Judge J. Michael Luttig was appointed to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in 1991 by President George H.W. Bush, where he served until 2006. He was a prominent conservative jurist, but was repulsed by the Trump regime, especially Trump’s contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law. He became one of the most outspoken critics of Trump. In this post, he criticized the Supreme Court for ignoring death threats to judges who disagreed with Trump.
This week, David French and I have both addressed the death threats on the lives of the federal judges who dare to rule against Donald Trump.
David did so this morning in the chilling piece in the New York Times linked below, and I did so on Tuesday in an hour-long interview with Meghna Chakrabarti of NPR’s On Point, one of the most thoughtful, intelligent interviewers I have ever had the pleasure to talk with.
During my conversation with Meghna, she played on air the actual audio of the death threat made to Federal Judge John McConnell referenced in David’s article. It was bone chilling. When Meghna asked for my reaction to the threat, I first thanked her on behalf of the entire Federal Judiciary for playing the audio for all of America to hear and then said “America is weeping at this moment, Meghna. America is weeping. I wish you could send this audio to the Supreme Court of the United States.”
I went on to say that the unconscionable attacks on the federal courts and individual federal judges by Donald Trump and his Attorney General will not only continue, but will continue to escalate until Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court of the United States denounce the President and the Attorney General for their unconscionable threats against the nation’s Federal Judiciary.
I explained that up to now, the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court have acquiesced in these assaults on the federal courts, tacitly condoning them, when the Chief Justice and the Court have no higher obligation under the Constitution of the United States of America than to denounce these attacks.
After my interview with Meghna, I forwarded the audio of the death threat to Judge McConnell to a number of the national media, with a note saying simply that “if the national media would saturate the American public with this chilling death threat against Judge McConnell, it could change the course of history.”
David French:
“Have you ever written words that you thought might get you killed? Have you ever written words that you worry might get someone you love killed?
That’s the reality that federal judges are facing across the nation. Our awful era of intimidation and political violence has come for them, and it represents a serious threat to the independence and integrity of the American judiciary.”
She read the full transcript of the recent interview of Trump by Norah O’Donnell of “60 Minutes.” The final interview was heavily edited, which is standard practice. The actual interview lasts for about an hour, but only 20 minutes is aired. If you recall, Trump sued CBS for $10 billion for airing an edited version of the “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris. He claimed that the interview was intended to hurt his candidacy, a totally meritless claim, since editing is routine and he suffered no injury. Rather than fight for its most prestigious news team, CBS caved and paid Trump $16 million. The corporation paid off Trump so that its merger with Paramount would be okayed by the FCC, which is the hands of a Trump flunkie.
Not mentioned by HRC was that O’Donnell asked Trump if he pressured Pam Bondi to prosecute James Comey and Letitia James. He denied it. She let it pass instead of showing the tweet in which he directed her to prosecute them. She should have asked why he did it, not whether he did it. The evidence was public.
HRC wrote:
At the end of her interview with President Donald J. Trump, recorded on October 31 at Mar-a-Lago and aired last night, heavily edited, on 60 Minutes, Norah O’Donnell of CBS News asked if she could ask two more questions. Trump suggested previous questions had been precleared when he mused aloud that if he said yes, “That means they’ll treat me more fairly if I do—I want to get—It’s very nice, yeah. Now is good. Okay. Uh, oh. These might be the ones I didn’t want. I don’t know. Okay, go ahead.”
O’Donnell noted that the Trump family has thrown itself into cryptocurrency ventures, forming World Liberty Financial with the family of Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. In that context, she asked about billionaire Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder and former chief executive officer of Binance. Zhao is cryptocurrency’s richest man. He pleaded guilty in 2023 to money laundering, resigned from Binance, paid a $50 million fine, and was sentenced to four months in prison.
Trump pardoned him on October 23.
O’Donnell noted that the U.S. government said Zhao “had caused ‘significant harm to U.S. national security,’ essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around.” She asked the president, “Why did you pardon him?”
“Okay, are you ready?” Trump answered. “I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt. And what I wanna do is see crypto, ‘cause if we don’t do it it’s gonna go to China, it’s gonna go to—this is no different to me than AI.
“My sons are involved in crypto much more than I—me. I—I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.”
After he went on with complaints about the Biden administration—he would mention Biden 42 times in the released transcript—O’Donnell noted, “Binance helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned [Zhao].” She asked him: “How do you address the appearance of pay for play?”
Trump answered: “Well, here’s the thing. I know nothing about it because I’m too busy doing the other….” O’Donnell interrupted: “But he got a pardon….” Trump responded: “I can only tell you this. My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good—my one son is a number one bestseller now.
“My wife just had a number one bestseller. I’m proud of them for doing that. I’m focused on this. I know nothing about the guy, other than I hear he was a victim of weaponization by government. When you say the government, you’re talking about the Biden government.” And then he was off again, complaining about the former president and boasting that he would “make crypto great for America.”
“So not concerned about the appearance of corruption with this?” O’Donnell asked.
Trump answered: “I can’t say, because—I can’t say—I’m not concerned. I don’t—I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, ‘Can I ask another question?’ And I said, yeah. This is the question….”
“And you answered…” O’Donnell put in.
“I don’t mind,” Trump said. “Did I let you do it? I coulda walked away. I didn’t have to answer this question. I’m proud to answer the question. You know why? We’ve taken crypto….” After another string of complaints about Biden, he said: “We are number one in crypto and that’s the only thing I care about.”
If, among all the disinformation and repetition Trump spouted in that interview, he did not know who he was pardoning, who’s running the Oval Office?
It appears House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) doesn’t want to know. At a news conference today, journalist Manu Raju noted: “Last week…you were very critical of Joe Biden’s use of the autopen…[you said] he didn’t even know who he was pardoning. Last night, on 60 Minutes…Trump admitted not knowing he pardoned a crypto billionaire who pleaded guilty to money laundering. Is that also concerning?”
Johnson answered: “I don’t know anything about that. I didn’t see the interview. You have to ask the president about that. I’m not sure.”
Pleading ignorance of an outrage or that a question is “out of his lane” has become so frequent for Johnson that journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice, who is very well informed about the news indeed, suggested today that journalists should consider asking Johnson: “Do you ever read the news, and do you agree it’s problematic for the Speaker to be so woefully uninformed?”
Johnson continues to keep the House from conducting business as the government shutdown hit its 34th day today. Tomorrow the shutdown will tie the 35-day shutdown record set during Trump’s first term. Representative Adelita Grijalva (D-AZ), whom voters elected on September 23, is still not sworn in. She has said she will be the 218th—and final—vote on a discharge petition to force a vote requiring the Department of Justice to release the Epstein files.
Trump and Johnson continue to try to jam Democratic senators into signing on to the Republicans’ continuing resolution without addressing the end of premium tax credits that is sending healthcare premiums on the Affordable Healthcare Act marketplace soaring. They continue to refuse to negotiate with Democrats, although negotiations have always been the key to ending shutdowns.
To increase pressure, they are hurting the American people.
The shutdown meant that funding for Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits on which 42 million Americans depend to put food on the table ran out on October 31. Although previous administrations—including Trump’s—have always turned to contingency funds Congress set aside to make sure people can eat, and although the Trump administration initially said it would do so this time as usual, it abruptly announced in October that it did not believe tapping into that reserve was legal. SNAP benefits would not go out.
On Friday, U.S. District Judge John McConnell of the District of Rhode Island ordered the administration to fund payments for SNAP benefits using the reserve Congress set up for emergencies. Since that money—$4.65 billion—will not be enough to fund the entire $8 billion required for November payments, McConnell suggested the administration could make the full payments by tapping into money from the Child Nutrition Program and other funds, but he left discretion up to the administration.
Today the administration announced it would tap only the first reserve, funding just 50% of SNAP benefits. It added that those payments will be delayed for “a few weeks to up to several months.” The disbursement of the reserve, it continued, “means that no funds will remain for new SNAP applicants certified in November, disaster assistance, or as a cushion against the potential catastrophic consequences of shutting down SNAP entirely.”
“Big ‘you can’t make me’ energy,” Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall noted. It’s also an astonishing act of cruelty, especially as grocery prices are going up—Trump lied that they are stable in the 60 Minutes interview—hiring has slowed, and the nation is about to celebrate Thanksgiving.
The shutdown also threatens the $4.1 billion Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) that helps families cover the cost of utilities or heating oil. Susan Haigh and Marc Levy of the Associated Press note that this program started in 1981 and has enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress ever since. Trump’s budget proposal for next year calls for cutting the program altogether, but states expected to have funding for this winter. Almost 6 million households use the program, and as cold weather sets in, the government has not funded it.
When the Republicans shredded the nation’s social safety net in their budget reconciliation bill of July, the one they call the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” they timed most of the cuts to take effect after the 2026 midterm elections. But the shutdown is making clear now, rather than after the midterms, what the nation will look like without that safety net.
In the 60 Minutes interview, O’Donnell noted an aspect of Trump’s America that is getting funded during the shutdown. She said, “Americans have been watching videos of ICE tackling a young mother, tear gas being used in a Chicago residential neighborhood, and the smashing of car windows. Have some of these raids gone too far?”
“No,” Trump answered. “I think they haven’t gone far enough because we’ve been held back by the—by the judges, the liberal judges that were put in by Biden and by Obama.” (In fact, a review by Kyle Cheney of Politico on Friday showed that more than 100 federal judges have ruled at least 200 times against Trump administration immigration policies. Those judges were appointed by every president since Ronald Reagan, and 12 were appointed by Trump himself.)
It appears that the administration did indeed ignore today’s deadline for congressional approval of the ongoing strikes against Venezuela, required under the 1973 War Powers Act. It is taking the position that no approval is necessary since, in its formulation, U.S. military personnel are not at risk in the strikes that have, so far, killed 65 people.
The owner of the Newpoint Charter School chain in Florida was convicted of racketeering and fraud in 2018, involving six different school districts. He pocketed millions of dollars that should have been spent on students and teachers. Ordered to pay back his ill-gotten gains, he now claims he can’t make the payments because his wife took most of his assets when they divorced.
Florida spends billions of dollars on charter schools and vouchers, with minimal oversight. Crooked charter operators and inadequate voucher schools are having great pay days.
The Pensacola News-Journal reported:
Escambia County’s Clerk of Court is taking Newpoint Charter School owner and convicted felon Marcus May back to court over claims he can’t afford to make the same monthly payments to repay nearly $7 million he owes in fines, interest and court costs.
May, 63, was convicted in 2018 in Pensacola for committing racketeering and fraud at six different school districts around Florida.
May has filed motions with the state saying his financial situation has changed due to his settlement agreement with his ex-wife, and he wants to cut back significantly on the monthly payments he makes.
“We’re going on seven years after the verdict, we’re still pursuing collections,” General Counsel at Escambia County Clerk of Court and Comptroller Cody Leigh said. “Justice extends beyond the verdict and that includes the clerk’s collection duties and obligations under the statute.”
May has been paying about $7,700 a month to the Escambia County Clerk of Court’s Office as part of his restitution payment plan, but he wants to drop that amount to about $1,500 a month.
To date, the clerk’s office says he has paid a total of about $270,000.
After his conviction in Pensacola in 2018, the businessman was ordered to pay $5.5 million in fines and restitution as part of his sentencing, but that amount has ballooned to around $7 million due to interest charges.
May has been in a legal fight with the clerk’s office since April of 2020 over collection of payment, and he filed for bankruptcy in May 2021.
The county spent another six months in bankruptcy court with May until a payment plan was confirmed.
At that time, it was determined May was earning about $13,000 a month, in large part income from real estate rentals he owns across the state, among other assets.
Now May is telling his creditors, including Escambia County, that his wife is getting those real estate assets under their amended marital divorce settlement agreement and he only has $3,000 a month to divide between several creditors, leaving the county with a monthly payment of about $1,500.
“In July of this year, we got a letter from Marcus May’s attorneys that said the planned payments would be substantially reduced because his disposable income went down substantially,” Leigh said.
Unconvinced of his reasons for cutting his payments to the county by five grand a month, the clerk and legal staff pushed to have May’s federal bankruptcy case reopened to take a closer look at what has become of his assets, including the real estate he now says belongs to his ex-wife.
“We filed a motion to reopen the bankruptcy case claiming that that was an impermissible plan modification,” Leigh said, “and that’s a discretionary call by the judge. She doesn’t have to reopen it, but she did. That is the first win of round two of reopening the bankruptcy and figuring out what was sold.”
Escambia County Clerk and Comptroller Pam Childers believes the judge’s decision is a win for taxpayers and county residents who have a right to collect what the court ruled was owed due to fraud, even if it means a years long legal fight.
“It’s just amazing how they will continue to connive and protect those assets as if they are theirs when they just use the school money, the children’s money, for their benefit,” Childers said. “They just feel entitled. I mean, even sitting in prison, there’s no remorse.”
Jennifer Rubin was one of the best columnists at The Washington Post. She left soon after Jeff Bezos began meddling into the views of the editorial pages. Rubin was hired by the Post originally to be the newspaper’s conservative voice. But after Trump was elected in 2016, her political views changed. Trump turned her into a keen-eyed liberal.
Rubin launched a wildly successful Substack blog called The Contrarian, which offers essays and conversations by her and other journalists and scholars.
Trump currently is enjoying well-deserved plaudits for bringing about a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of all Israeli hostages.
Trouble lies ahead, however, because under the agreement, Hamas is supposed to disarm and withdraw from governing Gaza. However, Hamas shows no willingness to give up their authority or their weapons. They were videotaped murdering their Palestinian rivals in public. When asked about these public executions, Trump said that Hamas was merely punishing some “very bad gangs.”
Trump very likely brokered a peace deal with two strategies: 1) his personal economic ties to Arab potentates; 2) his threat to Hamas to let Netanyahu do whatever he wanted in Gaza unless they signed the deal.
Rubin wrote in The Contrarian about the implicit messages that the Nobel committee sent to Trump in their awards.
The Nobel Prize Committee announced its annual awards over the last week or so. Aside from the number of winners based at U.S. universities (which have been until now the crown jewel of our education and scientific communities), something else caught my attention: Are the Nobel Prize judges…trolling Donald Trump?
I have no doubt the awards—the culmination of a long and rigorous process—are apolitical and entirely well deserved. However, what the committee said about the prizes and how the winners’ work were described certainly highlight Trump’s ignorance and malevolence. If you are going to shine a light on brilliance and excellence, Trump is going to be left in the dark—and others will notice.
Nobel Committee chair Jørgen Watne Frydnes was explicitly asked about Trump’s clamoring for the Peace Prize. “In the long history of the Nobel Peace Prize, I think this committee has seen many types of campaign, media attention,” Frydnes said. In other words, they are used to getting nagged. He continued: “This committee sits in a room filled with the portraits of all laureates and that room is filled with both courage and integrity. So, we base only our decision on the work and the will of Alfred Nobel.” Hmm. Sounds like Trump fared poorly in comparison to all those men and women esteemed for courage and integrity.
The explanation of the award itself seemed even more pointed. “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 2025 to Maria Corina Machado,” the committee explained. “She is receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” [Emphasis added here and below.] Democracy surely was front and center (with a notable reminder that it exists in conflict with dictatorship). In fact, democracy was mentioned in more detail and with greater fervor than peace itself.
The statement about Machado read: “As the leader of the democracy movement in Venezuela….” She was credited with leading the opposition demanding “free elections and representative government.” The committee explained:
This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground.
The regime she opposed is described in language you would (or will, on Saturday) hear at a No King’s Day rally: “a brutal, authoritarian state,” where the few at the top enrich themselves, where “violent machinery of the state is directed against the country’s own citizens,” battling an opposition “systematically suppressed by means of election rigging, legal prosecution and imprisonment.”
And in case anyone had missed the point:
Democracy is a precondition for lasting peace. However, we live in a world where democracyis in retreat, where more and more authoritarian regimes are challenging norms and resorting to violence. The Venezuelan regime’s rigid hold on power and its repression of the population are not unique in the world. We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarization. In 2024, more elections were held than ever before, but fewer and fewer are free and fair.
Maybe this was not intended to poke Trump in the eye—and the statement is accurate without any consideration of him—but condemnation of his tactics and outlook are the inevitable result of an award that elevates democracy, the rule of law, fair elections, and a free media. Since Trump antagonizes all those things, the award winners’ opponents sound an awful lot like Trump.
Trump prosecutes his perceived enemies, sets the American military against Americans, blows ships out of the water and murders those on board without due process, bullies the media, and seeks to rig elections. In other words, he embodies all the things Maria Corina Machado and other deserving winners fight against. So long as he continues doing all those things (i.e. so long as he remains Trump), he will continue bearing a disturbing resemblance to the other authoritarians around the globe—and will therefor never receive the award he has so openly whined about deserving. (Buckle up, however. Speaker of the House and go-to sycophant Mike Johnson, instead of working to find a compromise and assist in re-opening our government, is reportedly devoting his time and efforts to getting Trump his prize in 2026. Good luck with that.)
Trump, his lackeys, and his cultish cheering section seem not to understand that “peace” is not simply the absence of war. Conquest also achieves the end of some wars. But that is not what we are after. Peace, rather, requires renunciation of violence in favor of democratic and humanistic values. Only then do you have a lasting peace during which human beings can flourish.
The Peace Prize was not the only award that sounded like an anti-Trump recitation. Consider one of the three Nobel Prize winners for economics: Phillipe Aghion, a French economist and ½ of the winning team with Peter Howitt of Brown University. The Guardian reported:
[He] warned that “dark clouds” were gathering amid increasing barriers to trade and openness fueled by Donald Trump’s trade wars. He also said innovation in green industries, and blocking the rise of giant tech monopolies would be vital to stronger growth in future.
“I’m not welcoming the protectionist wave in the US, and that’s not good for world growth and innovation,” he said.
To be clear, I don’t think he and the other winners received their awards because they sound like a rebuttal to Trump. Rather, Trump is so invariably, deeply, and consistently wrong on economics that anyone recognized for merit invariably will contradict his irrational, ignorant views.
In all likelihood, Nobel folks did not set out to troll Trump. But if you are going to celebrate peace—real peace, and the democracy it depends upon—alongside the keys to economic growth (free trade, scientific discovery, dynamic and free societies), then you are going to find yourself sounding like the retort to MAGA authoritarian, know-nothingism.
This year’s Nobel prize committee wound up illustrating the degree to which Trump is inimical to peace, progress, and prosperity.The committeeshould earn a prize for that.
The Trump administration, enabled by complicit Republicans in Congress, has betrayed our Constitution repeatedly.
Such as, sending troops to peaceful cities, against the wishes of their elected officials.
Allowing masked ICE agents to snatch people from their homes, their workplaces, and the streets without a warrant.
Allowing ICE agents to use unnecessary force.
Taking “the power of the purse” away from Congress, whose Republican majority has willingly abandoned its Constitutional role.
Establishing tariffs based on Trump’s whims, not only disrupting the global economic order, but hurting American farmers and increasing inflation for all Americans.
Enriching himself and his family by making real estate deals with foreign powers, selling crypto to receive tribute of billions of dollars, selling Trump merchandise, and accepting a gift of a $400 million jet plane from a foreign power (an act forbidden as an emolument by the Constitution).
Politicizing the Justice Departnent as a personal Trump vendetta campaign against those his enemies.
Purging veteran career civil servants who won’t bend their knee to Trump.
Twisting civil rights enforcement to be the opposite of the law’s intent. Instead of protecting people of color and other minorities who have suffered from generations of discrimination, civil rights protection now applies to whites, who allegedly suffer whenever any institution tries to help minorities advance (DEI).
Firing any government lawyers who were assigned to investigate his criminal activities.
The list goes on and on.
Trump acts as if he is a king. The U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by six conservatives, have granted him “absolute immunity” from prosecution for anything he does as President. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution allows this grant of royal power.
And that is why we must show to express the wishes of the people: NO KINGS!
The Trump administration used a threat to try to cow leading universities to abandon their independence. The administration called their offer a “Compact,” but in reality it was an offer of protection money. The old way of the Mafia: “Pay us and we will make sure no one breaks your windows or vandalizes your store.”
M.I.T. became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump administration’s higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.
The proposal, called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” was sent to nine universities and would require colleges to cap international student enrollment, freeze tuition for five years, adhere to definitions of gender and prohibit anything that would “belittle” conservative ideas.
In a letter on Friday to the Trump administration, M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote that the university has already freely met or exceeded many of the standards outlined in the proposal, but that she disagrees with other requirements it demands, including those that would restrict free expression.
“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Dr. Kornbluth wrote.
A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in a statement that “any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.”
“The best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” she added. “President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and common sense policies.”
The White House has said it wants responses from the universities by Oct. 20. The other eight colleges are the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
The compacts have been deeply unpopular among faculty members, who view them as yet another political intrusion into the affairs of academia. They argue that the Trump administration is threatening the independence of American higher education by cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to force top universities to adopt its agenda.
In the post at 9 a.m. today, two scholars of racism and equity explained that Trump’s scrubbing of museums, national parks, and other federal facilities is an attempt to capture control of the culture and erase the place of Blacks, women, and anyone else who is not a straight white male.
But, as scholar Julian Vasquez Heilig writes here, Trump and his commissariat cannot control the popular culture. In time, we can hope, his mean-spirited efforts to revise history will become a bad joke, a cruel joke, a stupid joke. He and all those who carry out his orders will become a public laughing stock.
Vasquez Heilig writes on his blog Cloaking Inequity:
The Super Bowl has always been more than football. It is a ritual, a spectacle, a national performance. It’s where America tells the world who it thinks it is, and who it wants to be. Which is why the announcement that Bad Bunny will host the halftime show is far more significant than a musical lineup change. It’s a cultural earthquake.
I remember the first time I heard Bad Bunny. It was December 6, 2019, at La Concha Hotel in San Juan. In the downstairs lounge, the beat of reggaetón was shaking the walls, and I pulled out Shazam to figure out what it was. The song was Vete. The room was electric, filled with Puerto Ricans singing every word in Spanish, unapologetically themselves. That night, it hit me: Bad Bunny was not just making music in San Juan, he was celebrating culture. He wasn’t crossing over into the mainstream by adapting; he was dragging the mainstream toward him. He refused to translate, refused to dilute, and now he is everywhere—on playlists, on charts, SNL, in crowded places from San Juan to New York to Madrid.
That’s why his Super Bowl moment matters so much. It is not just a performance, it is the culmination of a global movement that began in places like that basement lounge in Puerto Rico. What felt local then is now universal. Bad Bunny’s rise shows how culture flows upward, from the margins to the center, from overlooked communities to the biggest stage in the world. For millions of us, this is affirmation. For the right wing, it is destabilization. Because when the halftime show belongs to Bad Bunny, it proves that America is no longer just what they imagine it to be. It is bigger, louder, and more diverse than great again nostalgia can contain.
Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and the New Halftime Era
The NFL’s halftime choices haven’t shifted by accident. When the league came under fire for its treatment of Colin Kaepernick and broader criticisms about racial injustice, it needed credibility. Enter Jay-Z and Roc Nation. The NFL tapped him to advise and help curate halftime shows.
The results have been undeniable. Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance last year was a watershed moment—unapologetically Black, politically charged, and culturally defining. That performance sparked widespread discussion, and even a blog post I wrote about it entitled “TV Off”: What Kendrick Lamar Was Really Saying at the Super Bowl drew more than 100,000 readers in just a few days. Clearly, the hunger to talk about representation and ownership of the halftime stage is real.
Now with Bad Bunny taking the baton, the NFL is making another cultural statement, whether it fully realizes it or not (I think it does). The league’s biggest platform is no longer reserved for the safe, predictable acts of yesterday. It’s becoming a stage where hip hop, reggaeton, and the voices of communities once marginalized are front and center.
Bad Bunny and the Right’s Panic
For decades, the halftime show was dominated by choices that reinforced a narrow image of America: classic rock icons, country stars, or pop acts who wouldn’t ruffle feathers but had wardrobe malfunctions. Bad Bunny shatters that mold. His performance won’t be a side act, it is the show. Spanish won’t be a novelty; it will be central.
This is exactly why the right wing panics. To them, football Sundays and Super Bowls have long been “their” cultural territory. They’ve wrapped the game in patriotic rituals, military flyovers, and moments of silence for conservative heroes. When someone like Bad Bunny steps into the spotlight, it disrupts their monopoly. It forces a new definition of America—one that is multilingual, multicultural, and undeniably Latino. That’s what makes his halftime role so radical: after focusing on the Black experience with Kendrick, this year signals that Latino identity is no longer peripheral. It’s woven into the fabric of America’s biggest stage.
Why ICE Wants to Loom Over the Moment
It might sound absurd that ICE wants to connect itself to the Super Bowl halftime show, but immigration enforcement has always thrived in the shadows of visibility. When Latino joy and success are celebrated so publicly, ICE apparently feels the need to remind America of its terrorizing power.
Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl is a triumph of belonging. But ICE’s assaults, raids, arrests, kangaroo courts, and deportations are constant reminders that belonging is conditional on politics. While millions watch a Puerto Rican superstar, ICE agents are throwing mothers and journalists to the ground, spraying pepper liquid into the eyes of Americans who dare to ask questions, arresting elected politicians at the behest of Washington politicians after turning off their body cameras, and authorized by the Supreme Court to detain people simply for looking Latino and poor.
The contradiction is sharp: on the world’s stage, Latino identity is being widely celebrated; on America’s streets, it’s criminalized. ICE doesn’t need to show up at the stadium—it already shows up in our daily life. Its existence ensures that even at moments of cultural triumph, there’s a purposeful shadow of fear and terroristic threats.
Danica Patrick’s Tone-Deaf Criticism
And then, inevitably, a silly critic emerges from the sidelines. This time it’s Danica Patrick, who dismissed Bad Bunny’s hosting role. Her comments were more than unhelpful, they were stupid.
Patrick should know better. She carved her own career by getting along in a male-dominated sport, where every step forward was a battle for representation. She knows the symbolic weight of breaking barriers. For her to turn around and mock or diminish Bad Bunny’s presence is hypocritical at best, willfully ignorant at worst.
Bad Bunny isn’t there to tick a diversity box, he’s there because he is one of the most influential artists alive— maybe THE most. The incredible success of his shows that he did for his most recent album this past summer ONLY in Puerto Rico is proof that the center of American culture is shifting. Criticizing that isn’t just a matter of taste. It’s a refusal to accept reality.
The Lions, Charlie Kirk, and Who Gets Tribute
The battle over cultural ownership in America doesn’t stop at the Super Bowl. It plays out every Sunday on the NFL field. When conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the league encouraged teams to hold moments of silence in his honor. Most complied. But the Detroit Lions, along with a few other teams, did not.
That decision matters. It was a quiet but deliberate act of boundary-setting, a refusal to let every NFL broadcast become a political ritual sanctifying right-wing political ideology. By declining the tribute, the Lions reminded us that not every form of patriotism must come prepackaged with conservative allegiance. It wasn’t loud or defiant. It was subtle and deeply symbolic. Sometimes resistance isn’t what you do, it’s what you decline to perform and participate.
The Lions’ restraint connects to the same cultural realignment symbolized by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Both moments reject the idea that American culture belongs to a single tribe. They push back against the notion that sports, music, or patriotism must orbit one political pole. They insist, instead, that culture belongs to everyone, not just the loudest or the angriest voices claiming to defend it.
The Double Standard of Protest
Of course, this tension between culture, power, and dissent has long been visible in the NFL. When Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality, he was branded a traitor by many of the same voices now demanding “respect” for Charlie Kirk. His silent, dignified act of conscience was recast as an attack on America itself.
The outrage was never really about the flag. It was about control. It was about who is allowed to define what counts as “patriotic.” Kaepernick’s kneeling was an act of moral courage, but it exposed how fragile America’s cultural gatekeepers truly are when confronted with truth. They could not tolerate a protest that revealed their own comfort with injustice and brutality.
Meanwhile, state violence continues daily without the same moral outrage from the right-wing. ICE officers violently throw mothers and journalists to the ground without cause. They pepper-spray citizens in their eyeballs for daring to ask questions in a conversation. They arrest and detain American citizens in raids not for crimes but for looking poor, brown, or foreign. These acts have not provoked right-wing primetime outrage or public boycotts. Their hypocrisy is staggering.
A man kneeling quietly for justice was vilified. Agents brutalizing families are ignored. The problem has never been the method of protest, it has always been their morality. Silence in the face of injustice is acceptable; silence against injustice is not. The Lions’ quiet refusal and Kaepernick’s quiet protest share something profound: both disrupted the script of cultural obedience. Both reminded us that resistance isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s the refusal to play along.
The Supreme Court’s Enabling Role
And looming behind all of this is the judiciary. Recent Supreme Court rulings have expanded law enforcement’s power, narrowing protections under the Fourth Amendment and giving politicians more leeway to persecute immigrants using federal data. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been the lead in the right-wing judicial majorities that have handed law enforcement broad authority to stop, question, and detain anyone with minimal cause. Its new rulings have created the legal cover that now makes racial profiling essentially legal.
Racial profiling has happen illegally before and the new legal result empowered by the Supreme Court is the same: citizens living under suspicion, families living in fear, communities targeted not for what they’ve done but for how they look. The Supreme Court has enabled ICE brutality in the same way NFL owners enabled the blackballing of dissent, by creating structures that justify exclusion and violence while insisting neutrality.
The Bigger Picture: Who Owns the Stage?
So what do Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Danica Patrick, ICE, the Lions, Charlie Kirk, and Brett Kavanaugh all have in common? They are all part of the “fight, fight, fight” (see new Trump $1 coin) over who gets to define American culture.
The right wing has long claimed the NFL as its territory: its rituals, its tributes, its symbols of patriotism. But culture evolves. It cannot be contained. From Detroit to San Juan to Los Angeles, new voices are shaping the narrative. Bad Bunny’s halftime show, Kendrick’s explosive performance, and even the Lions’ silent refusal all tell the same story: football does not belong exclusively to one political ideology. Neither does America.
The real question is whether we are willing to see that America’s identity is bigger than its old rituals. Are we willing to admit that inclusion is not a threat but a fact? Because culture doesn’t wait for permission. It claims the stage. And this year, that stage will belong to Bad Bunny.
Julian Vasquez Heilig is a professor, writer, and a legit lifelong Detroit Lions fan since 1981. He attended the NFC Championship in San Jose two years ago to support his Cardiac Cats and last year’s playoff loss to the Washington Commanders at Ford Field. He was also at the official Lions partners party during the NFL Draft in Detroit, where he met Robert Porcher and Jason Hanson. Over the years he’s spotted Billy Sims in Times Square, endured the heartbreak of the Lions’ 0–16 season, and treasures his personally autographed Barry Sanders helmet. Beyond education and equity, Julian dabbles in writing about sports, culture, and society.
A reader who uses the name Quickwrit parses the Constitutionnand finds that Trump is doing today exactly what King George did to the colonists.
Quickwrit writes:
WHAT TRUMP IS DOING TODAY is the very same thing that our Declaration of Independence lists as the violations of liberty that triggered our Declaration of Independence. Take a look:
The King used armed forces to control American cities and towns, without first asking permission from the legislatures; quoting the Declaration, it says: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” Just like King Trump sending armed National Guard units into our cities today.
The King replaced local police with his armed forces. The Declaration says: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
The King’s armed forces were protected from killing civilians: “For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.” People die today in ICE custody, and nothing happens.
The King ignores civil courts: “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”
“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices.”
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.”
“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained.” Today, not only do governors of Red States do nothing without Trump’s approval, neither does Congress.
The Declaration also says that we also declare our independence from the King for his:
“cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world’ (just like Trump’s tariffs);
“depriving us in many cases of the benefit of Trial by Jury” and “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” (just like Trump deporting people without trial to be imprisoned in foreign nations).
The Declaration says Americans are breaking away because the King has opposed immigration that is vital to America’s economic growth, by “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” Already in 1740, laws had been passed to grant “natural born” citizenship status to immigrants who lived there for seven consecutive years.
The King has also been “redistricting” Americans out of their right to representation: “He has refused to pass Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.” Just like the redistricting going on today.
Americans today truly need to read the history of our Revolution and what went into and is actually in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Read the ACTUAL WRITINGS of our Founding Fathers, not just listen to or read the “analyses” of political talking heads on today’s TV and social media.
That kind of reading takes time, and too few Americans today are willing to spend the time.
MSNBC broke the bombshell story: before the 2024 election, undercover FBI agents handed a paper bag with $50,000 cash to Tom Homan. They heard that Homan was soliciting bribes. The meeting was filmed.
The investigation of Homan for corrupt activities was quashed by Trump’s Department of Justice, presumably with the full knowledge of Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar,accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January,according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.
It’s unclear what reasons FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting down the investigation. But a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a “deep state” probe in early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, the sources say.
On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.
The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”
Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement early in Trump’s first term, openly claimed during the 2024 campaign that he would play a prominent role in carrying out Trump’s promised mass deportations.
Asked for comment about MSNBC’s exclusive reporting, the White House, the Justice Department and the FBI dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless.
Scott Maxwell is my favorite opinion writer at The Orlando Sentinel. He always makes sense, in a state led by a Governor and Leguslature that make no sense at all.
In this column, he asks a straightforward question: Why is there no accountability for school vouchers? Why are taxpayers shelling out money for substandard schools? Why is money diverted from public schools to pay for schools where the curriculum is based on the Bible, not facts?
Maxwell writes:
Florida recently joined about a dozen states in passing new rules that say participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, can’t use their vouchers on junk food.
I think that makes sense to most people. This program, after all, is supposed to provide “nutrition” to people in need, most of whom are children, elderly or people with disabilities. Basically, if taxpayers are providing $330 a month for basic food needs, that money shouldn’t be used on Red Bull and Oreos.
So now let’s take that a step further.
Taxpayer money also shouldn’t be used to send students to the junk-food equivalent of school — places that hire “teachers” without degrees, use factually flawed curriculum or that hand out A’s to every kid, regardless of what they actually learn, just to make their parents feel better.
Just like with food stamps, taxpayers have a right to know that the money they’re providing for schools is actually funding a quality education.
Yet in Florida that is not the case. Here, the voucher-school system is the Wild West with a lack of accountability and scary things funded with your tax dollars.
The Orlando Sentinel has documented this mess for years through its “Schools without Rules” investigation that found taxpayer-funded voucher schools where:
• “Teachers” lacked degrees or any kind of basic teaching certification • Finances were so disastrous that schools actually shut down in the middle of the school year, stranding families and students • Science classes taught students that dinosaurs roamed the earth alongside man, and history lessons claimed slavery and segregation weren’t really all that bad
• Administrators refused to admit students with disabilities or who had gay parents • Parents filed complaints that included “Cleaning lady substituting for teacher,” “They don’t provide lunch and they don’t even have a place to eat” and “I don’t see any evidence of academics”
I don’t care how pro-school choice you are, tax dollars shouldn’t fund that kind of nonsense.
Some of these fly-by-night schools set up in strip malls seem to thrive because they tell parents what they want to hear — that their kids who were struggling in public schools magically became straight-A students at voucher schools with little to no standards or legitimate measures of success.
Well, that’s the educational equivalent of junk food. And taxpayers wouldn’t fund that kind of nonsense if the state enacted basic accountability measures.
Namely, all voucher-eligible schools should be required to:
• Publish graduation rates and nationally accepted test scores • Hire teachers who are certified or at least have a college degree • Disclose all the curriculum being taught • Ban discrimination
Most good schools already do this. Think about it: what kind of reputable school wouldn’t agree to hire qualified teachers? Or wouldn’t want the public to see what kind of test scores their students produce?
If you want to send your kid to a school that’s unwilling to clear those ground-level hurdles, you shouldn’t expect taxpayers to fund it. Similarly, if you want to run a school that refuses to serve kids in wheelchairs or who are gay, you shouldn’t fund your discrimination with money that belongs to the people against whom you’re discriminating.
In Florida, some of the worst voucher schools are faith-based. But so are some of the best. Parents and taxpayers deserve to see the difference — the test scores that show whether students are actually learning.
Many faith-based schools embrace science and history. But some try to replace proven facts with their own beliefs or opinions, using “biology” books that claim evolution data is false and “history” books that try to put sunny spins on slavery and segregation.
The people who defend — and profit off — Florida’s unregulated voucher system usually cite “freedom” and “parental rights” as a justification for unfettered choice. But you know good and well that virtually every other taxpayer-funded system has sensible guardrails.
You can’t take Medicaid money to a witch doctor or a psychic “healer.” And just like we don’t give parents the “choice” to use SNAP vouchers to buy their kids Snicker bars, they don’t deserve the “freedom” to take money meant to provide a quality education to a school that can prove it’s providing one.
Basic transparency and accountability measures are needed for any program to be effective. So whenever you hear anyone protesting them, you have to wonder what it is they don’t want you to see.
Diane Ravitch's blog 