I just wanted to end today’s show by thanking all of the wonderful people who work behind the scenes at this network. You may have seen some reports about me and the show, and after giving all of this some careful consideration and weighing in alternative timeslots CNN offered me, I’ve decided to move on. I am grateful to CNN for the nearly 18 years I’ve spent here doing the news. People often ask me if the highlight of my career at CNN was at the White House covering Donald Trump. Actually, no. That moment came here when I covered former President Barack Obama’s trip to Cuba in 2016 and had the chance to question the dictator there, Raul Castro, about the island’s political prisoners. As the son of a Cuban refugee, I took home this lesson: It is never a good time to bow down to a tyrant. I have always believed it’s the job of the press to hold power to account. I’ve always tried to do that here at CNN, and I plan on doing all of that in the future. One final message. Don’t give in to the lies. Don’t give in to the fear. Hold on to the truth and to hope. Even if you have to get out your phone, record that message. I will not give in to the lies. “I will not give in to the fear!” Post it on your social media so people can hear from you, too. I’ll have more to say about my plans in the coming days. But until then, I want to thank all of you for tuning in. It has been an honor to be welcomed into your home for all these years. That’s the news. Reporting from Washington. I’m Jim Acosta.
The article focuses on one community college that they targeted, North Idaho College, which may lose its accreditation, not because of academic or financial problems but because its board is in chaos.
The extremists target all public education. They think education is indoctrination. They think it’s dangerous, even vocational and technical education.
Here are a few illustrative paragraphs:
The charter violations that kicked off this accreditation scandal four years ago never had anything to do with academics. The two-year community college offers a solid education and features the top nursing program in the state. Their finances are stable too. No, NIC might go under because the Board of Trustees has existed in a state of toxicity, chaos, and dysfunction ever since the far right gained a board majority four years ago.
It is difficult to overstate how catastrophic disaccreditation would be for the people of North Idaho. With a price tag 65 percent lower on average than four-year state institutions, community colleges place higher education within reach of the least advantaged Americans; over a third of their students make less than $20,000 per year. At NIC, 57 percent of students receive financial aid. Local businesses depend on the college for employee training on everything from office software to forklift operation. High school students can enroll in dual credit programs, which let students get a head start on their first year of college and allow homeschoolers to obtain official transcripts….
How could this happen? The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit….
The consequences of that agenda go far beyond NIC’s accreditation crisis. Idaho’s abortion laws are among the strictest in the country; citing difficulty recruiting doctors given the risk of criminalization, two hospitals havealready closed their labor and delivery departments, leaving many rural Idahoans hours from maternal care. Armed militia members have shown up in the children’s section of libraries looking for pornography, and libraries are limiting service due to legislation that holds librarians criminally liable for books deemed inappropriate. Idaho’s primary and secondary schools are literally falling apart; it spends less per student than any other state and ranks 43rd in education quality.
This “parasitic wasp” is at work in other red states.
Sherrilyn Ifill is a law professor who holds an endowed chair at Howard University. She is a former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
In this post, she offers sage advice about how to recharge your batteries and re-engage in the struggle for a better society. She wrote this piece soon after the 2024 election. It’s good advice.
….But ours is a subtle strength Potent with centuries of yearning,
Of being kegged and shut away In dark forgotten places. We shall endure To steal your senses In that lonely twilight Of your winter’s grief.
-Pauli Murray, To the Oppressors (1939)
The truth is that things are going to get very bad. America has gone over the cliff’s edge. How hard we land in the ravine below remains to be seen. But we are one week in, and things are already quite dire. Trump’s first round of cabinet nominees, and his insistence that his picks be installed without a vote of Congress is a defining moment. It demonstrates that there will be no bottom with this Administration.
Donald Trump and his coterie of supporters are firmly in control of the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. And because they are in charge of this country – which perhaps undeservedly, has stood as an example throughout much of the world as a symbol of freedom, equality, ethics, the rule of law and democracy – other countries will fall in our wake.
I am saying this now because I have always tried to be honest in my writings and analysis about this country. I say all of this because I have been able over the years to encourage my clients, my colleagues, my staff, my family and community to believe that we can fight and win. I have infected other people with my unshakeable optimism about what we can accomplish to transform this country.
I am going to keep fighting. It’s what I do. But I do not want to lead you astray. Because I do think that many of us – especially those of us in communities likely to be targeted by this Administration – need to see this moment as one in which we are focused on surviving this difficult time. I have faced the fact that we will not be able to move much forward in the next few years. In fact, I expect things to become so dire over the next two years, that we will scarcely recognize the country we live in. I expect that fear and cruelty will become part of our daily diet. We will hear the frightening sound of silence, as those who speak out most boldly against the excesses of the incoming administration, against its policies, against Musk and against Russia, find themselves at cross-purposes with a vindictive and cruel administration with almost unimaginable power to control communications, law, and the sense of reality itself.
Perhaps it won’t be that bad. But we are here in some measure, because far too many failed to imagine that the worst could happen. I have written already about “the nadir,” and I believe we must face it.
And so, our goal now must be first and foremost to survive this dark period with as much of our values, dignity, integrity, work, financial stability and physical and mental health intact as possible. We must also work to protect our families and communities, and to hold in place our most trusted and needed institutions, a modicum of the rule of law, our constitutional commitment to equality and to free expression. As I have said in earlier pieces, this is “planting time.” Planting is work. That work must be aimed at building ideas, theories, paradigms, institutions, skills, practices, and alliances that we can seed now for a future harvest – a fulsome and lush democracy that will reflect the very best of us.
We are not “watching the Trump show” this time. We’ve seen it already. We can dip in every now and then, but we must not become paralyzed watching the train wreck. We will, of course, push back against injustice, and defend our rights and citizenship when necessary in the courts. We will demand that congressional representatives, our Governors and our Mayors, act to protect our democratic rights. Even when we know they will not stand up for what is right, we must not be silent. We must not make it easy for them to be cowards or to take our rights. We must still call, write and email our representatives and show up at town halls and meetings. Remember that those who have fought for us over these past years are tired too. Let them see us in these spaces and hear from us.
But our primary work must be first and foremost to work in our communities – both physical and ideological. To build them up and to share time and ideas with those committed to democracy and justice. We each need a curriculum of local service.
We also need a personal curriculum that will allow us to contribute to the building of the future we dream of for ourselves and our families. That means that our core work must be to commit during this time to do less watching, and more learning and more growing. We need to become better citizens for the democracy we want. That means we must dedicate time to expanding our thinking and our knowledge, and to building up our democratic imagination. That means our work is to imagine, to ally, to experiment, restore, befriend, study, read, write, serve, and create. Every one of us. Even as chaos swirls around us.
I encourage you to show your children and grandchildren real things – nature, animals, how things are built, how to cook from scratch. Teach them cursive writing, so that they have a signature all their own. Take them to live concerts and theater. Go on field trips. Infuse their lives with memories of things that are true and concrete.
If you teach, use primary documents in your teaching, take your students to historic sites, listen to audio of oral arguments and speeches so that they will feel confident in their understanding of history, and know that history was made by human beings not machines.
If you litigate, do it with the expectation that you will win. And act like it. Show out. Be excellent and remain confident. Those who can still feel shame – whether those at your opponents table or those on the bench – will feel it when you hold the standard high. And your clients will never forget it.
If you organize, never stop. Plant those seeds deep in our communities.
If you hold office. Hold it. Do not give up your power. Use your voice. Master every rule. Make a record. I repeat. Make a record–so that the truth might be known.
To protect ourselves and our loved ones, there are also pragmatic things we must do. I’ve thought of a few:
Save some cash. And keep enough in the house for gas and food for a week.
Let yourself imagine what you would do if you lost your job in terms of finding new employment, paying rent/mortgage for several months, and start building what you need to be able to meet that moment if it comes.
Get needed vaccinations in case new HHS policies result in changes or delays in their development or availability. Stock up on COVID tests, and get the most recent COVID booster. Purchase Plan B if it’s available in your area.
Think about tightening security on your electronic devices. Be more thoughtful about social media, and even return to making phone calls and writing letters in some instances. I know it’s old school, but actually memorize the phone numbers of at least two loved ones.
Gird yourself spiritually, through your faith or other meditative practices, as we are all likely to hear or confront many disturbing and ugly interactions. Experience art, go on walks, dance, play Spades, Dominoes, Scrabble. We need resilience.
Walk away when you need to walk away. Challenge when you need to. Try to always have back up.
Take the bystander training offered by groups https://righttobe.org/ so that when you see outrages committed against members of your community or against strangers, you will have practice in how you might intervene or respond.
Get an online subscription to a news service from another country so that you have a reliable sense of what’s going on in the world, and how this country is being perceived.
Are your taxes paid, or more importantly, filed?
Is your passport up-to-date?
If you have money to give – then give to your local library, the food pantry, homelessness services. But also give to cultural institutions. Get a library card and a membership to a museum. Give to organizations working to hold back the worst that this administration may dish out – the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center, and so many others.
I am going to write more in this space. I hope you’ll subscribe and even pay a nominal fee to sustain the writing. I’m right here, going through this with all of you. And for me there is beauty in our shared walk. Let’s do this together.
Donny Convict is what would happen if Dunning and Kruger had a baby, and then dropped it on its head. he’s too fucking stupid to know just how fucking stupid he is. he has these moronic ideas, and then blurts them out like he’s the biggest genius who ever lived. and the MAGA yokels are right there to gobble it all down. yay, Donny! yay, External Revenue Service
Wikipedia: The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias that causes people to overestimate their abilities in a specific area, particularly when they have low ability in that task.
Jeff writes:
the Confederacy of Sewer Clowns Big Top Confirmation Circus rolled into DC yesterday, and the first jester to summersault into the ring was Pete Hegseth.
Pete is, of course, the ahem allegedly publicly drunk, ahem allegedly sexual-abusing goon who Donny saw on Fox News and then picked to head the Department of Defense.
here are a few things we learned about ahem allegedly Piss-Drunk Pete.
Senator Duckworth: “…you’re unqualified to do that. you can’t do the acquisition and cross-servicing agreements, which essentially are security agreements. you can’t even mention that. you’ve done none of those. you talked about the Indo-Pacific a little bit, and I’m glad that you mentioned it. can you name the importance of at least one of the nations in ASEAN, and what type of agreement we have with at least one of those nations, and how many nations re in ASEAN, by the way.”
Hegseth: “I couldn’t tell you.”
Senator Duckworth: “no, you couldn’t, because you couldn’t bother to—”
Hegseth: “I know we have allies in South Korea, Japan and Australia.”
Senator Duckworth: “none of those countries are in ASEAN. I suggest you do a little homework before you prepare for these types of negotiations.”
this is the crux of the matter. take away Pete’s ahem alleged predatory behavior towards women. take away the ahem alleged public drunkenness. Pete Hegesth utterly lacks the skills and knowledge required to head the Department of Defense — a massive bureaucracy that employs over 2.91 million people.
as a member of the Minnesota National Guard, Pete rose to the rank of Major. after that, he became a Fox News morning chat-show bobblehead. there’s a reason that Defense Secretaries are almost always lifetime military officers: it takes a lifetime of experience to acquire the skills necessary to do the job. Pete has none of that.
Pete’s only real qualification for the job — the only qualification that matters to Dear Leader — is that he’ll willingly carry out any order. for instance, Pete seems totally cool with shooting American civilians.
Senator Hirono: “in 2020, then-President Trump directed former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to shoot protestors in the legs in downtown DC — an order Secretary Esper refused to comply with. would you carry out such an order from President Trump to shoot protesters in the legs?”
Hegseth: [dodges the question]
Senator Hirono: “that sounds to me that you would comply with such an order. you will shoot protesters in the legs.”
Senator King: “I want to be clear. are we going to abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture or are we not?”
Hegseth: “what an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives to international bodies.”
oh, that’s lovely. we’re going to ignore a decades-old human rights agreement that almost every other nation on the planet abides by, because AMURRIKKKA FIRST. does Piss-Drunk Pete not realize that the Geneva Conventions also protects American soldiers and civilians? treaties only work when all countries abide by them. Pete should have learned this working well with others crap in kindergarten.
Hegseth: “commanders meet quotas to have a certain number of female infantry officers or infantry enlisted. and that disparages those women—”
Senator Gillibrand: “commanders do not have to meet quotas for the infantry. commanders do not have to have a quota for women in the infantry. that does not exist. It does not exist. and your statements are creating the impression that these exist. because they do not. there are not quotas.”
Pete absolutely does not want women serving in the combat. he wrote a book about it. he thinks women serving in the military is just more DEI crap that the commie Democrats cooked up to make America weak. and Pete’s willing to lie and claim that female combat soldiers are being forced upon commanders.
this ‘women can’t do a man’s job’ nonsense is the same misogynistic bullshit we’re hearing from the screech monkeys, about how Los Angeles is burning to the ground because the LA fire chief is a lesbian.
in Donny Convict’s America, only white men should be in positions of authority.
Senator Rounds: “he wants to bring lethality back in.”
here’s the dictionary definition of lethality: the capacity to cause great harm, destruction, or death — basically, what the United States Military already has.
so, why is Senator Rounds so excited to have the military “restored” to its current state? because MAGA Republicans have been brainwashed into believing that commie-marxist Democrats have turned the US armed forces into a bunch of emasculated sissiex who can’t fight. it’s why Esteemed Senator Fidel Cancun practically orgasmed over Russian army propaganda — because he believes this shit, too.
it’s a lie so patently dumb that only a MAGA would believe it — but it’s why Republicans are so hot to have Pete come in. he’s going to bring back lethality — and brutality — against our allies, against American protesters, against anyone Dear Leader tells him to.
Jay Kuo, lawyer, humorist and political consultant, watched the confirmation hearings of Pete Hegseth for the position of Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is notoriously unqualified. His Republican defenders treated his lack of experience and knowledge as a plus, a breath of fresh air. To charges of drunkenness, adultery, and womanizing, the Republican attitude was “Yawn. Everyone does it.”
Kuo writes:
Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, is many things: a serial adulterer, an accused rapist, a right-wing crusader and an often out-of-control drunk.
What he is not is qualified in any way to lead the Defense Department.
But apparently none of that posed any bar to the GOP senators on the Armed Services Committee, who appear ready to send Hegseth through to a full floor vote, which is now expected to go his way along a party line or near-party line vote.
Still, even assuming Hegseth’s confirmation is now assured, Democrats did a good job of laying the groundwork for resistance to and criticism of Hegseth’s leadership. They pulled no punches and demonstrated that it still matters to stand firm on the question of job qualifications, obeying the rule of law, and disqualifying questions of character.
No qualifications? Even better!
Republican senators spent much of yesterday’s confirmation hearing twisting Hegseth’s vices into virtues and his negatives into notches. For example, even though Hegseth has never led an organization of more than 200 people or a department with a budget of hundreds of millions let alone billions of dollars, this was somehow a plus.
Mr. Hegseth and his Republican allies on the panel made the case that his lack of experience compared with previous defense secretaries would be a plus.
Mr. Hegseth said: “As President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they’re retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives. And where has it gotten us?”
His utter inexperience was even “a breath of fresh air” per Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, with Hegseth being an outsider rather than from “the same cocktail parties that permeate Washington.”
In his opening statement, Hegseth even argued that he didn’t have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years” but that “it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”
This may have made for a good sound bite, but it is disrespectfully false and misleading. It completely whitewashes the fact that his predecessor, Gen. Lloyd Austin, whom Hegseth has implied was a DEI hire, literally ran a war in a desert. Sen. Chuck Hagel, who served as Defense Secretary under President Obama, still has shrapnel in him from his service in Vietnam.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) drove home the point that Hegseth simply isn’t qualified for the job when she asked him to name just one country within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), yet Hegseth began talking about South Korea, Japan and Australia.
“Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN,” responded Sen. Duckworth, who is a combat veteran who lost both legs and mobility in her right arm when her Blackhawk helicopter went down during the Iraq War from hostile fire. “I suggest you do a little homework,” she said.
As reporter Jordan Weissmann remarked, “This might seem like a small, embarrassing gotcha, but ASEAN is an acronym you encounter a lot if you do even very basic reading about the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China.”
The Trump “yes” man
Given that Hegseth’s senate confirmation is more or less in the bag, questions around whether he would be an independent check upon Trump’s excessive executive power have grown in importance.
For example, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked Hegseth whether the U.S. would abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture. Rather than state that we would, Hegseth responded, “What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.”
In a similar vein, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) had this exchange with Hegseth that highlighted the danger of having a puppet heading the Pentagon, with loyalty to Trump over the U.S. Constitution:
Sen. Slotkin: “As the Secretary of Defense, you will be the one man standing in the breach should President Trump give an illegal order, right? I’m not saying he will. But if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. Do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the Commander-in-Chief that would violate the US Constitution?”
Hegseth: “Senator, thank you for your service, but I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders.”
Sen. Slotkin then pressed Hegseth on this, giving real-world, not hypothetical, instances where his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, apologized for deploying forces in D.C. to put down protests and convinced President Trump not to deploy the 82nd Airborne. Hegseth resisted responding with yes or no answers and refused generally to second-guess or get ahead of conversations that he would have with the president, only grudgingly admitting by the end of the line of questioning that there are “laws and processes under our Constitution that would be followed” (using the passive voice, I should add).
During Sen. Slotkin’s questioning, Hegseth also appeared to confirm that he would use active duty U.S. forces to staff things like detention camps for migrants, which Sen. Slotkin noted the military is not trained to do as it is more of a policing function.
A disqualifying past history
When Democrats had opportunities to question Hegseth about his troublesome history, they scored blows over his alleged sexual assaults, public intoxication, mismanagement of nonprofits and opposition to women in combat.
The most notable exchange occurred between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Hegseth, when Kaine sought to clarify whether any of the behavior of which Hegseth is accused (including allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and spousal abuse) would be disqualifying for a nominee, at least in his opinion, were it proven to be true.
Hegseth repeatedly refused to address Kaine’s questions, claiming again and again that the allegations against him were from anonymous sources and that they were false. Kaine caught Hegseth in a bit of a trap, however, when he laid out the series of instances of adultery that included the incident he claimed as a consensual encounter. Even were that true, it still happened, Kaine pointed out, months after the birth of his daughter by the woman who would become his second wife after he had cheated on his first.
Sen. Kaine pointed out that it was Hegseth’s judgment that concerned him. The exchange is worth viewing in its entirety:
Sen. Kaine later went on MSNBC to underscore how evasive Hegseth had been. “Should committing a sexual assault be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should spousal abuse be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should drunkenness on the job be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. He wouldn’t answer any of them. And that was very telling to me.”
On the question of Hegseth’s alcohol consumption, one GOP committee member, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), rose to defend the nominee. He accused Democrats of hypocrisy, asking whether they had ever demanded senators who showed up drunk to step down from their positions.
This defense was awkward in three respects. First, it seemed to confirm that Hegseth indeed has a drinking problem, just one that is shared by some of Mullin’s Senate colleagues. Second, it completely ignores history because a prior nominee for Secretary of Defense, Sen. John Tower, was denied confirmation precisely because of issues over his excessive drinking and womanizing. And third, as Kaitlan Collins of CNN later pointed out to Mullins during an interview, how is the bad behavior of a senator a defense of someone who wants to run the Pentagon?
Gaming the system
By the time Hegseth even set foot in the committee room, the game was already rigged in his favor.
The main holdout in the GOP has always been Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is a sexual assault survivor and a combat veteran. Ernst has brought attention to the plight of female service members and has pressed for changes to how the Pentagon deals with cases of sexual assault. Because she sits on the Armed Services Committee, a no vote from her likely would have doomed Hegseth, whose nomination might never have even gotten out of committee.
Sen. Ernst had been lukewarm to Hegseth before the MAGA bullying began. As the New York Times reported,
Ms. Ernst initially appeared hostile to [Hegseth], telling reporters that he would “have his work cut out for him.” After a private meeting with Mr. Hegseth, she said on Fox News that she was not yet a “yes” on his confirmation.
Her confession prompted an immediate backlash from outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump, who targeted her with ads and social media posts, while prominent Iowa Republicans threatened to mount primary challenges against her in 2026.
Within days, Ms. Ernst met with Mr. Hegseth again, and announced that she had been heartened by his promises to audit the Pentagon and appoint a senior official to deter sexual assaults in the military and ensure that female service members would be considered for combat roles if they could meet the requirements.
Sen. Ernst’s political capitulation went beyond merely bowing to GOP pressure. Per reporting by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Sen. Ernst, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), even declined an offer to meet with Hegseth’s accuser—the woman who filed a complaint with the police claiming Hegseth had raped her after a GOP conference in Monterey, California.
So much for supporting victims of sexual assault.
The FBI background check on Hegseth was already woefully deficient because its investigators interviewed none of Hegseth’s accusers or former spouses. This is contrary to standard protocol, which advises interviews of all current and former spouses of nominees. When the FBI background check finally came back, it came with instructions not to share it with any of the Committee members beyond the chair and the ranking Democratic member.
Finally, to hamstring the vetting process even further, the GOP only permitted only one round of questioning of Hegseth, which completed after just four hours yesterday. Seven minutes for each senator to question the nominee, who largely refused to answer the question asked, produced the desired result: It barely scratched the surface of what the public is entitled to know.
Our reader who calls him/herself “Democracy” writes here about Jeff Bezos’ shameless betrayal of the founding principles of The Washington Post, as well as its recent motto “Democracy dies in darkness.” He not only canceled the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (to avoid taking sides), but he (or David Shipley, editor of the editorial page), canceled a cartoon critical of billionaires (including Bezos) who rushed to pay court to the new, felonious president.
Why would a titan with assets of more than $200 billion bend his knee and kiss the ring of a convicted felon? Why would Mark Zuckerberg, also with assets of more than $200 billion, immediately made his peace with Trump by eliminating content moderation from Facebook, welcoming the return to FB of Nazis, conspiracy theorists, racists, and other malefactors. Are they fearful of losing a few billions? Are they worried about being left out of dinners at Mar-a-Lago?
Bear in mind that The Washington Post led the way in discrediting Joseph McCarthy (those who were alive then will never forget Herblock’s cartoons, portraying him as a thug) and exposing the Watergate Scandal, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.
Bezos’s cowardice is causing the loss of excellent journalists, readership, revenue–and most important–reputation.
“Democracy” wrote, as a comment on this blog:
When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established seven “guiding principles” for the newspaper. At the very top was this:
“The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”
Some of the other principles were these:
* “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”
* “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”
* “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”
* “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”
Given what has happened to The Post in the last couple of years under Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, Eugene Meyer must be spinning in his grave.
Prior to the election, The Fiscal Times reported this:
“23 Nobel Prize-winning economists expressed support for the policies proposed by Kamala Harris, warning that the policies of her opponent would be ‘counterproductive.’…The 23 Nobel laureates — more than half of all living recipients of the economics award — said that the Harris agenda focused on the middle class and entrepreneurship would ‘improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness.’…By comparison, Trump’s agenda of high tariffs and regressive tax cuts would ‘lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.’ In addition, in their view Trump represents a threat to the rule of law and political stability, necessary components of a thriving economy.”
The New York Times reported this:
“More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president…The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that ‘the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.’ Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would ‘jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,’ the letter said.”
And yet, Jeff Bezos SPIKED a Post endorsement of Harris, and then lied about it in a column that was shameful, dishonest, and disreputable to The Post and the quality journalists who work there, or who used to, because a number of them have already quit or are planning on exiting.
Bezos had a relatively simple choice.
Honor The Post’s masthead logo — “Democracy Dies in Darkness — AND the principles established by Eugene Meyer, OR not.
Bezos chose racism and misogyny and sedition, and fascism.
“Monday, he swore an oath to uphold the constitution, went across the street for lunch, then returned to the Reich Chancellery and outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists and turned to his main agenda: an empowering law that would give him the authority to make good on his promises to revive the economy…withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners, and exact revenge on political opponents. ‘Heads will roll,’ Hitler vowed…
“When Hitler wondered whether the army could be used to crush any public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea out of hand, observing ‘that a soldier was trained to see an external enemy as his only potential opponent.’…Blomberg could not imagine German soldiers being ordered to shoot German citizens on German streets in defense of Hitler’s government…Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentarian swamp”—den parlamentarischen Sumpf—only to find himself now foundering in a quagmire of partisan politics and banging up against constitutional guardrails. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.”
You’d think that Jeff Bezos might be aware of all of this. He likely is. But he’s chosen to collude with Trump, presumably because it helps his bank account – as if he needs that. Bezos gave $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund, which presumably Trump will pocket, and he coughed up $40 million to produce a “documentary”on Melania Trump, set to air later this year. A. Documentary. On. Melania. Trump.
Honestly, given her “accomplishments,” couldn’t a suitable “documentary” be produced for about $40?
As someone who used to deliver The Post, and who has been a reader for more than 50 years, I think it only appropriate to tell Jeff Bezos from the bottom of my heart that he can Kiss My Ass.
Today is the fourth anniversary of the worst act of insurrection in our nation’s history. Urged on by President Donald Trump, who insisted that he actually won the election of 2020, a large mob stormed the United States Capitol in hopes of stopping the certification of the election of Joe Biden.
To be clear, Trump is a world-class liar and a very sore loser. He simply refused to admit that he lost the election, fair and square. Biden won the electoral vote and the popular vote. Trump’s lawyer challenged the voting results in multiple states. They filed more than 60 lawsuits, appealed twice to the U.S. Supreme Court, and lost every time. They lost in courts where the judge was appointed by Trump, as well as by other Presidents.
Still, he refused to concede his loss. He spent the past four years claiming that he had been cheated, even though he never produced a scintilla of evidence to support his lies. Several of his lawyers were disciplined or disbarred. His personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani was disbarred and also fined $148 million for defaming two election workers in Georgia. Although he had declared that he is bankrupt, Giuliani continues to turn over his assets to the women he defamed. Trump cannot pardon civil judgments, so Giuliani is likely to lose not only his law license but all of his assets.
Yet Trump survived, having persuaded his faithful base that he had been cheated in 2020, despite his lack of evidence and multiple indictments and convictions.
History will say this about Trump:
He was the first President who refused to participate in the peaceful transfer of power to the winner of the election.
He was the first President to inspire an insurrection against the government.
He will be the first convicted felon ever to serve as President.
His insurrection and his name will live forever in infamy.
Quite an ignominious legacy.
To read an excellent article by Robert Reich on the same topic, open this link.
Joyce Vance is a veteran federal prosecutor; she was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern district of Alabama from 2009-2017. She writes a blog called “Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance.” She usually writes about the law, the justice system, and Trump’s efforts to avoid accountability for his misdeeds. But in this post, she addresses the root cause of his appeal: low-information voters who are hoodwinked by his lies and believe he will fight for them. Ha. Not funny.
She writes:
It’s no wonder that Project 2025 calls for putting an end to the Department of Education. Trump’s electoral success depended on so-called low-information voters, members of the electorate who couldn’t or didn’t distinguish between the tough talk and tough guy image the candidate portrayed and the reality of the policies that come with his win. That’s often true for MAGA candidates, who are inexplicably able to attract the voters who are harmed by the policies they subsequently pass, as with tax cuts for the extremely wealthy and the working-class voters who didn’t benefit from them, but made them possible.
The Washington Post had this story today about the hopes of low-income voters who went for Trump in 2024, like a single mom who said she sometimes has to choose between buying toilet paper and milk and told reporters, “He is more attuned to the needs of everyone instead of just the rich … I think he knows it’s the poor people that got him elected, so I think Trump is going to do more to help us.” So far, that’s not looking good.
This very predictable reporting about voters suffering from buyers’ remorse is emerging even before Trump takes office. These people hope he won’t do exactly what he said he would during the campaign and has been focused on during his transition with programs like the Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk’s DOGE—cut government spending that they depend on. Whether it’s low-income people, mixed-status immigrant families, people who rely on Social Security, or parents with immune-compromised kids who rely on immunized classrooms, people voted against their own self-interest and are now facing that reality.
There are no do-overs in presidential elections. Successful disinformation campaigns or campaigns where image trumps consequences have lasting effects.
But spin, or disinformation—however you want to characterize it—designed to redirect voters away from focusing on bad facts about candidates can work, and this past election proved it. This T-shirt ad that the algorithm fed me earlier this week is an example of how Trump’s criminal conviction was sold to voters: the mythical outlaw, not the corrupt criminal. It’s hard to believe Americans fell for that, but they did, giving Trump a pass and letting him cultivate an image that was one step further out there than Sarah Palin’s maverick.
Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.
Stepping on education and staunching the flow of information is a key goal for any authoritarian. Remember when Trump told an evangelical group during the campaign that if they voted in 2024 it would be the last time they had to vote? That’s something that Americans, hopefully, will not fall for, because the 2026 midterms will be key. If guardrails are going to be rebuilt, that’s where an important part of it will happen. And while we’re all burned out from the last election, this next one will matter; we will need to reengage, because a big Democratic win could staunch the bleeding from unfettered acquiescence by the legislative branch to Trump, who currently commands majorities in both chambers. That means the provision of accurate information and accurate analysis of that information to voters who will put it to use is important. But what does that look like in a country that voted for Trump?
One thing that is clear from the ease with which Trump seems to have stripped so many voters of their common sense is the need to restore civics education in this country. That’s a long-term plan and a big topic that we need to take on over time, but it’s not too early for us to begin to think about what we can do in the coming year ahead of the midterms. For one thing, if it’s right for you, even if it’s a stretch, consider running or seeking appointment to a school board. Republicans got the jump on Democrats in this arena. It’s time to catch up. Or, if that’s not in your lane, make the time to show up at school board meetings and demand civics education in our schools. Progress in this area will take time, but we can all set a good example and encourage people around us to do a better job of understanding what matters in government. Ironically, if 2017 is any indication, people caught off guard (although who knows how) by some of the worst excesses Trump is likely to engage in will be ready to be better informed and reengage in democracy. Capturing that moment will be important.
One of the goals of Project 2025 is terminating the Department of Education. There is growing Republican support for that plan at the state level by leaders who want to restore state control (much like conservatives sought restoration of abortion policy to the hands of red state officials in Dobbs). Enter Trump’s nominee to head the Department, Linda McMahon, who ran the Small Business Administration (SBA) for him from 2017 to 2019.
Trump’s appointment of the professional wrestling magnate has drawn little comment as the media has focused on Matt Gaetz, Pete Hegseth, and others. Suffice it to say she does not appear to possess much of a background in public education. She was on the Connecticut Board of Education for one year, but there has been reporting she received that appointment after lying about having a degree in education. When that report came to light while McMahon was running, unsuccessfully, for a Connecticut Senate seat, she said that “she mistakenly thought her degree was in education because she did a semester of student teaching, and that she had written to the governor’s office the previous year to correct the error after another newspaper noticed the mistake.” (I, too, did some student teaching in college, but I was always clear my degree was in political science and international relations.)
McMahon is a longtime Trump ally and financial backer, apparently key qualifications for the job. After two years at the SBA, she stepped aside to run Trump’s America First Action PAC. Other qualifications: Yahoo News reported that “Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary was once pile-driven by a 7ft wrestler and feigned being drugged unconscious while her husband cheated on her.” Yahoo went on to recount that “Mr. Trump served as a sponsor and host for WWE events in Atlantic City in the late 1980s and years later appeared in the ring himself, when he took a razor to the head of Ms. McMahon’s scandal-ridden husband, Vince, as the wrestling boss wailed. In 2013, WWE inducted Mr. Trump into its hall of fame.”
The National Education Association ran an editorial opposing McMahon’s confirmation. They called her “unqualified” and wrote that she “spent years pushing policies that would defund and destroy public schools.” That sounds like a good fit if your agenda involves destroying the Department of Education. Start at the top.
NEA President Becky Pringle said, “McMahon’s only mission is to eliminate the Department of Education and take away taxpayer dollars from public schools, where 90% of students – and 95% of students with disabilities – learn, and give them to unaccountable and discriminatory private schools.”
So while we begin to think about ways to repair democracy, medium-term goals like winning midterm elections, and long-term goals like restoring civics education, spare a moment for some short-term plans: write to your senators about McMahon’s nomination. It’s flying largely under the radar screen, and it should not be. Do not obey in advance, and do not make it easy for Trump to destroy democratic institutions like the Department of Education with the complicity of your state and federal elected officials. We have a lot of work to do when it comes to public education. We have to insist that free, publicly funded, high-quality education is available to every child. Our engagement as citizens is everything. Let’s get to work.
The Thought Police lost an important case in Arkansas! Score one for librarians, booksellers, and people who read books! It’s a setback for those who don’t read books, never have, never will.
A federal judge Monday tossed out parts of an Arkansas state law that allowed librarians and booksellers to be sent to prison for up to a year for allowing minors to access “obscene” or “harmful” materials, whatever local officials might decide is “obscene” or “harmful.” Probably gay penguins.
In his ruling, US District Judge Timothy Brooks found that the law, Act 372, violated the First Amendment and also generally sucked, was overly vague, and didn’t provide adequate guidance to libraries and booksellers to help them avoid being arbitrarily prosecuted. The law created a new process for complaints and required libraries (tell you what, just assume “and booksellers” is part of every sentence, OK?) to shelve “harmful” materials in a special adults-only section, although it didn’t mandate that such a section be behind a beaded curtain like at an old video store. A similar law in Idaho — minus the librarian-jailing — is also being challenged in federal court, as are multiple other censorship laws.
Brooks wrote that the law “deputizes librarians and booksellers as the agents of censorship; when motivated by the fear of jail time, it is likely they will shelve only books fit for young children and segregate or discard the rest,” which was of course the point. For all the Mad Moms’ insistence that they only want to protect tiny innocent kids from “obscene” materials, the actual targets of book banning tend to be anything rightwing parents dislike, especially mentions of LGBTQ people, books about race, and sex education.
Holly Dickson, executive director of the ACLU of Arkansas, said yippee, now we can poison kids’ minds, destroy the family, and kill God, or at least that’s how wingnuts will interpret what she actually said, which was
“This was an attempt to ‘thought police,’ and this victory over totalitarianism is a testament to the courage of librarians, booksellers, and readers who refused to bow to intimidation…”
To learn more about the court decision, open the link.
Several days ago, Elon Musk tweeted his endorsement of an extremist political party in Germany, the AfD, which is known for its xenophobic and hateful views. A number of pundits said he had thrown his support to a Neo-Nazi party. J.D. Vance soon added his praise of the extremist party.
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a scholar of extremism, wrote at the MSNBC website, about the alarm bells that Musk and Vance set off.
“Only the AfD can save Germany,” Musk posted on X, prompting backlash from conservative and mainstream German leaders and the global Jewish community about a key Trump adviser’s endorsement of a party that has flirted with Nazi and white supremacist slogans and espoused dehumanizing and hateful rhetoric against immigrants and Muslims. In the wake of the criticism, Musk doubled down, writing the next day that “AfD is the only hope for Germany.”
Make no mistake: It is extremely dangerous to have an American vice president-elect and a core Trump adviser voice support for the AfD, therefore normalizing very extreme political positions.
Vance’s more tacit endorsement for AfD came in the form of a post responding to claims that AfD is dangerous. “It’s so dangerous for people to control their borders,” Vance tweeted sarcastically Saturday, implying support for the party’s anti-immigration positions. “So so dangerous. The dangerous level is off the charts.”
Make no mistake: It is extremely dangerous to have an American vice president-elect and a core Trump adviser voice support for the AfD, therefore normalizing very extreme political positions. The AfD has called for mass deportations, argued that children with disabilities should be removed from regular schools, and runs social media ads blaming immigrants for crimeand sexual violence. One anti-immigrant ad run by the AfD showed the belly of a pregnant white woman with the phrase “New Germans? We’ll make them ourselves.” Another campaign billboard used a 19th century painting of a slave market — depicting a nude, white woman having her teeth inspected by turban-clad, brown men — to warn that Europe could become “Eurabia,” a reference to a conspiracy theory favored by white supremacists.
To finish reading, open the link.
Trump’s advisers are showing their hand awfully early. Know them by those they admire.
Diane Ravitch's blog 