Remember how Trump ridiculed Hillary Clinton for using a private email server to conduct State Department business? His crowds chanted “Lock her up!” at his rallies. The FBI reopened an investigation 10 days before the election, based on allegations about her emails, closed the investigation a few days later, and she lost the election. No classified information was found on her private server.
Hillary Clinton was baffled by reports of top U.S. officials unwittingly sharing war plans with a reporterduring an unsecure group chat that allegedly took place on the Signal messaging app.
“You have got to be kidding me,” the former Secretary of State wrote next to a wide-eyed emoticon on X.
Clinton’s post included a link to a bombshell Atlantic magazine story about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security director Tulsi Gabbard sharing what appeared to be highly sensitive information about military strikes in Yemen with Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg.
Goldberg wrote Monday he withheld information that could’ve put U.S. troops in danger due to the “shocking recklessness of this Signal conversation.”
But he shared portions of the conversation that included Vance claiming “I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now.”
Goldberg said the plan being discussed “included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.”
Throughout her failed 2016 presidential campaign, Clinton was dogged by criticism for using a private server located in her Chappaqua home to conduct official business white serving in President Obama’s cabinet. She lost to Trump, whose crowds regularly chanted “Lock her up” at his rallies.
Hegseth — a Fox News personality prior to being tapped by President Trump to manage national defense — called Goldberg a “deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again” during a brief interview on a Hawaiian airport tarmac.
National Security Council Spokesman Brian Hughes confirmed the messages inadvertently shared with The Atlantic “appeared to be an authentic message chain” that’s inclusion of a journalist merited further review.
He also argued the success of the strikes that occurred over the weekend proved the alleged leak was no threat to U.S. troops.
President Trump claimed at a Monday afternoon press conference that he knew nothing about the security breach, adding “I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic.”
The funniest blog out there is Jeff Tiedrich’s “everyone is entitled to my own opinion.” He is all over the scandal of Pete Hegseth & Co. including Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, on a top-secret texting group that discussed war plans. The group used an app that was not secure, that could have been easily hacked. It’s one advantage was that it would disappear after a few weeks and would never be archived; apparently that’s the way our government does business now. No transparency.
When asked about it, Trump said he knew nothing at all (does he ever?). Hegseth blamed the journalist and said he lied (he didn’t). What a bunch of clowns we have in charge of our government? Dangerous clowns. Not funny clowns.
I’m not editing Tiedrich’s effusive use of F-words. Too many. If you want to subscribe and see all his links, go to this address.
Tiedrich wrote today:
hey, remember when that commie rat-bastard Hillary Clinton ran a private email server? of course you do. it was the crime of the century — front page news on every paper. HILLARY FUCKS UP BIGTIME, the headlines screamed, in thousand-point boldface type. THE EMAIL LADY IS A WITCH. BURN HER! BURN HER!!!
Republicans fell all the fuck over each other in a mad dash to be the first to demand she not just resign, but impale herself on her dagger, immediately.
I mean, what the fuck, Hillary? how could you endanger national security like that?
Republicans, as everyone knows, are careful stewards of America’s security. you’d never catch a Republican doing something as foolhardy as, for instance, absconding with dozens of boxes of classified documents, lying about having them, refusing to return them, hiding them, bragging about their contents to golf cronies, waving them in the faces of randos, scrawling to-do lists on them, even sleeping with them — and then stashing them in the unspeakably ugly shitter of their vermin-infested Florida golf motel.
that simply wouldn’t happen. that shit’s for traitors like the email lady.
you would never catch Republicans doing anything as clownfucklingly insane as texting war plans to each other over a phone app. and you would most certainly never ever, ever, EVER catch one inadvertently including a journalist in such a discussion, because that would be—
oopsies.
The world found out shortly before 2 p.m. eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen.
I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44 a.m. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing.
was that wrong?
because Piss-Drunk Pete has to plead ignorance on this thing. because if anyone had said anything at all to him when he first started at the Department of Defense that that sort of thing was frowned upon…
seriously, check out this Three Stooges level of dipshittery. a couple of weeks ago, Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, was minding his own business, when out of the clear blue—
I received a connection request on Signal from a user identified as Michael Waltz. Signal is an open-source encrypted messaging service popular with journalists and others who seek more privacy than other text-messaging services are capable of delivering. I assumed that the Michael Waltz in question was President Donald Trump’s national security adviser.
and then,
Two days later—Thursday—at 4:28 p.m., I received a notice that I was to be included in a Signal chat group. It was called the “Houthi PC small group.”
Goldberg’s phone started blowing up with actual fucking war plans.
so, who besides Couchfuck McGee and Piss-Drunk Pete were on this text chain? according to Goldberg, he received messages from Marco Rubio, Stephen Miller, Tulsi Gabbard, Susie Wiles, Scott Bessent, and other sundry Sewer Clowns.
now, the government has its own secure means of communicating internally. there’s no need to use third-party messaging apps that are prone to, y’know, facilitating embarrassing fuck-ups. so why do it? over to you, Heather Cox Richardson.
The decision to steer around government systems was possibly an attempt to hide conversations, since the app was set to erase some messages after a week and others after four weeks. By law, government communications must be archived.
so, were any laws broken? of fucking course laws were broken — this is Donny’s administration we’re talking about here. openly flouting the law is what they do. Heather Cox, please explain it to the nice people.
the use of Signal may also have violated the Espionage Act, which establishes how officials must handle information about the national defense. The app is not approved for national security use, and officials are supposed either to discuss military activity in a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF, or to use approved government equipment.
and then on top of that, there’s that whole we sent classified information to a journalist who didn’t have clearance thing.Subscribe
“when I’m president of the United States, neither she nor any of these other people are going to be above the law. whether it’s her, or Eric Holder, for what he did on Fast and Furious, or any of these other folks. people are going to be held accountable if they broke the laws of this country. nobody is above the law, not even Hillary Clinton.”
[taps earpiece] hold on, I’m being informed that this clip isn’t from yesterday. it’s from January 12, 2016, when Marco was campaigning for president and vowing to throw the email lady in jail.
so Marco, you were fairly pissed off when Hillary allegedly played fast and loose with her emails, do you have anything at all to say about Donny’s entire administration disseminating war plans to a reporter?
“One point that doesn’t get made enough about Hillary’s unsecured server illegally used to conduct state business (obviously created to hide the Clintons’ corrupt pay-for-play): foreign adversaries could easily hack classified ops & intel in real time from other side of the globe.”
but about today’s scandal? no comment from Stephen Miller. he’s busy having lunch.
“imagine if it was, I don’t know, Donald Trump, what the media would be doing to him right now. eviscerating him. or imagine if it was a member of the military … they still go after these guys for a tiny tiny fraction of what she willfully did.”
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic. to me it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. but I know nothing about it. you’re saying that they had what?”
weird how Donny never knows anything about anything. in eighty years we’ve gone from the buck stops here to why the fuck should I know what’s going on?
watch Donny and the Sewer Clowns sweep this whole thing under the rug — and watch how the media will be too distracted by the inevitable next scandal to follow up on the one that’s happening right under their noses today.
(credit where credit is due: props to Bulwark Sarah Longwell, who did the hard work of tracking down all those old tweets and clips.)
hey, remember Pete’s first few days on the job, when he set about firing every black person and woman who held a position of leadership — because, you know, they were all supposedly DEI hires, and there’s no way any of those people could possibly have been hired for their experience and competence. I mean, obviously.
— Air Force General C.Q. Brown Jr., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. no, he didn’t. — Admiral Lisa Franchetti, chief of naval operations for the U.S. Navy. no, she didn’t. — Admiral Linda Fagan, the first female to lead the Coast Guard. no, she didn’t. — Lt. Gen. Jennifer Short, the senior military assistant to the secretary of defense. no, she didn’t. — Telita Crosland, the head of the military’s Defense Health Agency. nope, not her.
now let’s check the list of DUI hires.
— Pete Hegseth, fuck yes, he absolutely did.
yesterday, reporters caught up with Pixilated Pete and asked the only question on everyone’s mind: “can you tell us how your information about war plans was shared with a journalist?”
“so I— you’re talking about a deceitful and highly-discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of pedaling hoaxes time and time again to include the, I don’t know, the hoaxes of ‘Russia Russia Russia,’ or ‘the fine people on both sides’ hoax …”
A National Security Council spokesman told the BBC the text message thread “appears to be authentic.”
a president who gave an actual shit about national security would have fired Hegseth on the spot — and a Secretary of Defense who cared about his own integrity would have resigned before Donny had the chance to fire him.
that’s Donny’s Confederacy of Sewer Clowns for you. not one of them was hired for their expertise — or their integrity.they’re all a bunch of incompetent ideologues and toadies who fuck up spectacularly on a daily basis — and as long as they keep kissing Dear Leader’s ass, not one of them will ever face accountability.
hey, Hillary — got anything to say about Pete’s inability to own up to his own self-inflicted scandal?
Mujib Mashal wrote in The New York Times about the desperate starvation facing the Rohingya refugees as a result of the shutdown of U.S. foreign aid. They escaped Myanmar’s “ethnic cleansing” and now live in a United Nations camp, where their survival depends on donations of food from benevolent nations. The U.S., thanks to billionaires Trump and Musk. They should take a tour of the camps and see for themselves why foreign aid is impirtant.
Mashal writes:
More than a million people in the world’s largest refugee camp could soon be left with too little food for survival.
In the camp in Bangladesh, United Nations officials said, food rations are set to fall in April to about 18 pounds of rice, two pounds of lentils, a liter of cooking oil and a fistful of salt, per person — for the entire month.
The Trump administration’s freeze on aid has overwhelmed humanitarian response at a time when multiple conflicts rage, with aid agencies working feverishly to fill the void left by the U.S. government, their most generous and reliable donor. Many European nations are also cutting humanitarian aid, as they focus on increasing military spending in the face of an emboldened Russia.
The world is left teetering on “the verge of a deep humanitarian crisis,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned on a visit to the Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Friday.
“With the announced cuts in financial assistance, we are facing the dramatic risk of having only 40 percent in 2025 of the resources available for humanitarian aid in 2024,” he said, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. “That would be an unmitigated disaster. People will suffer, and people will die.”
At the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, overcrowded warrens of bamboo and tarp huts on mounds of dirt house more than a million Rohingya people driven from their homeland, Myanmar, by a campaign of ethnic cleansing that intensified in 2017.
Fenced off from the rest of Bangladesh, and almost entirely cut off from opportunities to find work or integrate into the country, the Rohingya refugees remain entirely at the mercy of humanitarian aid. The United Nations, with the help of the Bangladeshi government and dozens of aid organizations, looks after the needs of the traumatized people — education, water, sanitation, nutrition, medical care and much more.
The sudden drop in humanitarian aid threatens a wide range of programs and communities around the world, but the plight of the Rohingya is unusual in its scale and severity.
“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” Mr. Guterres said. “Here it is clear budget reductions are not about numbers on a balance sheet. Funding cuts have dramatic human costs.”
Even at the current food allowance of $12.50 per person, per month, more than 15 percent of the children at the camp are acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations — the highest level recorded since 2017, when hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived after a sharp escalation of violence in Myanmar.
When a funding shortfall slashed the monthly food allowance to $8 in 2023, malnutrition and crime soared. People tried to flee the camp by embarking on dangerous and often fatal boat journeys.
During Mr. Guterres’s visit to the camp, U.N. officials had set up on a table sample food baskets showing what refugees currently get at $12.50 per person, and what that will be slashed to next month if, as they now project, the allotment falls to $6, barring a last-minute rescue.
Pointing to the sparse basket marked “$6,” Dom Scallpelli, the Bangladesh country director for the World Food Program, said, “If you give only this, that is not a survival ration.”
Even the $6 diet expected for the month of April would be made possible only because the United States unfroze its in-kind contribution, agreeing to send shipments of rice, beans, and oil, Mr. Scallpelli said. The cash contributions — the United States provided about $300 million to the Rohingya response last year, a little over half the entire response fund — remain halted.
“If we didn’t even have that, it would have been a total nightmare situation,” Mr. Scallpelli said about the in-kind donations. “At least we are thankful to the U.S. for this.”
Abul Osman, a 23-year-old refugee who arrived at Cox’s Bazar in 2017, said the refugees were already struggling with the bare minimum and the slashing of rations would be devastating for a population with no livelihood options. The Rohingya in Bangladesh are only allowed schooling inside the camp, and are not allowed access to higher education or jobs outside.
Pregnant women and children will suffer the most from dire food shortages, but the resulting mental health crisis will affect everyone, he said.
“It’s a threat to our survival,” he said.
People will die. Many thousands will die. Should we care? Our government claims to be Christian. What is the Christian response to a humanitarian catastrophe?
Nicholas Kristoff tried to estimate how many people will die because of Elon Musk’s frivolous cutting of foreign aid to desperate people? Of course, Musk relied on the authority given to his phony DOGE by Trump. So together, they bear responsibility for the deadly consequences. If either has a conscience, which is questionable, they will go to their graves someday knowing that they caused mass murders.
As the world’s richest men slash American aid for the world’s poorest children, they insist that all is well. “No one has died as a result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,” Elon Musk said. “No one.”
That is not true. In South Sudan, one of the world’s poorest countries, the efforts by Musk and President Trump are already leading children to die.
Peter Donde was a 10-year-old infected with H.I.V. from his mother during childbirth. But American aid kept Peter strong even as his parents died from AIDS. A program started by President George W. Bush called PEPFAR saved 26 million lives from AIDS, and one was Peter’s.
Under PEPFAR, an outreach health worker ensured that Peter and other AIDS orphans got their medicines. Then in January, Trump and Musk effectively shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development, perhaps illegally, and that PEPFAR outreach program ended. Orphans were on their own.
Without the help of the community health worker, Peter was unable to get his medicines, so he became sick and died in late February, according to Moses Okeny Labani, a health outreach worker who helped manage care for Peter and 144 other vulnerable children.
The immediate cause of death was an opportunistic pneumonia infection as Peter’s viral load increased and his immunity diminished, said Labani.
“If U.S.A.I.D. would be here, Peter Donde would not have died,” Labani said.
We worked with experts at the Center for Global Development who tried to calculate how many lives are at risk if American humanitarian assistance is frozen or slashed. While these estimates are inexact and depend on how much aid continues, they suggest that a cataclysm may be beginning around the developing world…
An estimated 1,650,000 people could die within a year without American foreign aid for H.I.V. prevention and treatment.
Achol Deng, an 8-year-old girl, was also infected with H.I.V. at birth and likewise remained alive because of American assistance. Then in January, Achol lost her ID card, and there was no longer a case worker to help get her a new card and medicines; she too became sick and died, said Labani.
Yes, this may eventually save money for United States taxpayers. How much? The cost of first-line H.I.V. medications to keep a person alive is less than 12 cents a day.
I asked Labani if he had ever heard of Musk. He had not, so I explained that Musk is the world’s wealthiest man and has said that no one is dying because of U.S.A.I.D. cuts.
“That is wrong,” Labani said, sounding surprised that anyone could be so oblivious. “He should come to grass roots.”
Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive. Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son.
“Many more children will die in the coming weeks,” said Margret Amjuma, a health worker who confirmed the deaths of Peter and Achol.
On a nine-day trip through East African villages and slums I heard that refrain repeatedly: While some are already dying because of the decisions in Washington, the toll is likely to soar in the coming months as stockpiles of medicines and food are drawn down and as people become weaker and sicker.
Two women, Martha Juan, 25, and Viola Kiden, 28, a mother of three, have already died because they lived in a remote area of South Sudan and could not get antiretroviral drugs when U.S.A.I.D. shut down supply lines, according to Angelina Doki, a health volunteer who supported them.
Doki told me that her own supply of antiretrovirals is about to run out as well.
“I am going to develop the virus,” Doki said. “My viral load will go high. I will develop TB. I will have pneumonia.” She sighed deeply and added, “We are going to die.”
In South Africa, where more than seven million people are H.I.V.-positive, the Desmond Tutu Health Foundation estimates that ending PEPFAR would lead to more than 600,000 deaths over a decade in that country alone.
I am a historian of education. I started the blog in 2012 to draw attention to the nefarious push for privatization. The privatization movement was and is well-funded by billionaires and highly coordinated. Its leaders attacked public schools as “failing,” they railed against teachers, and they advocated for charter schools. And of course, they hate unions. They pushed the idea that “school choice” would inevitably lead to better education, as parents would of course choose the best schools. Competition would produce better schools.
But the idea they really pushed was that schools are a consumer choice, not a public good. Charter schools were a step on the road to vouchers. Vouchers completely destroy the fundamental idea that public schools are a civic responsibility that all of us pay for because all of us benefit, whether or not we have children in public schools.
I wrote three books to spread the word about the hoax of the privatization movement. It directed public money to Walmart-style chains, grifters and entrepreneurs.
But since the re-election of grifter Trump, I have written far more about Trump than about education.
You deserve an explanation.
Trump is a threat to our democracy.
He has turned control of the government over to Elon Musk, a man lacking in understanding of government and lacking in empathy. Musk is ransacking every part of the federal government, ruthlessly firing civil servants and cutting contracts but leaving untouched the billions he receives every year.
Trump has upended the world by insulting our allies and praising authoritarians.
He attacks NATO and the EU. He scorns Ukraine, which was ruthlessly invaded by Russia. He sides with Putin. He opens a tariff war with our neighbors.
I have lived a long life and I have never been more afraid for the survival of the country I love than I am now. We are led by fools and scoundrels.
Trump and Musk are trying to dismantle the federal government. The damage they are inflicting will take years to repair. Valuable agencies like USAID and the Department of Education have been closed without bothering to get approval from Congress. Thousands of civil servants have been fired with no due process or evaluation of their significance.
And we are only two months into his term.
The survival of our public schools depends on the survival of our society.
Trump hates public schools. He wants to fund vouchers everywhere so that children may be indoctrinated in religious schools, so that parents can be paid for home schooling, so that rich parents can be subsidized.
We are in a terrible place.
Trump is a puppet of Putin. He has never said anything critical of Putin, although he is fast to insult everyone else. Why? What does Putin have over Trump?
He has appointed the least qualified people to head every department, with the possible exception of Marco Rubio, who has abandoned his core beliefs to serve Trump.
Of course, I am worried about the survival of public schools.
I’m even more concerned about the survival of our democracy.
Dana Milbank warns about Trump’s determination to stamp out a free press. The most salient fact about Trump is his narcissism. He demands obeisance, praise, respect, admiration, even groveling. He despises criticism. That’s why he is determined to intimidate journalists and media moguls.
If he can’t intimidate them, he sues them, expecting to intimidate them with financial disaster (he sued CBS for $10 billion for allegedly editing an interview on “60 Minutes”to help Kamala Harris in the election, even though he can’t demonstrate any harm he suffered since he won the election). Milbank does not mention his publisher Jeff Bezos’ obsequious attempts to please Trump by spiking the Washington Post’s editorial endorsement of Kamala Harris and by clamping down on the content of opinion columns, limiting them to praise of “personal liberties” and “free markets.”
The appearance of Milbank’s column is proof that Milbank has not kowtowed to Bezos’ edict, although he does fail to mention that Amazon, also owned by Bezos, paid Melania Trump $40 million to produce a film about her life.
Maybe his last line is a pleas to his boss Bezos, the second richest man in the world.
Milbank writes:
President Donald Trump’s Oval Office ambush of Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky last week was rightly seen as a disaster for freedom in the world. But it also showcased a disaster for freedom at home: the administration’s attempts to extinguish the free press.
Barred by the White House from entering the room that day were the Associated Press and Reuters, venerable news agencies that have covered American presidents for decades. In their place: a correspondent from Russian state media, Tass’s Dmitry Kirsanov. The White House removed Kirsanov from the event in progress, claiming he was not “approved” to be there — asking us to believe that, in an astonishing security lapse, a Russian government propagandist had infiltrated the Oval Office without its knowledge.
Also brought into the room by the White House (which reversed more than a century of practice by seizing from journalists the authority to decide which reporters will be in the press “pool” that has access to Trump): Brian Glenn, correspondent for the MAGA outlet Real America’s Voice and boyfriend of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia). He accused Zelensky of “not respecting the office,” asking: “Why don’t you wear a suit?”
Then there was the correspondent from another MAGA outlet, One America News. He told Trump that foreign leaders had “praised your courage and conviction” and asked him “what gave you the moral courage” to start talks with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin about Ukraine, “something that previous leaders lacked the conviction to do.”
“I love this guy,” Trump replied. Upon learning he was from One America News, Trump said: “Well, that’s why I like him. One America News does a great job. That’s very — I like the question. I think it’s a very good question.”
This is the result when the government decides who can cover the president: a sycophantic circus.
The First Amendment tells us that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
But Trump tells us otherwise. “Who knows, maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!” he posted on Truth Social last week, suggesting he wanted to make it illegal for journalists to use anonymous or off-the-record sources, an essential part of newsgathering because it protects people from retaliation. “They are made up, defamatory fiction, and a big price should be paid for this blatant dishonesty,” Trump wrote. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.” But Trump has launched a multipronged attack on our most essential freedom, with precious little pushback:
• His ferociously partisan chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has launched or threatened investigations into ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS, NPR, a website that rates media credibility and radio stations with ties to progressive billionaire George Soros. • Trump’s acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia has threatened to prosecute “anyone who impedes” the work of Elon Musk and his team — a threat widely understood to include journalists. • Trump himself has kept up a barrage of lawsuits against ABC, CBS, the Des Moines Register (over an inaccurate poll), the Pulitzer Prize board and others, and corporate owners have felt pressured to settle lawsuits they would otherwise win to avoid Trump’s retribution. • The administration has cut off funds to pro-democracy media outlets in places such as Cuba, Iran and Ukraine, and it is cutting off the editorial independence of Voice of America. • The president has spread lies about American news organizations, such as Politico and the New York Times receiving USAID funds as a “‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS” in “THE BIGGEST SCANDAL OF THEM ALL,” and he has ordered government agencies to cancel subscriptions to news outlets. • Trump on Feb. 23 called NBC and “MSDNC” “an illegal arm of the Democrat Party” that “should be forced to pay vast sums of money for the damage they’ve done to our Country.” He also called for my colleague Eugene Robinson to be “fired immediately” because he didn’t like one of Robinson’s columns that was critical of Republicans. • Musk last month called for journalists at “60 Minutes” to be given “a long prison sentence” because of their (routine) editing of a Kamala Harris interview during the election. He also said a Wall Street Journal reporter who exposed racist rants by one of Musk’s employees should be “fired immediately.” • And, of course, there’s the aforementioned White House takeover of the press pool and its banishment of the AP from the Oval Office, Air Force One and similar settings because it still refers to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of Mexico. Trump wants to call it the Gulf of America, but the gulf doesn’t belong exclusively, or even mostly, to the United States, and the rest of the world still uses its traditional name — which is why the AP (and The Post) still uses its traditional name. Posters in the White House briefing room declared “VICTORY” over the AP, which Musk now calls “Associated Propaganda.”
As Rebecca Hamilton, an American University law professor, put it in Just Security last month, it all amounts to “a wholesale effort by Trump and his allies to eviscerate the free press in order to construct an information ecosystem dominated and controlled by those who espouse his views.”
Among Trump’s possible next steps: prosecuting journalists, as some in the administration have threatened. “It is essential that we understand how serious this threat is, because it is much harder to bring things back after they’ve already been finished,” Hamilton tells me. “And so it is worth fighting every single attack on press freedom, even if each attack individually seems like it could be a minor issue.”
The systematic assault on the press is part of a broader crackdown on the civil liberties of those who disagree with Trump. FBI Director Kash Patel has vowed to prosecute Trump’s opponents and critics, and Ed Martin, the D.C. prosecutor, has sent “letters of inquiry” to Rep. Robert Garcia (D-California) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, suggesting they were “threatening” Musk (in Garcia’s case) and Supreme Court justices (in Schumer’s case, based on five-year-old remarks he said at the time were not intended as threats). Trump’s border adviser, Tom Homan, has asked the Justice Department to investigate Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) over her advice to migrants.
More broadly, the administration’s attempts to ban anything that it considers to be “diversity, equity and inclusion” were blocked by a federal judge on First Amendment grounds, because the executive orders force grant recipients to certify that they do not promote DEI. Other agencies have cracked down on expression, including the Pentagon and Veterans Affairs, where the display of gay pride flags has been banned in offices and cubicles.
The efforts are at times clumsy: The day after Wired published an article titled “The Young, Inexperienced Engineers Aiding Elon Musk’s Government Takeover,” Martin sent a public letter to Musk that read like a phishing email from a non-native English speaker. “Anyone imperiling others violating our laws,” proclaimed one sentence in its entirety. “Any threats, confrontations, or other actions in any way that impact their work may break numerous laws,” read another. “We will not act like the previous administration who looked the other way as the Antifa and BLM rioters as well as thugs with guns trashed our capital city. We will protect DOGE and other workers no matter what.”
That’s not the sort of language one typically sees coming from the Justice Department — but these are not normal times. ABC News’s parent company, Disney, paid $15 million to Trump in December to settle a defamation lawsuit — a decision that appeared to be based not on the legal merits but on fear of Trump’s vengeance. Meta in January agreed to pay Trump $25 million to settle a 2021 lawsuit over Trump’s suspended Facebook and Instagram accounts. CBS News parent Paramount Global is now in settlement talks over the “60 Minutes” editing. Even so, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Project 2025 author, joined the attack on CBS, demanding that it hand over the “full, unedited transcript and camera feeds.” Hanging over Paramount if it doesn’t settle Trump’s (frivolous) lawsuit: The FCC could block its planned merger with Skydance.
This is on top of Carr’s probes of NBC parent Comcast (for its supposed DEI practices) and NPR and PBS (for their underwriting practices). Upon arriving, he reinstated complaints of political bias against ABC, CBS and NBC affiliates while declining to reinstate a similar complaint against a Fox affiliate. And he’s probing KCBS radio in San Francisco for its coverage of an immigration enforcement operation. (Not to be outdone, Georgia’s Greene is using her House Oversight subcommittee chairmanship to call the head of NPR to testify about its “blatantly ideological and partisan coverage.”)
Trump’s choice to run Voice of America, failed Arizona gubernatorial and Senate candidate Kari Lake, has vowed to purge the organization of “Trump derangement syndrome.” Last week, VOA suspended veteran journalist Steven Herman over his social media activity, the New York Times reported. A few weeks ago, Trump adviser Richard Grenell called Herman “treasonous” for quoting on social media the president of a democracy advocacy group saying the elimination of the U.S. Agency for International Development “makes Americans less safe at home and abroad.”
The attempted elimination of USAID by the administration has unquestionably hurt efforts to establish a free press in repressive countries. Reporters Without Borders said the sudden freeze of foreign aid programs “has left media organizations around the world in chaos, gravely hampering access to reliable news in zones of serious interest to the United States.” For example, Cubanet, a thorn in the side of Cuba’s regime and an ally of dissidents, was informed that its $1.8 million, three-year grant had been canceled.
So it goes across the Gulf of America, as Trump has decreed it must be called. Unlike, say, restoring the name Mount McKinley in Denali National Park, this is not something Trump can do on his own. Yet the White House said the AP was “lying” by using the name the rest of the world uses. The AP, in its lawsuit seeking reinstatement at the White House, argued that “the Constitution does not allow the government to control speech” and that Americans “have the right to choose their own words and not be retaliated against by the government.” But so far, a judge has rejected the AP’s request.
The gulf tempest may be just an excuse to punish news organizations. The White House is moving to evict some outlets from their seats in the briefing room to make room for MAGA-friendly ones. The Pentagon seized office space that had gone to outlets such as the Times, NPR, NBC and Politico, giving the space to right-wing outlets such as Breitbart, One America News and the New York Post. (It also gave space to liberal HuffPost, which had not requested it.)
This comes on top of the White House’s more egregious move to take control of the press pool, the rotating group of reporters allowed to be in the room with the president. As the White House Correspondents’ Association protested, this means “the government will choose the journalists who cover the president.”
Much of this was proposed in the Project 2025 blueprint, which, despite Trump’s denials during the campaign, has turned out to be a road map for the new administration. It suggested the White House find an “alternative” to the WHCA, take away some of the media’s space in the White House, seize editorial control over VOA and defund public broadcasting, among other things — and variations of all of these policies are underway.
Ominously, Project 2025 also called for rescinding guidance issued by the Biden administration that prevented prosecutors from seizing journalists’ records during leak investigations. The Justice Department “should use all of the tools at its disposal to investigate leaks,” Project 2025 proposed. This, First Amendment advocates fear, implies use of the 1917 Espionage Act to prosecute reporters if they don’t reveal their sources — in effect criminalizing journalism.
Complicating the response by the press to these assaults: Much of American media is owned by corporations and billionaires whose interests are not always aligned with those of a free press. Hamilton, the law professor, calls for “strategic litigation” by media outlets against the administration to push back against the assaults. She says journalists need to “continue to write without self-censoring.” And she says “the public also needs to understand the true value to democracy of having a free press, because if you lose that, then you lose one of the key foundations of accountability in a democracy.”
That’s a lot to ask. But it’s going to take all three — courageous media ownership, fearless journalism and an engaged readership — if the free press is going to survive the Trump presidency.
Carol Kocivar is former President of the California State PTA. She has worked as an attorney, journalist, and ombudsperson and is the parent to two children who graduated from the San Francisco public schools
Scary as this may seem, it is time to talk with your children about how our democracy is threatened.
I know. I know. Those are strong words. I certainly am not suggesting that we ask first graders whether the president should have more power than the Congress or the Supreme Court. But I am looking at this through the lens of history– with the knowledge that Hitler and Mussolini strengthened their hold through the indoctrination of youth.
Our children are not born with democracy in their DNA. It is our responsibility to ensure that each generation has the knowledge and skills to support and preserve our democracy.
Political outreach to children is already underway. Below is an example of a Kid’s Guide on the internet.
“With the triumphant return of President Trump to the White House, Americans everywhere are celebrating his return and what it means for our nation. And, as our kids are the future of our country, it’s important for them to understand how Trump will make America great again. That’s why we created The Kids Guide to President Trump, and right now we’re giving it away for FREE!”
Kids are taught about the Constitution in school In elementary school, students should already have some basic knowledge about how our government is supposed to work. By the time they have completed the 8th grade, they should know the basics of our constitutional democracy. For example, the California History/ Social Science frameworks provides that 8th graders should be taught about separation of powers, checks and balances, the nature and purpose of majority rule, and the ways in which the American idea of constitutionalism preserves individual rights.
They should know, for example, that the president is not a king.
They should know that the Congress passes laws, not the president.
They should know that the President and his staff cannot refuse to follow court orders.
They should know the president does not have the right to refuse to implement spending decisions of Congress.
They should know their rights include freedom of speech.
What can parents do?
In age appropriate language, discuss current events with them. I was going to say discuss it at the dinner table but you probably have a better shot at their attention as you drive to and from sports events.
Seek out incidents that challenge the basic principles of our democracy and discuss them.
What do they think? How does that square with what they know about the constitution?
Explain why you think it is important that they understand what is happening in the country.
Discuss money for schools. Does their public school need more or less money? What do they think about cutting funding for their school?
Talk about the importance of voting. Can voting change public policy?
Ask what would help them become more involved in issues that affect their school? Their community? Their country?
It’s up to us to preserve democracy for our children.
New York Times foreign affairs columnist Thomas Friedman smells a rat in the bilateral talks between Trump and Putin about the war in Ukraine. He’s been watching both of them for years, and he knows they are both lying. Putin is using Trump for his own ends. Trump wants to please Putin.
Ever since President Trump returned to office and began trying to make good on his boast about ending the Ukraine war in days, thanks to his relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin, I’ve had this gnawing concern that something was lost in translation in the bromance between Vlad and Don.
When the interpreter tells Trump that Putin says he’s ready to do anything for “peace” in Ukraine, I’m pretty sure what Putin really said was he’s ready to do anything for a “piece” of Ukraine.
You know those homophones — they can really get you in a lot of trouble if you’re not listening carefully. Or if you’re only hearing what you want to hear.
The Times reported that in his two-and-a-half-hour phone call with Trump on Tuesday, Putin agreed to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, according to the Kremlin, but Putin made clear that he would not agree to the general 30-day cease-fire that the United States and Ukraine had agreed upon and proposed to Russia.
The Kremlin also said that Putin’s “key condition” for ending the conflict was a “complete cessation” of foreign military and intelligence assistance to Kyiv — in other words, stripping Ukraine naked of any ability to resist a full Russian takeover of Ukraine. More proof, if anyone needed it, that Putin is not, as Trump foolishly believed, looking for peace with Ukraine; he’s looking to own Ukraine.
All that said, you will pardon me, but I do not trust a single word that Trump and Putin say about their private conversations on Ukraine — including the words “and” and “the,” as the writer Mary McCarthy famously said about the veracity of her rival Lillian Hellman. Because something has not smelled right from the start with this whole Trump-Putin deal-making on Ukraine.
I just have too many unanswered questions. Let me count the ways.
For starters, it took Secretary of State Henry Kissinger over a month of intense shuttle diplomacy to produce the disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt and Israel and Syria that ended the 1973 war — and all of those parties wanted a deal. Are you telling me that two meetings between Trump’s pal Steve Witkoff and Putin in Moscow and a couple of phone calls between Putin and Trump are enough to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine on reasonable terms for Kyiv?
Trump couldn’t sell a hotel that quickly — unless he was giving it away.
Wait, wait — unless he was giving it away. …
Lord, I hope that is not what we’re watching here. Message to President Trump and Vice President JD Vance: If you sell out Ukraine to Putin, you will forever carry a mark of Cain on your foreheads as traitors to a core value that has animated U.S. foreign policy for 250 years — the defense of liberty against tyranny.
Our nation has never so brazenly sold out a country struggling to be free, which we and our allies had been supporting for three years. If Trump and Vance do that, the mark of Cain will never wash off. They will go down in history as “Neville Trump” and “Benedict Vance.” Likewise Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and national security adviser Michael Waltz.
Why else am I suspicious? Because Trump keeps saying that all he wants to do is end “the killing” in Ukraine. I am with that. But the easiest and quickest way to end the killing would be for the side that started the killing, the side whose army invaded Ukraine for utterly fabricated reasons, to get out of Ukraine. Presto — killing over.
Putin needs to enlist Trump’s help only if he wants something more than an end to the killing. I get that Ukraine will have to cede something to Putin. The question is how much. I also get that the only way for Putin to get the extra-large slice that he wants and the postwar restrictions that he wants imposed on Ukraine — without more warfighting — is by enlisting Trump to get them for him.
Why else am I suspicious? Because Trump has left all our European allies on the sidelines when he negotiates with Putin. Excuse me, but our European allies have contributed billions of dollars in military equipment, economic aid and refugee assistance to Ukraine — more combined than the United States, which Trump lies about — and they have made clear that they are now ready to do even more to prevent Putin from overrunning Ukraine and coming for them next.
So why would Trump enter negotiations with Putin and not bring our best leverage — our allies — with him? And why would he visibly turn U.S. military and intelligence aid to Ukraine off and then on — after shamefully calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “a dictator”?
Sorry, that doesn’t smell right to me, either. What made Kissinger and Secretary of State James Baker particularly effective negotiators is that they knew how to leverage our allies to amplify U.S. power. Trump foolishly gives the back of his hand to our allies, while extending an open hand to Putin. That’s how you give up leverage.
Leveraging allies — the biggest asset that we have that Putin does not — “is what smart statecraft is all about,” Dennis Ross, the longtime Middle East adviser to U.S. presidents, told me.
“The key to good statecraft is knowing how to use the leverage that you have — how to marry your means to your objectives. The irony is that Trump believes in leverage — but has not used all the means that he has” in Ukraine, said Ross, the author of the timely, and just published, “Statecraft 2.0: What America Needs to Lead in a Multipolar World.”
What also smells wrong to me is that Trump appears to have no clue why Putin is so nice to him. As a Russian foreign policy analyst in Moscow put it to me recently: “Trump does not get that Putin is merely manipulating him to score Putin’s principal goal: diminish the U.S. international position, destroy its network of security alliances — most importantly in Europe — and destabilize the U.S. internally, thus making the world safe for Putin and Xi.”
Trump refuses to understand, this analyst added, that Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping both want to see America boxed in to the Western Hemisphere rather than messing around with either of them in Europe or Asia/Pacific — and they see Trump as their pawn to deliver that.
Finally, and pretty much summing up all of the above, it smells to me that Trump has never made clear what concessions, sacrifices and guarantees he is demanding from Russia to get a peace deal on Ukraine. And who goes into a negotiation without a very clear, unwavering bottom line in terms of core American interests?
There are sustainable ways to end a war and keep it ended and there are unsustainable ways. It all depends on the bottom line — and if our bottom line departs fundamentally from that of Ukraine’s and our allies’, I don’t think they are going to just roll over for the Trump-Putin bromance.
Putin wants a Ukraine with a government that is basically the same as his neighboring vassal Belarus, not a Ukraine that is independent like neighboring Poland — a free-market democracy anchored in the European Union.
What kind of Ukraine does Trump want? The Belorussian version or the Polish version?
I have absolutely no doubt which one is in Ukraine’s interest, America’s interest and our European allies’ interest. The thing that gnaws at me is that I don’t know what Donald Trump thinks is in his personal interest — and that is all that matters now in Trump’s Washington.
Until it’s clear that Trump’s bottom line is what should be America’s bottom line — no formal surrendering of Ukrainian territory to Putin, but simply a cease-fire; no membership for Ukraine in NATO, but membership in the European Union; and an international peacekeeping force on the ground, backed up with intelligence and material support from the U.S. — color me very, very skeptical of every word Trump and Putin say on Ukraine — including “and” and “the.”
It is clear to Friedman that Trump sides with Putin. But why? Why is he eager to satisfy Putin? Why does he behave like the wimpy little brother when he talks to Putin?
Tesla is in trouble for two reasons: first, Elon Musk entered politics and alienated half the nation’s voters. He didn’t just endorse Trump, he created the slash-and-burn DOGE, which is firing government workers en masse without cause. More people are trading in Teslas than any other brand. Protests are taking place at Tesla showrooms. Teslas are being vandalized by people angry at Musk and his destruction of federal agencies.
Second, a Chinese auto manufacturer recently announced that its electric car can be fully recharged in five minutes, as compared to the hours it takes to recharge a Tesla.
Instead of redesigning our government, Musk should have stuck to building better cars.
Sometimes a chart is just a chart. Sometimes, when you’re looking at Tesla Inc. and BYD Co. Ltd. in early 2025, it’s a striking squiggly metaphor.
Tesla, the biggest US electric-vehicle maker, has shocked the world this year with its overt politicization and slumping sales and stock price. BYD, its great Chinese rival, just shocked the world by announcing its newest model can recharge in five minutes. The symbolism, capturing the lead that China has taken in EVs compared with a US still fighting with itself about the relative wokeness of EVs, could hardly be clearer.
At a Supercharger, you’ll typically be able to add 150 to 200 miles of range to a Tesla in less than 30 minutes—sometimes more, sometimes less. With a typical home EV charger, you can completely recharge a Tesla’s battery overnight, adding roughly 25 to 40 miles of range per hour that it’s plugged in.
Which do you prefer: a battery that recharges in five minutes or one that requires 30 minutes or even hours?
Two years ago, two friends were driving to their weekend getaway in Orient, Long Island, in New York. Both were doctors. One was a noted pulmonologist who had saved my life in 1998 when I had a dangerous pulmonary embolism. His wife was a surgeon in an emergency room at a public hospital, who saved lives every day. They were driving a Ford Explorer.
It was late, about 11:30 pm on a Friday night. They were close to their home, and the highway was nearly deserted.
For reasons that no one knows, they collided with a new Tesla, driven by a man who was showing it to his friend, a visitor. The Tesla exploded. The local fire department arrived soon after. Their poured water on the two burning cars, but the water could not douse the Tesla’s lithium battery. The fire burned out hours later. The four people in the two cars burned to death.
Since then, I have read about electric bicycles with lithium batteries that exploded spontaneously. They should never be stowed indoors.
Then I googled “Tesla exploding,” and I saw a pattern. Beware. Safety matters most.
Diane Ravitch's blog 