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Trump Lashes Out at His Enemies and Sells Merch to Troops at Fort Bragg

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
7

Members of the military are supposed to be nonpartisan; they serve the nation, not the President or his party. Yet Trump gave an invective-filled speech to the troops at Fort Bragg, denouncing his political enemies, while a pop-up shop sold Trump campaign merchandise to the troops.

All completely inappropriate. But Trump respects no norms. The Supreme Court gave him “absolute immunity” as president. He will use that license to do and say whatever he wants, no matter how inappropriate.

Military.com reported on the politicization of the military and how it violates Pentagon policy.

It was supposed to be a routine appearance, a visit from the commander in chief to rally the troops, boost morale and celebrate the Army‘s 250th-birthday week, which culminates with a Washington, D.C., parade slated for Saturday.

Instead, what unfolded Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium — blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.

As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom — amid the president’s controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles — as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump’s diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.

For this story, Military.com reached out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office as well as the Army and the 82nd Airborne Division directly with a series of questions that ranged from the optics of the event to social media posts showing the sale of Trump campaign merchandise on the base, to the apparent violation of Pentagon policies on political activity in uniform.

Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump’s recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.

One unit-level message bluntly said “no fat soldiers.”

Open the link from Military.com to continue reading.

Trump speech at Fort Bragg.

Categories Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Lies, Trump

Six Nobel Laureates in Economics Denounce Trump Budget Bill

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
3

The Economic Policy Institute issued an open letter to the American people, written and co-signed by six economists who won the Nobel Prize.

They wrote:

As economists who have devoted our careers to researching how economies can grow and how the benefits of this growth can be translated into broadly shared prosperity and security, we have grave concerns about the budget reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on May 22, 2025.

The most acute and immediate damage stemming from this bill would be felt by the millions of American families losing key safety net protections like Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits. The Medicaid cuts constitute a sad step backward in the nation’s commitment to providing access to health care for all. Proponents of the House bill often claim that these Medicaid cuts can be achieved simply by imposing work reporting requirements on healthy, working-age adults. But healthy, working-age adults are by definition not heavy consumers of health spending, so achieving the budgeted Medicaid cuts will obviously harm others as well.

Medicaid provides health insurance coverage for low-income Americans, but this includes paying out-of-pocket health costs for low-income retired Medicare recipients and providing nursing home and in-home care services for elderly Americans. Medicaid also covers 41% of all births in the United States, including over 50% of all births in Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. Work reporting requirements will obviously yield no savings from these Medicaid functions.

Besides providing affordable health care to families, Medicaid is also crucial to state budgets and hospital systems throughout the country—particularly in rural areas. In 2023, the federal government sent $615 billion to state governments to cover Medicaid spending; this federal contribution accounted for over 75% of total state Medicaid spending in more than 19 states. Rural hospitals in states that accepted the Medicaid expansion that was part of the Affordable Care Act were 62% less likely to close than rural hospitals in non-expansion states.

In addition to Medicaid, the House bill also significantly cuts SNAP. These steep cuts to the social safety net are being undertaken to defray the staggering cost of the tax cuts included in the House bill, including the hidden cost of preserving the large corporate income tax cutpassed in the 2017 tax law. But even these sharp spending cuts will pay for far less than half of the tax cuts (not even including the cost of maintaining the corporate income tax cuts of the 2017 law).

U.S. structural deficits are already too high, with real debt service payments approaching their historic highs in the past year. The House bill layers $3.8 trillion in additional tax cuts ($5.3 trillion if all provisions are made permanent) on top of these existing fiscal gaps—and these tax cuts are overwhelmingly tilted toward the highest-income households. Even with the safety net cuts, the House bill leads to public debt rising by over $3 trillion in coming years (and over $5 trillion over the next decade if provisions are made permanent rather than phasing out). The higher debt and deficits will put noticeable upward pressure on both inflation and interest rates in coming years.

The combination of cuts to key safety net programs like Medicaid and SNAP and tax cuts disproportionately benefiting higher-income households means that the House budget constitutes an extremely large upward redistribution of income. Given how much this bill adds to the U.S. debt, it is shocking that it still imposes absolute losses on the bottom 40% of U.S households(if some of the fiscal cost is absorbed in future bills with extremely high and broad tariffs, the share of households seeing absolute losses will increase rapidly).

The United States has a number of pressing economic challenges to address, many of which require a greater level of state capacity to navigate—capacity that will be eroded by large tax cuts. The House bill addresses none of the nation’s key economic challenges usefully and exacerbates many of them. The Senate should refuse to pass this bill and start over from scratch on the budget.

Daron Acemoglu
MIT Economics

Peter Diamond
MIT Economics

Oliver Hart
Harvard University

Simon Johnson
MIT Sloan School of Management

Paul Krugman
Graduate Center, City University of New York

Joseph Stiglitz
Columbia University

Categories Billionaires, Cruelty, Economics, Economy, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Inequity, Injustice, Jobs, Republicans, Trump

Governor Gavin Newsom: Do Not Give In to a Lawless President

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
16

Governor Gavin Newsom spoke to the situation in Los Angeles, which Trump is using as a target in his campaign to distract the public from his incompetence. In his hateful way, Trump always refers to Governor Newsom as “Newscum.”

Governor Newsom said, as transcribed by The New York Times:

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California delivered a speech on Tuesday, titled “Democracy at a Crossroads.” The following is a transcript of his remarks as broadcast online and on television channels:

I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.

This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles. Those raids continue as I speak.

California is no stranger to immigration enforcement. But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders, a strategy both parties have long supported, this administration is pushing mass deportations, indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.

What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before. On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people. A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb. A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.

In other actions, a U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested; a 4-year-old girl, taken; families separated; friends, quite literally, disappearing.

In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly, to protest their government’s actions. In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace and, with some exceptions, they were successful.

Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of unrest. We manage it regularly, and with our own law enforcement. But this, again, was different.

What then ensued was the use of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents detaining people and undermining their due process rights.

Donald Trump, without consulting California law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets, illegally and for no reason.

This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk.

That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. As the news spread throughout L.A., anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.

By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers. Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.

If you incite violence — I want to be clear about this — if you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held to account. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.

Already, more than 220 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.

But that, that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation, he chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. He federalized another 2,000 Guard members.

He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines. These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement. We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.

We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.

That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.

California will keep fighting. We’ll keep fighting on behalf of our people, all of our people, including in the courts.

Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city. Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.

If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.

And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th.

I ask everyone: Take time, reflect on this perilous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.

This is a president who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. He’s declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing.

He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment. And the threat of defunding them. At threat, he’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to, in his own words, “for getting elected.”

And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.

Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.

Democracy is next.

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.

The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.

The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office — with all due respect, Mr. President — is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.

At this moment, at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully.

I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.

Do not give into him.

Categories Bigotry, California, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Immigration, Justice, Trump

Trump Shows His Fascist Face

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
6

It was inevitable. And now it’s happening. During his first term, Trump repeatedly encouraged violence. He told police officers in New York not to be so nice when they arrest people. He asked “his” generals if they could shoot protestors in the legs. He broadcast fake videos showing him beating up a cartoon character labeled CNN. He urged his crowds at rallies to beat up protestors and said he would pay their legal fees. He wants to seem like a real man, a tough guy. But don’t forget that this tough guy dodged the draft five times with a podiatrist’s note about bone spurs in his feet.

This week, his troubles were mounting. There was the very public split with Musk, who dropped hints about Trump’s name in the still confidential Epstein files. There was Elon’s claim that Trump would have lost the election and control of the House without Elon’s help. What kind of “help”? There was the tariff mess, which was causing a global economic disruption and predictions of inflation. And Trump’s poll numbers were plummeting.

What a perfect time to send in large numbers of ICE agents to immigrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles! Send them to Home Depot, where immigrants cluster in search of work–not the “criminals, rapists, and murderers” he warned us about, but laborers looking for work.

Voila! Their friends, families, and neighbors turned out to protest the ICE raids, and all at once there are crowds and people waving Mexican flags (a big mistake, they should have waved American flags). The situation was volatile but there was no reason to think that local and state police couldn’t handle it.

Trump is shrewd: he saw his chance to distract public attention from his failing policies, and he took it. Without bothering to contact Governor Newsom, Trump mobilized the National Guard. He ordered 2,000 into the troubled neighborhood. Then he sent in another 2,000, plus 700 Marines.

Only the Governor can call up his state’s National Guard, except in the most exceptional situations (the last time it happened was 1965, when President Johnson mobilized the National Guard in Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators because Governor George Wallace refused to do so).

It is even more unusual for a President to call in the military to oppose ordinary people, which is normally handled by state and local police. There is an act-the Posse Comitatus Act–that specifically forbids the Army and Air Force from acting against civilians on American soil. A different law, 10 U.S. Code 275, forbids Navy and Marine Corps members from the same thing. Trump claims that the anti-ICE protests are an insurrection, which allows him to call in the Marines. Legal scholars disagree, but most think he overreached and that there was no insurrection in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the large show of force drew an even larger crowd to the protests and made it more dangerous. Nonetheless, there seem to be more military at the scene than protestors.

Miraculously, no one has been killed (unlike the genuinely violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, where Trump rioters viciously beat police officers and several people died). He sat back and watched the insurrection on television and is now considering whether to reimburse them for their legal expenses after being imprisoned for engaging in insurrection.

Trump said on national television that “many people” had been killed during the protests (not true) and that if he had not sent in the troops, the city would have been “obliterated.” This is nonsense. The clash between the protesters and the military is contained to a few blocks of a very large city.

Today, there were spontaneous peaceful rallies in many cities to show support for the demonstrators in Los Angeles.

The best response: show up for a “No Kings” rally on Saturday. Check the website http://www.nokings.org to find one or create one where you live. Be peaceable. Sing. Dance. Bring American flags. The Constitution protects the right to assemble peacefully.

Trump is not only diverting attention from his monstrous One Ugly Bill, he is laying the groundwork for martial law and dictatorship.

Categories Accountability, California, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Hoax, Resistance, Trump, Tyranny

Gary Legum: ABC Punishes Reporter for Accurate Description of Stephen Miller

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2025 //
5

Gary Legum writes at the blog “Wonkette.” Legum was appalled when he heard that ABC had suspended its reporter Terry Moran for posting a tweet about the hatefulness of Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller. Miller prides himself on his open hatred of immigrants and his eagerness to expel millions of them. He is ultra-MAGA and proud of it.

ABC punished Moran because he told the truth.

By the way, there is a reference in this piece to Stephen Miller’s wife Katie. I have not seen any reason to mention the flurry of reports that she has left her government job to work as a personal assistant for Elon Musk. Did she leave Stephen? Did she move to Texas with Elon? what about their children? Are they in DC or Starland, Texas?

Legum writes:

Something happened to ABC News reporter Terry Moran over the weekend: He was brought low by a brutal attack of unvarnished honesty.

Sir, really. Honesty? In Donald Trump’s America?

Even better, Moran’s honesty was an assessment of the character — or complete and utter lack thereof — of Stephen Miller, the irredeemably evil sack of donkey vomit who does whatever it takes to stay on Donald Trump’s good side, all so he can continue to hold the power — as shadow president, basically — to destroy lives for no other reason than his parents apparently never hugged him and told him he was worthy of love.

Which, quite frankly, can you blame them? We imagine raising Stephen Miller involved mysterious supernatural happenings around the house and nannies hanging themselves from the top floor of the family manor in full view of the guests at Miller’s birthday party.

The trouble started, as it so often does, with a tweet. On Saturday, Moran posted his opinion, for which your Wonkette congratulates him even though we know this sort of thing is frowned upon by the giants of journalism:

The thing about Stephen Miller is not that he is the brains behind Trumpism.

Yes, he is one of the people who conceptualizes the impulses of the Trumpist movement and translates them into policy.

But that’s not what’s interesting about Miller.

It’s not brains. It’s bile.

Miller is a man who is richly endowed with the capacity for hatred. He’s a world-class hater.

You can see this just by looking at him because you can see that his hatreds are his spiritual nourishment. He eats his hate.

Trump is a world-class hater. But his hatred only a means to an end, and that end is his own glorification. That’s his spiritual nourishment.

None of this is news about Stephen Miller to anyone who has ever known him, going back to his high school days when he once got booed off a stage for excoriating his fellow students for being nice to the school’s janitors. A journalist who wrote a book about Miller during Trump’s first term titled it Hatemonger, and we doubt many people blinked an eye.

Shoot, the man’s own family disowned him, and his childhood rabbi called him out in a sermon on Rosh Hashanah. Do you know how horrible of a person you have to be to get a rabbi to denounce you from the bema during the High Holidays? That’s an honor usually reserved for biblical villains and Adolf Hitler, and we are not glibly invoking Godwin’s Law when we say that. We have sat through a lot of High Holiday sermons.

Moran deleted the tweet at some point, but the damage was done. The White House jumped all over Moran in defense of Miller. Vice President JD Vance called the tweet “an absolutely vile smear” and declared that Miller is motivated by “a love of country.” White House Press Nazi Karoline Leavitt, perhaps forgetting who she works for and what kind of crap he puts out every day, called it “unhinged and unacceptable” in a tweet. 

Then the press secretary, her face shining like a highly polished apple, went on Maria Bartiromo’s Fox Business show and said that “ABC is gonna have to answer” for Moran’s comments:

Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com

Leavitt: “ABC is gonna have to answer for what their so-called journalist put out on twitter … we have reached out to ABC. They have said they will be taking action, so we will see what they do … hopefully this journalist will either be suspended or terminated.”

Miller himself called Moran a radical “adopting a journalist’s pose.” Oh no, was he so upset he couldn’t eat his usual Sunday brunch consisting of a live bat?

Moran posted his screed at 12:06 a.m. Sunday morning, the “drunk texting your ex because you’ve been drinking all night and are now all caught up in your lonely feels” hour. Nothing good ever comes of picking up your phone at that hour.

ABC News promptly suspended Moran. Via Deadline:

“ABC News stands for objectivity and impartiality in its news coverage and does not condone subjective personal attacks on others,” a network spokesperson said. “The post does not reflect the views of ABC News and violated our standards — as a result, Terry Moran has been suspended pending further evaluation.”

ABC should try being like Wonkette, whose only standard is the truth. Then Moran could have called Stupid Nosferatu whatever he wanted: hideous shit goblin, Skeletor, fascist taint shavings, a lower life form than the crud under the fridge, a loser husband who rumors are abounding may have been cucked by Elon Musk, a motherfucking shanda fur di goyim … the list goes on and on and on.

We are not in the habit of giving ABC any advice, but we think their response to Leavitt’s demand that they “answer for” Moran should be two middle fingers raised high, accompanied by a sneer that could melt the press secretary’s face off. It is way past time for high-level journalists to be consistently frank about what Stephen Miller is and what he’s doing, instead of couching his vile bigotry and single-minded pursuit of extremist actions as some sort of polite disagreement between right and left over immigration policy.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Ethics, Immigration, Media, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Manufactures a Crisis to Distract from Real Problems

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
16

Heather Cox Richardson writes today that Trump eagerly overstepped his authority so as to create a crisis in Los Angeles. Local and state authorities responded appropriately to protests against the aggressive actions of ICE. But Trump insisted that there was an insurrection underway, a statement tweeted by his aide Stephen Miller. He took charge of the state National Guard, which was last done in 1958 when President Eisenhower called in the Arkansas National Guard to restore order in Little Rock during white protests against civil rights enforcement.

HRC suggests two reasons for Trump’s eagerness to call in troops in L.A. First, he wants a pretext to send troops anywhere anytime, in effect, to create a police state. Second, he wants to distract attention from his embarrassing breakup with Elon Musk, the chaos caused by his tariffs, and the controversies surrounding his “One Ugly Bill” and its threat to Medicaid.

A third reason is that he seized on the opportunity to humiliate Democratic Governor Newsom.

A fourth reason is that he loves to play the part of a tough guy.

Question: why did he not send in the National Guard to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021?

She wrote:

Flatbed train cars carrying thousands of tanks rolled into Washington, D.C., yesterday in preparation for the military parade planned for June 14. On the other side of the country, protesters near Los Angeles filmed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throwing flash-bang grenades into a crowd of protesters. The two images make a disturbing portrait of the United States of America under the Donald J. Trump regime as Trump tries to use the issue of immigration to establish a police state.

In January 2024, Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to kill a bipartisan immigration measure that would have beefed up border security and funding immigration courts because he wanted to campaign on the issue of immigration. During that campaign, Trump made much of the high immigration numbers in the United States after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, when the booming U.S. economy attracted migrants. He went so far as to claim that migrants were eating people’s pets.

Many Trump supporters apparently believed officials in a Trump administration would only deport violent criminals, although Trump’s team had made it clear in his first term that they considered anyone who had broken immigration laws a criminal. Crackdowns began as soon as Trump took office, sweeping in individuals who had no criminal records in the U.S. and who were in the U.S. legally. The administration worked to define those individuals as criminals and insisted they had no right to the due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner reported that at a meeting in late May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who appears to be leading the administration’s immigration efforts, “eviscerated” federal immigration officials for numbers of deportations and renditions that, at around 600 people per day, he considered far too low. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested,” one of the officials at the meeting told Giaritelli. “‘‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” Miller said.

After the meeting, Miller told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity that the administration wanted “a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.” Thomas Homan, Trump’s border czar, took the message to heart. “You’re going to see more work site enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” he told reporters. “We’re going to flood the zone.”

According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, undocumented immigrants made up more than 4% of the nation’s workforce in 2023 and are concentrated in landscaping, farm work, and construction work. Sweeps of workplaces where immigrants are concentrated are an easy way to meet quotas.

The Trump regime apparently decided to demonstrate its power in Los Angeles, where over the course of the past week, hundreds of undocumented immigrants who went to scheduled check-in appointments with ICE were taken into custody—sometimes with their families—and held in the basement of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A.

This was the backdrop when on Friday, June 7, federal officials launched a new phase of the regime’s crackdown on immigration, focusing on L.A. workplaces. Agents in tactical gear sweeping through the city’s garment district met protesters who chanted and threw eggs; agents pepper sprayed the protesters and shot at them with what are known as “less-lethal projectiles” or “non-lethal bullets” because they are made of rubber or plastic. Protesters also gathered around the federal detention center, demanding the release of their relatives; officers in riot gear dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Officers arrested more than 40 people, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU), for impeding a federal officer while protesting. Huerta’s arrest turned union members out to stand against ICE.

At 10:33 a.m. yesterday morning eastern time—so, before anything was going on in Los Angeles—Miller reposted a clip of protesters surrounding the federal detention center in Los Angeles and wrote that these protesters constituted “[a]n insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.” Miller has appeared eager to invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military against Americans.

On Saturday, in the predominantly Latino city of Paramount about 20 miles south of L.A., Rachel Uranga and Ruben Vives of the Los Angeles Times reported that people spotted a caravan of border patrol agents across the street from the Home Depot. Word spread on social media, and protesters arrived to show that ICE’s arrest of families was not welcome. As about a hundred protesters arrived, the Home Depot closed.

Over the course of the afternoon, protesters shouted at the federal agents, who formed a line and shot tear gas or rounds of flash-bang grenades if anyone threw anything at them or approached them. L.A. County sheriff’s deputies arrived to block off a perimeter, and the border agents departed shortly after, leaving the protesters and the sheriff’s deputies, who shot flash-bang grenades at the crowd. The struggle between the deputies and about 100 protesters continued until midnight.

Almost four million people live in Los Angeles, with more than 12 million in the greater L.A. area, making the protests relatively small. Nonetheless, on Saturday evening, Trump signed an order saying that “[t]o the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Based on that weak finding, he called out at least 2,000 members of the California National Guard to protect ICE and other government personnel, activating a state’s National Guard without a request from its governor for the first time in 50 years.

At 8:25 p.m., his social media account posted: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

California’s governor Gavin Newsom said Trump’s plan was “purposefully inflammatory.” “LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice,” Newsom said. “We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.” Newsom said the administration is trying “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis.”

Trump apparently was not too terribly concerned about the “rebellion”; he was at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey, by 10:00 p.m.

At 10:06 p.m., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is under investigation over his involvement with a Signal chat that inappropriately included classified information, posted: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil; a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.” He added that the Defense Department was mobilizing the National Guard and that “if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.”

At 2:41 a.m., Trump’s social media account posted: “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest. We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual…unable to to handle the task. These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED…. Again, thank you to the National Guard for a job well done!”

Just an hour later, at 3:22 a.m., Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass posted: “I want to thank LAPD and local law enforcement for their work tonight. I also want to thank [Governor Gavin Newsom] for his support. Just to be clear, the National Guard has not been deployed in the City of Los Angeles.”

National Guard troops arrived in L.A. today, but James Queally, Nathan Solis, Salvador Hernandez, and Hannah Fry of the Los Angeles Times reported that the city’s garment district and Paramount were calm and that incidents of rock throwing were isolated. Law enforcement officers met those incidents with tear gas and less-lethal rounds.

Today, when reporters asked if he planned to send troops to L.A., Trump answered: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.” Trump appeared to be referring to the divisions during the Biden administration caused by Trump and his loyalists, who falsely claimed that Biden had stolen the 2020 presidential election. (In the defamation trial happening right now in Colorado over those allegations, MyPillow chief executive officer Mike Lindell, who was a fierce advocate of Trump’s lie, will not present evidence that the election was rigged, his lawyers say. They added: “it’s just words. All Mike Lindell did was talk. Mike believed that he was telling the truth.”)

At 5:06 p.m. this evening, Trump’s social media account posted: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations—But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.” He followed this statement with that odd closing he has been using lately: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal answered: “Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.”

At 6:27, Governor Newsom posted that he has “formally requested the Trump Administration rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles county and return them to my command. We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty—inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed. Rescind the order. Return control to California.” The Democratic governors issued a statement standing with Newsom and calling Trump’s order “ineffective and dangerous.”

At 10:03, Trump posted: Governor Gavin Newscum and “Mayor” Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots. These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists. Remember, NO MASKS!” Four minutes later, he posted: “Paid Insurrectionists!”

There is real weakness behind the regime’s power grab. Trump’s very public blowup with billionaire Elon Musk last week has opened up criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk controlled. In his fury, Musk suggested to Trump’s loyal followers that the reason the Epstein files detailing sexual assault of children haven’t been released is that Trump is implicated in them. Trump’s promised trade deals have not materialized, and indicators show his policies are hurting the economy.

And the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is raising significant opposition. Today Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) complained about the excessive spending in the bill for ICE, prompting Stephen Miller to complain on social media and to claim that “each deportation saves taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.” But David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute on Friday estimated that the deportation plans in the measure would add almost $1 trillion in costs.

There is no doubt that as their other initiatives have stalled and popular opinion is turning against the administration on every issue, the Trump regime is trying to establish a police state. But in making Los Angeles their flashpoint, they chose a poor place to demonstrate dominance. Unlike a smaller, Republican-dominated city whose people might side with the administration, Los Angeles is a huge, multicultural city that the federal government does not have the personnel to subdue.

Trump stumbled as he climbed the stairs to Air Force One tonight.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Resistance, Trump

Trump Is Trying to Seize Control of Public Broadcasting, But Judge Blocks Him, for Now

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
2

Trump is determined to defund NPR and PBS. He claims they are radical, far-left media outlets. The federal funding these media receive is funneled through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In his effort to control CPB, Trump told three members of the board of CPB that they were fired. Trump intends to control every outlet of public information, either by threatening their funding or (if private) suing to intimidate them. This is fascism.

The CPB board sued and said that it was created by Congress to be independent of political direction.

A federal district judge in DC, appointed by Obama, issued a decision that caused both sides to claim victory. The decision said that the board members would not suffer irreparable harm if removed, but that CPB is an independent agency. The judge declined to block the firings but CPB treated the ruling as a victory for its independence.

Brian Stelter of CNN described the decision:

Yesterday a federal judge declined to immediately intervene in Trump’s attempt to remove three Corporation for Public Broadcasting board members, “ruling the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a strong likelihood the firings were unlawful or that they would suffer irreparable harm,” The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky reports.

“But CPB officials celebrated the ruling as a win, pointing to part of the ruling that acknowledges that ‘Congress intended to preclude the President (or any subordinate officials acting at his direction) from directing, supervising, or controlling the Corporation.'” The entity’s statement on the matter is titled “Court Recognizes CPB’s Independence.”

The bottom line: CPB is keeping its board members in place and continuing to fight. 

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Trump

Is Harvard Teaching Remedial Math? Trump Says It Is.

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2025 //
14

In his epic battle to punish the nation’s most prestigious university, Trump claimed that Harvard is teaching remedial math. That was his way of saying that its standards of admission are very low because Harvard wants to recruit unqualified nonwhite students.

Trump has refused to release his own academic record but his public statements indicate that he is in no position to tell Harvard whom to admit or what to teach.

Only 3.6% of the students who applied to Harvard last year were admitted.

The Boston Globe took a close look at the course that Trump–the stable genius–calls “remedial.”

A star student at her small Alabama high school, Kyra Richardson graduated confident in her academic prowess in all but one subject: math.

By the time she arrived at Harvard in the fall of 2024, it had been more than 12 months since Richardson‘s last math class. Even though she passed a college-level AP calculus course as a high school junior, Richardson said it felt more like she was memorizing formulas than truly understanding the concepts behind calculus.

So when it came time for her to begin fulfilling the math requirement associated with Harvard’s pre-medical track, the university recommended (and Richardson agreed) she should take an intro-level calculus course called Math MA.

Even with her previous calculus experience, she said, the Harvard course was far from an easy A. “I’m glad that I took a class that pushed me,” Richardson said.

In recent months, amid the White House’s ongoing battle with Harvard, the Trump administration has used that class to questionthe university’s academic rigor. In what has become a familiar refrain, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Josh Gruenbaum, a top US General Services Administration official, and President Trump himself have all labeled a modified version of the calculus course Richardson completed — known as MA5 — “remedial math.” 

“I want Harvard to be great again,” Trump said in the Oval Office last month. “Harvard announced two weeks ago that they’re going to teach remedial mathematics. Remedial, meaning they’re going to teach low grade mathematics like two plus two is four. How did these people get into Harvard if they can’t do basic mathematics?”

Richardson said she laughed when she heard the remedial math comment because “MA5 is the exact same class [as MA]. It just meets five times a week” as opposed to four. 

According to an online course description of MA5, the extra day of instruction time “will target foundational skills in algebra, geometry, and quantitative reasoning that will help you unlock success in Math MA.” The homework, exams, and grading structure of MA5 are the same as MA, a course Harvard has offered for decades. Even MA5’s format is not entirely new. Five days of instruction was previously required for all students taking Math MA in 2018.

“If you look at academic support and a college trying to help their students, and you think that’s unnecessary or it’s embarrassing that they have to provide that kind of support, then it’s coming from a place of ignorance,” said Richardson. “You have no understanding of how, not just college, but how learning works. You can’t learn without help.”

All Harvard freshmen take a placement exam in mathematics prior to their arrival on campus. Based on how they score, the university suggests which course they should be placed into. Math MA5, MA, and its companion course, MB, make up Harvard’s most basic introductory calculus courses known as the M series. MA5 was introduced last year by Harvard to combat pandemic learning losses, which saw students show up to campus with gaps in their math knowledge, especially in early high school courses like algebra, as a result of virtual learning. 

“When this first came out about us teaching remedial math, I was like, ‘Well, this is news to me and I wouldn’t even know how to do it,’” said Harvard’s director of introductory math Brendan Kelly. “Thinking about how to explain addition to somebody is an expertise that your elementary school teachers and middle school teachers have. … We focus on much more advanced mathematics.”

Only 20 students took MA5 this past academic year according to Kelly. The course was taught across two sections, each with 10 students, Kelly said, all of whom have declared majors like economics or biology that necessitate a strong foundation in calculus…

Remedial math courses in higher education are typically defined as “non credit bearing courses that cover middle school and high school content below that of college algebra,” said Chris Rasmussen, a professor of mathematics at San Diego State University. “So we’re talking fractions or some basic algebraic manipulation.” Rasmussen — who was part of a team of outside professors that recently conducted a full review of Harvard’s math department — said “in no way is MA5 a remedial math course. It’s a rigorous calculus course.”

The article includes a PDF with the course syllabus. How many members of Congress could pass it? Not many. Certainly not Trump or Secretary McMahon.

Categories Bigotry, Higher Education, Lies, Trump

Federal Appeals Court Allows Trump to Exclude AP from Press Pool

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2025 //
7

Trump got very angry at the AP, an international press agency, because it insisted on calling the Gulf of Mexico by its rightful name. It refused to follow Trump’s renaming it as “the Gulf of America.”

So Trump punished the AP by excluding it from the press pool on Air Force 1 and in other gatherings.

A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to allow Trump to continue choosing which press gets access to him. Two of the judges were appointed by Trump.

Peter Baker, a national correspondent for The New York Times wrote on Twitter:

Appeals court rules that the president can punish a news outlet based on the content of its coverage by denying it access that it has had for generations. If the decision stands, it represents a major blow to press freedom. @ZJMontague @minhokimdh

The consequences of this go beyond Trump barring the @AP from the White House press pool. By this logic, a future Democratic president will be able to bar conservative media outlets that want to ask about, say, his advancing age or his son’s business activities.

Replies to his comments criticized the media for not boycotting Trump events in solidarity with AP.

The New York Times reported:

A federal appeals court on Friday paused a lower court’s ruling that had required the White House to allow journalists from The Associated Press to participate in covering President Trump’s daily events and travel alongside their peers from other major news outlets.

By a 2-to-1 vote, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that many of the spaces in the White House complex or on Air Force One where members of the press have followed the president for decades are essentially invite-only, and not covered by First Amendment protections.

“The White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted,” wrote Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee. She was joined by Judge Gregory G. Katsas, who was also appointed by Mr. Trump.

The ruling temporarily lifted the requirement that the White House give A.P. journalists the same access as other news media professionals while the appeal continues. But it was clouded by the fact that the situation facing The Associated Press has shifted considerably since the legal standoff began in February.

Categories Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Lies, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: History Matters. Truth Matters. Here is a Plan.

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2025 //
10

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian so naturally she recoils at the daily misuse and distortion of history by Trump and his appointees. They don’t know much about history, and they want to distort it for partisan purposes.

She has a plan to set the record straight, based on evidence and facts. Read on.

She writes:

In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”

The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.

The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is famous in U.S. history as the site of a surprise attack by 353 Japanese aircraft that destroyed or damaged more than 300 aircraft, three destroyers, and all eight of the U.S. battleships in the harbor. Four of those battleships sank, including the U.S.S. Arizona, which remains at the bottom of the harbor as a memorial to the more than 2,400 people who died in the attack, including the 1,177 who died on the Arizona itself.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II.

Pearl Harbor Day is a landmark in U.S. history. It is observed annually and known by the name President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it: “a date which will live in infamy.”

But that date was not June 7, eighty-four years ago today.

It was December 7, 1941.

The Trump administration claims to be deeply concerned about American history. In March, Trump issued an executive order calling for “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” It complained, as Trump did in his first term, that there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

The document ordered the secretary of the interior to reinstate any “monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” It spelled out that the administration wanted only “solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”

To that end, Trump has called for building 250 statues in a $34 million “National Garden of American Heroes” sculpture garden in order to create an “abiding love of country and lasting patriotism” in time for the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. On May 31, Michael Schaffer of Politico reported that artists and curators say the plan is “completely unworkable.” U.S. sculptors tend to work in abstraction or modernism, which the call for proposals forbids in favor of realism; moreover, there aren’t enough U.S. foundries to do the work that quickly.

Trump is using false history to make his followers believe they are fighting a war for the soul of America. “[W]e will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance,” he told a crowd in 2020. “They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” he said. Like authoritarians before him, Trump promised to return the country to divinely inspired rules that would create disaster if ignored but if followed would “make America great again.” At a 2020 rally, Trump said: “The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control. This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country.”

Trump’s enthusiasm for using history to cement his power has little to do with actual history. History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future.

Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat its worst moments.

The hard lessons of history seem to be repeating themselves in the U.S. these days, and with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, some friends and I got to talking about how we could make our real history more accessible.

After a lot of brainstorming and a lot of help—and an incredibly well timed message from a former student who has become a videographer—we have come up with Journey to American Democracy: a series of short videos about American history that we will release on my YouTube channel, Facebook, and Instagram. They will be either short explainers about something in the news or what we are releasing tonight: a set of videos that can be viewed individually or can be watched together to simulate a survey course about an important event or issue in American history.

Journey to American Democracy explores how democracy has always required blood and sweat and inspiration to overcome the efforts of those who would deny equality to their neighbors. It examines how, for more than two centuries, ordinary people have worked to make the principles the founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence the law of the land.

Those principles establish that we have a right to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in our government, and to have equal access to resources.

In late April, in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, Trump showed Moran that he had had a copy of the Declaration of Independence hung in the Oval Office. The interview had been thorny, and Moran used Trump’s calling attention to the Declaration to ask a softball question. He asked Trump what the document that he had gone out of his way to hang in the Oval Office meant to him.

Trump answered: “Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.”

The Declaration of Independence is indeed very special to our country. But it is not a declaration of love and unity. It is the radical declaration of Americans that human beings have the right to throw off a king in order to govern themselves. That story is here, in the first video series of Journey to American Democracy called “Ten Steps to Revolution.”

I hope you enjoy it.

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Categories Democracy, Extremism, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump
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