufficient evidence to prove either theory."

Sunday, April 13, 2025

Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession; The New York Times, April 13, 2025

Mr. Thayer is an Episcopal priest. ; The New York Times; Palm Sunday Was a Protest, Not a Procession

"On Sunday, in cities around the world, Christians begin Holy Week by celebrating Palm Sunday, when Jesus entered Jerusalem for the final time before his death and resurrection. To mark the day, Christians recreate Jesus’ procession, often starting outside churches and winding down sidewalks and city streets waving palm branches.

Celebrations like this often miss an uncomfortable truth about Jesus’ procession: At the time, it was a deliberate act of theological and political confrontation. It wasn’t just pageantry; it was protest.

On that first Palm Sunday, there was another procession entering Jerusalem. From the west came Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, riding a warhorse and flanked by armed soldiers bedecked in the full pageantry of an oppressive empire. Every year during Passover, a Jewish festival celebrating liberation from Egyptian oppression and slavery, Pilate entered Jerusalem to suppress any unrest set off by that memory.

His arrival wasn’t ceremonial; it was tactical — a calculated show of force, what the Pentagon might now call “shock and awe.” It displayed not only Rome’s power but also Rome’s theology. Caesar was not just the emperor; he was deified and called “Son of a God” on coins and inscriptions. His rule was absolute, and the peace it promised came through coercion, domination and the threat of violence...

Jesus entered the city not on a warhorse but on a donkey, not with battalions but with beggars. His followers were peasants, fishermen, women and children — people without standing or status. They waved palm branches — symbols of Jewish resistance to occupation since the Maccabean revolt — and cried out “Hosanna!” which means “Save us.” Save us from a system of oppression disguised as order. Save us from those who tacitly endorse greed with pious language and prayers...

Sound familiar?

We, too, live in the shadow of empire. Ours doesn’t speak Latin or wear togas, but its logic is familiar. Our economy prioritizes the 1 percent and puts corporate profits over worker dignity. Our laws enforce inequality in the criminal justice system, education and health care. Our military-industrial complex would be the envy of Rome. We extract, exploit, incarcerate, and we call it “law and order.""

Friday, April 11, 2025

Am I Still Allowed to Tell the Truth in My Class?; The Atlantic, April 11, 2025

Phillip Atiba Solomon, The Atlantic; Am I Still Allowed to Tell the Truth in My Class?

"The administration’s claim in the Dear Colleague letter that universities becoming race-blind will allow students to enjoy “a school environment free from discrimination” is absurd on its face. People widely understand racism to refer to folks with power abusing folks without it—injustices that many students experience well before arriving at college. The letter, in contrast, would have readers believe that racism’s greatest harm is hurting students’ feelings on campus. One cannot be a neutral observer of the world and hold this position."

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal; The Atlantic, March 26, 2025

Jeffrey Goldberg and Shane Harris , The Atlantic; Here Are the Attack Plans That Trump’s Advisers Shared on Signal

"On Monday, shortly after we published a story about a massive Trump-administration security breach, a reporter asked the secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, why he had shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen on the Signal messaging app. He answered, “Nobody was texting war plans. And that’s all I have to say about that.”

At a Senate hearing yesterday, the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, were both asked about the Signal chat, to which Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was inadvertently invited by National Security Adviser Michael Waltz. “There was no classified material that was shared in that Signal group,” Gabbard told members of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Ratcliffe said much the same: “My communications, to be clear, in the Signal message group were entirely permissible and lawful and did not include classified information.”

President Donald Trump, asked yesterday afternoon about the same matter, said, “It wasn’t classified information.”

These statements presented us with a dilemma. In The Atlantic’s initial story about the Signal chat—the “Houthi PC small group,” as it was named by Waltz—we withheld specific information related to weapons and to the timing of attacks that we found in certain texts. As a general rule, we do not publish information about military operations if that information could possibly jeopardize the lives of U.S. personnel. That is why we chose to characterize the nature of the information being shared, not specific details about the attacks.

The statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Ratcliffe, and Trump—combined with the assertions made by numerous administration officials that we are lying about the content of the Signal texts—have led us to believe that people should see the texts in order to reach their own conclusions. There is a clear public interest in disclosing the sort of information that Trump advisers included in nonsecure communications channels, especially because senior administration figures are attempting to downplay the significance of the messages that were shared."

Sunday, March 16, 2025

The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education; The New York Times, March 15, 2025

, The New York Times; The Authoritarian Endgame on Higher Education

"When a political leader wants to move a democracy toward a more authoritarian form of government, he often sets out to undermine independent sources of information and accountability. The leader tries to delegitimize judges, sideline autonomous government agencies and muzzle the media. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has done so over the past quarter-century. To lesser degrees, Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey recently have as well.

The weakening of higher education tends to be an important part of this strategy. Academic researchers are supposed to pursue the truth, and budding autocrats recognize that empirical truth can present a threat to their authority. “Wars are won by teachers,” Mr. Putin has said. He and Mr. Erdogan have closed universities. Mr. Modi’s government has arrested dissident scholars, and Mr. Orban has appointed loyal foundations to run universities.

President Trump has not yet gone as far to impede democracy as these other leaders, but it would be naïve to ignore his early moves to mimic their approach. He has fired government watchdogs, military leaders, prosecutors and national security experts. He has sued media organizations, and his administration has threatened to regulate others. He has suggested that judges are powerless to check his authority, writing on social media, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Mr. Trump’s multifaceted campaign against higher education is core to this effort to weaken institutions that do not parrot his version of reality. Above all, he is enacting or considering major cuts to universities’ resources. The Trump administration has announced sharp reductions in the federal payments that cover the overhead costs of scientific research, such as laboratory rent, electricity and hazardous waste disposal. (A federal judge has issued a temporary restraining order against those cuts.) Vice President JD Vance and other Republicans have urged a steep increase of a university endowment tax that Mr. Trump signed during his first term. Together, these two policies could reduce the annual budgets at some research universities by more than 10 percent."

Monday, March 3, 2025

The weekend the "Free World" died; The Ink, March 2, 2025

ANAND GIRIDHARADAS, The Ink; ESSAY: The weekend the "Free World" died

In the Oval Office fiasco, a country revealed

"Early in the afternoon on Friday, the president and the vice president of the United States delivered a contemptuous scolding to the wartime leader of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. The country of “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall” and “We choose to go to the moon” and “rendezvous with destiny” had become the country of “You’re not in a good position. You don’t have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards.” It was a shocking, abusive scene, unlike any foreign policy chroniclers could recall. By Sunday, the British prime minister had declared that “we are at a crossroads in history,” and European countries were talking about a coalition of the willing to defend Ukraine. It was the weekend the notion of the “free world” died...

Toward the end of the meeting, Trump commented that the awful scene he had participated in would make great television. Here was the triumph of the spirit of attention-seeking at any cost, the spirit in which there are no values worth defending if they do not carry the possibility of making people watch you. Everyone is an influencer now; everyone covets followers more than friends. Trump trash-talked an erstwhile American ally because he knew it would do numbers with his followers.

In recent weeks, I have wondered why the leaders of other countries have not been brave in calling out the situation in the United States, in naming this fascist threat from within. The obvious answer is American power and leverage. It can be expensive to speak truth to superpower, as Zelensky will surely be learning in coming days.

But after the meltdown in the Oval Office on Friday, I began to wonder if another reason is involved. Maybe those leaders, like much of the world, do not look at America right now and see a country being hijacked by this dangerous leader. Maybe much of the world looks at a country that, in its bones, has fundamentally changed. Has lost that other spirit. Lost the sunniness, the hopefulness, the decency, the will to sacrifice, the idealism, the confidence, the hope.

What will stop Trump? everyone is asking all day long. Maybe an actual and effective form of resistance will involve more than the thwarting of a leader. It will be a cultural project up and down American life. To resist the meanness and smallness and cruelty and cynicism and solipsism. To insist, by showing, that what he is is not who we are."

Saturday, February 22, 2025

Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin; New York Post, February 20, 2025

 Ronny Reyes, New York Post; Fox News’ Mark Levin criticizes Trump for attacking Zelensky: ‘MAGA doesn’t support Putin’

"Fox News host Mark Levin, a longtime supporter of President Trump, is breaking with the commander-in-chief over his recent attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, warning Trump that “MAGA doesn’t support Putin.”

Speaking on the Mark Levin Show on Wednesday, Levin offered a rare criticism of the president as he backed Zelensky for maintaining order in Ukraine following Russia’s invasion in 2022.

Levin’s segment appeared to be a direct response to Trump’s claims that Zelensky is a dictator that the Ukrainian leader is stopping free elections and only has a very low approval rating. 

The Fox News host said both of those assertions are false."

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Some Protestants Felt Invisible. Then Came Bishop Budde.; The New York Times, January 26, 2025

Ruth Graham and , The New York Times; Some Protestants Felt Invisible. Then Came Bishop Budde.

"It was the first Sunday since a fellow Episcopalian, Bishop Mariann E. Budde, delivered a sermon that many observers heard as an echo of passages like the one from Luke. Speaking at a prayer service at the National Cathedral in Washington the day after President Trump’s inauguration, she faced the president and made a direct plea: “Have mercy.”

After the service, Mr. Trump called Bishop Budde a “Radical Left hard line Trump hater” in a social media post. His foes immediately hailed her as an icon of the resistance. But for many progressive Christians and their leaders, the confrontation was more than a moment of political catharsis. It was about more than Mr. Trump. It was an eloquent expression of basic Christian theology, expressed in an extraordinarily public forum...

“A plea for mercy, a recognition of the stranger in our midst, is core to the faith,” Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe, the Episcopal Church’s top clerical leader, said in an interview. “It is radical, given the order of the world around us — it is countercultural — but it’s not bound to political ideology.”...

The clergy members addressed it directly in their sermons, too. At Church of the Transfiguration, the associate rector, the Rev. Ted Clarkson, acknowledged to the congregation that aspects of the bishop’s sermon might have been “hard to hear.” But “mercy is truth,” he said, “and I expect a bishop to preach the truth.” (Bishop Budde preached on Sunday at a church in Maryland.)...

Bishop Budde’s message seemed to be resonating beyond the usual audience for Sunday sermons.

Her most recent book, “How We Learn to Be Brave,” was listed as temporarily out of stock on Amazon Friday afternoon. At that time, the book was No. 4 on the site’s list of best-sellers, 11 spots above Vice President JD Vance’s memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” 

The publisher of Bishop Budde’s book, Avery, an imprint of Penguin Books, was scrambling to reprint “a significant number of books,” said Tracy Behar, Avery’s president and publisher."