Pete Hegseth has made clear his determination to control press coverage of his actions. He decided which media would get space in the press rooms of the Pentagon, kicking out some established journalists to make room for right-wing journalists. He tried to monitor all information coming from the Pentagon.
This week, he fired the leadership of the military’s “Stars and Stripes,” which has always enjoyed editorial independence. Hegseth can’t tolerate that. He wants total control.
Although he was a talking head on FOX, he has no respect for freedom of the press.
The Defense Department on Friday fired the publisher and the editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news outlet that reports on the U.S. military, according to a senior Pentagon official and the dismissed journalists.
The firings raised questions about the Pentagon’s willingness to ensure the editorial integrity of the publication that has reported extensively on difficulties faced by military communities as the war in Iran has dragged on. The terminations came about 10 days after Stars and Stripes journalists reported on hardships that Navy sailors were facing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier whose deployment was extended to nine months amid the war.
On Friday, the Pentagon sent termination notices to Erik Slavin, the editor in chief, and Max Lederer, the publisher, who had announced his retirement earlier this week, citing conflict with the Pentagon leadership on the paper’s direction. Lara Korte, a Middle East correspondent at the news outlet, was also fired on Friday, according to the official and a post she made on social media.
The Defense Department declined to comment. Capt. William Urban, the military deputy to the publisher who was brought to the role earlier this month, said in a letter published on Friday that his priority was to ensure “the highest quality of editorially independent reporting” at Stars and Stripes. Captain Urban’s previous role was as a senior spokesman for the Pentagon….
Why it matters:
“Stars and Stripes” is supposed to be an independent news organization for the military, not a propaganda mouthpiece for the Pentagon.
The ouster of the leadership of “Stars and Stripes” is a plain effort to muzzle the publication and turn it into a lapdog for Pete Hegseth.
This is a brief overview of how “Stars and Stripes” won its editorial independence, as told by blogger TCinLA:
In 1944, General George S. Patton Jr. was very upset with a 22-year old Sergeant who drew cartoons for “Stars and Stripes”. The Sergeant was Bill Mauldin, creator of two cartoon characters, Willie and Joe, who were considered to be the voice of American GIs on the front lines. Willie and Joe were always tired, needed a shave, were wearing the filthy fatigues they lived in on the front lines in Italy, and viewed the U.S. Army as a more threatening personal enemy than the Wehrmacht. The GIs agreed with everything they said. By 1945, the war in Europe was a slog through the coldest European winter in a century. In March 1945, General Patton summoned Mauldin to his Luxembourg headquarters, where over 45 minutes he accused Sgt. Mauldin of inciting mutiny and destroying military discipline through his unkempt character portrayals. Mauldin defended his work as a “safety valve” for combat infantrymen, resulting in a tense 45-minute standoff that ended in a stalemate.
It took an intervention by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower to protect Mauldin and preserve the editorial independence of “Stars and Stripes,” preventing Patton from banning the paper or jailing the cartoonist. Eisenhower fiercely believed that “Stars and Stripes” should belong entirely to the front-line troops, famously declaring: “This newspaper should be the equivalent of a soldier’s hometown newspaper, with no censorship of its contents, other than for security.” Ike recognized that Willie and Joe served as a vital, non-destructive psychological safety valve. He knew that letting G.I.s laugh at their miserable conditions and blow off steam about overbearing officers actually preserved army morale. Too bad the current dildo running the Pentagon and his short-fingered thin-skinned felonious boss are too fucking stupid to understand that Eisenhower was smarter than all ten of them combined.
Originally when it was created by Congress in 1942, Start and Stripes occupied a unique place in American journalism: funded by the government, read by the military, but mandated by law to report the news independently, without editorial interference. This was because the America that could actually win wars believed US servicemen deserved real news, not Pentagon horseshit. (That happens to still be the law, should any congressional moron care to see it enforced.)
Cartoonist Bill Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in “Stars and Stripes.”
You should read the full post by TCinLA, which reports on the recent episodes of censorship by the Trump administration, some of which have succeeded, others that have not.
Trump despises the press and delights in insulting them. In his first term, he called the press “the enemy of the people,” a term usually associated with Joseph Stalin. He has continued to lash out at reporters who are not his lapdogs. He ridicules them, especially if they are female.
When it happens, other members of the press corps act as though nothing happened.
Why don’t they stand up for their colleagues? Why do they ignore Trump’s unprecedented bullying?
He needs them. He glories in their presence. They give him oxygen.
Why don’t they close their iPads, cell phones, and notebooks, and walk out en masse?
Walk out.
Here is Trump’s latest diatribe, directed of course at a female journalist.
The Washington Post reported:
The White House on Monday leveled a sharply personal attack against CNN reporter Kristen Holmes after she asked President Donald Trump a pointed question during a news conference, crossing a barrier rarely breached by politicians to invoke her children.
“Jon Ossoff said you’d rather travel with your aide Natalie Harp and build the ballroom than do your job as president,” Holmes said. “What is your response?”
Trump answered Holmes’s question with an insult to Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia), whom he called a “Pee-wee Herman look-alike,” referring to the Paul Reubens character.
Then the White House’s “rapid response” account on X took up the altercation, posting a video clip of the exchange and assailing Holmes as a “disgraceful, humiliating embarrassment to her alleged profession.”
In a follow-up tweet, the account dipped into a more personal line of attack: “Someday, your children will come across your disgusting and inhumane question,” the White House wrote. “They will be sickened and embarrassed to have a parent be so callous and vindictive. It’s quite troubling.”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment about its social media posts.
Trump’s personal attacks on journalists have been a defining feature of his combative approach to the press. Though he has criticized reporters throughout his political career, his critiques of women journalists, particularly those representing CNN, have grown more heated in recent months. And the administration has increasingly used official White House social media accounts to escalate what might once have been spur-of-the-moment exchanges.
Most recently, at the rescheduled White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in July, Trump said that CNN anchor and Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins should “just smile” — a misogynistic trope — and likened her appearance to that of Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender activist villainized in conservative circles.
He followed up by posting an edited image imposing Collins’s likeness on an image of Mulvaney, which was later shared by an official White House account.
Trump’s critique of Holmes, a senior White House correspondent, continued during the news conference.
At another point, the president shushed her: “Quiet. Quiet. Quiet. You’re very disrespectful in front of this young man, okay? Don’t you find her disrespectful? He understands. Quiet. Who are you with?”
“I’m with CNN,” Holmes replied.
“Fake news. You’re fake news. You’re loud. You’re a loud, boisterous person. You’re fake news,” Trump said. “Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet. You’re a fake reporter, and you report fake news.”
CNN, in a statement, defended Holmes, calling her “one of the most respected and accomplished journalists covering the White House” and said it rejects the attacks “in the strongest possible terms.”
“This afternoon, she did her job and asked the President of the United States a tough, relevant, and newsworthy question on behalf of the American people,” a CNN spokesperson wrote in a statement. “Public officials are free to challenge reporting they disagree with, but personal attacks on journalists for asking questions are beneath the office and inconsistent with the principles of a free press.”
Holmes’s colleagues on CNN’s White House team rushed to her defense. “What a horrible to thing to say. Kristen is an incredible reporter, person and, above all, mother,” White House correspondent Alayna Treene wrote on X. “I don’t understand such a reaction to a journalist asking the president for his response to something a Democratic senator has leveled against him.”
“Kristen is an excellent reporter who asked a good question, to which the president gave a fulsome answer,” Betsy Klein, a senior White House reporter, wrote. “You know what’s disgusting and inhumane? Bringing her perfect children into this.”
We live in strange and dangerous times. For the first time in memory, maybe ever, the rule of law itself is under attack. Our Dear Leader has threatened judges who rule against his wishes. He and his lawless administration ignore decisions they don’t like. He installed a Supreme Court majority who were vetted by the far-right Federalist Society. That majority proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite their repeated pledges not to do so, and to gut the Voting Rights Act, terminating guarantees of equal rights for Black Americans.
At this time when the rule of law itself is disregarded by the President, who is himself ruled only by whim and self-aggrandizement, two retired judges expressed their concern in The Guardian.
Judge Michael P. Connelly and Judge Robert F. Orr wrote:
Last October, US lawyers, judges and rule-of-law advocates traveled to Warsaw as guests of the Carter Center. Neither of us was among them. But when our colleagues returned, their stories inspired us.
They told us about judges and lawyers across central Europe who had been surveilled, smeared, prosecuted and sometimes jailed for standing between political power and courts meant to remain independent.
And they kept going.
Poland’s example was especially compelling. When its government sought greater control over the judiciary, Polish judges put on their robes and marched through Warsaw. Judges from across Europe joined them in what became the March of 1,000 Robes.
Then they left their courthouses and traveled through towns and villages, explaining what an independent judiciary means to a farmer, shopkeeper, parent or business owner. They talked about law not as an abstraction, but as protection against arbitrary power.
They understood a truth Americans can no longer overlook: judicial independence cannot survive merely because judges believe in it. The public must understand why it matters.
That lesson brought us on to a bus.
Last month, shortly after the United States celebrated its 250th birthday, the Justice in Motion tour traveled from western Pennsylvania through Ohio and into Michigan. Thirty sitting and retired judges, lawyers and advocates handed out pocket constitutions, met students and asked a question Americans do not consider often enough: what does the rule of law mean in everyday life, and what happens when we take it for granted?
In Columbus, we did something neither of us imagined during our years on the bench. We put on our robes and marched from the federal courthouse toward the supreme court of Ohio, carrying purple flowers, an international symbol of judicial independence.
American judges do not ordinarily march in the streets. Nor should they. The judiciary derives much of its legitimacy from restraint. Judges do not campaign for particular outcomes or answer criticism with press conferences. They speak through their decisions. But these are no ordinary times.
And our Polish colleagues taught us that silence can carry its own risk.
Our march was not about Democrats or Republicans, nor about defending particular judges or decisions. It was about defending the system that allows legal disagreements to be resolved according to law rather than political power.
One of us was elected to the supreme court of Ohio as a Democrat. The other was elected to the supreme court of North Carolina as a Republican and is now an independent. Through two long careers, we have disagreed about plenty.
That is precisely the point.
The rule of law is not a partisan possession.
Both sides enter a courtroom with the right to be heard. Judges must apply the law to the facts without regard to which party is more powerful, popular or politically useful.
Sometimes judges get it wrong. That is why we have appellate courts. Sometimes courts issue decisions that elected officials or citizens strongly dislike. That is unavoidable in a constitutional democracy.
The answer is appeal, legislation where constitutionally permissible, or constitutional amendment. It cannot be intimidation, retaliation for unpopular rulings or the suggestion that compliance with lawful court orders is optional.
Once adherence to judicial decisions depends upon whether the politically powerful agree with them, we have left the rule of law behind.
In Wooster, Ohio, about 150 people gathered across from the historic courthouse. The discussion was not about red America or blue America. It was about ordinary life.
The rule of law is why you can deposit money in a bank and expect it to be there tomorrow. It is why contracts mean something, property can be protected and an individual citizen can enter a courthouse and challenge the government.
These protections seem ordinary only because generations before us built institutions strong enough to make them ordinary. When the rule of law works, it is almost invisible.
Judges are trained – rightly – to exercise restraint. During our years on the bench, we spoke through our rulings. That tradition is essential to maintaining confidence in an impartial judiciary.
But restraint should not be confused with silence about the survival of the institution itself.
When judges are threatened because of their rulings; when an adverse decision is answered not with an appeal but with demands for retaliation; when courts are judged legitimate only when they produce politically desired outcomes, those who understand the system have an obligation to explain what is being lost.
Our Polish friends understood this before we did. Their circumstances differ from ours, and comparisons should be made carefully. But the lesson travels well.
The rule of law does not defend itself. Neither does an independent judiciary. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless citizens and public officials possess the courage and habits necessary to honor them.
Four days on a bus will not persuade a nation. The purpose was more modest: to begin conversations, one community and one citizen at a time, about institutions Americans have been fortunate enough to take for granted.
That work belongs not only to judges and lawyers, but to all of us.
The rule of law is not something judges possess. It is something citizens inherit.
And every generation must decide whether to preserve it.
What’s giving us hope now
Justice Robert F Orr (retired): What gives me hope is the scope of individuals and groups now focusing and talking about the rule of law and the independence of our judiciary. Our bus trip had a great mix of backgrounds and experience both in the judges participating and meeting us at stops as well as the young people who amplified the message across various media platforms. It’s genuinely a national movement.
Justice Michael P Donnelly (retired): What gives me hope is the genuine appreciation we encountered during the bus tour for the role of an independent judiciary in protecting individual rights and civil liberties. The people we met understood that these freedoms, defended at great sacrifice throughout our history, cannot be taken for granted – and that each generation must be willing to stand up for them.
Michael P Donnelly is a retired justice of the supreme court of Ohio
Robert F Orr is a retired justice of the supreme court of North Carolina. Both participated in the Justice in Motion tour organized by the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic
L.C. Francis authors the blog “L.C. Francis Open Society for History and Civics.” In this post, he imagines how Benjamin Franklin would react if he could time-travel to the present day. He titled this one “A Republic in a Costly Costume.”
His subtitle is:
Benjamin Franklin visits Washington and finds the experiment alive, wounded, witty, dangerous, and leaning toward the very monarchy it was built to resist.
“Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors.” — Benjamin Franklin, writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, published in The New-England Courant, July 1722.
Dear Friends,
Yesterday, I wrote about Adams and Jefferson, two bitter friends who died on the Fourth of July, fifty years after the Declaration. But for weeks, another question has been on my mind: what would one founder think if he returned for America’s 250th birthday?
On this Sunday morning, after the fireworks have quieted and the crowds have gone home, I did not want to hand you another stack of bad news. I did not want to build another time machine just for cleverness. I chose Benjamin Franklin because, of all the Founders, he might be the least surprised by what he found in Washington in 2026.
Franklin was intimately aware of monarchial tendencies because he had known kings, ministers, courtiers, printers, mobs, frauds, scientists, diplomats, and men who mistook applause for wisdom. He would not arrive appalled by our foolishness. He would arrive amused, worried, and already reaching for his pen, because sometimes a Republic needs to hear the truth from a man who understood both human weakness and the strange miracle of self-government.
I visualized him observing the ruined East Wing, the ballroom adjacent to the People’s House, the painted Reflecting Pool, attacks on the press, a craving for royal attention, and an occupant of the People’s House who is more eager to be admired than to serve our Republic.
Then Franklin writes home…Hope you find this insightful & enlightening.
Dispatch on the Status of Our Republic
Washington City July 5, 2026
My Esteemed Friends,
Having been conveyed, by means I cannot explain, into a future age that corresponds to 250 years from our time, and finding myself in the city your posterity has raised for the administration of the Republic, I have thought it prudent to send you a few observations before I am returned, if I am permitted to be returned to our time.
Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson will be pleased to hear that our Republic still exists in form. Elections take place, courts at the national, state, and local levels continue to interpret the law, newspapers continue to publish, and the public debates with such fervor that I almost thought the entire nation was a printing press.
Yet I confess that the condition of the Executive office gave me pause.
We once quarreled with George III because no free people should be governed by the vanity of one man. I now find, to my astonishment, a chief magistrate who appears to regard that monarch not as a warning but as an interior decorator. He favors ceremony, obedience, personal loyalty, public flattery, and buildings large enough to persuade small minds that greatness has occurred.
I had hoped your descendants would remember that we rejected monarchy not because crowns were uncomfortable, but because men wearing them became so.
The President’s residence, also called the People’s House and meant as a duty-bound home, has been significantly transformed. A wing was removed, and a ballroom was added. Donors gather nearby, contractors appear pleased. The words reflect public service, but the atmosphere feels like courtly flattery. I’ve strolled through Versailles and seen men bow so deeply they could pick pockets unnoticed. Now, even the Potomac seems to have acquired a touch of French elegance.
I am told this is all done for greatness. I have found that when a man must constantly proclaim his greatness, the evidence is usually still under construction.
As a printer, I paid especially close attention to the press, and this issue grew more serious the longer I spent in this era. The current President doesn’t just dislike criticism; all public figures dislike it, though some handle it more gracefully. This gentleman, with a countenance the color of an apricot or a persimmon, seems to believe himself to be the reincarnation of the courts of France and, therefore, the press should praise him, obey him, change geography in his favor, and apologize whenever inconvenient facts emerge.
One news service was punished for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico on command, as though a president could improve geography by signing it in a larger hand. Broadcasters have been threatened. Reporters are treated as enemies when they ask questions rather than bring incense. Lawsuits are brandished like royal decrees. It reminded me of old George III, though fairness requires this confession: George was born into a monarchy. He did not have to assemble one from wounded vanity, public entertainments, donor money, and several coats of gold paint.
Permit an old printer to be plain: a free press is not an ornament of liberty. It is one of its tools. A government that fears printers has already confessed more than printers have written.
I also observed that nearly every citizen carries a small glowing glass into which he may speak a question and receive an answer before his own judgment has had time to put on its shoes. This instrument is astonishing. It fetches a fact, composes a letter, translates a tongue, summarizes a book, and offers counsel with the confidence of a lawyer who has not yet found the statute. Much of what it provides is helpful, though some is incorrect. Its rapid delivery might lead a lazy mind to equate speed with wisdom.
I say this as one who loved invention: no machine, however clever, can spare a Republic the burden of discernment. A device may gather the lightning, but only judgment can make the rod.
Nevertheless, I do not lose hope.
I observed citizens carefully counting votes. I saw judges trying to keep the law from becoming a command. I saw teachers, librarians, clerks, veterans, reporters, and ordinary Americans doing the quiet work no ballroom can replace. They receive little applause, which may be why their service remains valuable.
When we gave the people a Republic, I warned that keeping it would be their burden. Upon further reflection, after visiting our Republic for the first time in 250 years, I would only add this: beware the man who loves the symbols of our country more than its restraints. Beware the patriot who attacks the press, flatters himself with marble, and treats public office as family property. George III lost America by misunderstanding Americans. It would be a poor anniversary indeed if Americans returned the favor by misunderstanding George III.
Tell our friends in Philadelphia that the Republic has not failed. The forms remain: elections, courts, printers, laws, and that blessed American habit of arguing with everyone within reach.
But the balance has shifted toward one man’s office in a manner that would please Mr. Hamilton, satisfy much of Mr. Adams, send Mr. Jefferson searching for ink and a quill, and prompt Paul Revere to get back on horseback. The President now stands so enlarged that many citizens seem less interested in restraining him than in being near enough to admire the glow.
This is the warning I carry home: a Republic may keep its papers and still lose its posture. If the people do not soon pull power back toward Congress, the courts, the press, the states, and themselves, they may wake to find they have not crowned a king but have trained themselves to obey one.
Our democratic experiment continues, but it now dangerously leans toward the very thing we crossed an ocean of trouble to resist.
I remain, as ever, Your affectionate friend and humble servant, B. Franklin
P.S. I hope this dispatch finds you in good health and, if possible, in better shade than I presently enjoy, for the heat here is dreadful. I am told the current chief magistrate has intellectual doubts that the climate itself can change, which is a curious position in an age that can weigh the stars, split the atom, and yet still offends itself by consulting a thermometer.
You may recall that the annual White House Correspondents Dinner was interrupted last April 25, then cancelled, after a lone gunman tried to break through security and was stopped.
The event is a venerable tradition. The April dinner was designed for 2,500 guests. The rescheduled dinner was held last night. It was slimmed down to 700 people, which included prominent figures in the media, especially those journalists who cover the White House.
The speech took place at the same time that the Trump Justice Department claims the authority to issue subpoenas to reporters for writing stories that Trump treats as leaks.
Trump did what he does best: he insulted the journalists who cover him, and he ridiculed politicians who are his enemies.
The Washington Post reported:
He said that he had once mixed up CNN reporter Kaitlan Collins, whom he said “never smiles,” with a transgender social media personality, Dylan Mulvaney, after he called the 34-year-old cable news star a “young, attractive woman.” He said he planned to host twice-weekly fights at the White House.
“We will have sloppy Chris Christie, one of the sloppiest human beings, fighting,” Trump said to silence. “I could mention the governor of Chicago, but I’m going to mention instead Jerry Nadler. Oh my God! They’re fighting for a big piece of cheesecake, big fat piece of cheesecake.” Then he told a joke about Sen. Adam Schiff (D-California).
“I hate some people,” he said to groans. “He’s a liar, and I called him watermelon head because he has the largest head I’ve ever seen with the smallest neck, pencil neck. How does that make a fat, ugly head on a little pencil neck?”
Trump’s entourage laughed at his vitriolic barbs, but the journalists sat in “stunned silence” as Trump attacked the journalists who cover him.
Trump proved to all who heard him that he has low regard for a free press. But he is a master of insults and disparagement.
The Trump administration claims to be transparent, but it is quick to harass reporters if they discover and reveal information that the administration wants to hide. The New York Times recently explained that Trump had to use his old Presidential airplane to return from the NATO meeting in Ankara, Turkey, because his huge airplane–the Qatari gift– didn’t have the required security enhancements. The reporters credited with the story received subpoenas, and the government will try to compel them to testify before a grand jury and reveal their sources.
The Trump administration issued subpoenas on Friday to several journalists for The New York Times, after the news outlet reported this week on security concerns involving President Trump’s new Qatari-donated Air Force One.
The subpoenas — which seek to force the reporters to testify before a federal grand jury in Manhattan on Wednesday — were an extraordinary escalation in President Trump’s efforts to threaten and intimidate independent news organizations.
In some cases, the subpoenas were delivered by federal agents who showed up at reporters’ homes.
The Times denounced the administration’s actions.
“The appearance of federal law enforcement agents on the doorstep of news reporters should shock the conscience of any American who believes in the Constitution and the press freedom it protects,” said David McCraw, The Times’s top newsroom lawyer, in a statement on Friday evening.
“Our journalists report the facts and advance the American public’s right to know how their government is operating and their taxpayer dollars are being used,” Mr. McCraw wrote. “This brazen act should be seen as nothing more than an attempt to prevent the public from knowing what is happening in their country by intimidating journalists from doing their jobs.”
The subpoenas contain few specifics, asking only that the journalists testify “in regard to an alleged violation of federal criminal law.” They were issued by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan. Mr. Clayton, who leads one of the country’s most prominent law enforcement offices, was recently nominated by Mr. Trump to serve as director of national intelligence.
Representatives for the White House did not respond to inquiries on Friday evening.
In a statement on Saturday, a Justice Department spokeswoman said that “reporters are not the targets, those leaking classified information are.”
“We value and appreciate the important role that the press plays in this country, but D.O.J. also plays an important role to make sure that the people entrusted with our nation’s secrets do what they’re supposed to do with that information,” said the spokeswoman, Emily Covington. She added, “We recognize there may always be natural tension there, but we are not going to ignore the law.”
The Times journalists who received subpoenas included Julian E. Barnes, Eric Lipton, Tyler Pager and Eric Schmitt, who reported on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had departed Turkey on the old Air Force One as a security precaution at the urging of the Secret Service. On Thursday, The Times reported that the new Air Force One, a Qatari-donated Boeing 747-8, lacked some of the advanced security features of the older aircraft, including antimissile capabilities. Both articles cited sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues.
Before the Wednesday article was published, a senior official at the Federal Bureau of Investigation contacted a reporter and a senior editor at The Times to ask that the article be held, calling it an issue of national security, according to a person familiar with the conversation. The F.B.I. official declined to explain the security issue. The official also asked The Times to disclose its sources for the article; the newspaper refused to do so. (A spokesman for The Times, Charlie Stadtlander, confirmed the account.)
Mr. Trump has long been a harsh critic of the news media. But in his second term in office, he has moved aggressively to use the immense powers of the federal government in his efforts to attack the press.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department sought to compel testimony from journalists at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. The Justice Department withdrew the subpoenas after both news organizations fought back in sealed filings.
Both Democratic and Republican administrations have initiated leak investigations into the disclosure of classified information. But subpoenas aimed at journalists are not common, and First Amendment advocates say they can chill the work of news gathering.
In January, F.B.I. agents took the rare step of searching the home of a Washington Post reporter, Hannah Natanson, as part of an investigation into a government contractor’s handling of classified material. The agents seized phones, laptops and a smartwatch after executing a search warrant. Ms. Natanson had spent months speaking with government employees while reporting on the Trump administration’s efforts to shrink the federal work force.
The Times is a party to several lawsuits involving Mr. Trump and his administration.
The president suedThe Times last year, accusing it of defaming him, disparaging his reputation and seeking to undermine his 2024 candidacy.
In December, The Timessued the Defense Department after it imposed restrictions on reporters who cover the military. The company sued again after the agency reduced reporters’ physical access to the Pentagon.
In May, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission sued The Times, accusing it of employment discrimination. On Friday, The Timesfiled a counterclaim, saying the lawsuit was an act of retaliation for its coverage of the Trump presidency and a violation of its First Amendment rights.
As a citizen of New York City, I am pleased to have voted for Zohran Mamdani. I am not a Democratic Socialist. I am a Democrat.
I like his determination to deliver on his promises. I like his zestfulness. I like his idealism and his determination to protect the weak and vulnerable.
The other day, he jumped into a public swimming pool, fully clothed, in Harlem, surrounded by children. No shoes, but a suit and tie. He makes people happy. He has a great smile.
I don’t agree with him about everything, but I have never agreed with any elected official about everything.
I feel that he is a good man who wants to keep his promises and make life affordable.
He’s a Muslim, I’m a Jew.
Remember during the Knicks championship series, someone posted on social media:
“My mayor is Muslim,
My bagel is Jewish,
My Christian’s Dior,
The Knicks win in four.”
Okay, they won in five but the point is that we all live together. We work together. Today we will watch dozens of Tall Ships from all over the world parade up the Hudson River. And we cheer together.
That’s New York City. That’s America.
Happy Fourth of July!
Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: Good morning, my fellow Americans. Season after season, year after year, the tides have come in and out of New York Harbor. Long before the name “New York” had ever been spoken, Lenape dugouts crossed these currents. It was on these waters that tall masts crested the horizon, captained by explorers like Verrazzano and Hudson after whom we’ve named our bridges and rivers. And ever since, ships full of travelers weary from long journeys have passed through the Narrows, the winds of the Atlantic at their backs.
When those passengers lifted their heads to glimpse what lies just beyond the waves, what did they see? They saw land, lush and teeming with life. They saw men waiting at the docks to take them into bondage. They saw tenements rife with squalor. They saw industry rumbling with activity, steam and smoke rising, a city on the move. They saw a towering monument to freedom, her torch glowing world-wide welcome. They saw New York City. They saw America.
Tomorrow, our nation marks 250 years since we declared our independence. Two hundred and fifty years of a grand experiment in self-governance — an experiment so audacious that some in 1776 doubted it would last more than a few years, let alone a quarter of a millennium. From Lexington to Los Angeles, Selma to Seneca Falls, Morrisania to Midwood, Americans will come together for a day, just as we do each year. Families will gather around the grill. Fireworks will fill the night sky. This will be no ordinary day of celebration. Two hundred and fifty years presents a rare opportunity for more than 340 million people to turn together — both towards one another and towards ourselves, to take measure of who we are as a nation. When we look at America, what do we see?
Here at City Hall, as I sit behind George Washington’s desk, alongside new Americans who came to this country, I cannot see all of America. But like so many who came before, I can see New York City.
The city I see today looks very different than the one that greeted George Washington. In July of 1776, our city simmered under the yoke of oppression. The British had imposed a colonial rule so repressive that 250 years ago, 80 miles south, a small group of newspaper editors, farmers, and soldiers signed their names on a document declaring truths that feel self-evident now but were revolutionary then, establishing the ideals our nation still strives to fulfill.
The British did not take it well. War broke out. And that August, as the largest battle of the Revolutionary War unfolded in Brooklyn, batteries on Governors Island took aim at British ships anchored just offshore. We were outgunned, we were outmanned and we were soundly defeated. After only a few months, it appeared our fledgling attempt at democracy was on the precipice of collapse.
But that night, with the moon overhead, thousands of our soldiers silently climbed into ferries and flat-bottomed boats and escaped to Manhattan. The Continental Army survived to fight another day. Independence may have been declared in Philadelphia, but it was rescued in New York City. George Washington was the last to leave Brooklyn. As he waited at the river’s edge, the sun beginning its rise, he would have looked out over New York City’s waters and seen what so many have seen in the 250 years since — an opportunity to begin anew. Those opportunities — like everything in New York City — are not given. They are won.
In 1838, 11 years after New York outlawed slavery, a recently emancipated Black man by the name of James Weeks sought to begin anew as well — and to help hundreds of others do the same. He bought property in Brooklyn, won himself the right to vote, and sold lots to others newly freed. When they landed in New York Harbor, they knew they had something waiting for them that they had never had before: a home. Weeksville still stands today — a living, breathing testament to what we know America to be: a place each of us has the power to make.
The Harbor was busy those years, as ships poured in from around the world. Hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants arrived with stomachs aching from a famine manufactured by imperial cruelty. Chinese sailors settled in what is today, Chinatown. Millions more traveled under the Statue of Liberty and through Ellis Island — Jewish people escaping pogroms, Italians fleeing poverty, Syrians seeking economic opportunity.
Each of these new arrivals peered through portholes onto a city that was changing as fast as the nation. They saw merchants peddling their wares on the docks, streets being laid out on a grid, buildings rising into the clouds. They could not yet see the nativism they would face — the jobs they would be refused, the landlords who would not rent to them, and the abject labor and living conditions they would withstand. But no matter how much smog hung over the harbor, they still saw an opportunity to begin anew.
Over the years that followed, despite laws enacted by the federal government to bar their entry, despite sweatshop fires that killed hundreds of women, despite riots aimed at their very existence, immigrants made homes here in New York City, and they helped to make New York City. That legacy of every generation of Americans insisting that the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness extends to them, too, is no relic of the past. It carried millions of Black Americans north during the Great Migration; it drew hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans to New York City after the Second World War; it invited countless others from the West Indies, and South Asia, and West Africa, and across the world. And it is what brought my family to this city when I was seven years old.
My family did not arrive by boat, although we saw the Statue of Liberty from the window of the plane. Even from the air, we could make out the promise of America — the promise of the beautiful, patriotic work of rendering America, year after year, a little more faithful to its founding ideals. There is a term so often used to describe our nation and those who have shaped it: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism, the conventional wisdom tells us, makes our freedom a little more free, is how we dug the Erie Canal and irrigated the West, is why children in faraway lands grow up dreaming of one day moving here.
And yet the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional. For generation after generation, we have been told that when the world has sent its people to our shores, it has not sent its best. It sent Puritans and Sikhs and Quakers and Muslims and Jewish people who were banished for praying the wrong way, worshipping the wrong Gods, angering the wrong people. It sent peasants and serfs from slums and shtetls who were treated as less because they hardly owned clothes, let alone land. It sent immigrants for whom power was something someone else had. We are told that America is exceptional because we are richer, stronger, more powerful than everyone else.
The truth, my friends, is that America is exceptional because here, nothing is fixed into place. The frontier may be closed, we may have walked on the moon, but the work of fulfilling the values first enshrined in the Declaration of Independence — that work endures, my friends, and it belongs to us all. It belongs too to our newest Americans, those standing here with me today, all of whom were recently naturalized. Nearly a decade ago, I too felt what you feel — the joy of no longer being just a New Yorker, but an American too. You each hold a special power. The power to determine what America means.
The powerful have always known their answer. America, in their view, is an arena of supremacy, where only a select few are allowed freedom, where not all are created equal. America, if you ask them, becomes less the more people it welcomes. America, they will tell you, belongs only to those with the right accent or the right shade of skin. The rest of us, they insist, should be grateful for merely being allowed to visit.
How small they are, how weak, how unoriginal. At every moment in our past, those who led through exclusion and isolation have tried to win power and enrich themselves by turning us against one another. Division is the oldest trick in politics, and the cheapest. But time and again — including 250 years ago — those forces of division have been vanquished by the forces of progress. As Thomas Paine once wrote, “this new world hath been the asylum for the persecuted lovers of civil and religious liberty […] hither have they fled.” And yet today, too many of our leaders do not believe in a vision of this nation as an asylum for the persecuted — but rather as one that persecutes those seeking asylum. As we mark 250 years, what do we see?
We see a city of contradictions within a nation of contradictions. We see the wealthiest country in the history of the world — one where children go to sleep hungry while the world’s first trillionaire hungers for more. We see monopolies that dominate every industry and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans. We see a nation whose immense wealth has been built by those with calloused, dirt-streaked hands — those who toil on factory floors and chisel into stone — and we see a nation that has allowed so much of that wealth to be held instead in the soft hands of a precious few.
Yes, we see America in a health insurance industry that exploits the sick, but that is not all I see when we look for America. We see it too in the nurse who works a double shift and then stops on her way home to check on an ailing neighbor.
Yes, we see America in corporate landlords for whom negligence is a business model. We see it too in the father who tucks his children into bed beneath a ceiling stained with leaks, who wakes before dawn to go to work and still believes his country can do better by his family.
Yes, we see America when we spend our tax dollars on bombs and bailouts, when we sell our elections to the highest bidder. Yet we see it just as clearly in every American who still believes this country belongs to we, the people.
We see America each time neighbors link arms with neighbors — without asking how long they have lived here, or what papers they have — as ICE invades our neighborhoods.
We see America each time those young and old stand in the beating rain or the stifling heat to cast their ballots.
We see America each time working people demand more — not just for themselves, but for their fellow Americans.
There are some who respond to those who ask for more from America with a simple refrain: “Love it or leave it,” they say. But patriotism has never been about pretending our nation is without flaws. Patriotism is every act of righteous dissent, it is every march led under the heavy sun, it is every protest held a decade before its time. It is precisely because we love this nation that we will not leave it. After all, who loves America more than those who have sacrificed so much to make it free?
Today, I think not only of the Fourth of July — I think too of the ninth of July. Five days after the Declaration of Independence was signed, it arrived here in New York City. Redcoats had disembarked on Staten Island. More than a hundred British ships loomed just offshore. Across this city, the Continental Army prepared for an invasion. George Washington commanded his brigades to assemble just a few feet from this building. It was known then as the Commons — today, we call it City Hall Park.
There, within range of British guns, Washington ordered his generals to read the Declaration aloud. And with the world’s mightiest empire poised to attack, Washington told the people of New York City what we will celebrate tomorrow — that we had declared our independence. That freedom was within reach. That evening, danger loomed. Conflict was not a question but a certainty. And yet when those early New Yorkers marched toward the statue of King George III that stood in Bowling Green, a statue they would melt down into bullets for their young army, they walked in unison — grounded not in the pursuit of plunder, but in ideals that for the first time had a name: America.
Those ideals upon which our nation was built — they are strong enough to endure any authoritarian regime, but only if we reach for them. Ours is a nation working each day towards the perfection in which it was conceived. A nation striving each day to better itself. Therein lies the work of America — the striving, the bettering, the reaching towards perfection.
What a privilege each of us has, to live in a nation that every one of its inhabitants can shape. What a responsibility each of us possesses, to prove ourselves worthy of all those who came before. What power each of us holds, to bring America ever-closer to the greatness so many have seen when they looked upon these shores — the greatness that, for 250 years, has been America.
Thank you. God Bless America, God Bless New York City, and happy Fourth of July.
Timothy Snyder is an expert on European history. He taught for many years at Yale University and held a prestigious chair in European history. In 2025, he accepted a chair at the University of Toronto. His Substack blog is titled “Thinking About…” This important essay appeared in May 9. Nothing Snyder says here has changed.
The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide.
On April 20th I was asked to speak in New York about ethics and power. My thinking, which I expressed in a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations, on this little video, and in the media, was that our utterly unethical war was also utterly self-destructive. The war, a catastrophe in itself, suggests the guiding principle of Trump foreign policy: superpower suicide. The term was since come into more general use, and readers have been asking me to spell it out.
Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.
It is hard to see this clearly. Even as we oppose individual Trump adventures, we hope that in some way they are based on some understanding of the national interest. They are not. To get the perspective we need to see the nature of this anti-strategic self-slaughter, it will help to consider thirteen traditional bases of state power.
1. Statehood. A superpower must, at a minimum, be a modern state. This means that it must be an arrangement that includes, via law and other institutions, a larger body of citizens within a common endeavor. There is no sign that the Trump administration regards the United States of America as a state. It treats the existence of the United States as a commercial opportunity for a select few people, American and otherwise.
2. National interest. Another minimal requirement of superpower would be a sense of why that power must be used. The Trump administration exhibits no interest in the good of the people. Theorists of international relations have differed as to how leaders understand national interests; we are intellectually unprepared, however, for a situation in which the leader simply does not care about either the state or the nation.
3. Succession. Again, for a state to maintain itself as a superpower, it must maintain itself over time. The basic requirement of such continuity is a succession principle, a means by which authority is transferred from some people to other people while institutions continue to function. In the United States, democracy enables succession. Historically, there are means of succession, for example by dynasty (or dynastic adoption, as in second-century Rome) or by the decision of a politburo, as in China or the USSR (in the US this would be a capitalist politburo, the sort of oligarchical coven that got us JD Vance). Getting from democracy to such different arrangements would end the American republic. Trump aspires to stay in power indefinitely, and says so. By putting the vote in question, he puts America in question, and thus American power.
4. Elites. For states to thrive and to accumulate and maintain power, the right people have to be in charge. There is no perfect means to achieve this, and there is the inevitable tension, as the Roman Stoics and others have noted, between the skills needed to rise to the top and those suited to serving some general interest. And those who rise to a position of authority will try to pass it on to their children; the Roman Catholic Church went to the extreme of insisting on priestly celibacy to block this tendency. Historically, powerful states seek ways to enable qualified people to serve in positions of authority, regardless of birth. Ancient China had an examination system. Napoleon established the principle of merit in both civilian and military life. The United States had a civil service that was the envy of the world as well as a military that was its most meritocratic institution. The Trump administration has chosen to disable the civil service and to purge the military command of people of quality. This process has been carried out by people who are themselves wildly unqualified to hold any sort of office, let along cabinet positions. To see where we are, we must understand that people such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, about whom one might raise other objections, had no business accepting their nominations, since they lack any qualifications. The fact that such people could be considered, let alone appointed, is a marker of superpower suicide.
5. Education. In a deeper sense, a superpower must have a mechanism to refresh its society, and thus its politics and administration, by preparing its population to understand the challenges of the world. This administration has done the contrary. University students are forbidden to gather and to speak their minds; university administrations are threatened with retaliation if they allow their faculty to teach freely; libraries around the country, including in military academies, are purged of useful books; public education generally is replaced with scams whereby tax money is transferred from the poorer to the richer while schools themselves are starved; an unregulated internet is allowed and indeed encouraged to transform the public sphere into a realm of emotions and recriminations.
6. Science. The rise of great powers often involves an alliance between politics and science. The ancient Mesopotamians were astronomers whose systems of describing the heavens still mark our ways of thought; so were the Mayans. The Romans managed to operationalize Greek science to build, defend, and cure. The Renaissance was, by no coincidence, also the age of exploration. Modern imperial powers built state institutions to fund science and attract scientists; the United States from the 1940s was the outstanding example of this trend, and science (often as practiced by immigrants) was the most important basis of American superpower. Current American policy is to fund science on the basis of primitive ideological taboos, and to discourage young scientists from immigrating to the United States. Senior scientists are also leaving; a colleague in a central position in US science just told me that he is leaving the country in part because the overall environment is better in other places. It is also US policy to cast doubt on basic scientific observations, such as that of human-caused climate change.
7. Energy. Human groups that pioneer new forms of energy technology rise; those that do not fall. This might be the most profound truth of our history; a magnificent forthcoming bookdemonstrates the significance of energy transitions at the most profound level, that of the history of life on earth itself. Humans who mastered fire could consume more energy themselves. Humans who domesticated dogs could use their energy to hunt mammoths. Humans who domesticated plants could turn solar energy to their own purposes. Humans who understood weather and climate could turn wind energy to the purpose of exploration and conquest, as did the Vikings. The United States was established on the cusp of a transition to hydrocarbon energy: coal, oil, natural gas. These forms of energy are now becoming obsolete, not only in ecological but also in economic terms. And yet this administration has chosen to cancel America’s energy transition and subsidize technologies that have no future. This is superpower suicide in perhaps the most basic form. And nothing could benefit America’s chief rival, China, more than this choice.
8. Technology. It requires little effort to associate technology with the rise of great powers. Military achievement is associated intimately with innovation; from the spur to the machine gun, the causal relationship is not really contestable. While the United States spends gigantic amounts of money on weaponry, the Trump administration has chosen to focus on weapons from the past rather than of the future. Trump’s idea is battleships named after himself based on what he remembers of a movie. The plans for “Trump-class” battleships are a mixture of the fictional and the vulnerable, which does reflect the man. The notion is to invest untold amounts of money into a kind of weapon has been understood to be obsolete since 1943, and which if somehow built would be highly vulnerable to weapons other countries now have. This strategic atavism draws the United States away from national security in its most basic sense. The shape of modern warfare is revealed by the high-tech war between Russia and Ukraine, especially in Ukraine’s successful self-defense. The Trump administration chose to ignore the lessons of that war and to demean and defund America’s Ukrainian ally, to the detriment of American interests and American warfighting.
9. Diplomacy. This art, celebrated by great powers, has been trashed by the United States. It cannot be practiced without understanding other countries, as the most focused American diplomats have stressed (for example, Henry Kissinger, who can hardly be excused of softheartedness). It has rested, in the American and other cases, on the deliberate construction of a diplomatic corps where people train in languages and trade in knowledge. Under the Trump administration, the foreign service has been trashed. The principle of diplomacy, such as it is, is that other countries will do what we want because we are big and bad. This has not worked. The bizarre notion that the president can himself “make deals” is the sign of a religious cult; like most cults, its activity is the generation of ever more creative excuses for the lack of performance. There is no evidence that Trump knows how to negotiate, and abundant evidence that he does not: for example, defeat in trade wars with China; personal vulnerability to the preferences of Russian leaders, and the disaster of Iranian nuclear enrichment, of which Trump himself is the chief sponsor. In practice, critical negotiations, with Iran and elsewhere, have been put in the hands of two people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with close personal relationships with the president and obvious economic stakes in the relevant conflicts. The diplomacy of the Huns was far more sophisticated than this. It is hard to overstate how primitive the current American approach is, and how much joy it brings to America’s enemies.
10. Alliances. Great powers have allies. To be sure, they might change these alliances rapidly for reasons of interest, as the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire famously did. The whole history of the Roman Empire, for that matter, was one of active diplomacy with neighboring barbarians (as the Romans saw matters); archaeology bears witness to the arrangements that were made. The history of modern European empires was also one considered alliances, as the architects of American superpower understood. Under the Trump administration, useful allies are mocked and marginalized for no reason other than personal whimsy and a sense of grievance. Because there is no sense of state or national interest, there can be no understanding that alliances are of service. Trump feels annoyed because he is losing a war and removes US troops from Germany; those troops are there to enable the United States to win wars. I personally cannot think of any other example in which the leaders of a great power behaved in this way, presumably because these kinds of choices are inconsistent with the maintenance of power. The United States now seems to be treating as “allies” middle eastern countries that have nothing to offer except their own interests in the use of American armed forces in their own region, permanent engagement in the disastrous politics of oil, and financial opportunities for people personally close to Trump.
11. The international system. Postwar America did something far more impressive than build a system of alliances; it essentially created a set of laws, rules, and norms that allowed American power to maintain itself and to expand. The European Union and NATO, so abused by the Trump people today, were indirect and direct results of American policies intelligently designed to maximize American trade and security interests. But the achievement was far broader than that, and indeed historically unprecedented: the construction of laws and conventions that kept one country in the center of the world. Today, the Trump people make themselves at the World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference and similar gatherings and complaining that the rules are against them — the exact opposite was the case, because America made the rules. In deliberately destroying its own international system, this American government is improving the position of its rivals China and Russia, who have been calling for exactly this to happen, but who lacked the ability to make it happen.
12. The idea of victory. A superpower wins in confrontations, at least some of the time. This administration loses again and again, and is seen to lose by others. Trump announced that his main weapon of influence would be tariffs, but then lost his trade war with China, leaving Beijing more powerful and more emboldened. The Russo-Ukrainian war is a curious case. It would serve the interests of the United States in prosperity and stability for Ukraine to win; but under Trump the United States has switched its policy to one of support for Ukraine to support for Russia. So it has lost in that way. But since the United States has made that pivot, Ukraine has performed ever better in the war, and Russia has performed worse. And so the United States, amazingly, has managed to be the loser in the same war a double sense: by failing to see its own interests, and then by failing to fail. The Iranian war is an obvious strategic defeat in every traditional sense; insofar as there were any American objectives, they were not achieved. Trump’s policies have left Iran with more enriched uranium in the hands of a more radical regime which holds new sources of economic power in the world. In the current situation, in which military options have been self-humiliatingly exhausted, the useful instruments would be those that involved communicating with the Iranian people or influencing Iranian society. Those institutions existed until very recently; they were willfully demolished, to great fanfare, in early 2026.
The United States is now governed by people who celebrate defeat in symbolic terms characteristic of states in disastrous decline. Consider Defense Secretary Hegseth’s description of the rescue of a US pilot as the resurrection of Jesus. The screaming blasphemy of this might distract us from its strategic helplessness. Christological images of this sort are used as propaganda to transform defeat in the real world into victory in some imaginary one. The US lost the war in Iran. Among other things it was not able to sustain an air campaign. The downing of a US fighter meant than an individual mission failed. It is happy news, of course, that the pilot survived. But the notion that this was a “literal miracle,” as Hegseth claimed, brings the United States, sadly, into the tradition of losers who use Jesus to claim to be winners. An historical example of this was Polish Romanticism, with its idea that the collapse of a republic (chiefly due to wealth inequality) made of Poland the “Christ of Nations.” Donald Trump’s own self-deification has to be seen in similar terms: a president who could assert power in this world would not have to claim that his real authority comes from another one. His fantasies of the total destruction of Iranian civilization are part of an apocalyptic panorama that is inconsistent with decent politics.
13. Finances. Though not the most interesting historical subject, budget disaster stands behind many of the most notable collapses of state power, ancient and modern. Under Trump our national debt now approaches $40 trillion. National debt is higher than GDP of the country for the first time since the end of the Second World War. That is a notable point of comparison: it is normal to run big deficits when facing the challenge of the scale of a world war. We are running huge deficits for an entirely different reason: because we decline to tax wealthy individuals and corporations. That is not an approach that is consistent with fighting and winning wars, nor with maintaining the social services that allow a modern society to function. More profoundly: it reflects an approach to politics — government as customer service to the very wealthy — that leads us from power to ethics.
The war can lead us to a diagnosis of superpower suicide. Wars cannot be won by people who have no idea what they are doing, because they have no frame of reference (such as the nation or the state) beyond their own feelings. They cannot be fought well when the wrong people are making the daily decisions and the wrong weapons are being deployed. They cannot be reasonably brought to an end when there is no practice of diplomacy and no notion of the value of alliances and no concern about corruption.
But even a strict focus on power will lead us back to justice. But just as the war is only a symptom of superpower suicide, so superpower suicide is only a symptom of a still deeper condition, the one that must be addressed.
Even if all we cared about were American power, we would have to ask ourselves how to undo the distortions of democracy and the drastic inequalities of that enabled world-historical levels of strategic buffoonery. After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable.
The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.
*****
PS. If you would like to help Ukrainians defend themselves from Russia’s criminal war of aggression, please consider contributing to the Sky Defense campaign. For worse but also for better, as the Ukrainians have shown us, this is a time when civil society campaigns can contribute to general security.
Trump has spent a lot of time rescuing, pardoning and trying to reward the people who joined him in attempting to overturn his election loss in 2020. He is a giant baby. He is a sore loser. He lost decisively, and he refuses to accept it. More than 60 federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected his appeals because there was no evidence of election fraud.
Someday, with time, we will look back on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat as a low point in our history. Of course, we will look at his two terms in office as the absolute nadir of our history, as a time he spent rolling back civil rights, environmental protections, international alliances, access to healthcare, defunding medical and scientific research, bullying universities, and censoring the mass media.
Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.
Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.
Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.
Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.
Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.
Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.
Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.
Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.
Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”
This a great article that will uplift your spirits!
Jennifer Rubin is a journalist and lawyer who was hired by The Washington Post to be its conservative columnist. But Trump radicalized her, and she became a leading voice for liberal policies. After Jeff Bezos decided to placate and woo Trump, she resigned her job and started a new and wildly popular blog called “The Contrarian,” where she and other brilliant writers gathered to critique the madness of MAGA.
She recently posted an optimistic analysis of American politics. Despite the gerrymandering, despite horrible court decisions, Democrats are in a great position to wash the MAGA stain out of the nation’s government.
It’s the most optimistic piece I’ve read in a long while, and I think you will enjoy it too.
Rubin writes:
In a span of less than two weeks, the U.S. Supreme Court (contravening the text and intent of the post-Civil War amendments and decades of court precedent) and the Virginia State Supreme Court (overturning the will of Virginia voters and inventing a new definition of “election”) have bulldozed through the electoral landscape to slant the 2026 midterm playing field in Republicans’ favor.
In Louisiana v. Callais, the U.S. Supreme Court demolished 60 years of progress in voting rights, robbed Black and Hispanic communities of the power to elect representatives of their own choosing, and aimed to decimate the ranks of non-white U.S. House members, state legislators, and local officials. This is nothing short of an attempt to reimpose white supremacy.
This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local bodies like city councils, by ending the protections of Section 2 of the act, which had provided a pathway to assure that voters of color would have some rudimentary fair representation. It’s the culmination of the life’s work of Chief Justice John Roberts and Samuel Alito, who have shown persistent resistance to the idea of the United States as a multiracial democracy, and a brazen willingness to reject Congress’ judgment that fair representation for minority voters sometimes requires race-conscious legislation…. It protects Alito’s core constituency: aggrieved white Republican voters.
As infuriating, partisan, and legally unsound as these rulings are, they are not the final word on either the midterms or the future of our multi-racial democracy.
The Midterms
Even with the loss in Virginia, Democrats’ five-seat pick up in California should more than counteract the original Texas re-redistricting (where two of the five seats Republicans sought to steal may well go to Democrats). And despite the Virginia decision, Democrats may still pick up one to two more seats under Virginia’s old map. The net pickup for Republicans currently is less than ten before Democrats pursue their own redistricting in New York, Illinois, Colorado, and Maryland.
However, even with the advantage of, say, a dozen rigged seats, Republicans are unlikely to keep the House majority. Since 2024, Democrats have swung the electorate substantially in their direction, over-performing in comparison to Kamala Harris in 193 of 226 state legislative races, by 20 points in some cases. On average, Democrats are doing more than 10 points better than they did in 2024. (Brookings’ William A. Galston wrote: “In the six special elections for the House conducted in 2025-2026, the swing toward Democratic candidates averaged about 15 points, while the swing toward Democratic gubernatorial candidates in New Jersey and Virginia averaged 14 points.”)
More than 20 Republican House seats were won by less than 10 points in 2024; 43 Republicans won by less than 15%. Given the electoral shift, Democrats’ list of targeted seats expands each week.
The New York Times reported that gerrymandering “tells only part of the story” about the midterms. While “Democrats could end up losing at least half a dozen safe seats, and possibly more,” depending on new maps drawn in Southern states, Republicans face gale-force “headwinds” thanks to Donald Trump’s atrocious approval numbers, his reviled Iran war, soaring gas and other consumer prices, snatching away healthcare coverage from millions, disaffection of Hispanic voters, and rampant corruption.
In short, gerrymandering, however outrageous, will not be enough to save Republicans if Democrats generate huge turnout, especially among those voters enraged that they have been stripped of voting power. (As Hungary demonstrated, a determined opposition can overcome a raft of unfair impediments imposed by a corrupt, unpopular regime.)
Democrats, independents, and disaffected Republicans know that the MAGA cult has no message — which is why MAGA lawmakers and courts must rig the election to cement white supremacy. That’s all they’ve got.
Democrats have their targets
The enormity of reversing 60 years of progress on voting rights necessitates a new era of intense organizing and public education — a new civil right movement to counter MAGA’s court-imposed Jim Crow. That effort kicks off with a grassroots National Day of Action on Saturday, May 16, in Alabama. Organizers declared, “The dismantling of the Voting Rights Act is a reminder that we have unfinished business. The fight is ours and we are going to finish it.” Scores of democracy groups, faith-based organizations, and civil rights organizations will rally to oppose Jim Crow redistricting and to support multi-racial democracy.
The goal: Democrats must win, and win big, in 2026 and 2028. Senate seats, governorships, and other statewide offices cannot be gerrymandered. A massive registration and turnout-the-vote operation must expand deep into Republican areas, appealing to disgruntled independents and Republicans while firing up the base. Democrats will need a broad, inclusive electoral coalition to pursue bold reform. As former attorney general Eric Holder likes to say, progressives “need to be comfortable with acquiring power and using power.”
What then? If Democrats come out of the 2028 election with House and Senate majorities, and the presidency, they will have all the motivation and tools required to reverse the slide into Jim Crow, beginning with substantial reform of the discredited Supreme Court. The MAGA justices’ willful misreading of the Voting Rights Act and the Constitution to concoct a “color blind” interpretation of voting rights (coupled with their monstrous expansion of executive power and abuse of the emergency docket) should unify democracy defenders on the urgency of Supreme Court reform through court expansion, term limits, revised appellate jurisdiction, and ethics reform.
The Supreme Court itself has shown itself to be the enemy of democracy. If and when Democrats retake control of the political branches, it will be incumbent on them not only to write new voting legislation protecting minority voters and all voters in the ability to participate fairly in elections that reflect the will of all the people. They will also have to consider reform of the Supreme Court itself.
With the election of aggressive Senate Democrats running in 2026 and 2028, Democrats should have little trouble carving out a filibuster exception, especially if they win by large margins that affirm voters’ rejection of MAGA assault on pluralistic democracy.
Though the tools to sustain multi-racial democracy may be different from those employed in the 1960s, Madeleine Greenberg of the Campaign Legal Center reminded us: “Every generation has faced attempts to restrict access to the ballot box, and every generation has pushed back.” If Democrats win elections decisively and fully exercise the power they obtain, they can fix what MAGA white supremacists have broken. Only then can we fulfill the promise of pluralistic democracy.
The midterm elections of 2026 are approaching. Start working now to reclaim our democracy! Our time is now.
Diane Ravitch's blog 