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Trump Regime Inflicts Chaos on Prestigious Science Agencies

By dianeravitch
May 30, 2025 //
11

Jocelyn Kaiser wrote in Science magazine about the chaos inflicted on the National Institutes of Health by Trump appointees and Elon Musk’s DOGS (not a misspelling) wrecking crew. Large numbers of scientists were fired, some were rehired, then fired again. What was the goal? Was it to sow demoralization and fear? If so, it succeeded.

Since World War II, the U.S. has led the world in science, medicine, and technology, which are important components of our economy. It’s by no means clear why Trump selected people who were determined to disrupt and destabilize the core of the federal science program. Kaiser interviewed many insiders to compile this overview of a machine of destruction, unleashed for unknown reasons on some of our most important science agencies.

Kaiser wrote

On a cool, sunny, mid-April day, the cheerful redbuds and other flowering trees amid the sprawling labs on the National Institutes of Health (NIH) main campus belied the pervasive gloom. Nearly 3 months into President Donald Trump’s administration, NIH in-house scientists and other workers were reeling from mass layoffs of colleagues; the removal of leaders; and limits on travel, communication, and purchasing that have shut the agency off from the outside world, hamstrung experiments, and crushed the community’s spirits.

On that spring day in Bethesda, Maryland, one senior scientist lamented that two star colleagues in his institute were heading back to their native China from NIH, abandoning a destination that had always drawn talent from around the world. “I want to cry,” he said. Another pointed to the abrupt retirement the previous day of a noted NIH nutrition scientist who said the agency had censored his publications and interactions with the media.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), billionaire Elon Musk’s quasi-official White House enforcer, “pops in and out” of online meetings of senior leaders, the scientists said. Another researcher, who is not a U.S. citizen, mentioned that he has prepared a “deportation plan,” including a company lined up to ship belongings back to his native country, in case he’s fired and loses his work visa.

The atmosphere is one of “chaos and fear and frustration and anger,” said a senior scientist with NIH’s intramural research program who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to protect themselves and others from retribution. This scientist added: “It’s this feeling of utter powerlessness and repeated insults.”

A former top NIH official who was forced out believes that’s the intent. “I think the plan is to sow as much chaos as possible. … I think they want a dispirited workforce at NIH so people will just say ‘to hell with it’ and leave.”

It’s working. Hundreds of NIH employees took voluntary buyouts offered by the Trump administration. And at least 25 of the roughly 320 physician-researchers who lead trials of drugs, cell therapies, and vaccines at NIH’s massive Clinical Center are leaving, as are consulting physicians, a researcher there told Science.

In NIH entryways, recently installed portraits of Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and new NIH Director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya have become a forum for silent protests. A photo of tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square during China’s 1989 student uprising was briefly plastered below one set of visages. On a different wall on another day, flyers appeared for a nationwide protest of Trump’s science cuts along with a Post-it note with the word “Shame.” A staff memo sent out the day a Science reporter visited warned of penalties for “damage or destruction of federal property” including “defacement of portraits.”

A researcher who has spent more than 2 decades with NIH’s intramural research program believes the world’s largest biomedical agency will never be the same. “However bad everyone on the outside thinks it is, it is a million times worse. They’re dismantling and destroying everything.”

Along with firing about 2500 of the agency’s 20,000-strong federal workforce and pushing others to retire, Trump officials have used what some call “bureaucratic sabotage” in ways that likely explain why NIH has disbursed at least $1.8 billion less in funding to outside researchers in this administration’s first 3 months than it did in the same time period in 2024. They have canceled more than 800 grants on topics such as HIV research, transgender health, and vaccine hesitancy. NIH, at HHS’s behest, also tried to impose a crippling cut in the overhead payments made to universities that carry out grant-funded research.

More disruption looms, including HHS-demanded cuts to billions of dollars in contracts that fund key support staff and research centers and a White House proposal due any day now that will likely aim to slash up to 44% from NIH’s $47.4 billion budget and overhaul its structure. An agency that once had strong bipartisan support and was seen as the crown jewel of U.S. science, and the envy of the world, now faces a diminished, uncertain future.

I think the plan is to sow as much chaos as possible. … I think they want a dispirited workforce at NIH so people will just say ‘to hell with it’ and leave.

Some on the NIH campus that April day held out hope for Bhattacharya, who has said he wants to “undo some of the disruptions” and get NIH research back on track. Bhattacharya told Science this week, “It’s been a tough period” at NIH, but “I think things have turned around significantly.”

But others see him as firmly aligned with the Trump administration. In recent remarks to the research community, Bhattacharya said he wants to pivot NIH toward Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda, which focuses on chronic diseases, a shift that could come at the expense of the basic research and infectious disease studies that the agency now funds. “His presentation was distressing on multiple fronts,” says longtime NIH observer Keith Yamamoto, a cell biologist at the University of California (UC) San Francisco. 

Others outside the agency share a pessimistic assessment of NIH. “I don’t think there’s any way to sugarcoat the last 100 days. The state of the enterprise is chaotic and it’s in jeopardy,” says Mary Woolley, president of Research!America, a biomedical research advocacy group. “I am terribly worried,” says molecular biologist Shirley Tilghman, former president of Princeton University. “It will take years to undo the damage that is being inflicted right now.”

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION’S interference with NIH began the day after he took office, when HHS political appointees imposed a “pause” on communications from its 27 institutes and centers. Past administrations had sometimes briefly halted press releases and other communications, but this time, NIH extended the pause to public meeting attendance by scientists who handle grant programs and reviews. That meant meetings were abruptly halted, sometimes minutes before the start time or even midway through. In-house scientists and grants staff were also told to freeze hiring, purchasing, and travel. Days later, on 27 January, the White House froze grant payments from all federal agencies.

That first week, Trump appointed an acting director to replace Monica Bertagnolli, who had stepped down as NIH director days before the presidential transition. But instead of veteran Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak, who had previously held the acting role, he chose Matthew Memoli, a longtime influenza researcher with NIH’s intramural program. Memoli had questioned the need for widespread COVID-19 vaccinations during the pandemic. That put him at odds with Anthony Fauci, then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and a frequent target of conservatives, and may have elevated Memoli in the administration’s eyes.

On Friday of the second week, the director’s office, known as Building 1, received an order to post a notice imposing an immediate 15% cap on indirect costs, the overhead payments the agency includes with each grant, to save $4 billion. Former NIH officials say they were alarmed by the sudden memo, which had multiple errors and directly conflicted with congressional restrictions on the agency’s indirect costs rates. By Monday, universities had won a court order halting the cap, arguing it was illegal.

That same week, the first signs of a widely expected purge of NIH leadership emerged. Tabak was called to a meeting at HHS headquarters in downtown Washington, D.C., and told he was reassigned to a job there and would lose his NIH lab. The 25-year NIH veteran announced his retirement later that day. Deputy Director for Extramural Research Michael Lauer, who oversaw NIH grant policies, abruptly retired later that week amid rumors he, too, would be reassigned. Before he left, Lauer ordered staff to lift the NIH grant freeze after a court ruled it was illegal.

Next came what many dubbed the “Valentine’s Day massacre”—the dismissal of nearly 1200 NIH employees who, along with thousands of other federal workers, had a “probationary” status because they were new to the agency or, in many cases, were veterans but had recently changed positions. Among them were crucial Clinical Center staff along with more than a dozen tenure-track investigators. Illustrating the haphazard nature of the firings, the clinical staff and animal care workers were quickly rehired when it became clear they were essential, and the firings of the tenure-track scientists were also eventually reversed. HHS also abruptly halted routine renewals of the many intramural scientists on term-limited appointments—a policy reversed after an appeal from Memoli but that NIH researchers say has recently resurfaced.

AS FEBRUARY ROLLED into March, a new threat crystallized for the university scientists and other extramural researchers who receive the bulk of NIH funds: HHS ordered NIH to cancel hundreds of grants that allegedly violated Trump executive orders barring funding for topics that touched on diversity, equity, and inclusion and LGBTQ health. The cuts included HIV trials in South Africa, training grants, health equity and environmental studies, as well as work on vaccine hesitancy and COVID-19.

“It was soul sucking every time to see those lists of grants that were vulnerable,” says Emily Erbelding, an NIAID division director who was put on leave this month. NIH letters terminating the grants stated that the work “no longer effectuates agency priorities”—language meant to satisfy recently revised grant policy requirements.

The cuts have made a huge dent in some research fields, such as transgender health, which has lost at least $157 million in unspent NIH funding. Although researchers can appeal terminations, and a few cancellations have been reversedwithout explanation, some scientists have already shut down their programs. After losing $5 million in research and training grants studying ways to improve health care for Alzheimer’s disease in sexual and gender minorities, social scientist Jason Flatt of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas laid off his two full-time staff and is scrambling to find other support for five graduate students. “This has been my life’s work,” says Flatt, who now expects to pivot to less politically fraught Alzheimer’s studies.

It will take years to undo the damage that is being inflicted right now.

At some top research universities all NIH funding, regardless of its focus, has become leverage as the Trump administration pressures the institutions on matters unrelated to science. First the White House killed NIH grants, and other federal funds, to Columbia University in March saying it had not properly combated antisemitism in the wake of campus protests against Israel’s bombing of Gaza. Columbia has been negotiating policy changes, so far without winning back its funding, more of which was frozen. At dozens of other universities NIH funding is threatened. Harvard University, facing the loss of at least $2.2 billion in multiyear grants from NIH and other agencies, has called the demands an attack on academic freedom and on 21 April, filed a lawsuit challenging the cancellations. Bhattacharya told Science he supports the freezes because “these institutions ought to obey the civil rights laws.” 

Much of the money flowing from NIH to universities supports early-career researchers. Other changes at the agency also threaten the U.S. pipeline for scientists. Virtually all NIH-funded training programs aimed at attracting underrepresented groups to science are now gone. “I’m concerned that these events are very likely to affect who decides to stay in science and we will lose important and necessary scientific talent,” says cell biologist Needhi Bhalla of UC Santa Cruz, who has mentored several trainees supported by these awards.

THE FIRST DAY OF APRIL, Bhattacharya’s start date, brought another wave of about 1300 job cuts at NIH as part of Kennedy’s plans to downsize and centralize operations at all HHS agencies. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) faced similarly huge reductions in force. That same week, four institute directors and one acting director at NIAID and other NIH institutes were told they had been put on leaveand in most cases offered reassignments to sites with the Indian Health Service far from their current homes. (None has publicly resigned or accepted the reassignment so far.) Other NIH leaders, including the chief of the agency’s well-regarded international center and some close to Fauci, were removed as well.

The HHS-imposed staff cuts, which ignored a plan developed by NIH leadership and submitted by Memoli, wiped out many communications, acquisitions, human resources, and policy offices. They swept up intramural scientists who many thought would be protected, including 10 tenured neuroscientists who Kennedy later said were fired by mistake—one of many acknowledged errors at NIH, CDC, and FDA. (As this story went to press, these scientists were back in the lab but had still not been officially reinstated.)

Even NIH’s biggest supporters acknowledge that some parts of the massive agency could be improved or made more efficient through centralization of necessities such as information technology. But as one senior scientist put it, “There was no planning.” Institute leaders are now scrambling to get functions handled by the disbanded offices operating again.

However bad everyone on the outside thinks it is, it is a million times worse. They’re dismantling and destroying everything.

Some of the internal restrictions have recently been eased. Peer-review meetings to consider grant proposals have resumed, as well as institute council meetings, which do the second level of funding review. Bhattacharya quickly lifted the freeze on travel and purchasing.

Yet the staff shortages are still taking a toll. One intramural scientist had to cancel a talk at a local university because his slides, submitted 30 days earlier, had not yet been approved. The few senior scientists who have rare agency credit cards are swamped with requests to buy lab supplies. “The backlogs are crazy,” a postdoc says—6 months for mice or a microscope part that would normally take 2 weeks. Researchers are getting by with workarounds such as sharing antibodies.

With continuing losses of key technicians, physicians, and administrative staff, the Clinical Center now lags in lab testing and faces difficulty bringing in patients from outside the United States, who are needed for studies of rare diseases. Its patient population has dropped by at least 30% since Trump took over, to below 70 in April compared with more than 100 during the same month in past years, a senior clinical investigator there tells Science. The Clinical Center’s Steven Rosenberg, a pioneer in using a person’s own immune cells to fight their advanced cancer, says the staff cuts and purchasing delays mean up to 2-month delays in treatment for his seriously ill patients and fewer treated overall. “We’re working at a much slower pace,” he says.

WHETHER THINGS WILL get better at NIH now that it has a permanent director is anyone’s guess. Although he has said he backs research on health disparities, which his own work has examined, Bhattacharya supports the Trump administration cuts to diversity programs, which he calls “a political ideology.” And he has brushed off killing HIV grants in South Africa as part of a shift of resources to support Kennedy’s focus on Americans’ health. “I’m concerned that he has little autonomy,” Yamamoto says.

Rosenberg, who has met with the new director, is more optimistic: “He seemed very reasonable and eager to improve things,” he says.

More reshaping of NIH could be coming. Career staffers in Building 1 have been replaced with political appointees with no experience with research agencies. DOGE and HHS are expected to approve new grant solicitations, and the agency this week began to absorb an HHS-mandated $2.6 billion cut in contracts that fund vaccine scientists, equipment maintenance, long-running heart disease studies, and much more.

Kennedy’s influence is a particular worry. The HHS director ordered NIH to launch a study of the causes of autism, which Kennedy has falsely blamed on vaccines, although he says other “environmental” causes could have a role. Another study the White House and Kennedy have told NIH to instigate will explore “regret” among transgender people who undergo hormone treatments. “The conclusions seem predetermined,” says biochemist Jeremy Berg of the University of Pittsburgh, former director of NIH’s basic science institute and former editor-in-chief of Science. “It undermines the credibility of NIH particularly because it seems designed to drive a particular political agenda.”

The Republicans in control of Congress so far have taken no action to protect NIH, although Senator Susan Collins (R–ME) said today at a hearing on the state of the biomedical research enterprise that the cuts to NIH scientists and grants “must be reversed.” Collins chairs the committee that oversees NIH’s budget and held the hearing in partnership with the panel’s senior Democrat, Senator Patty Murray (WA). Murray has protested the many NIH cuts, most recently to NIH’s landmark Women’s Health Initiative, which HHS said it had reversed after an outcry. Congress will also decide whether to go along with Trump’s proposed, radically smaller NIH budget and reorganization plan. Indirect cost payments will almost certainly be revisited and trimmed. “We are undoubtedly at an extremely challenging time for the biomedical research community,” says Jennifer Zeitzer, deputy executive director of the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology.

For now, the biomedical research community and NIH staff are hoping the resumption of council meetings will allow grants to flow out again—although staff shortages will be an impediment. Disbursing NIH’s full budget before the end of the fiscal year on 30 September “is going to be a near impossible feat for the number of people left,” says a former cancer institute official. If so, hundreds of millions of dollars in congressionally approved funding meant to identify new medical treatments and test them in patients across the U.S. and world will go back to the Department of the Treasury.

Like those on the NIH campus who spoke with Science, many of the agency’s former leaders are also not optimistic about the next 100 days, or the rest of Trump’s term. Geneticist Francis Collins, NIH director from 2009 to 2021 who abruptly retired in late February and closed his NIH lab, is one. “Reckless decisions will disrupt a noble institution with a stunningly positive track record, drive young scientists to leave the country, and damage the future health of the nation.”

With reporting by Sara Reardon.

Update, 2 May, 11:55 a.m.: Additional comments from NIH Director Jayanta “Jay” Bhattacharya, from an interview after this story was posted, have been added.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Health, Science, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Courts Are Our Guardrail–For Now

By dianeravitch
May 28, 2025 //
11

Heather Cox Richardson is a national treasure. she is also an exemplar of the value of studying history as a guide to today’s events and their meaning.

She writes:

Political scientist Adam Bonica noted last Friday that Trump and the administration suffered a 96% loss rate in federal courts in the month of May. Those losses were nonpartisan: 72.2% of Republican-appointed judges and 80.4% of Democratic-appointed judges ruled against the administration.

The administration sustained more losses today.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency.” The administration had tried to dismiss the case, but Chutkan ruled the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’” “The Constitution does not permit the Executive to commandeer the entire appointments power by unilaterally creating a federal agency…and insulating its principal officer from the Constitution as an ‘advisor’ in name only,” she wrote.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon struck down Trump’s March 27 executive order targeting the law firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, more commonly known as WilmerHale. This law firm angered Trump by employing Robert Mueller, the Republican-appointed special counsel who oversaw an investigation of the ties between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russian operatives.

Leon, who was appointed to the bench by President George W. Bush, made his anger obvious. “[T]he First Amendment prohibits government officials from retaliating against individuals for engaging in protected speech,” Leon noted. “WilmerHale alleges that ‘[t]he Order blatantly defies this bedrock principle of constitutional law.’” Leon wrote: “I agree!” He went on to strike down the order as unconstitutional.

Today NPR and three Colorado public radio stations sued the Trump administration over Trump’s executive order that seeks to impound congressionally appropriated funds for NPR and PBS. The executive order said the public media stations do not present “a fair, accurate, or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens.” NPR’s David Folkenflik reported White House spokesperson Harrison Fields’s statement today that public media supports “a particular party on the taxpayers’ dime,” and that Trump and his allies have called it “left-wing propaganda.”

The lawsuit calls Trump’s executive order and attempt to withhold funding Congress has already approved “textbook retaliation.” “[W]e are not choosing to do this out of politics,” NPR chief executive officer Katherine Maher told NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly. “We are choosing to do this as a matter of necessity and principle. All of our rights that we enjoy in this democracy flow from the First Amendment: freedom of speech, association, freedom of the press. When we see those rights infringed upon, we have an obligation to challenge them.”

U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis today denied the administration’s motion for a 30-day extension of the deadline for it to answer the complaint in the lawsuit over the rendition of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man sent to El Salvador through what the administration said was “administrative error.”

Despite five hearings on the case, the administration’s lawyers didn’t indicate they needed any more time, but today—the day their answer was due—they suddenly asked for 30 more days. Xinis wrote that they “expended no effort in demonstrating good cause. They vaguely complain, in two sentences, to expending ‘significant resources’ engaging in expedited discovery. But these self-described burdens are of their own making. The Court ordered expedited discovery because of [the administration’s] refusal to follow the orders of this court as affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit and the United States Supreme Court.”

Trump is well known for using procedural delays to stop the courts from administering justice, and it is notable that administration lawyers have generally not been arguing that they will win cases on the merits. Instead, they are making procedural arguments.

Meanwhile, stringing things out means making time for situations to change on the ground, reducing the effect of court decisions. Brian Barrett of Wired reported today that while Musk claims to have stepped back from the Department of Government Efficiency, his lieutenants are still spread throughout the government, mining Americans’ data. Meanwhile, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought will push to make DOGE cuts to government permanent in a dramatic reworking of the nation’s social contract. “Removing DOGE at this point would be like trying to remove a drop of food coloring from a glass of water,” Barrett writes.

Political scientist Bonica notes that there is a script for rising authoritarians. When the courts rule against the leader, the leader and his loyalists attack judges as biased and dangerous, just as Trump and his cronies have been doing.

The leader also works to delegitimize the judicial system, and that, too, we are seeing as Trump reverses the concepts of not guilty and guilty. On the one hand, the administration is fighting to get rid of the constitutional right of all persons to due process, rendering people who have not been charged with crimes to prisons in third countries. On the other, Trump and his loyalists at the Department of Justice are pardoning individuals who have been convicted of crimes.

On Monday, Trump issued a presidential pardon to former Culpeper County, Virginia, sheriff Scott Jenkins, a longtime Trump supporter whom a jury convicted of conspiracy, mail and wire fraud, and seven counts of bribery. Jared Gans of The Hill explained that Jenkins accepted more than $70,000 in bribes to appoint auxiliary deputy sheriffs, “giving them badges and credentials despite them not being trained or vetted and not offering services to the sheriff’s office.” Jenkins had announced he would “deputize thousands of our law-abiding citizens to protect their constitutional right to own firearms,” if the legislature passed “further unnecessary gun restrictions.” Jenkins was sentenced to ten years in prison.

Although Jenkins was found guilty by a jury of his peers, just as the U.S. justice system calls for, Trump insisted that Jenkins and his wife and their family “have been dragged through HELL by a Corrupt and Weaponized Biden D[epartment] O[f] J[ustice].” Jenkins, Trump wrote on social media, “is a wonderful person, who was persecuted by the Radical Left ‘monsters,’ and ‘left for dead.’ This is why I, as President of the United States, see fit to end his unfair sentence, and grant Sheriff Jenkins a FULL and Unconditional Pardon. He will NOT be going to jail tomorrow, but instead will have a wonderful and productive life.”

Today Trump gave a presidential pardon to Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who pleaded guilty to tax crimes in 2024. The pardon arrived after Walczak’s mother donated at least $1 million to Trump. The pardon spares Walczak from 18 months in prison and $4.4 million in restitution. Also today, Trump announced plans to pardon reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley, who were sentenced to 7 and 12 years in prison for conspiracy to defraud banks of $36 million and tax evasion. Their daughter spoke at the 2024 Republican National Convention.

Bonica notes that delegitimizing the judicial system creates a permission structure for threats against judges. That, too, we are seeing.

Bonica goes on to illustrate how this pattern of authoritarian attacks on the judiciary looks the same across nations. In 2009, following a ruling that he was not immune from prosecution for fraud, tax evasion, and bribery, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi railed about “communist prosecutors and communist judges.” In 2016, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Türkiye rejected the authority of his country’s highest court and purged more than 4,000 judges. Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe pushed judges to stop protests, and the judiciary collapsed. In the Philippines in 2018, Rodrigo Duterte called the chief justice defending judicial independence an “enemy,” and she was removed. In Brazil in 2021, Jair Bolsonaro threatened violence against the judges who were investigating him for corruption.

But, Bonica notes, something different happened in Israel in 2023. When Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition tried to destroy judicial independence, people from all parts of society took to the streets. A broad, nonpartisan group came together to defend democracy and resist authoritarianism.

“Every authoritarian who successfully destroyed judicial independence did so because civil society failed to unite in time,” Bonica writes. “The key difference? Whether people mobilized.”

—

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Trump

Trump Threatens to Transfer Harvard’s Billions for Scientific Research to Trade Schools, Demands Names of Foreign Students

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2025 //
13

Trump is a petty man who is filled with rage, grievance, and a passion for retribution. His current target is Harvard University because the nation’s most prestigious university told him no. Harvard’s President Alan Garber said it would not allow the federal government to control its curriculum, its admissions, and its hiring policies. No.

Every Cabinet department has pulled research grants to Harvard. Now he warns he might turn the billions that were going to medical and scientific research and hand it over to trade schools.

He would rather stop researchers who are trying to find cures for cancer, tuberculosis, Alzheimer’s, multiple sclerosis, and other diseases than back down on his efforts to stifle academic freedom and his vendetta against Harvard.

I don’t know about you, but I would rather see the federal government fund the search for a cure for MS than withdraw the funding. If he wants to fund trade schools, why should he do so at the expense of crucial research?

He wrote on Truth Social yesterday:

“I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land,” Trump said in a post on social media. “What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!”

Meanwhile, Trump dreamed up another way to harass Harvard during the hours when he couldn’t get to sleep. He demanded that Harvard give him a list containing the names and countries of origin of all its foreign students. Harvard has nearly 7,000 foreign students. Why? What will he do with those names? Will he say they are spies and try again to expel them? Funny thing is he already has all their names and countries. They were registered when they applied for a visa. It’s all a campaign of endless vengeance by a petty, bitter man.

Categories Academic Freedom, Economy, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Health, Higher Education, Research, Science, Stupid, Trump

DANGER! DANGER! DANGER! The “Beautiful” Tax Bill Guts the Rule of Law!

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2025 //
12

That “One Big Beautiful Bill” is supposed to be about the budget and taxes but tucked into it are a variety of dangerous items that Trump partisans hope will go unnoticed.

The most dangerous item of all undercuts the rule of law.

Liz Cheney and Adam Kinziger noticed it. They posted this warning on Twitter:

Our blog contributor called Quickwrit noticed the innocuous but dangerous insertion into the bill.

Quickwrit write here:

DANGER!!! DANGER!!! DANGER!!!

Buried at the bottom of Page 562 in the Republicans’ 1,116-page “Big Beautiful Bill” is a provision that will end all federal court challenges to anything that Trump orders and that will allow Trump to declare null and void all previous rulings against his orders.

It will be the beginning of genuine dictatorial rule.

The provision on Page 562 invokes enforcement of Federal Rules of Civil Procedures Rule 65(c) which says that a federal court can ONLY issue an injunction AFTER a plaintiff has posted a bond to cover the costs of damages that an injunction could have on the party against which the injunction was issued if subsequent appeals overturn the injunction.

Because Trump and his federal agencies could claim billions of dollars in damages if an injunction is overturned by the pro-Trump U.S. Supreme Court, there is NO ONE WHO CAN AFFORD to seek any future injunction against Trump’s orders or those of his agencies.

IN ADDITION: Rule 65(c) will be applied RETROACTIVELY to all the injunctions issued so far against Trump and his agencies, and all those injunctions will be removed because no bond was posted with any of them.

THE EFFECT WILL BE that everything that has been blocked by the federal courts will be unleashed and there will be NO FUTURE INJUNCTIONS issued against ANYTHING that Trump orders to be done.

Even if none of the many other odious things are removed from the Big Beautiful Bill, this provision to invoke Federal Court Rule 65(c) MUST BE ELIMINATED or there will be no future restraints on Trump. He will be free to dictate anything he wants with NO COURT INTERFERENCE. Rule by law will end in America.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Republicans, Trump

William Kristol: A Permanent Stain on Our History

By dianeravitch
May 23, 2025 //
29

William Kristol was a leading figure in the conservative movement. His father Irving Kristol was renowned as the godfather of neoconservatism. Bill was the editor of the Weekly Standard for many years. But because he is a principled conservative, he loathes what Trump is doing to our nation. He writes at The Bulwark, my favorite Never-Trump blog.

What’s happening is not normal, he writes:

If the Trump administration’s sudden assault on thousands of foreign students legally studying at Harvard seems unprecedented, it’s because it is. If the abrupt abrogation of temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans legally living and working in the United States seems unprecedented, it’s because it is. If the sudden arrests and deportations of law-abiding immigrants checking in as ordered at government offices seems unprecedented, it’s because it is. If the deportations of other immigrants without anything like due process and basically in defiance of court orders to prisons in third countries seems unprecedented, it’s because it is.

And if it all seems utterly stupid and terribly cruel and amazingly damaging to this country, it’s because it is.

But it turns out nativism is one hell of a drug. The Trump administration has ingested it in a big way, and it’s driving its dealers and users in the administration into a fanatical frenzy of destructive activity. And the Republican party and much of Conservatism Inc.—and too much of the country as a whole—is just watching it happen.

The United States has many problems. No one seriously thinks that Harvard’s certification to participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program is one of them. And the Department of Homeland Security’s announcement of the action against Harvard makes clear this isn’t just about Harvard: “Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.” Are our other institutions of higher education suffering from their ability to attract and enroll students from abroad, if they chose to do so? Are the rest of us?

No. And to the degree there are some discrete problems, nothing justifies this kind of action against Harvard. As Andrea Flores, a former DHS official, told the New York Times, “D.H.S. has never tried to reshape the student body of a university by revoking access to its vetting systems, and it is unique to target one institution over hundreds that it certifies every year.”

Similarly, what’s the justification for the Trump administration’s unprecedented sudden and early abrogation of temporary protected status for 350,000 Venezuelans who fled tyranny and are now living peacefully and working productively in this country? There is no broad unhappiness at their presence, no serious case that they are causing more harm than doing good. Nor for that matter is there a real argument that the presence of 20,000 Haitians living and working in Springfield, Ohio, is a problem that required first lies to denigrate them and now attempts to deport them.

And this week, the nominee to head U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services said the Trump administration intends to end the well-established Optional Practical Training Program, which is the single largest channel for highly skilled immigrants to stay and work in the United States after finishing their education here. A study by a leading immigration scholar, Michael Clemens of George Mason University, finds that slashing that program would cause permanent losses to U.S. innovation, productivity, economic growth, and even job opportunities for native workers.

But here we are, with an administration where fantasy trumps reality, ideology trumps evidence, and demagoguery trumps decency. As the economist Dani Rodrik puts it, “Three things made the US a rich and powerful nation: the rule of law, its science & innovation system, and openness to foreign talent. Remarkable how Trump has taken a sledgehammer to all three. No enemy of this country could do more.”

Foreigners studying and working here are not damaging the United States. A virulently nativist administration is what’s damaging the United States. It’s doing so in ways from which it will be difficult to recover. Just as important, it’s doing so in ways that will be a permanent stain on this nation’s history.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education, History, Trump

Breaking News! Trump Revokes Harvard’s Ability to Enroll International students

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2025 //
22

The Trump administration upped the stakes in its vindictive campaign against Harvard University. It has canceled Harvard’s enrollment of international students.

Harvard refused to cave to the Trump administration’s demands to monitor its curriculum and its admissions and hiring policies. In response, the administration has suspended billions of federal dollars for medical and scientific research.

The New York Times reported:

The Trump administration on Thursday halted Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, taking aim at a crucial funding source for the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college in a major escalation in the administration’s efforts to pressure the elite school to fall in line with the president’s agenda.

The administration notified Harvard about the decision after a back-and-forth in recent days over the legality of a sprawling records request as part of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigation, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

The latest move is likely to prompt a second legal challenge from Harvard, according to one person familiar with the school’s thinking who insisted on anonymity to discuss private deliberations. The university sued the administration last month over the government’s attempt to impose changes to its curriculum, admissions policies and hiring practices.

“I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked,” according to a letter sent to the university by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary. A copy of the letter was obtained by The New York Times.

About 6,800 international students attended Harvard this year, or roughly 27 percent of the student body, according to university enrollment data. That is up from 19.7 percent in 2010.

The move is likely to have a significant effect on the university’s bottom line…

In a news release confirming the administration’s action, the Department of Homeland Security sent a stark message to Harvard’s international students: “This means Harvard can no longer enroll foreign students, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status.”

This message came from a Cabinet member who was asked in a hearing to define “habeas corpus,” and she said it meant that the President can deport anyone he wants to.

This action is a demonstration of Presidential tyranny. It should be swiftly reversed by the courts.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Higher Education, Trump

Fareed Zakaria: Trump’s War on Science Is Damaging Our Economy and Our Future

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2025 //
17

If someone asked you which of Trump’s policies was the most catastrophic, what would you say? His personal attacks on law firms that had the nerve to represent clients he didn’t like? His unleashing of ICE to threaten and arrest people who have committed no crime? His efforts to intimidate the media? His assault on free speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom? His blatant disregard for the Constitution?

All of these are horrible, despicable, and vile.

Yet one of his grievances burns deeper than the other. This is his contempt for science.

His first show of irrational hatred for science was his selection of the utterly unqualified Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. He is a conspiracy theorist with no experience in science or medicine. RFK has been a one-man wrecking crew.

Then he used his authority to close down university research centers. These centers are working on cures for the most intractable diseases: cancer, ALS, Alzheimer’s, and more.

Why does Trump hate science? Is it another facet of his ongoing hatred for knowledge, the arts, culture?

Fareed Zakaria of CNN gives a good overview.

Watch.

Categories Academic Freedom, Cruelty, Democracy, Economy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Ignorance, Science

Now Will They Leave Joe Biden Alone?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2025 //
24

As I was scrolling through Twitter on Sunday, I read a bunch of anti-Biden tweets, so I added my two cents.

I tweeted:

Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp

I once wrote on this blog that I would never criticize Joe Biden because he was running against a man who was totally unfit for the job. Several Trumpers has since written to complain about that statement, saying that it demonstrated my bias, but time has confirmed my view.

Regardless of his mental state, Biden would never have appointed a crackpot to run the National Institutes of Health. He would never have defunded USAID, NPR, PBS, FEMA, the Voice of America, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the U.S. Department of Education. Nor would he have let loose Elon Musk’s DOGS to ransack federal agencies, fire thousands of expert career officers, mess with the Social Security Administration, and hoover up all our personal data, for whatever nefarious purposes he chooses. Unlike Trump, Biden would not have terrorized institutions of higher education and threatened academic freedom and freedom of speech. Unlike Trump, Biden respected the independence of the Justice Department and the FBI and did not put political lackeys in charge of them or treat them as his personal attack dogs.

Frankly, I can’t keep track of the many federal programs and agencies that Trump has recklessly destroyed. If anyone knows of such a compilation, please share it. Trump and Musk have vandalized our government, and despite the thousands of injudicious, capricious firings, have not saved any money at all.

Then I came across this post by Julie Roginsky, which appeared shortly after the nation learned that former President Biden has prostate cancer, which has metasticized to his bones. She is writing about the new book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson that aims to prove that President Biden was experiencing severe mental and physical decline while he was in office and that his family and staff collaborated to conceal that decline from the public.

She wrote:

Maybe now they’ll leave Joe Biden alone — or, better yet, spend some time assessing his actual presidency, both in isolation and in comparison with what has followed.

Stick it to legacy media, which has consistently beaten up on a decent man.

Was Biden operating at half-capacity throughout his term? Was he operating at 10%? Here are some facts, regardless of the opinions rendered by amateur neurologists all over media these days.

“Biden inherited an economy that was flat on its back because of the pandemic, and he’s bequeathing an economy that’s flying high,” said Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, which just lowered the credit rating of the United States for the first time in history under Donald Trump. 

Biden’s economic tenure was marred by the inflation that was a hangover of the Covid pandemic. But the numbers don’t lie about the rest of it. On his watch, the Dow Jones rose by over 40%, while the Nasdaq rose by almost 50%. The economy expanded by 11% during his four years in office (compared with under 9% during Donald Trump’s first term). Despite inflation, retail sales grew by more than 20%. Household net worth was 28% higher when Biden left office than when he took over from Trump. Unemployment was 2% lower at the end of Biden’s tenure than when he entered the White House. 

Most importantly, no one was predicting the demise of our 250 year American experiment while Biden was in charge.

Now, Biden is diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. You don’t need to be an oncologist to know that the prognosis is not great.

So maybe now is a good time to reflect not just on Biden’s tenure but on what this obsession with his mental health means for the future of this country. Reporters who have spent the past several weeks on the fainting couch about “the cover up” of his mental condition in the Oval Office have consistently failed to acknowledge the successes of his tenure. They have failed to compare that tenure, both in economic and in governance terms, to what has followed. They have never stopped beating up a man who is no longer in the White House to take stock of the mental health of the current occupant of the White House.

Trump’s mental decline (which is apparent to anyone who has lived in the New York media market for the past four decades) is not happening, you see — because he does not stutter, because he shouts with vigor, because he “truths” at all hours of the night, unlike a septuagenarian who might require more rest. 

In short, all this is just “Trump being Trump.” It cannot be that he is stark raving mad. 

And Trump’s economic record, the one that is driving inflation ever higher, the one that is destroying consumer sentiment, the one that has driven both the stock and bond markets crazy? Never mind all that. Have you listened to Biden’s conversation with Robert Hur? Now that’s a scandal. 

Look, I really don’t care if Biden was confined to a gurney for four years. The facts speak for themselves. The country was more prosperous, the democracy was more stable, the nation was more respected, the people were less terrified, when he was in charge. 

Yes, Biden’s staff may have covered up his medical condition while he was in the Oval Office. But the real scandal is the cover up happening now. The media so obsessed with kicking Biden now that’s gone that it is ignoring the very real danger that his successor poses to us all. 

I am not a religious person but I hope that whatever higher power exists will look out for Joe Biden. He is a good man, who did well on behalf of the people who entrusted him with the presidency. That is a hell of a lot more than could be said about his successor.

I repeat:

Maybe it’s just me, but I would rather have Joe Biden (surrounded by highly competent people) asleep than Donald Trump at his best (surrounded by Fascists, haters, and law-breakers) on his best day. @jaketapper @AlexThomp

Categories Biden, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Health, Trump

Why Does the Trump Administration Want to Deport or Imprison This Cancer Researcher?

By dianeravitch
May 19, 2025 //
4

I have been following the case of Kseniia Petrova, a cancer researcher at Harvard, with a sense of outrage and helplessness. She attended a conference in France and returned last February with samples of frog embryos for her laboratory. She was detained by Customs for failing to declare them and has been incarcerated ever since. The other day, the charge of bringing in an undeclared item was upgraded to a felony, and this young woman faces a possible 20 years in prison.

Is she the kind of dangerous, violent criminal that Trump promised to deport? No.

Jay Kuo is both a lawyer and a playwright, whose blog is called The Status Kuo. He writes about the case today in hopes of rallying support for her. Petrova left Russia to protest the invasion of Ukraine. If she is deported there, she will be immediately jailed.

He writes:

We need to pay close attention to the case of Kseniia Petrova. She’s a Russian-born researcher who was detained by Customs and Border Protection back in February when traveling back from a conference in France.

Like others caught up in the “immigration crackdown” by the Trump administration, Petrova has been held in ICE detention ever since. In her case, a custom agent alleged she had failed to declare frog embryo samples that she’d picked up from a colleague to bring back to the U.S.

For this, the government canceled Petrova’s visa and threatened to deport her. But her case is about far more than frog embryos.

For starters, her home country is Russia, where she was outspoken against the war in Ukraine and was part of the exodus of Russians opposed to Putin’s invasion. She now faces persecution or worse for her anti-war activism should she be sent home, even while the Trump administration bends over backwards for Putin and the Kremlin.

She’s also a researcher and valued member of the Harvard medical sciences community, which has been the constant target of the Trump White House. Being deliberately cruel to Petrova means Trump gets to traumatize Harvard in yet another way.

Petrova has been languishing in a detention facility in Louisiana, but things had begun to move her way. This week, Judge Christina Reiss, a federal judge in Vermont hearing Petrova’s habeas petition, questioned government lawyers over whether Customs and Border Protection actually had the authority to cancel Petrova’s visa. Judge Reiss had set a bail hearing for next Friday, and many viewed it as a hopeful signal that she was set to release Petrova from custody.

Not so fast, said the government. What they did next was frankly shocking, even in this corrosive and highly politicized environment.

The government charges Petrova criminally

Apparently out of sheer spite, and faced with the prospect of losing another case where they had egregiously overreached and overreacted, the government charged Petrova with felony smuggling. That’s a charge that carries up to 20 years in prison. 

Felony smuggling laws are intended to deter profiteers from deliberately carrying in endangered species, not to punish researchers who fail to declare frog embryo samples.

Normally when you fail to declare something that should have been itemized at customs, you could face a fine. It’s considered a minor infraction. And in this case, it isn’t even clear that frog embryos count. According to Petrova’s lawyer, customs experts conveyed that that she “did not need a permit to bring in her non-living scientific samples that are not considered biological material under U.S. Customs law.”

The criminal complaint itself is a just single page attaching an affidavit from a Homeland Security agent. In that affidavit, the agent makes much of the fact that, after checking her text messages on her phone (!!), he learned that Petrova apparently had been told by a colleague that she should declare the samples. But she had joked about not having a plan to carry them in, saying, “I won’t be able to swallow them.”

When asked, Petrova told the agent that she was not sure she needed to declare anything. (I should add here that advice from a colleague is not the same as legal advice from a customs lawyer.) Per the Customs and Border Protection website, U.S. government agencies “regulate the importation of biological materials that can pose a threat to agriculture, public health, and natural resources” (emphasis added). But frog embryo samples don’t pose any threat. So it’s hardly clear that Petrova knew these had to be declared.

“Yesterday’s hearing in federal district court in Vermont confirmed that Customs and Border [Protection] officials had no legal basis for cancelling Kseniia’s visa and detaining her,” wrote Petrova’s attorney. The judge in Vermont seemed prepared to agree and to rule that canceling her visa over this was excessive. 

Filing criminal charges now? Really?!

When someone is taken into custody by immigration officials, it is customary to charge them first with any crimes they have committed. This makes sense because criminal charges, which are far more serious, should always take priority over any immigration violations, which are normally just civil violations.

Once the individual has been prosecuted, explained Ingrid Eagly, co-director of the Criminal Justice Program at the UCLA School of Law, to the New York Times, the authorities can begin the process of removing them from the country. In Petrova’s case, “they put her in removal proceedings, and now are saying it is a criminal case.” Dr. Eagly explained that this was a “ratcheting up of the charges,” an atypical move that “seems retaliatory, designed for a particular end.”

Prof. Marisol Orihuela of Yale Law School told the Times that this was the first time she had seen a case where criminal charges were brought against someone who had already been in removal proceedings for so long. “The question it raises in my mind is why would it take three months” to decide to charge Petrova, remarked Prof. Orihuela. “It doesn’t really quite add up,” she added, wondering why the government would “need this amount of time if you thought this was a crime worth charging.”

Nor does it make any sense that after three whole months, there is still no further evidence beyond what one lone agent said Petrova did and said under questioning just before she was taken in. There are no interviews of Petrova’s colleagues. There is no showing, beyond a text thread with a colleague, that Petrova knew such samples must be declared. They’ve had three months, but the case has not advanced beyond what was known at the time.

On top of this, the timing of the charge is highly suspicious. Judge Reiss had only this week questioned whether Petrova’s visa revocation was proper, and from all accounts she would have likely ordered Petrova’s release on bail next Friday.

Here’s what I want to know. Who in the administration ordered Petrova to be criminally charged? Was there coordination between an overzealous Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Justice? When was the charging decision made? Did anyone object to it? Why was there apparently no investigation to obtain further evidence to support the charge?

Playing dangerous politics, holding political prisoners

Petrova’s case has been prominent in the headlines. She has received support from all across the country and the world. A feature on her plight was published in the New York Times. Her work as a scientist studying images for cancer diagnostics has been widely lauded, while her detention has been condemned as a pointless harm, not just to her but for medical science and the world.

It would not surprise me if orders to do everything possible to continue to punish and hold Petrova came from the very top of the Trump administration. After all, moving to criminally charge Petrova, three months after she was first detained, makes zero sense unless your point is to make an example of her and thumb your nose at customary prosecutorial practices.

The administration has basically said, “Oh, so you think you can get her out? We’ll stop you, just to show that we can. To hell with your ‘due process’ and ‘civil rights.’ We’re in charge, and she’s not going anywhere.”

This is of course the same position the government has taken with Kilmar Abrego García and all the other political prisoners in El Salvador’s CECOT facility. 

I say “political prisoners” because that is precisely what they’ve now become. Petrova, Abrego García, and others are being held for purely political reasons, by or at the request of the U.S. government. It’s not because they’ve committed any actual crimes or are in any way deserving of the treatment they are receiving. Rather, it’s because the administration wants to telegraph strength and cruelty, just like any other fascist regime.

It’s also why the White House is so desperate to cast them as “criminals” and stretch the laws and the truth, even to absurd degrees, to fit its narrative. That makes this fight not just about achieving justice for those wrongly arrested and held, but also about rejecting the raw politicization of their cases and of our immigration and criminal justice systems. 

Indeed, fighting for justice for Petrova and others now means no less than fighting for the rule of law, democracy and the very soul of our nation, now put at serious risk by the tyranny of the Trump regime.

Petrova is not a dangerous criminal. She has not raped or murdered anyone. She is a researcher trying to find a cure for cancer.

Categories Extremism, Fascism, Research, Science, Trump

Netanyahu Is a War Criminal. Will Trump Stop Him?

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2025 //
5

Gideon Levy, a writer for the Israeli progressive publication Ha’aretz, excoriates the ongoing military campaign in Gaza. It’s about to get worse. Netanyahu is perpetuating the war for no reason. He has utterly destroyed Gaza. He has ordered the bombing of hospitals and schools, claiming that they sheltered terrorists while knowing that he was committing war crimes. For the last three months, Israel has prevented food, medicine and humanitarian aid from entering Gaza.

Nothing the Israeli Defense Forces do can eliminate Hamas. Their soldiers live in an elaborate city of well-supplied tunnels, protected from the bombing. When hostages were released, members of Hamas appeared in their uniforms, faces hidden, brandishing their weapons, letting the Israelis know that they are still a force, still in charge. This served to goad the extremists who surround Netanyahu. More killing lies ahead. The only one who could end it is Trump. He’s in the region. He’s not stopping in Israel. He’s not using his relationship with Netanyahu to stop the killing. He should.

He could intervene instead of musing idly about turning Gaza into “the Riviera of the .Middle East” and expelling its people elsewhere.

Gideon Levy wrote:

About 70 people from dawn to noon on Wednesday. Almost twice the number of those killed in the massacre at Kibbutz Nir Oz. 22 of them were children, and 15 were women. The previous evening, 23 were killed in a hospital. 

Operation Gideon’s Chariots has yet to begin, and the chariots of genocide are already warming their engines.

How will we call this massacre, so indiscriminate and pointless, even before the big operation has begun? 23 killed in the bombing of a hospital – one of the most serious war crimes – just to try and kill Mohammed Sinwar, the latest devil, with nine bunker buster bombs – everything to provide Yedioth Ahronoth in their lust for the main headline: “In his brother’s footsteps.” 

The readers loved it, Israelis loved it, no one came out against it on Wednesday.

They made peace in Riyadh, and in Gaza they massacred. It’s hard to think of a more grating contrast than this, between the scenes in Riyadh and those in Jabalya on Wednesday.

Children’s bodies being carried by their parents, the bulldozer trying to clear a way for the ambulance and being blown up from the air, the people burrowing in the ruins of the hospital searching for their loved ones – all this in the face of lifting sanctions from Syria and the hope for a new future.

Nothing, not even the elimination of another Sinwar, can justify the indiscriminate bombing of a hospital. This unwavering truth has been totally forgotten here by now. Everything is normal, everything is justified and approved, even the attack on the intensive care ward in the European Hospital in Khan Yunis is a mitzvah. 

No choice exists but to cry out again: You cannot attack hospitals – and not schools that have been turned into shelters, either – even if the strategic air command of Hamas is hiding underneath them. Even if Sinwar is there, whose kill is so pointless.

Is there anything left we can do in Gaza that will be seen in Israel as morally and legally unacceptable? 100 dead children? A thousand women for Sinwar the brother? It was necessary to eliminate him, they explained, because he was an “obstacle to a hostage deal.” 

We’ve even lost our shame. The sole obstacle to a hostage deal sits in Jerusalem, his name is Benjamin Netanyahu, along with his fascist partners, and no one can even conceive that it’s legitimate to harm them to remove the obstacle.

What happened on Wednesday in Gaza is just a promo for what will occur in the coming months, if no one stops Israel. The further Donald Trump’s colossal campaign in the Gulf advances, the pistol that will stop Israel has yet to be seen.

When supposedly there was still a purpose, when the goals were seemingly clear, when the human need to punish and take revenge for October 7 was still understandable, when it still seemed that Israel knew what it wanted at all; it was still possible somehow to accept the mass killing and destruction. 

But no longer. Now, when it’s clear Israel has no goal and no plan, there is no longer any way to justify what happened in Gaza on Tuesday night.

No Israeli leader opened their mouth, not a single one. The left’s hope, Yair Golan, on a good day calls to end the war, and like him, tens of thousands of determined protesters. 

They want to end the war to bring the hostages home. They are also worried about the lives of the soldiers who will fall in vain. 

But what about Gaza? What about its sacrifice? How have we reached a situation in which no Zionist politician can come out in its defense? Not one righteous man in Sodom, not a single one. 

The sights from there once again scorched the soul on Wednesday, once again body carts, once again children in a long line of body bags on the floor, here lie their bodies, and once again the heartbreaking weeping of parents for their daughters and sons. 

About 100 people were killed in Gaza on Wednesday. Almost all of them innocent, except for their being Palestinians who live in the Gaza Strip. They were killed by Israeli soldiers. This is their appetizer for the campaign their military aspires to – and we remain silent.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Fascism, International, Trump
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