Erwin Chemerinsky writes on the legal site Cafe that a judge’s ruling upholding the Trump administration’s demand for a list of Jews at U of Penn is “egregiously wrong.”
Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and a constitutional scholar.
He wrote:
A federal judge in Philadelphia was egregiously wrong in upholding an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoena to the University of Pennsylvania that effectively requires it to provide a list of its Jewish faculty and staff. At a time of increasing antisemitic acts, and at a moment when the likes of Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens are expressing vile anti-Jewish hate to massive audiences, it should be unthinkable to ask a university to compile and turn over a list of Jewish people on campus, including their home addresses and phone numbers. The University has appealed and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit should quickly reverse federal district court Judge Gerald Pappert’s truly insensitive opinion…
The EEOC’s goal is to force the University to create a list, with contact information, of as many Jewish faculty and staff on campus as possible so that the agency can reach out to interview them. It is a fishing expedition by the EEOC with the hope that if it contacts enough Jewish faculty and staff, it might find evidence of antisemitism on campus.
For many reasons, this is unconstitutional; it also is deeply frightening. The Supreme Court has held for almost 70 years, since NAACP v. Alabama in 1958, that requiring organizations to disclose their members violates freedom of association. In that case, the Court held that Alabama violated the First Amendment in requiring that groups like the NAACP disclose their membership lists. Many cases since have reaffirmed this principle. For example, in Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta (2021), the Court declared unconstitutional a California requirement that non-profit groups turn over their list of donors that they already were required to provide to the federal government….
There are also serious privacy concerns in requiring that the University compile and turn over contact information. The district court said the information here—personal home addresses and phone numbers, task-force participation, survey receipt—is not “highly personal.” This is just wrong as a matter of law. In U.S. Department of Defense v. FLRA (1994), the Supreme Court recognized substantial federal employee privacy interests in home addresses. Moreover, a list of home addresses and phone numbers is one thing; a list of home addresses paired with religious identity is another. Similarly, in Kallstrom v. City of Columbus (1998), the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recognized that disclosure of home addresses can threaten personal security when linked to a category that a hostile actor has targeted. Hostile attacks on Jewish victims are at their highest number in decades….
This egregious decision should be reversed on appeal.
Robert Reich has selected the Supreme Court Justice whom he believes is the worst in modern history. The two likeliest nominees are clearly Samuel Alito, who wrote the decision that reversed Roe v. Wade and that is responsible for the deaths of many women who were unjustly denied medical care because of Justice Alito.
But no, he chooses Justice Clarence Thomas. In this post, he explains why.
Friends,
I’ve long assumed that Samuel Alito was the worst.
Alito — who authored the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022), the case that ended constitutional abortion rights by merely asserting that the high court’s prior opinion in Roe v. Wade (1973) was wrongly decided; who accepted a 2008 luxury fishing trip to Alaska, including private jet travel, from hedge fund billionaire and GOP donor Paul Singer yet failed to disclose it on Alito’s financial forms and didn’t even recuse himself from decisions involving Singer’s subsequent business before the Supreme Court; who hoisted an inverted American flag outside his Virginia home shortly after the January 6 Capitol riot, a symbol of support for Trump’s false claims of a stolen 2020 election — has the moral and intellectual stature of a poisonous toad.
But I’ve come to revise my view of the court’s worst Justice.
Clarence Thomas is 77 years old. He has now served on the Supreme Court for over 34 years, making him the longest-serving member of the Court. He is a bitter, angry, severe hard-right, intellectually dishonest, ideologue. After reading his latest thoughts on America, I’ve concluded Thomas is even worse than Alito.
Last Wednesday, Thomas gave a rare public address at the University of Texas in Austin that began as a banal tribute to the Declaration of Independence before degenerating into a misleading screed against progressivism.
“At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream,” Thomas intoned. “The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.”
Thomas went on to blame progressives for the worst crimes of the 20th century, insisting that “Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, and Mao” were all “intertwined with the rise of progressivism,” as was “racial segregation,” “eugenics,” and other evils.
This is pure rubbish.
In reality, America’s Progressive era emerged at the start of the 20th century from the corruption and excesses of America’s first Gilded Age (we’re now in the second, if you hadn’t noticed) — its record inequalities of income and wealth, its “robber barons” who monopolized industries and handed out sacks of money to pliant legislators, it’s dangerous factories and unsafe working conditions, its violent attacks on workers who tried to form unions, its corporate control over all facets of government, its widespread poverty and disease, and its corrupt party machines.
In many ways, the Progressive Era — whose most prominent leader was Republican president Theodore Roosevelt, not Woodrow Wilson, by the way — saved capitalism from its own excesses by instituting a progressive income tax, an estate tax, pure food and drug laws, and America’s first laws against corporate influence in politics.
Then, under Teddy Roosevelt’s fifth cousin (Franklin D.), came Social Security, the 40-hour workweek (with time-and-a-half for overtime), the right to form unions, and laws and regulations that limited Wall Street’s ability to gamble with other people’s money.
Clarence Thomas got it exactly backwards. Had we not had the Progressive Era and its reforms extending through the 1930s, America might well have succumbed to fascism — as did Germany under Hitler, and Italy under Mussolini, or to communist fascism, as did Russia under Stalin. Progressive and New Deal reforms acted as bulwarks against the rise of fascism in America.
In fact, it’s been the demise of such reforms since Ronald Reagan that have opened the way to Trumpian neo-fascism.
Over a third of American workers in the private sector were unionized in the 1950s, giving them bargaining leverage to get higher wages and better working conditions. Now, fewer than 6 percent are unionized, which has contributed to the flattening of wages, a contracting middle class, inequalities of income and wealth rivaling the first Gilded Age, and an angry and suspicious working class that’s become easy prey for demagogues.
Wall Street has been deregulated — allowing it to go on gambling sprees such as the one that produced the financial crisis of 2008, which claimed millions of working peoples’ homes, savings, and jobs.
America’s social safety nets have become so frayed that almost a fifth of the nation’s children are now in poverty. Yet Reagan, George W. Bush, and Trump have slashed taxes on the rich and on big corporations and have allowed giant corporations to merge into giant monopolies rivaling the trusts of the first Gilded Age. And Trump has ushered in an era of corruption the likes of which America hasn’t seen since that earlier disgraceful era.
Thomas claims that “The century of progressivism did not go well.” Baloney. It helped America create the largest middle class the world had ever seen, while also extending prosperity to millions of Black and brown people.
The tragedy is that America turned its back on progressivism and on social progress, in part because of the Supreme Court and Justice Clarence Thomas.
Flashback: I was in law school in 1973 when the Supreme Court decided Roe, protecting a pregnant person’s right to privacy under the 14th amendment to the Constitution.
Clarence Thomas was in my law school class at the time, as was Hillary Rodham (later Hillary Clinton) and Bill Clinton.
The professors used the “Socratic method” – asking hard questions about the cases they were discussing and waiting for students to raise their hands in response, and then criticizing the responses. It was a hair-raising but effective way to learn the law.
One of the principles guiding those discussions is called stare decisis — Latin for “to stand by things decided.” It’s the doctrine of judicial precedent. If a court has already ruled on an issue (say, on reproductive rights), future courts should decide similar cases the same way. Supreme Courts can change their minds and rule differently than they did before, but they need good reasons to do so, and it helps if their opinion is unanimous or nearly so. Otherwise, their rulings appear (and are) arbitrary — even, shall we say? — partisan.
In those classroom discussions almost fifty years ago, Hillary’s hand was always first in the air. When she was called upon, she gave perfect answers – whole paragraphs, precisely phrased. She distinguished one case from another, using precedents and stare decisis to guide her thinking. I was awed.
My hand was in the air about half the time, and when called on, my answers were meh.
Clarence’s hand was never in the air. I don’t recall him saying anything, ever.
Bill was never in class.
Only one of us now sits on the Supreme Court. And he has shown no respect for stare decisis.
Nor has he respected judicial ethics.
A federal law — 28 U.S. Code § 455 — requires that “any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”
In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Thomas’s wife, Ginni, actively strategized with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows on overturning the election results. Between Election Day 2020 and the days following the January 6th attack on the Capitol, she exchanged 29 text messages with Meadows, in which she spread false theories about the election, urged Meadows to overturn the election results, and called for specific actions from the White House to help overturn the election. She also served as one of nine board members of a group that helped lead the “Stop the Steal” movement and called for the punishment of House Republicans who participated in the U.S. House Select Committee investigating the January 6th attack.
Yet Clarence Thomas has repeatedly participated in cases that have come to the high court directly or indirectly involving the 2020 election results, refusing to disqualify himself.
In addition, he failed to disclose his wife’s income from her work at the Heritage Foundation, in violation of the Ethics in Government Act.
Finally, there’s his speech last week in Austin. How can Americans be expected to believe in the impartiality of the Supreme Court in general and Clarence Thomas in particular when he condemns an entire philosophy of government — progressivism — and all the people who continue to call themselves progressives, in effect labeling them neo-fascists?
At the start of his speech last week in Austin, Clarence Thomas noted that “My wife Virginia and I have many wonderful friends and acquaintances here, and it is so special to have our dear friends Harlan and Kathy Crow join us today.”
He was, of course, referring to the Republican mega-donor who has spent the last twenty years lavishing Thomas with personal gifts, luxury yacht trips, fancy vacations, and funding for Ginni Thomas’s political organization.
Small wonder that Clarence Thomas prefers the Gilded Age over the Progressive Era. He’s the living embodiment of The Gilded Age’s public-be-damned excesses.
Hence, he’s my nominee for the worst justice in modern Supreme Court history.
Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter who focuses on Florida politics. His blog Seeking Rents should be read by every Floridian, as well as anyone who cares about government ethics.
In this post, he shows how corporations buy the votes they need to pass bills that hurt the public interest.
The votes are for sale. The public can’t compete with the corporations. Except at the ballot box.
Question: Why does the public re-elect these scoundrels?
Garcia writes:
Florida lawmakers banked $14 million in campaign contributions on the day before the start of the 2026 legislative session, according to a Seeking Rents review of first-quarter campaign finance reports.
The avalanche of donations recorded on Jan. 12was, in part, the result of an annual fundraising orgy that takes place in Tallahassee on the eve of every lawmaking session. Legislators are forbidden from raising money during their 60-day session, which means they — and the special interests seeking to buy access and influence in the state Capitol — must scramble to beat the opening gavel.
Much of that last-minute money was essentially laundered through intermediaries — like political committees controlled by lobbyists or campaign consultants — that make it difficult to the trace the true origins of many donations.
For example, one of the biggest session-eve spenders this year was “A Stronger Florida,” a political committee linked to the lobbying firm Rubin Turnbull & Associates, which records show doled out more than $500,000 to more than three dozen legislators. Recent large donors to the lobbyist-controlled committee include the billionaire-run insurance firm Ryan Specialty, for-profit hospital owner HCA, online casino operator ARB Interactive, and Outpost Brands, which sells loosely regulated products infused with an opioid-like extract.
But two companies stand out for the amount of last-minute money they dropped on Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature: Gun manufacturer Sig Sauer Inc. and home insurer Slide Insurance, both of whom, records show, showered nearly $500,000 on legislators on the final day of pre-session fundraising.
More than 30 lawmakers deposited a combined $480,000 in donations from Sig Sauer on Jan. 12— including House Speaker Danny Perez (R-Miami), Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula), incoming House Speaker Sam Garrison (R-Fleming Island), incoming Senate President Jim Boyd (R-Bradenton) and Sen. Jay Trumbull (R-Panama City), each of whom took $50,000 apiece via various fundraising committees they control.
The mass cash infusion came as Sig Sauer was lobbying those same lawmakers to pass a bill shielding the company from legal exposure related to a company-made pistol that can allegedly “ghost fire” without anyone pulling the trigger.
Emails and text messages obtained by Seeking Rents show lobbyists for Sig Sauer gave the original draft of the legislation to Trumbull and Rep. Wyman Duggan (R-Jacksonville), who received a $50,000 donation from the company in December.
Lobbyists for Sig Sauer emailed an aide to Sen. Jay Trumbull a draft of the legislation that became Senate Bill 1748.
The Sig Sauer bill passed the House of Representatives by a 75-29 vote but was unable to get through the Senate. The legislation could be resurrected in the future, though, particularly with the support of a legislator like Trumbull, who is in line to become president of the Senate after the 2028 elections.
Another text message obtained by Seeking Rents — sent by Eileen Stuart, a lobbyist for Sig Sauer, to Duggan, the House bill sponsor — shows that Sig Sauer representatives dined with Trumbull shortly before the session began. The lobbyist described the future Senate president as “firmly committed” to the legislation.
A text message from Sig Sauer lobbyist Eileen Stuart to Rep. Wyman Duggan.
Meanwhile, more than 40 lawmakers reported a combined $469,000 on Jan. 12 from Tampa-based Slide Insurance, which has become one of Florida’s moreinfamousinsurancecompaniessince launching in 2021.
It’s not clear what specific bills or issues the now-publicly traded company lobbied lawmakers on this session.
But the House of Representatives attempted tolimit the ability of insurance companies to shift money between affiliates and subsidiaries in order to avoid state laws prohibiting excess profits. And Slide has been particularly aggressive in the past when it comes to using internal transactions to move money across its corporate structure.
The profit-stripping legislation breezed through the House by a 106-3 vote. But it was never given a single hearing in the Senate.
Senate leaders were, it turns out, the biggest beneficiaries of Slide’s session-eve contributions.
Records show that a fundraising committee chaired by Boyd, the incoming Senate president, took $170,000 from Slide — more than a third of all the money the company donated on Jan. 12.
The No. 2 recipient? Trumbull, who will follow Boyd as Senate president and who took $45,000 from Slide Insurance the day before session began.
Now, all the contributions that Sig Sauer and Slide made the day before session went to Republicans — which makes sense, since Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature (as well as the Governor’s Office and all three statewide elected Cabinet posts) and have complete control over the agenda in the Capitol.
But to be very clear, plenty of corporate interests buying access in Tallahassee also make sure to spend a bit of money currying favor with some Democrats, too.
A particularly interesting example: The new campaign-finance reports show that the giant landowner behind the “Blue Ribbon Projects” bill gave $10,000 on Jan. 12 to a committee controlled by Rep. Christine Hunschofsky (D-Parkland), the incoming House Democratic Leader.
It could perhaps help explain how the legislation — which would have enabled the largest landowners in Florida to develop city-sized projects on rural tracts of land with minimal local oversight — managed to pick up a handful of Democratic votes in each of the threeHousecommittees it passed this session, despite opposition from environmental groups and local governments.
The Blue Ribbon Projects bill ultimately failed in the Senate — but just barely.
It’s against the law for the federal government to interfere in curriculum and instruction, but in recent years that has not stopped federal officials from trying. Many people harbor the illusion that there is a way of teaching that is the best, better than any other way. As soon as they think that panacea has been identified, they want to mandate it for everyone.
The Obama administration pressed states to adopt the Common Core curriculum, even when there was no evidence–none at all–that it was better than any other curriculum.
Today’s panacea is called “the science of reading.” The evidence? Reading scores in Mississippi went up after the state adopted SOR. The counter-evidence? Congress funded a $6 billion demonstration project called Reading First, based on the same ideas, as part of No Child Left Behind in 2001. The results: students learned the skills taught, but their comprehension did not improve.
Peter Greene reports that Congressional legislators are so impressed by SOR that they have written federal legislation to ensure that its methods are universally taught. Members of Congress know nothing about teaching reading, but they want to mandate the one best way on everyone.
Check out HR 7890, brought to us by Rep. Erin Houchin of Indiana, along with Rep. John Manion of New York and Rep. Kevin Kiley of California. The bill– The Science of Reading Act– wants to federally mandate Science of Reading stuff. It has the effect of creating a federal definition of SoR that captures the general vagueness of the term:
The term ‘science of reading’ means an interdisciplinary body of evidence-based research about reading and issues related to reading and writing that—
(A) identifies instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing as essential components to skilled reading;
(B) demonstrates the importance of background knowledge, oral language, the connection between reading and writing, and strong writing instruction;
(C) explains why some students have difficulty with reading and writing; and
(D) does not use a three-cueing model.
Hope that clears it right up for you. If you’re fuzzy on three-cueing, we get a federal definition for that, too. It has to do with A) using context, pictures, or syntax as primary basis for teaching word recognition and B) “teaches visual memory as the primary basis for word recognition.” So, sight words? Sight words are bad now?
Anyway, under the bill, only programs that are aligned with SoR get grant money under the grants to “entities in support of kindergarten through grade 12 literacy,” The bill would add to the directions that states are given for distributing the grants. Which makes me wonder if these GOP Representatives missed the meeting where the regime explained that these kinds of grants were going to be toast anyway.
That’s pretty much the whole bill, other than it’s not allowed to limit any of the protections of students under IDEA or the ADA. The best part is at the very bottom of the page where the bill explicitly says that the bill absolutely does not
authorize any officer or employee of the Federal Government to mandate, direct, or control a State, local educational agency, or school’s specific instructional content, academic standards and assessments, curricula, or program of instruction.
Somebody was wrapping up the bill and remembered that the feds are not allowed to dictate curriculum or instructional programs. Conservatives remembered that really well back when President Obama and Arne Duncan were extorting state compliance with promoting Common Core, but seem to have kind of forgotten now.
So that’s the bill. It directs states to push a particular ill-defined un-supported possibly-nonexistent instructional methodology, and then promises that this bill does not authorize the feds to push a particular instructional methodology. It went to the House Committee on Education and Workforce, where the committee voted 33-0 to report the bill. Should this bill escape its well-deserved death, I expect its major effect will be to influence education grant paperwork, but let’s hope it just sits on the steps up on Capitol Hill and quietly fades away.
Garry Rayno, writer of “The Distant Dome” for inDepthNH, has been covering the legislature for many years. The presence of a large faction of libertarians in the legislature make it difficult to predict what they will do.
In this post, he reviews the likely consequences of passing a voucher bill for which everyone is eligible.
Rayno wrote about what vouchers will accomplish: They will subsidize the well-to-do while diminishing the resources of poor districts.
He wrote:
This week the House will vote on what is perhaps one of the Republicans’ biggest priorities, universal public school open enrollment or Senate Bill 101.
The bill has changed since it left the Senate with a new funding source so one town’s school property tax dollars are no longer sent to another school district following one of its students.
Under the new plan, the district enrolling another district’s student would receive a $9,000 payment from the state’s often tapped Education Trust Fund which was originally established to hold state tax dollars for public education separately to guarantee the state meets its obligation to provide its students an adequate education and to pay for it.
Over the last five years about $130 million dollars has been drawn from the trust fund to largely subsidize the education of children who were not supported by the state dollars because they are in private, or religious schools or homeschooled and their parents were footing the bill.
Despite two superior court rulings the state is not meeting its obligation to pay for an adequate education for its students, lawmakers have not seen fit to increase state aid to public schools which receive about $4,200 per pupil in state aid, along with differentiated aid for poverty, English language learners and special education making the average per pupil aid around $5,000 per student.
If this bill passes, and it probably will, even more money will be drawn from the Education Trust Fund to pay for students moving from one public school to another.
The State Department of Education declined to predict how many students might take advantage of the new open enrollment policy, so just how much of a hit the trust fund will take is not known.
The trust fund is not the only entity that will experience financial loss with the new policy.
The school district losing the student will lose his or her state aid which ranges from $4,200 on the low end to about $8,000 on the high side.
Chances are the districts losing students will be in property poor communities that can ill afford to lose any state aid for their schools without impacting property taxes. Even if they reduce staff if enough students leave, many costs like buildings, electricity, heating and transportation will remain the same.
The district receiving the students will receive the $9,000 per student state aid but its average per pupil cost is likely to be higher than the state average of about $23,000 per student.
That means the receiving district will have to pick up the difference in theory although adding a few students is not likely to change overall costs much.
And the big issue still hanging over the open enrollment bill is who pays for a student’s special education costs who transfers.
The sending district is responsible for those costs, so some — and it may actually be many — school districts will be sending the receiving districts substantial checks to cover special education services which have been growing steadily more expensive with the state and federal governments not living up to their obligations to pay those bills.
That means local property taxpayers in a sending district will continue to pay the majority of the special education costs for their student if he or she transfers out of the district.
Under the bill, parents are responsible for their student’s transportation to the new school although they can make arrangements with the receiving districts to drop their student at a convenient bus stop, but that is not guaranteed.
Looking at the bigger picture, who will be able to participate in the new open enrollment scheme? Probably not a single parent — most likely a mother — who has to work one or two or three jobs to support her children, or poor families with both parents working.
The largest group served by the open enrollment plan will be children of well-to-do parents who have the time and money to drive their children the 10 or 50 or 100 miles to the school of their choice be it for academics, the theater, music, art or athletic program, or even the special education services, to schools in property wealthy school districts.
Once again it is the reverse Robin Hood concept where the property wealthy districts and wealthy families receive the greatest benefit while the property poor districts and their families will see less state aid and dwindling educational resources for their children.
Much like the state’s voucher program, while it was originally touted as a way for low-income parents to access the best educational environment for their children, the greatest benefit is to those families wealthy enough to send their children to private or religious schools or to homeschool their children.
There is a lot of rhetoric about open enrollment providing the best educational experience for children, but that is only true if you can afford to and have the time to transport their children to another school district.
Since the supporters of the voucher program or Education Freedom Accounts, were able to open the program to any eligible parent in New Hampshire last year regardless of income this year, they have proposed several other ways to expand it beyond the legal cap of 10,000 students this year and 12,500 this coming school year by opening it up to military families and allowing EFA students to take classes at their local public schools at no cost.
When the program originally passed, EFA students were not allowed to go back to their former school for a class or two, there was a bold black line.
Now supporters of the program want to blur the line which is fine for the student and his or her parents but not the school districts which lost the state aid associated with those students.
The proposed changes do not help those low-income parents who were used to finally get the program passed by including it in the budget package during the 2021 session, but are now seldom mentioned. The program did not have the votes to pass on its own five years ago.
If the voucher program were truly helping kids who do not do well in the public school environment from low-income families, there would be a lot less opposition.
Those kids are a small minority and do not receive the vast majority of the benefits.
Those who benefit from the new open enrollment program are the same people who benefit from the voucher program, those wealthy enough to send their children to private and public institutions and homeschool, not those leaving public schools, who are few and far between and a declining percentage.
The greatest beneficiaries of this “school choice” push are not the ones who need government’s help. They can do quite well on their own.
And all of these changes to public education do nothing to reform it or fund it adequately, but do make it more difficult to provide for the educational needs of 90 percent of the state’s children who attend public schools.
And that is the bigger picture too many people fail to see.
Vengeance against all those who have dared to investigate him for his role in the insurrection of January 6, vengeance against those who dared to investigate him for taking classified documents to Mar-a-Lago, vengeance against those who dared to criticize him, vengeance against those who prosecuted him for paying off Stormy Daniels….the list is long. His grievances are many.
Every FBI agent who participed in these investigations was fired. But that’s not enough.
At last, he has found the perfect vehicle, a prosecution to snare his enemies. They will be charged with participating in a Grand Conspiracy to smear him.
The federal judge is Aileen Cannon, who killed Special Prosecutor Jack Smith’s case against Trump. The jury will be drawn in Fort Pierce, Florida, a deep-red jurisdiction, even for matters that occurred in Washington, D.C. The prosecutor will be an 81-year-old Trump ally, not a career prosecutor.
The trial and verdict are rigged. That’s the way Trump likes it.
U.S. Installs a Trump Loyalist to Lead ‘Grand Conspiracy’ Case Into Trump Foes
A former lawyer for President Trump’s campaign, Joseph diGenova, is said to be planning to split time between Miami and Fort Pierce, where a grand jury overseen by a Trump-favored judge sits.
Robert Hubbell is a well-informed and insightful blogger with a large following.
In this post, he sorts through the claims and counterclaims of the past 24 hours.
He writes:
In a famous thought experiment posed by physicist Erwin Schrödinger, the life-or-death fate of a cat in a box is determined by the random radioactive decay of a particle. Schrödinger argued that the rules of quantum mechanics implied that as the cat awaited its fate, it was simultaneously alive and dead (i.e., in superposition) until the moment the random radioactive decay occurred, at which time the cat’s fate became fixed—it was either alive or dead, but not both.
Friday, Trump and Iran operationalized the “Schrödinger’s Cat” thought experiment using the Strait of Hormuz instead of a cat in a box. Early Friday, Trump said that the Strait of Hormuz was open but that the US blockade against Iran would continue, while Iran said the Strait is open but will remain closed so long as the Trump blockade remains in effect. To further complicate matters, Iran said that when the Strait opens, permission to pass through the Strait must be granted by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
If the above paragraph makes your head hurt, then you understand the situation perfectly—because it makes no sense. Indeed, that was the point of Schrödinger’s thought experiment; he was mocking the seemingly nonsensical idea of a cat being simultaneously dead and alive. That is exactly where we are with the Strait of Hormuz: It is both open and closed, blockaded by the US for now, with future transit subject to the whim of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
We are in this state of quantum indeterminacy because Trump is making announcements that do not appear to be connected to reality. In other words, Trump is lying. He has every incentive to pretend that the conflict with Iran is over. Nearly every announcement Trump made on Friday was quickly contradicted or denied by Iran. See, e.g., Jerusalem Post, Iran denies claim that US will retrieve enriched uranium.
As reported in the Jerusalem Post, the Iranian Parliament Speaker Ghalibaf posted a statement on Twitter accusing Trump of making multiple false claims:
“The President of the United States made seven claims in one hour, all seven of which were false,” Ghalibaf wrote. “They did not win the war with these lies, and they will certainly not get anywhere in negotiations either.”
Ghalibaf urged all to “read the real and accurate news of the negotiations in the recent interview of the Foreign Ministry spokesman,” in which a Foreign Ministry spokesman claimed that Iran will not transfer its enriched uranium anywhere, contrary to earlier Trump claims that Iran had agreed to do so.
Iran and the US appear to be negotiating a three-page term sheet that includes the release of $20 billion in frozen Iranian assets. Axios has published a detailed outline of the term sheet, although both Iran and Trump have denied reporting on the purported terms. See Axios, U.S. considers $20 billion Iran cash-for-uranium deal.
The Axios article provides a good summary of the state of play in a rapidly evolving situation. My recommendation is to wait until the US and Iran make a joint announcement before trying to parse the terms. Until then, much of the reporting is market manipulation disguised as leaks from “administration officials.” See Reuters, Traders place $760 million bet on falling oil ahead of Hormuz announcement.
Per Reuters,
Investors placed a bet worth about $760 million on a falling oil price around 20 minutes before Iran’s foreign minister announced on Friday that the Strait of Hormuz was open, another sizeable wager on the world’s most traded commodity ahead of major announcements in the course of the Middle East war.
But whatever the outcome, it does not appear that Trump will be able to replicate the advantageous terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated by President Obama. And Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will regulate traffic through the Strait of Hormuz—an unimaginable situation before Trump’s ill-advised and unconstitutional decision to start a war against Iran without consulting Congress or the American people.
We should hope that peace negotiations succeed quickly. But we should not forget that the war was a debacle that cost thousands of lives and billions of dollars, alienated US allies, increased prices in the US, and shifted the balance of power in the Middle East toward Iran, which will retain its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Trump is in the process of surrendering, and no amount of lying can change reality. We must not let Trump and his apologists distort or bury the truth of what happened over the last six weeks. It was an unmitigated disaster, full stop. Trump and all Republicans must be held to account in November…
Hubbell has two other stories in this post that you should know about.
The first is explosive investigative reporting about Kash Patel by Sally Kirkpatrick in The Atlantic. She reports that she interviewed many FBI employees and learned that Patel is a heavy drinker. He is, she writes, a security risk. Patel and his law firm announced on Twitter that he was suing her and the magazine.
Another item describes the Trump administration’s efforts to send former CIA Director John Brennan to prison. One prosecutor, unwilling to go along, resigned. Brennan had the bad luck to land in the courtroom of Judge Aileen Cannon in South Florida. Hubbell feels sure that Brennan will be cleared of whatever charges they cobble together against him.
Heather Cox Richardson tries to make sense of the conflicting narratives about the Iran War. Read Trump’s comments on Air Force One. Read them again. Maybe a third time. What did he say?
This morning, after a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon took effect Thursday, Iran announced the Strait of Hormuz was open to commercial ships. Israel has been bombing southern Lebanon, where Iran-backed Hezbollah militants operate, and Iran’s leadership has said it would not recognize a ceasefire with the United States until Israel’s bombing of Lebanon stopped.
With Iran’s announcement the strait was open, Trump hit the media circle, announcing through interviews and social media posts that the war with Iran was over and peace talks were all but done, although Trump said the U.S. Navy will continue to blockade Iran’s ports. Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch noted that Trump posted thirteen times in an hour claiming total victory.
He claimed that Iranian leaders had “agreed to everything,” including the removal of its enriched uranium, and that “Iran has agreed never to close the Strait of Hormuz again.” He promised that Iran had agreed to end its nuclear program forever and that talks “should go very quickly.” He said that the United States would work with Iran at “a leisurely pace” to retrieve and capture Iran’s highly enriched uranium and that Iran would receive no money for its cooperation despite a report from Axios that the U.S. is considering the release of $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds in exchange for Iran giving up its stockpile of enriched uranium.
Right on cue the stock market jumped and the price of oil futures dropped. Trump declared the breakthrough was “A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD!” and asked why media outlets questioning the alleged deal didn’t “just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT?”
But, as Ashley Ahn of the New York Times reported, Iranian officials’ interpretation of events was quite different from Trump’s characterization. Iran’s top negotiator, speaker of parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, posted on social media that Trump had made seven claims in an hour, and all seven of them were false. Iran rejected Trump’s claim that it had agreed to hand over its uranium stockpile, and also said that the strait was open for commercial vessels—not military ships—but would close again if the U.S. blockade continued.
Tonight on Air Force One, after the stock market closed, when asked if Iran would turn over its nuclear material, Trump said: “We’re taking it. We’re taking it. Very simple. We’re taking it. With Iran. We’re going in with Iran. We’re taking it. We will have it. I don’t call it boots on the ground. We’ll take it after the agreement is signed. After there— there’s a very big difference. Before and after. BC. It’s before, and after. And after the agreement is signed, it’s a lot different than before. We would have taken it. If we didn’t have an agreement, we would take it. But I don’t think we’ll have to.”
When a reporter asked Trump whether he would extend the ceasefire “if you don’t have a deal by Wednesday” when it ends, the president answered: “I don’t know. Maybe not. Maybe I won’t extend it. But the blockade is gonna remain. But maybe I won’t extend it. So you have a blockade, and unfortunately we’ll have to start dropping bombs again.”
While being able to announce the end of the Iran war—at least for now—relieves Trump’s immediate crisis, there are many others in the wings. This evening, an article in The Atlantic by Sarah Fitzpatrick portrayed Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel as a poor manager who is terrified he is going to lose his job and whose overuse of alcohol, tendency to disappear, and purges of FBI agents who had investigated Trump endangers our national security. Fitzpatrick notes that Patel has kept his job thanks to his willingness to use the FBI to target Trump’s perceived enemies, but his focus on things like whether FBI merchandise looks “fierce” has made officials think “we don’t have a real functioning FBI director.”
Writ even larger than the behavior of the director of the FBI is the growing focus on corruption in the Trump administration. On Wednesday, House Democrats announced they have created a task force to reinforce ethics rules and highlight the Trump family’s self-dealing when in office. The task force is made up of members from across the country and from different caucuses in the Democratic Party. Representative Joe Morelle, a fellow New Yorker and close ally of House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries who is the top-ranking Democrat on the House Administration Committee, will lead the task force along with Kevin Mullin of California, Delia C. Ramirez of Illinois, and Nikema Williams of Georgia.
Also on the task force are the top-ranking Democrat on the House Oversight and Reform Committee, Robert Garcia of California, and the top-ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, as well as Congressional Progressive Caucus members Greg Casar of Texas and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and the head of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, Brad Schneider of Illinois.
They will be looking into self-dealing like Trump’s current negotiations with the Internal Revenue Service to settle the $10 billion lawsuit he filed against it after an IRS contractor during his first term leaked some of his tax information, along with that of more than 400,000 other taxpayers, to two news outlets during Trump’s first term. Trump, along with his sons Donald Jr. and Eric, said the leak caused “reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing.”
Peter Nicholas of NBC News noted in February that $10 billion is more than 80% of last year’s IRS budget.
Fatima Hussein of the Associated Press notes that several watchdog organizations have filed briefs challenging Trump’s lawsuit. Democracy Forward argued that the case is “extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics,” and that “the conflicts of interest make it uncertain whether the Department of Justice will zealously defend the public [treasury] in the same way that it has against other plaintiffs claiming damages for related events.”
On Wednesday, Democratic representatives Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Dave Min of California, along with Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and minority leader Chuck Schumer of New York, introduced the Ban Presidential Plunder of Taxpayer Funds Act to ban presidents and vice presidents from stealing taxpayer money.
Pointing to the Department of Justice’s recent settlement of $1.2 million with Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russians before Trump took office, after he sued for $50 million on the grounds that the criminal case against him was malicious prosecution, Raskin warned of an “emerging MAGA grift of suing the government as a ‘plaintiff’ on bogus grounds and then settling the suit as a ‘defendant’ for big bucks.”
“Over the past 15 months, we have seen unprecedented corruption from this administration, but this new abuse of power of providing huge cash payments to ‘settle’ baseless lawsuits brought forward by Trump and his allies is a new low. The bill that Senator Warren, Leader Schumer, Ranking Member Raskin, and I are bringing forward would stop this backdoor bribery and bring some accountability back to the federal government,” said Representative Min.
In February, when the lawsuit came to public attention, Trump noted that it seemed odd for him to be negotiating with himself over the issue, but told reporters that he would give whatever monies he was awarded to charity. “We could make it a substantial amount,” he said. “Nobody would care because it’s going to go to numerous very good charities.”
… Trump made 13 posts in an hour today on Truth Social claiming total victory in the Iran War with the concepts of a peace agreement allegedly imminent. However, as with all things Trump, the reality and details never seem to match up with his claims. It appears that may be the case yet again.
Donald J. Trump continues in his role as Master of Chaos. Yesterday, we woke to the good news that the Strait of Iran was open! Great! Wall Street loved it, stocks soared. But over the course of the day, it turned out that the Strait was not really open. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t.
Trump needed a win, and he told the world that he got it. It was hard to tell what was true, what was a boast, and what was a lie.
… Trump made 13 posts in an hour today on Truth Social claiming total victory in the Iran War with the concepts of a peace agreement allegedly imminent. However, as with all things Trump, the reality and details never seem to match up with his claims. It appears that may be the case yet again.
… These were some of Trump’s claims from his blizzard of manic posts:
“Iran has agreed to never close the Strait of Hormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the World!
“A GREAT AND BRILLIANT DAY FOR THE WORLD! DJT”
“Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!
“Again! This deal is not tied, in any way, to Lebanon, but we will, MAKE LEBANON GREAT AGAIN!”
“Iran, with the help of the U.S.A., has removed, or is removing, all sea mines! Thank you!”
“Thank you to Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar for your great bravery and help!”
“The U.S.A. will get all Nuclear “Dust,” created by our great B2 Bombers – No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon, either, but the USA will, separately, work with Lebanon, and deal with the Hezboolah situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer. They are PROHIBITED from doing so by the U.S.A. Enough is enough!!!”
“The Failing New York Times, FAKE NEWS CNN, and others, just don’t know what to do. They are desperately looking for a reason to criticize President Donald J. Trump on the Iran situation, but just can’t find it. Why don’t they just say, at the right time, JOB WELL DONE, MR. PRESIDENT, and start to gain back their credibility???”
… Reuters: “Significant differences between Iran and the US remain to reach a deal aimed at ending the war, a senior Iranian official told Reuters, adding that keeping the Strait of Hormuz open is ‘conditional on US adherence to the terms of ceasefire’. The official said ‘no agreement has been reached on the details of the nuclear issues,’ and serious negotiations are required to overcome differences.”
… Middle East analyst Shaiel Ben-Ephraim: “The deal shaping up to end the war in Iran has the following components:
Iran officially declared the waterway “completely open” today for all commercial vessels for the remainder of the ceasefire. Iran plans to levy a toll there. The US opposes that. Unless they can get a cut of course.
The US is reportedly weighing the release of $20 billion in Iranian assets held in foreign accounts to be used for humanitarian purposes. This is a significant increase from the initial $6 billion offer, following Iran’s demand for $27 billion.
Trump stated that Iran has agreed to hand over its entire stockpile of nearly 2,000 kilograms of enriched uranium, which he refers to as “nuclear dust”. Trump is referring to Iran’s estimated 2,000 kilos of enriched uranium. Of this, 440–450 kilos is highly enriched to 60% purity, a short technical step from weapons-grade.
Both sides are debating a “voluntary” pause on uranium enrichment. The US is pushing for a 20-year moratorium, while Iran has offered only 5 years.
The US demands all material be shipped to the US. Iran has only agreed to “down-blend” it domestically. A compromise involves shipping some to a third country, likely Russia, and down-blending the rest under international monitoring.
The draft memorandum requires all future nuclear operations to be moved above ground, leaving current underground facilities like Fordow and Natanz out of commission.
Iran demanded a ceasefire in Lebanon and that was forced on Israel for ten days. However, Israel will not withdraw and continues to harbor plans to dismantle Lebanon.
… “This grand bargain serves Iranian and US interests in de-escalation. Overall it serves Iranian interests more, as it gives them money they did not have access to before and does not involve conditions regarding their ballistic missiles and leaves the current regime intact. The main threat to this deal, needless to say, is Israel. It has no interest in maintaining a ceasefire in Lebanon and a very strong interest in destroying this fragile deal.”
… Axios: A US official clarifies Trump’s Lebanon comments: “The President’s ceasefire agreement between Lebanon and Israel clearly states that Israel will not carry out any offensive military operations against Lebanese targets but preserves its right to self-defense against planned, imminent, or ongoing attacks.”
… “Trump shocked Netanyahu with post declaring Lebanon strikes ‘prohibited’. Israel asked the WH for clarifications, sources say.”
… Former CIA officer Marc Polymeropoulos: “Trump humiliates his best buds. This is political suicide for any Israeli PM, to adhere to this. I don’t care who it is. The idea of not being able to take action on your borders is untenable. Bibi of course deserves this humiliation, as he has been on his knees to Trump for perpetuity.”
… News18 (India): “Iran has pushed back against Trump’s claim that Tehran has agreed to hand over its stockpile of enriched uranium, with sources saying no such arrangement has been negotiated so far. A source close to Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said ‘no form of nuclear material transfer to America has been negotiated,’ directly contradicting Trump’s assertion.”
… Tasnim states that Iran has reportedly set 3 conditions for vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz:
Only commercial ships allowed, no military vessels; cargo must not be linked to “hostile” states.
Transit must follow routes designated by Iran.
Passage requires coordination with the IRGC Navy.
… Middle East analyst and former Israeli intelligence officer Danny Citrinowicz: “I’m concerned that, in this round, Iran came out with the upper hand. It demonstrated not only its ability to threaten the Strait of Hormuz, which it effectively controls, but also its willingness to keep it closed until conditions aligned with its interests, while refusing to yield to US demands.”
… “The takeaway from this episode is clear: Iran not only holds leverage over the strait, but any future arrangement with Tehran will have to be credibly enforced. Otherwise, the ‘Hormuz card’ can and likely will be played again. Iran is not entering the next round from a position of weakness.
… “From Tehran’s perspective, it may have made tactical concessions, since it is clear that even any closure of the strait in the coming weeks, given the volume of tanker traffic, would inflict significant pain on global markets. But strategically it reinforced its core message: it sets the terms in this arena and will not accept dictates from outside powers. And if Israel were to violate the ceasefire, the strait would likely be closed again.”
… “This development should serve as a reminder to the admin that this is not a simple winner-takes-all outcome. From Iran’s perspective, this is a negotiation, one it enters from a position of strength. It’s really become the ‘Strait of Iran’. Iran holds the key to the strait, and that reality does not appear likely to change anytime soon. Developments over the past 24 hours have only reinforced and deepened this reality.”
… Seyed Mohammad Marandi, Prof at Tehran Univ: “One of the major developments that Iran is currently orchestrating is shifting the passage of ships from other routes in the Strait of Hormuz to Iran’s coastal waters. This means that in the new order of the Strait of Hormuz, a significant long-term geopolitical change will take place.”
… Journalist Borzou Daragahi: “This is one reason why previous US admins ruled out an attack on Iran. No one, including the Iranians, knew what would happen and what it would mean if Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz. Then Trump FAFOed. Now we are in a situation where everyone in the world knows that Iran can close the Strait with a Tweet or a drone and that it would have a tremendous impact on the world economy. No matter what happens Iran will always hold that leverage.”
…lan Goldenberg, chief policy officer for J Street: “A reasonable deal is better than a return to war and I’ll support it. But let’s remember that this is a colossal failure for Trump and for US interests:
We could have had this deal or something similar before the war without: the death and destruction across the Middle East; massive damage to US allies and partners and global relationships; huge use of military resources that will take years to rebuild; and significant damage to the global economy.
If Trump hadn’t left the JCPOA [Obama’s multilateral agreement to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons, which Trump tore up], we’d probably be in the midst of negotiations on extensions of key components and follow on deals at this point but from a much stronger position. Iran wouldn’t have 400KG of HEU and we’d have the most comprehensive inspections regime ever developed to catch any cheating.
Instead this will probably involve nothing even close on what is arguably the single most important element of any nuclear deal – inspections and verification.”
… James Acton, director of the Carnegie Nuclear Program: “The two biggest criticisms of the JCPOA were sunsets and financial relief that Iran could spend on terrorism. The deal under discussion has both. That’s not a necessary criticism of diplomacy; it’s a criticism of those who criticized the JCPOA and will support any Trump deal. Sunset clauses and financial relief are necessary for any deal.”
… Yaroslav Trofimov, chief foreign affairs correspondent for WSJ: “To sum up the day. The Strait of Hormuz is still not open unless vessels go through the Iranian tollbooth, the US naval blockade of Iran continues, and the dramatic decline in oil prices is caused not by the changing reality on the ground but by market expectations – possibly over-optimistic – that the US and Iran will strike a nuclear deal in the foreseeable future.”
… Right-wing talk show host Ann Coulter: “Yay. The Strait that was open before we began bombing Iran open, is open again. Everybody pretend this is a huge victory for Trump so he’ll end this catastrophe.”
… Axios: “The US and Iran are negotiating over a plan to end the war, with one element under discussion being that the US would release $20 billion in frozen Iranian funds in return for Iran giving up its stockpile of enriched uranium. According to two sources, the US was ready in an earlier stage of the negotiations to release $6 billion for Iran to purchase food, medicine and other humanitarian supplies. The Iranians demanded $27 billion.”
… “The latest number discussed by the US and Iran is $20 billion. This was a US proposal. Meanwhile, the US asked Iran to agree to ship all its nuclear material to the US, while the Iranians only agreed to ‘down-blend’ it inside Iran. Under a compromise proposal now under discussion, some of the highly enriched uranium would be shipped to a third country.”
… Rep. Martin Stutzman (R-IN) on CNN: “Trump is a tough negotiator. We’ve been able to watch him negotiate on Truth Social, and there are days where you’re like, ‘wow’. Host: He threatened to take out an entire civilization. Stutzman: Those were the types of words they understood.”
… Fox host Sean Hannity said Pope Leo doesn’t understand Catholicism: “I went to Catholic school for 12 years, I attended a seminary in high school and studied theology. I left the Catholic church in large part because of institutionalized corruption. Others at the Vatican have totally lost sight of the true meaning of the Bible and its teachings.”
… Hannity: “Pope Leo is seemingly more interested in spreading left-wing politics than the actual teachings of Jesus Christ. Why is the pope twisting religion to only attack Trump? Is it because he is Trump-hating Democrat that lacks moral clarity?”
… WH Faith Office Senior Advisor Paula White‑Cain said nobody knows more about the Bible than Trump: “He can quote to you so many sermons. I mean, profound.”
Andrew Kirell writes: This morning, Pete Hegseth unloaded on the press again, this time invoking the Bible and likening journalists to the Pharisees, the New Testament figures who opposed Jesus.
Hegseth accused the press of constant negativity despite Trump’s “historic and important success” in Iran. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” he added.
He then launched into a lengthy biblical analogy, describing the Pharisees (and thus journalists) as “self-appointed elites of their time” who “witnessed a literal miracle” yet sought to “explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.” The “legacy, Trump-hating press,” like the Pharisees, he said, is “calibrated only to impugn.”
The sermon-like rant stood out, given the recent dust-up over Trump sharing an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus — a post he later deleted and claimed was meant to depict a “doctor.” The White House may have backed away from the religious comparison, but Hegseth’s comments only seem to resurrect it. “So…they are doubling down on Trump being Jesus?” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote.
Stelter’s take
This sentence from Hegseth was the tell: “I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage, you cannot resist pedaling.” He just can’t help himself.
The “holy war” type talk, insinuating that doubting Trump is like doubting Christ, was both deeply offensive and surprisingly insecure.
Gretchen Carlson put it perfectly on X: “As a Christian, how dare you use religion to shame those who simply ask questions.”
As a practical matter, a defense secretary who thinks the press is ignoring US military victories (the press has not done that, but I digress) would provide greater access to service members and share videos from the war zone. There are lots of ways to do that. But Hegseth has been pushing the press out. He’s not even giving fulsome access to MAGA media outlets.
>> Bottom line: Hegseth’s media-bashing hasn’t worked. The polling hasn’t budged. Trump and Hegseth’s messaging is not moving public opinion, which remains broadly opposed to the war.
Diane Ravitch's blog 