In July 2024, according to an article published today by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey in the New York Times, billionaire Elon Musk texted privately about his concerns that government investigations into his businesses would “take me down.” “I can’t be president,” he wrote, “but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.”
After appearing on stage with Trump on October 5, Musk texted a person close to him: “I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.” About an hour later, he added: “This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised. “‘Lasers’ from space.”
Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election and, when Trump took office, became a fixture in the White House, heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” It set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds, a practice that courts have ruled unconstitutional and Congress expressly prohibited with the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.
Musk vowed that his “Department of Government Efficiency” would cut $2 trillion from the U.S. budget, but he quickly backed off on those numbers. In the end, DOGE claimed savings of $175 billion, but that claim is unverifiable and CNN’s Casey Tolan says it’s probably wrong: less than half of it is backed up with any documentation.
Instead, as CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf reported today, since DOGE cut staffing at the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service, for example, and cut employees at national parks, which also generate revenue, its cuts may well end up costing money. Max Stier, who heads the Partnership for Public Service, suggests DOGE cuts could cost U.S. taxpayers $135 billion because agencies will need to train and hire replacements for the workers DOGE fired. Stier called DOGE’s actions “arson of a public asset.”
Grind and Twohey reported that Musk’s drug consumption during the campaign—they could not speak to his habits in the White House, although he appeared high today at a White House press conference—was “more intense than previously known.” He was a chronic user of ketamine, took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and traveled with a box that held about 20 pills for daily use. Those in frequent contact with him worried about his frequent drug use, erratic behavior, and mood swings. As a government contractor, Musk should receive random drug tests, but Grind and Twohey say he received advance warning of those tests.
It was never clear that Musk’s role at DOGE was legal, and the White House has tried to maintain that he was only an advisor, despite Trump’s February 19 statement, “I signed an order creating [DOGE] and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency,” saying the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’”
Trump posted today on social media: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” In a press conference today, Trump reiterated that Musk “is not really leaving.”
Musk’s time at the helm of DOGE might not have saved taxpayer money, but it has changed the world in other ways. Musk has used his time in the government to end investigations into his companies, score government contracts, and get the government to press countries to accept his Starlink communications network as a condition of tariff negotiations. According to John Hyatt of Forbes, Musk’s association with Trump has made him an estimated $170 billion richer.
The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”
Today, Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik of the New York Times reported that Musk put billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir data analysis firm into place across the government, where it launched its product Foundry to organize, analyze, and merge data. Thiel provided the money behind Vice President J.D. Vance’s political career. Wired and CNN had previously reported how the administration was using this merged data to target undocumented immigrants, and now employees are detailing their concerns with how the administration could use their newly merged information against Americans more generally.
Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication.
In the New York Times today, Michelle Goldberg recalls how Musk appeared uninterested in learning what USAID actually did—prevent starvation and provide basic healthcare—and instead called it a “radical-left political psy-op,” and reposted a smear from right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos calling USAID “the most gigantic global terror organization in history.” Goldberg also recalls Musk’s tendency to call people he disdains “NPCs,” or non-player characters, which are characters in role-playing games whose only role is to advance the storyline for the real players.
Aside from DOGE, the focus of Trump’s administration—other than his own cashing in on the presidency—has been on tariffs and immigration. Like the efforts of DOGE, those show a disdain for the law in favor of concentrating power in the executive branch.
During the campaign, Trump fantasized that constructing a high tariff wall around the U.S. would force other countries to fund the national deficit, enabling a Republican Congress to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In fact, domestic industries and consumers bear the costs of tariffs. Trump’s high tariffs, many of which he imposed by declaring an economic emergency and then using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), created such havoc in the stock and bond markets that he backed off.
Yesterday, Sayantani Ghosh, David Gaffen, and Arpan Varghese of Reuters reported that although most of the highest tariffs have yet to go into effect, Trump’s trade war has cost companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs.
Trump has changed tariff policies at least 50 times since he took office, and traders have figured out they can buy stocks cheaply when markets plummet after a dramatic tariff announcement, and sell when Trump changes his mind. This has recently given rise to Trump’s nickname “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
This moniker has apparently irritated Trump so much he has taken to social media to defend his abrupt dropping of tariffs on China, saying he did it to “save them” from “grave economic danger,” although in fact, China turned to other trading partners to cushion the blow of U.S. tariffs. Trump went on to suggest China did not live up to what he considered its part of the bargain, and he would no longer be “Mr. NICE GUY!”
On Wednesday a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs based on the IEEPA are illegal. The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to levy tariffs. Trump launched a social media rant in which he attacked the judges, insisted that “it is only because of my successful use of Tariffs that many Trillions of Dollars have already begun pouring into the U.S.A. from other Countries,” and said that he could not wait for Congress to handle tariffs because it would take too long—in fact, most of Congress does not approve of the tariffs—and that following the Constitution “would completely destroy Presidential Power.” “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal. White House senior counsel for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, the key proponent of Trump’s trade war, said: “Even if we lose, we’ll do it another way.”
Today Trump said he will double the tariff on steel imports from 25% to 50%.
The other major focus of the administration has been expelling undocumented immigrants from the U.S. During the 2024 campaign, Trump whipped up support by insisting that former President Joe Biden had permitted criminals to walk into the U.S. and terrorize American citizens. Trump vowed to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and often talked of deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., although his numbers have ranged as high as 21 million without explanation.
The administration has hammered on immigration to promote the idea that it is keeping Americans safe. But its first target of arresting at least 1,200 individuals a day has fallen far short. In Trump’s first 100 days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it arrested an average of about 660 people a day.
On Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who along with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is the face of the administration’s immigration policy, told the Fox News Channel that the administration is now aiming for “a minimum of 3,000 arrests…every day.” Administration officials hope to deport a million people in Trump’s first year in office.
CNN reported yesterday that those officials are putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies to meet that goal. This means that hundreds of FBI agents have been taken off terror threats and espionage cases involving China and Russia to be reassigned to immigration duties. Some FBI offices are offering overtime pay if agents help with “enforcement and removal operations.” Officers from other agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have also been deployed against immigrants in place of their regular duties.
Steven Monacelli of The Barbed Wire noted today that local law enforcement and state troopers have also been diverted to immigration, using a national network of cameras that read license plates. Joseph Cox and Jason Keobler of 404 Media reported yesterday that a Texas sheriff used the same system over the course of a month to look for a woman whom he said had a self-administered abortion, saying her family was worried about her safety.
Their attempt to appear effective has led to very visible arrests and renditions of undocumented migrants to prisons in third countries, especially the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. The administration has deliberately flouted the right of persons in the United States to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. The administration has met court orders with delay and obfuscation, as well as by attacking judges and the rule of law.
The administration continues to insist those it has arrested are dangerous criminals who must be deported without delay, but more and more reporting says that many of those expelled from the country had no criminal convictions. Today, ProPublica reported that the Trump administration’s own data shows that officials knew that “the vast majority” of the 238 Venezuelans it sent to CECOT had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. even as it deported them and called them “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and “the worst of the worst.”
ICE has increasingly met quotas by arresting immigrants outside of immigration check-ins and courtrooms: yesterday Dina Arévalo of My San Antonio reported that ICE arrested five immigrants, including three children, outside of an immigration court after a judge had said they were no longer subject to removal proceedings. The officers used zip ties on all five individuals.
At stake is the turn of the United States away from democracy and toward the international right wing. Yesterday the U.S. State Department notified Congress that it intends to use the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to promote “Democracy and Western Values.” On Tuesday a senior advisor for that bureau, Samuel Samson, who graduated from college in 2021, explained that the State Department intends to ally with the European far right to protect “Western civilization” from current democratic governments.
It also plans to turn the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which manages the flow of people into the U.S., into an “Office of Remigration” to “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries and “advance the president’s immigration agenda.”
“Remigration” is a term from the global far right. As Isabela Dias of Mother Jones notes, its proponents call for the “mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.” Of the congressional report, a person who works closely with the State Department told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket: “All of it is pretty awful with some pieces that definitely violate existing law and treaties. But institutionalizing neo-Nazi theory as an office in the State Department is the most blatantly horrifying.”
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This concept is behind not only the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also the purge of foreign scholars and lawful residents. The Supreme Court blessed this purge today when, during the period that litigation is underway, it allowed the administration to end immigration paroles for about 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela admitted under a Biden-era program, instantly making them undocumented and subject to deportation.
The court decided the case on the shadow docket, without briefings or explanation. In a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “[S]omehow, the Court has now apparently determined…that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”
Jackson added a crucial observation. The court, she wrote, “allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless [of the consequences], rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”
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“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1, 1950. “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.”
“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles, and the ones making those attacks were in her own party.
Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her, led a faction that had cowed almost all of the Republican Party into silence by accusing their opponents of “communism.” Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation. She had seen the effects of his behavior up close in Maine, where the faction of the Republican Party that supported McCarthy had supported the state’s Ku Klux Klan.
“Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,” Senator Smith said. “It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”
Senator Smith wanted a Republican administration, she explained, but to replace President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration—for which she had plenty of harsh words—with a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation.”
“I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
“I doubt if the Republican party could do so,” she added, “simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.”
“I do not want to see the Republican party win that way,” she said. “While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.”
“As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”
Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing five principles she hoped her party would adopt. It ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
In 1950, six other Republican senators signed onto Senator Smith’s declaration, leading McCarthy to sneer at “Snow White and the Six Dwarves.” Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support.
In a statement in honor of the 75th anniversary of Smith’s Declaration of Conscience, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that our time resembles hers, and decried the “character assassination, baldfaced lies, petty insults, and round-the-clock disinformation” of MAGA Republicans.
“[T]he hollowing out of American political language…tracks the corruption of American government and the disappearance of serious policy debate,” he wrote. “These movements of thought are not just part of one politician’s campaign for power. They are in service of a ruling public philosophy, which treats the government as an instrument for class plunder and private self-enrichment, a get-even-filthier-rich-quick scheme for the president and his family and friends.”
But for those who believe “that the government should be an instrument for the common good of all and the defense of our freedoms and civil rights, the state of politics in the country is a…serious threat to the survival of democratic institutions and the possibility of democratic progress.”
“The essential work of democracy is being trashed by the rule-or-ruin politics of the MAGA party,” Raskin wrote. “This is not a partisan exercise we are engaged in today to save and strengthen democracy in America…. MAGA and [the Department of Government Efficiency] are engaged in a hostile takeover of all the political institutions and programmatic achievements of American democracy.”
“Here in America we have a supreme Constitution, not a supreme leader,” Raskin wrote. “Democracy is not just a static collection of rules and practices. It is an unfinished project in motion, a constant work in progress. And we must never forget that democracy is the political system in service of human freedom.”
A month ago, another Maine senator, Independent Angus King, recalled Smith’s Declaration of Conscience in a speech to his colleagues in the Senate. “I fear that we are at a similar moment in history,” he said. “And…today’s ‘serious national condition’ [involves] the President of the United States. Echoing Senator Smith, today’s crisis should not be viewed as a partisan issue; this is not about Democrats or Republicans, or immigration or tax policy, or even the next set of elections; today’s crisis threatens the idea of America and the system of government that has sustained us for more than two centuries.”
“What’s at stake,” he said, is “the driving force behind the basic design of our Constitution—the grave danger to any society is the concentration of power in one set of hands.” King quoted framer of the Constitution James Madison, who warned: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
And yet, King said, “this ‘accumulation of all powers’ is exactly what is happening today, before our very eyes. Although many in this body unfortunately seem determined to ignore it, deliberately ignore it, the evidence is everywhere: from the elimination of Congressionally-established agencies to the withholding of appropriated funds…to issuing executive orders purporting to be law in place of legislation to sidestepping if not ignoring court orders: This President is engaged in the most direct assault on the Constitution in our history, and we in this body, at least thus far, are inert—and therefore complicit…. [T]his President is attempting to govern as a monarch, unbound by law or Constitutional restraint, not as a President subject to the constraints of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
King implored his colleagues to “reclaim our power…. You know, do our job.” He reminded them: “Each of us swore—swore, mind you—to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’; [and that we would] ‘bear true faith and allegiance to [the Constitution].’ Clearly,” he said, “the Framers knew there might someday be ‘domestic’ enemies of the Constitution and made it our sacred obligation to defend the Constitution from them,” and he called for his colleagues to stand alongside him to do so.
Last night, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) told host Jimmy Kimmel that Republican senators are indeed unnerved by Trump’s behavior and the actions of the administration. The problem, Booker said, is what Thomas Jefferson said: “‘When the public fears their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty.’”
Republicans in office “are so afraid of Donald Trump that they are letting things go,” Booker said “We the people have to make our politicians fear the consequences of…doing wrong more than they fear that Donald Trump will run a primary against them, or put $100 million, or troll them on the internet. This is…one of those moments when we are not going to see change in Washington unless more of us have said enough.”
Recalling the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Booker said that “the problem today we have to repent for is not just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but also the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. This is the time Americans have to step up and let their voices be heard.”
Seventy-five years ago, Senator Smith’s voice was largely ignored in the public arena. But she was right. Four years later, the Senate condemned McCarthy, and after his death in 1957, Wisconsin voters elected Democrat William Proxmire, who held the seat for the next 32 years. And while Senator Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, McCarthy has gone down in history as a disgrace to his state and to the United States of America.
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Even as government agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramp up their arrests and confrontations, the lug nuts on the wheels of the White House bus continue to loosen.
On Wednesday, officers from the Federal Protective Service, which is part of DHS, handcuffed an aide in the Manhattan office of Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Someone sitting in the office captured the confrontation on video.
Federal agents are trying to meet the quotas the administration has set for arrests by detaining individuals outside immigration courtrooms after they show up for their scheduled hearings. According to Christopher Maag of the New York Times, peaceful protestors gathered on Wednesday outside the Manhattan federal building that holds an immigration court and immigration advocates gathered outside the courtroom. As officers detained immigrants outside the courtroom, advocates reminded the immigrants they had a right to remain silent. Officers threatened to arrest the advocates for loitering, and a member of Nadler’s staff invited some of the advocates to Nadler’s office a floor above the court to defuse the situation.
The video shows a federal agent demanding access to a private area of Nadler’s office, saying “You’re harboring rioters in the office.” When an aide tried to stop them, agents handcuffed the aide. When another aide asked for a search warrant, an agent said they didn’t need one and pushed past her.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that its officers entered Nadler’s office because they were concerned about the safety of his staff members and that the agents detained the aide so they could complete their safety check.
Nadler, who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, identified the invasion of his office as an attempt to intimidate a member of Congress. “The Trump administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices,” he said. “We have to fight them. We don’t want to be a fascist country.”
Late Friday afternoon, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a popular San Diego restaurant, Buona Forchetta, just before it was supposed to open in what immigration advocate Aaron Reichlin-Melnick identified as an attempt to get local governments to work with them.
J.W. August of the Times of San Diego reported that, according to the restaurant’s manager, twenty to twenty-five ICE officers “surrounded the building and then came inside,” pushed him against a wall and handcuffed him and the staff, many of whom are students. The agents looked at a computer and at employees and, apparently not finding what they were searching for, arrested two employees because “they didn’t have a physical ID.” When an angry crowd tried to stop them from taking the two workers, the officers threw two flash-bang grenades to push the crowd back.
After the Department of Homeland Security published a list of sheriffs it claimed were noncompliant in working with DHS, the National Sheriffs’ Association issued a statement yesterday saying the publication of the list “has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration” and “could create a vacuum of trust that may take years to overcome.”
The organization, many of whose members are Trump loyalists, tried to distance DHS from the president, saying that “DHS has done a terrible disservice to President Trump and the Sheriffs of this country,” and demanded DHS apologize “to the Sheriffs and the American people.”
While apparently using its immigration policies to tighten its grip on the country, the administration itself appears to be in disarray. The acknowledgement in the New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk frequently used drugs during the 2024 campaign was only one weak spot in the administration.
Musk had fought with other administration officials, leading to rumors about the black eye he was sporting in Friday’s press conference. Recently, he had spoken out against the Republicans’ omnibus bill, and after reports that his Department of Government Efficiency had actually cost the government money, President Donald J. Trump reportedly asked his aides, “Was it all bullsh*t?”
After the press conference in which Trump thanked him for his service, the White House withdrew the nomination of Musk’s ally Jared Isaacman to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
On Thursday, Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto of NOTUS, the digital publication that covers U.S. politics, noted that the report of the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission, released a week earlier, is full of errors, including misrepresentation of experiments and nonexistent studies.
Margaret Manto of NOTUS wrote that the report appeared to confirm exactly what Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expected it would: that the primary drivers of chronic disease in children are “ultra-processed foods, environmental toxins, technology and medications, including vaccines.” It calls for a “coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative” to improve health with “movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing.”
It also calls for the government to apply artificial intelligence to “federal health and nutrition datasets” to “detect harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends.”
After news broke of the errors in the report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the problems “formatting issues.” But AI experts told Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert of the Washington Post that it appears the report’s authors relied heavily on AI. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Weber and Gilbert, “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point. It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can’t believe what’s in it.”
Trump also appears to be having trouble with the demands of governance. Yesterday, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Gordon Lubold, Dan De Luce, and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to figure out how to change Trump’s intelligence briefings to hold his attention. She is apparently considering creating a video of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) that’s made to look like a broadcast on the Fox News Channel. “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read,” one person with direct knowledge of the discussions told the reporters. “He’s on broadcast all the time.”
Since he took office on January 20, 2025, Trump has taken just 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week on average. In the same period, President Barack Obama took 63, and President Joe Biden took 90.
In a statement, DNI press secretary Olivia Coleman called the NBC story “laughable, absurd, and flat-out false.” But there is no doubt people from within the administration are talking to reporters and the administration is fixated on leaks: Today, Adam Goldman of the New York Times reported that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests to find leakers.
Goldman’s story was informed by insiders, though, who told him that Patel has fired so many people that he and his deputy, former political commentator Dan Bongino, have, as Goldman wrote, “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the FBI.” Goldman also reported that the top female agents at the FBI were told to take different jobs in the agency or retire.
There is also no doubt Trump continues to demonstrate that he is more committed to fantasy than reality.
Last night, he reposted a longstanding conspiracy theory that former president Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and that “Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see…. Democrats don’t know the difference.” The post was followed by MAGA and MAHA hashtags.
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The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government. On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”
The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ," she said.
Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.
But, as Linda Qiu noted in the New York Times today, most of the bill’s provisions have little to do with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans talk about. They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.
House speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that those losing coverage will be 1.4 million unauthorized immigrants, but this is false. As Qiu notes, although 14 states use their own funds to provide health insurance for undocumented immigrant children, and seven of those states provide some coverage for undocumented pregnant women, in fact, “unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally funded Medicaid, except in emergency situations.” Instead, the bill pressures those fourteen states to drop undocumented coverage by reducing their federal Medicaid funding.
MAGA Republicans claim their “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—that’s its official name—dramatically reduces the deficit, but that, too, is a lie.
On Thursday, May 29, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the measure would carry out “the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.” She echoed forty years of Republican claims that the economic growth unleashed by the measure would lead to higher tax revenues, a claim that hasn’t been true since Ronald Reagan made it in the 1970s.
In fact, the CBO estimates that the tax cuts and additional spending in the measure mean “[a]n increase in the federal deficit of $3.8 trillion.” As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, the CBO has been historically very reliable, but Leavitt and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to discount its scoring by claiming, as Johnson said: “They are historically totally unreliable. It’s run by Democrats.”
The director of the CBO, economist Philip Swagel, worked as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the George W. Bush administration. He was appointed in 2019 with the support of Senate Budget Committee chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) and House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth (D-KY). He was reappointed in 2023 with bipartisan support.
Republican cuts to government programs are a dramatic reworking of America’s traditional evidence-based government that works to improve the lives of a majority of Americans. They are replacing that government with an ideologically driven system that concentrates wealth and power in a few hands and denies that the government has a role to play in protecting Americans.
And yet, those who get their news by watching the Fox News Channel are likely unaware of the Republicans’ planned changes to Medicaid. As Aaron Rupar noted, on this morning’s Fox and Friends, the hosts mentioned Medicaid just once. They mentioned former president Joe Biden 39 times.
That change shows dramatically in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is an agency in the Commerce Department, established under Republican president Richard Nixon in 1970, that monitors weather conditions, storms, and ocean currents. The National Weather Service (NWS), which provides weather, wind, and ocean forecasts, is part of NOAA.
NWS forecasts annually provide the U.S. with an estimated $31.5 billion in benefits as they enable farmers, fishermen, businesspeople, schools, and individuals to plan around weather events.
As soon as he took office, Trump imposed an across-the-board hiring freeze, and billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” fired probationary employees and impounded funds Congress had appropriated. Now, as hurricane season begins, experts in storms and disasters are worried that the NOAA will be unable to function adequately.
Cuts to the NWS have already meant fewer weather balloons and thus less data, leaving gaps in information for a March ice storm in Northern Michigan and for storms and floods in Oklahoma in April. Oliver Milman of The Guardian reported today that 15 NWS offices on the Gulf of Mexico, a region vulnerable to hurricanes, are understaffed after losing more than 600 employees. Miami’s National Hurricane Center is short five specialists. Thirty of the 122 NWS stations no longer have a meteorologist in charge, and as of June 1, seven of those 122 stations will not have enough staff to operate around the clock.
On May 5, the five living former NWS, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote a letter to the American people warning that the cuts threaten to bring “needless loss of life.” They urged Americans to “raise your voice” against the cuts.
Trump’s proposed 2026 budget calls for “terminating a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs” and cutting about 25% more out of NOAA’s funding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also suffered dramatic cuts as Trump has said he intends to push disaster recovery to the states. The lack of expertise is taking a toll there, too. Today staff members there said they were baffled after David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season. (It does, and it stretches from June 1 to the end of November.) Richardson had no experience with disaster response before taking charge of FEMA.
Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are even more draconian. On Friday, in a more detailed budget than the administration published in early May, the administration called for cuts of 43% to the NIH, about $20 billion a year. That includes cuts of nearly 40% to the National Cancer Institute. At the same time, the administration is threatening to end virtually all biomedical research at universities.
On Friday, May 23, the White House issued an executive order called “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” The order cites the COVID-19 guidance about school reopenings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claim that the federal government under President Joe Biden “used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.” (Schools closed in March 2020 under Trump.) The document orders that “[e]mployees shall not engage in scientific misconduct” and, scientists Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann, and Brian Nosek explain in The Guardian, gives political appointees the power to silence any research they oppose “based on their own ‘judgment.’” They also have the power to punish those scientists whose work they find objectionable.
The Guardian authors note that science is “the most important long-term investment for humanity.” They recall the story of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who is a prime example of the terrible danger of replacing fact-based reality with ideology.
As Sam Kean of The Atlantic noted in 2017, Lysenko opposed science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century in favor of the pseudo-scientific idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. This idea reflected communist political thought, and Lysenko gained the favor of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Lysenko claimed that his own agricultural techniques, which included transforming one species into another, would dramatically increase crop yields. Government leaders declared that Lysenko’s ideas were the only correct ones, and anyone who disagreed with him was denounced. About 3,000 biologists whose work contradicted his were fired or sent to jail. Some were executed. Scientific research was effectively banned.
In the 1930s, Soviet leaders set out to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, and when their new state-run farming collectives failed, they turned to Lysenko to fix the problem with his new techniques. Almost everything planted according to his demands died or rotted. In the USSR and in China, which adopted his methods in the 1950s, at least 30 million people died of starvation.
“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.”
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On June 1, Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russia in “Operation Spider Web.” One hundred and seventeen drones, each operated by its own pilot, hit airfields in five regions. Ukraine says the drones hit 41 strategic bombers that had been attacking Ukrainian cities and destroyed at least 13 of them. Russia does not have the industrial capabilities to replace them.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Malyuk emphasized that military airfields and the aircraft that are bombing Ukraine are “absolutely legitimate targets…[a]ccording to the laws and customs of war.” The SBU estimates the drones did $7 billion of damage, hitting 34% of the aircraft that delivered cruise missiles.
The operation took more than 18 months of planning. It apparently involved sending trucks loaded with wooden cabins that had detachable roofs that could be opened remotely. Unsuspecting truck drivers hauled the cabins to locations near airbases, where the drones launched.
Once the drones were in the air, the vehicles carrying the cabins exploded. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the people who helped with the operation from within Russia had been withdrawn and “are now safe.”
Russia denied that the damage was that extensive, but there is no doubt that the attack was a significant blow to Russia’s war effort, demonstrating as it does that Ukraine can bring the war home. As Kateryna Bonder of the Washington, D.C., think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies notes, June 1 was Military Transport Aviation Day in Russia, a significant holiday for the armed forces. Russian president Vladimir Putin frequently ties operations to significant dates—as when he hosted a number of American lawmakers in Moscow on July 4, 2018—and the choice of this date for an attack on military aircraft threw that habit back at him.
Analysts recognize the Ukrainian attack as a new moment in warfare. Using apparently unwitting civilians, the Ukrainians managed to get their drones close enough to their targets to avoid Russia’s air defense systems; then, Bonder explains, the drones relied on a system that allowed operators to pilot them to the planes’ strategic weaknesses. The drones themselves cost between $600 and $1,000 apiece—and by using deception, technology, and strategic surprise, the Ukrainians managed to destroy billions of dollars worth of aircraft.
Bonder notes that the attack heralds a change in modern warfare, in which technological agility will trump industrial capacity and advantage will go to those countries that can adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Some observers are calling the attack the Russian Pearl Harbor, a reference to the attack by the Japanese Navy on the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, an attack that led to U.S. entry into World War II. But Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. This attack illustrates extraordinary vulnerability at this point, rather as if Pearl Harbor had happened in early 1945.
A former commander of U.S. Army Europe, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, posted: “For months, some believed that Ukraine didn't 'hold any cards.' Many of us have refuted that claim, saying an inflection point—due to failing Russian war economy and continued lack of Russian leadership adaptation, but especially due to a continued strong Ukrainian government, military and population support and will mixed with their innovative use of Special Operations, un-crewed systems (various drones), and fiber optic capabilities to counter Russian EW—would soon be felt on the battlefield. The coordinated and synchronized attack today, which appears to have decimated much of the Russian air fleet that were based over 4,000 km from the front line, is showing that Ukraine certainly has many aces in the hole.”
Hertling’s comment that some thought Ukraine didn’t hold any cards is a reference to President Donald J. Trump, who ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, warning him that Ukraine must cut a deal with Putin because Zelensky didn’t “have the cards” to win the war. With that meeting, Trump signaled that U.S. policy, which has supported Ukraine since 1994, would change to favor Russia.
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assistances, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Russia that they would honor the sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, a promise Russia broke when it invaded Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
During the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign, Trump vowed that he would end the war in Ukraine in a single day, maybe with a single phone call, and as other victories have slipped away from him, he has appeared frustrated that such an achievement has proved more difficult than he thought.
After the Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainians agreed to a 30-day ceasefire on March 11, but Russia has consistently refused to agree unless Ukraine accepts major territorial concessions and permits Russia to dictate that it not join the defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Rather than negotiating, Putin has launched repeated attacks on Ukrainian civil targets. On Sunday, May 25, Russia launched the largest air attack on Ukraine since the war began, and the week before, it launched its largest drone attack.
Those attacks happened even as Trump was talking directly with Putin, allegedly about a ceasefire. The White House policy has skewed heavily toward Russia against Ukraine even to the point that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff relied on Putin’s own translators during negotiations on February 11, March 13, and April 11. While Putin speaks English, Witkoff does not speak Russian.
Trump claims to be frustrated with Putin, at one point calling him “absolutely crazy,” which prompted Putin’s spokesperson to suggest that Trump was suffering from “emotional overload.” On May 27, Trump appeared to acknowledge his longstanding relationship with Putin when he posted on his social media site: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
And yet, although more than 80 senators from both parties have co-sponsored a bill to impose stronger sanctions against Russia, Trump has refused to back it, thus stalling it. Meanwhile, Benedict Smith of The Telegraph today covered State Department acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs Darren Beattie, who dismantled the office that countered disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran. In 2021, Smith notes, Beattie married a Russian national whose uncle has ties to Putin.
Beattie was dismissed from the first Trump administration after attending a white nationalist rally. He has attacked the United States as the “globalist American empire” and said that Putin should infiltrate western institutions to fight “woke” ideology. In 2021, Beattie wrote that the “position [of the U.S.] in the global order [is] rapidly deteriorating” and that he looked forward to its “prestige and power” collapsing. Praising Putin as “brave and strong,” he said that Putin had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican” and that “just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin.”
Beattie also wrote: “NATO is a far worse threat to the health, liberty, freedom, and flourishing of American citizens than Russia and China combined.”
Administration officials said the Ukrainians did not notify them before launching Operation Spider Web.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian forces detonated underwater explosives attached to the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. This is Ukraine’s third attack on the bridge since 2022. The SBU said the explosives “severely damaged” bridge supports, but the bridge reopened hours later.
The Ukrainian operations are only the most dramatic developments in ongoing stories today that show the Trump administration is not calling all the shots.
Trump’s vow to negotiate trade deals in place of his tariff walls has not yet produced any of those deals, and the White House today said it’s “likely” that a call will take place this week with China’s leader Xi Jinping. But Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal explained yesterday that Xi has made it clear China will play hardball with the U.S.
Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, told Phelim Kine, Daniel Desrochers, Megan Messerly, and Ari Hawkins of Politico: “Beijing has a sharp nose for weakness, and for all his bravado, Trump is signaling eagerness—even desperation—to cut a direct deal with Xi. That only stiffens Beijing’s resolve.”
Biden administration National Security Council deputy senior director for China and Taiwan Rush Doshi noted that Chinese officials see Trump as “unpredictable” and that Chinese diplomats don’t usually put the leader “at risk of a potentially embarrassing or unpredictable encounter.”
Jake Lahut of Wired reported yesterday that Trump advisors are themselves tired of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has Trump’s ear. Their comments to Lahut appear designed to put pressure on Trump to push her away, a sign that for now, anyway, she is entrenched.
Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka, whom Department of Homeland Security agents arrested on May 9, 2025, has sued the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, and the special agent in charge of the Newark Division of Homeland Security Investigations, Ricky J. Patel, for false arrest and malicious prosecution. He is suing Habba alone for defamation.
The suit outlines Habba’s public statements against Democrats in New Jersey and her vow to “turn…New Jersey red.” It says Habba acted “as a political operative” “in her individual personal capacity” “outside of any function intimately related to the judicial process” when she posted on her social media account that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law.” After repeated similar public statements, Habba dropped all charges.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took down her list of “sanctuary cities” she said weren’t cooperating with federal immigration authorities after the National Sheriffs’ Association demanded an apology.
Trump began today by attacking Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for his opposition to the extraordinary cost of Republicans’ omnibus bill, insisting that the bill would create “tremendous GROWTH.” But this afternoon, billionaire Elon Musk took a firm stand against Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a report showing that Musk’s net worth has increased by more than $100 billion since Election Day. The report listed the many ways in which he used his position in the federal government to stop investigations into his companies, undercut regulations, win federal contracts, gain access to data and sensitive information, attack his enemies, meddle in elections, and secure foreign deals, all without informing the American people of his conflicts of interest.
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Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth.
The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war. It projects global growth slowing from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026. That economic slowdown is concentrated primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China.
The OECD predicts that growth in the United States will decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two analyses today of Trump’s policies that add more detail to that report. The CBO’s estimate for the effect of Trump’s current tariffs—which are unlikely to stay as they are—is that they will raise inflation and slow economic growth as consumers bear their costs. The CBO says it is hard to anticipate how the tariffs will change purchasing behavior, but it estimates that the tariffs will reduce the deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years.
Also today, the CBO’s analysis of the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is that it will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade because the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the measure do not fully offset the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Republicans have met this CBO score with attacks on the CBO, but its estimate is in keeping with those of a wide range of economists and think tanks.
Taken together, these studies illustrate how Trump’s economic policies are designed to transfer wealth from consumers to the wealthy and corporations. From 1981 to 2021, American policies moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. After Biden stopped that upward transfer, the Trump administration is restarting it again, on steroids.
Just how these policies are affecting Americans is no longer clear, though. Matt Grossman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that economists no longer trust the accuracy of the government’s inflation data. Officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles a huge monthly survey of employment and costs, told economists that staffing shortages and a hiring freeze have forced them to cut back on their research and use less precise methods for figuring out price changes. Grossman reports that the bureau has also cut back on the number of places where it collects data and that the administration has gotten rid of committees of external experts that worked to improve government statistics.
There is more than money at stake in the administration’s policies. The administration's gutting of the government seeks to decimate the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights and to replace it with a government that permits a few wealthy men to rule.
The CBO score for the Republicans’ omnibus bill projects that if it is enacted, 16 million people will lose access to healthcare insurance over the next decade in what is essentially an assault on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The bill also dramatically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) benefits, clean energy credits, aid for student borrowers, benefits for federal workers, and consumer protection services, while requiring the sale of public natural resources.
These cuts continue those the administration has made since Trump took office, many of which fell under the hand of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” But, while billionaire Elon Musk was the figurehead for that group, it appears his main interest was in collecting data. His understudy, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, appears to have determined the direction of the cuts, which did not save money so much as decimate the parts of the government that the authors of Project 2025 wanted to destroy.
Vought was a key author of Project 2025, whose aim is to disrupt and destroy the United States government order to center a Christian, heteronormative, male-dominated family as the primary element of society. To do so, the plan calls for destroying the administrative state, withdrawing the United States from global affairs, and ending environmental and business regulations.
Yesterday the White House asked Congress to cancel $9.4 billion in already-appropriated spending that the Department of Government Efficiency identified as wasteful, a procedure known as “rescission.” Trump aides say the money funds programs that promote what they consider inappropriate ideologies, including public media networks PBS and NPR; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food and basic medical care globally; and PEPFAR, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that was established under President George W. Bush to combat HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries and is currently credited with saving about 26 million lives.
Vought appeared today before the House Appropriations Committee, where members scolded him for neglecting to provide a budget for the year, which they need to do their jobs. But Vought had plenty to say about the things he is doing. According to ProPublica’s Andy Kroll, he claimed that under Biden “every agency became a tool of the Left.” He said the White House will continue to ask for rescissions, but also noted that, as Project 2025 laid out, he does not believe that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend the money that Congress has appropriated, is constitutional, despite court decisions saying it is.
Representative Rosa DeLaur0 (D-CT) told Vought: “Be honest, this is never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable is what you fear the most. You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization, for the biggest companies to have unchecked power, for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge. Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.”
The use of the government to impose evangelical beliefs on the country, even at the expense of lives, also appears to be an administration goal. Yesterday, the administration announced it is ending the Biden administration’s 2022 guidance to hospital emergency rooms that accept Medicare—which is virtually all of them—requiring that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act they must perform an abortion in an emergency if the procedure is necessary to prevent a patient’s organ failure or severe hemorrhaging. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients.
The Trump administration will no longer enforce that policy. Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press found that even when the Biden administration policy was being enforced, dozens of pregnant women, some of whom needed emergency abortions, were turned away from emergency rooms with advice to “let nature take its course.”
Finally tonight, in what seems likely to be an attempt to distract attention from the omnibus bill and all the controversy surrounding it, Trump banned Harvard from hosting foreign students. He also banned nationals from a dozen countries—Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from entering the United States, an echo of the travel ban of his first term that threw the country into chaos.
Trump justified his travel ban by citing the attack Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, on peaceful demonstrators marching to support Israeli hostages in Gaza. An Egyptian national who had overstayed a tourist visa hurled Molotov cocktails at the marchers, injuring 15 people.
Egypt is not on the list of countries whose nationals Trump has banned from the United States.
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Today the U.S. political world was consumed by a public fight between President Donald J. Trump and his former sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk invested about $290 million into the 2024 election, vowing to elect Trump in order to get rid of government investigations into his businesses he worried would “take [him] down.”
When Trump took office, Musk became a fixture in the White House, attending Cabinet meetings and heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That group set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds at the same time that its staff sucked up information on Americans that could feed the training of artificial intelligence and killed the investigations into his businesses Musk had worried about.
In February, Musk posted on social media: “I love [Donald Trump] as much as a straight man can love another man.”
But Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome even as his antics hurt sales of his signature car, the Tesla, inspiring Trump to do a car commercial for him on the White House grounds. Just a week ago, Musk officially left the White House on the same day that an article in the New York Times documented his heavy drug use on the campaign.
Then, on Tuesday, June 3, he took a public stand against the omnibus bill Trump desperately wants Congress to pass, posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
And with that, the falling out began.
This morning, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Musk. Ron Filipkowski of Meidas followed the saga from there.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”
Trump then suggested that “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk promptly said he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station.
The two men continued to go back and forth, with Musk saying that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” a reference to the records compiled by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump was friendly. Musk also said Trump's tariffs will cause a recession, and agreed with another poster who suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Trump responded to that attack far more weakly than one would have expected, simply turning back to the omnibus bill and insisting it “is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.”
Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
It’s quite a gamble, since Trump controls the government contracts on which Musk’s fortune was built and on which he still relies. Some MAGA loyalists appear to see the fight as a victory for Trump and are thrilled to see Musk’s star fall. MAGA influencer Steve Bannon told Tyler Pager of the New York Times that he has advised Trump to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts and launch a formal investigation of his drug use and his immigration status.
Kylie Robison and Aarian Marshall of Wired noted that TrumpCoin lost more than $100 million in value during the fight. Tesla stock lost $152 billion of value from its market capitalization, prompting Filipkowski to note that the total came to about $9 billion per tweet.
Economist Robert Reich had perhaps the best summary of the fight today when he noted, “That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists—and that they both individually wield such massive power—is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy.”
Indeed, today’s White House and today’s America are very different from what they were eighty-one years ago.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his twenty-ninth Fireside Chat on June 5, 1944, and had good news for the American people. The day before, on June 4, Rome had fallen to Allied troops. “The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands,” Roosevelt said.
The president pointed out that it was “significant that Rome has been liberated by the armed forces of many nations. The American and British armies—who bore the chief burdens of battle—found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant Canadians. The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific, the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans, the Poles and the East Indians—all of them fought with us on the bloody approaches to the city of Rome. The Italians, too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired, have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German trespassers on their soil.”
This group of ordinary men from many different countries had worked together to defeat the forces of fascism.
But FDR warned Americans that the fall of Rome was only the beginning. “We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself,” he said. [T]he victory still lies some distance ahead. That distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that. But it will be tough and it will be costly.”
FDR knew something his audience did not. On the other side of the Atlantic, paratroopers, their faces darkened with cocoa, were already dropping into France, and the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allies were on their way across the English channel.
The order of the day from their commander Dwight D. Eisenhower that day had read: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
“Your task will not be an easy one,” it read, but it assured the troops that the Germans had suffered great defeats and Allied bombing had reduced German strength, while “[o]ur Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!”
Eisenhower’s public confidence did not reflect his understanding that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was a gamble. On June 5, in pencil on a sheet of paper, he had written a message to be communicated in case the invasion failed.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” it read. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and dedication to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
On the morning of June 6, 1944, five naval assault divisions stormed the beaches of Normandy. Seven thousand ships and landing craft operated by more than 195,000 naval personnel from eight countries brought almost 133,000 troops to beaches given the code names UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD. By the end of the day, more than 10,000 Allied troops were wounded or killed, but the Allies had established a foothold in France that would permit them to flood troops, vehicles, and supplies into Europe. When FDR held a press conference later that day, officials and press alike were jubilant.
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Last night, billionaire Elon Musk indicated he would be willing to paper over his fight with President Donald J. Trump, perhaps remembering, as Paresh Dave of Wired noted, that his companies stand to lose $48 billion over the next ten years if they lose their government contracts.
Trump spent this morning calling news anchors and telling them he’s not bothered by the fight. According to Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone, Trump today called CNN’s Dana Bash, the Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, and CBS News’ Robert Costa to claim he’s “not even thinking about Elon,” before bashing him as “the man who has lost his mind.”
Yesterday, Lauren Goode of Wired reported that big tech investors and executives were trying to walk a fine line between the two men, trying not to take a stand for or against either. J.V. Last of The Bulwark noted that no one was more hesitant to take a side than Vice President J.D. Vance, who wants to keep the favor of his Silicon Valley patrons but also needs Trump’s backing. At 10:28 last night, after Musk was already retreating, Vance posted on social media: “President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I’m proud to stand beside him.” As Last notes, this was a pretty weak statement, and “Trump is smart enough to understand that this is a confession.”
“Do not doubt, don’t second guess, and do not challenge the President of the United States Donald Trump,” House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) warned Republican lawmakers. “He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of our time.”
After Russian officials said they were prepared to offer Musk political asylum, Musk spent the day posting or reposting material that boosted his businesses and complaints about Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” This evening, he announced: “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”
How the fallout from this fight will affect the country remains unclear, but the announcement that the Pentagon is investigating whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s aides were asked to delete Signal messages may well be related to Musk’s fall from favor. In April, Hegseth arranged for Musk to have a top-secret briefing on U.S. military plans in case of war with China. According to Marc Caputo of Axios, Trump himself stepped in to stop the briefing from going forward. Now Hegseth is under investigation.
It does seem likely that the administration will try to pin blame on Musk for the chaos that the “Department of Government Efficiency” launched against the United States government.
Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman of ProPublica reported today on the AI prompts the Department of Government Efficiency used to “munch”—the word DOGE employee Sahil Lavingia used for “cancel”—contracts related to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Lavingia, who worked for two months for DOGE, said the idea was to go after anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” But the code was deeply flawed, resulting in wildly off-base contract values and a deep misunderstanding of what contracts actually did. “[M]istakes were made,” Lavingia said. “Mistakes are always made.”
Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance of the Washington Post took a broader view. They reported that “[a]cross the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.” They outlined how the administration is trying to patch the holes DOGE ripped in agencies: trying to rehire employees who were fired or left voluntarily and, if that doesn’t work, offering overtime, asking for volunteers, and asking employees to serve in new roles. Some new job offerings look a lot like the positions of people agencies just fired.
A White House official told the reporters: “If by chance mistakes were made and critical employees were dismissed, each individual agency is working diligently to bring these people back to work to continue the adequate functions of the federal government.” But morale is terrible, one worker at the Food and Drug Administration told the reporters. “Everyone is stressed and feels the absence of our colleagues.… I’m looking for another job.”
Still, DOGE is not the only group in the administration that has made poor decisions. Hannah Allam of ProPublica reported on Wednesday that the White House has put a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no experience in national security in charge of overseeing the government’s main center for preventing terrorism. Thomas Fugate’s main credentials for his position in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes overseeing $18 million in grants to local authorities to combat violent extremism, appear to be his time spent as an intern at the right-wing Heritage Foundation and his loyalty to Trump.
Fugate’s appointment appears to reflect that the administration is downplaying domestic terrorism to shift resources to immigration. In its budget proposal, DHS has called for eliminating the threat prevention grant program Fugate oversees, saying it “does not align with DHS priorities.” One former Homeland Security official told Allam the shift “means that the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States.”
Today, after months of maintaining it could not bring back Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully rendered to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration returned him to the U.S. A grand jury in Tennessee has charged Abrego Garcia with participating in a ten-year conspiracy to carry undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country. The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia participated in more than 100 trips that moved children as well as members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang.
The indictment has issues. Abrego Garcia is the only person named in the “conspiracy,” and the investigation into it began only in April, after the courts ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. The indictment is based on a 2022 incident in which Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee for speeding with eight passengers in his vehicle. He told police they were construction workers and was neither ticketed nor charged. While the indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia lied to the officer by not revealing he was coming from Texas, the referral report says he told the officer he was coming from Houston, Texas.
Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, noted that the chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Ben Schrader, resigned on May 21, saying: “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.” Williams notes that May 21 is the same day as Abrego Garcia’s indictment.
ABC News reported that Schrader resigned out of “concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.”
Meanwhile, government raids against immigrants are escalating and seem designed to provoke conflict. Today, masked officials in tactical gear, apparently from the Department of Homeland Security, carried out a number of raids in Los Angeles. Agents pepper sprayed and arrested David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU).
In a statement, the union called for “an end to the cruel, destructive, and indiscriminate ICE raids that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy, and hurting all working people,” adding: “Immigrant workers are essential to our society: feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces, and building our homes.”
Andy Craig, who studies election law and policy, noted today that “[m]ass deportation and immigration enforcement in the interior requires a police state, and the more of that you want, the more obviously it will look and act like a police state.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council agreed. He wrote: “In order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire goddamn population, you must first build the police state.”
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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 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.”
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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.
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At 10:19 last night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media: “Stand with ICE. Pass the B[ig] B[eautiful] B[ill].”
And there it is. The Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is the MAGA regime’s attempt to replace the American government we’ve had since the 1930s with one that reflects the antidemocratic values of Project 2025. The measure is unpopular. According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 60% of Americans think the bill will help wealthy people, while 54% think it will hurt poor people. Forty-seven percent think it will hurt the middle class, while only 31% think it will help the middle class. As Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted, it’s “[s]tunning how badly Trump and the Rs have lost the debate on what their reconciliation bill will do.”
The measure changes the nature of the American government by extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and adding significantly more money to immigration enforcement and defense spending. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure will add as much as $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years; with interest costs of that new debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded the measure would increase the debt by nearly $3 trillion.
At the same time that it moves money upward and into the white nationalist project of expelling immigrants, the measure guts federal policies and agencies that serve the American people, apparently with the goal of pushing such policies and agencies to the states. The CBO estimates that as many as 13.7 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the measure passes, and cuts of nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will mean cuts of about 30% to the programs on which millions of Americans depend.
Miller’s post underscores the administration’s need to change the conversation around the measure, whose 1,000-plus pages lay out the MAGA vision for the United States. “Don’t kid yourself,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) posted. “[T]hey know they are absolutely getting cooked politically w[ith] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”
Maanvi Singh of The Guardian put the right lens on events in Los Angeles today, noting “Trump’s dramatic escalation” and his vow “to crush opposition to his immigration raids.” Singh identified the administration’s escalation as the trigger for “a roaring backlash.”
Singh noted federal agents carried out arrests in L.A. without judicial warrants and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding families in the basements of federal buildings, refusing them access to lawyers and family members. Agents in riot gear attacked protesters with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, turning peaceful protests into clashes.
Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the protests an “insurrection,” and last night Trump activated at least 2,000 members of California’s National Guard over the protests of California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
Administration officials are continuing their emphasis on spectacle and performance to try to bring popular opinion back their way. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported today that television personality Dr. Phil McGraw and his camera crew were embedded with ICE during the raids.
According to Dr. Phil’s right-wing TV channel, he was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations.” He also had “exclusive” access to Tom Homan, the man known as Trump’s “border czar,” and recorded interviews with him before and after the L.A. sweeps.
But that, too, is spectacle. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Homan and Miller are the public face of border enforcement and anti-immigrant policies. But Homan is not part of ICE. He is a White House advisor, working in a civilian capacity. And yet, as Marshall records, he has taken to showing up before the cameras “in either faux military uniforms or, in most cases, civilian garb clearly meant to appear like military-style fatigues along with a ever-changing run of camo or olive drab baseball caps.”
Trump seems happy to let these White House officials take the lead in the immigration performance. On Saturday, Homan threatened to arrest anyone who obstructed immigration enforcement, refusing to exempt L.A. mayor Bass or California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom responded: “What the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let’s just get it over with. Tough guy. You know? I don’t give a damn, but I care about my community. I care about this community. The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up, they need to stop, and we need to push back, and I’m sorry to be so clear, but—that kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
As he arrived back at the White House this morning after spending the weekend at Camp David, Trump told reporters: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great…. I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job.” Homan does not have the authority to arrest anyone. Using him to threaten to arrest a governor enables Trump to make the threat while also being able to deny that he made it.
Although members of Congress have legal authority to enter ICE detention facilities to conduct oversight, Jesus Jiménez, Chelsia Rose Marcius, and Nate Schweber of the New York Times reported that over the weekend, five members said officials barred them from doing so. New York Democratic representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez say they were prevented from checking on the well-being of those detained in New York. In California, Democratic representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez, and Norma Torres were turned away from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Waters said she was trying to see David Huerta, the popular president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was injured when officers threw him to the ground and arrested him on Friday. Huerta’s arrest has mobilized union workers to protest the immigration sweeps, and today the Department of Justice announced it was charging him with felony conspiracy to impede an officer, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in federal prison. Crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., as well as in L.A. to call for Huerta’s release, and this evening he was released from custody on a $50,000 bond.
In a statement following his arrest, Huerta said: "What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”
Today Mayor Bass reminded protesters that “LA has a proud history of peaceful protests for immigrants rights.” She called for them to “continue that legacy—don’t fall into the Trump Administration’s trap. Protest peacefully. Looting and vandalism will not be tolerated.” She added: “Trump didn’t inherit a crisis—he created one. To those stoking the fire of lawlessness and chaos alongside him—LA will hold you accountable.” Observers today said the L.A. protests, most of which take place within a five-block radius, are overwhelmingly peaceful, characterized by Tejano music and celebrations of local culture.
This afternoon, a government official told Reuters that it is deploying about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until Wednesday. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in Los Angeles. The state and city have the means to control the protests. Donald Trump is getting involved to intentionally make the situation more violent. And potentially to create a pretext for some sort of martial law.”
David Dayen of The American Prospect posted: “The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.”
Today, California attorney general Rob Bonta and Governor Newsom sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for their order to federalize the California National Guard without authorization from the governor and against the wishes of local law enforcement, calling it “an inflammatory escalation unsupported by conditions on the ground.” They have asked the court to set aside the order, calling it unlawful.
In addition to being unlawful, it appears the deployment was not terribly well thought through. Matthias Gafni of the San Francisco Chronicle reported tonight that the National Guard troops sent by Trump to Los Angeles received no federal funding for food, water, fuel, equipment, or lodging. Gafni shows a photo of “wildly underprepared” troops sleeping in their clothes on a cement floor. Nonetheless, Trump called another 2,000 California National Guard troops into federal service today “to support ICE.”
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times looked around at events and wrote: “what i see is a white house whose ambitions outstrip its resources, who did not count on facing mass resistance, and which is scrambling to escalate the situation in hopes that a display of force will make people shut up.”
This evening, Trump posted on social media a photograph of what appeared to be border patrol and ICE agents with the caption: “THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL Boosts Border Patrol and ICE Agents on the Frontlines with the Largest Border Security Investment in History.”
Governor Newsom said: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country—defending democracy. They are not political pawns. The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend. It’s a blatant abuse of power. We will sue to stop this. The courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling. This is a red line—and they’re crossing it. WAKE UP!”
Also tonight, about 400 people turned out in Dallas, Texas, against ICE in solidarity with Los Angeles. At about 9:40 p.m. Dallas police said the protest was an unlawful assembly. At 10:15, officers moved in with pepper spray and smoke to disperse the crowd.
A final note: While the oxygen in the country was taken up by the administration's escalations, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today got rid of all 17 of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy, who has taken a public stand against vaccines, told the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he would not change existing vaccine approval systems. But in an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal, he said “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
Laura Unger and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press report that Kennedy intends to replace the fired committee members with his own picks.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
At 10:19 last night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media: “Stand with ICE. Pass the B[ig] B[eautiful] B[ill].”
And there it is. The Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is the MAGA regime’s attempt to replace the American government we’ve had since the 1930s with one that reflects the antidemocratic values of Project 2025. The measure is unpopular. According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 60% of Americans think the bill will help wealthy people, while 54% think it will hurt poor people. Forty-seven percent think it will hurt the middle class, while only 31% think it will help the middle class. As Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted, it’s “[s]tunning how badly Trump and the Rs have lost the debate on what their reconciliation bill will do.”
The measure changes the nature of the American government by extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and adding significantly more money to immigration enforcement and defense spending. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure will add as much as $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years; with interest costs of that new debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded the measure would increase the debt by nearly $3 trillion.
At the same time that it moves money upward and into the white nationalist project of expelling immigrants, the measure guts federal policies and agencies that serve the American people, apparently with the goal of pushing such policies and agencies to the states. The CBO estimates that as many as 13.7 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the measure passes, and cuts of nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will mean cuts of about 30% to the programs on which millions of Americans depend.
Miller’s post underscores the administration’s need to change the conversation around the measure, whose 1,000-plus pages lay out the MAGA vision for the United States. “Don’t kid yourself,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) posted. “[T]hey know they are absolutely getting cooked politically w[ith] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”
Maanvi Singh of The Guardian put the right lens on events in Los Angeles today, noting “Trump’s dramatic escalation” and his vow “to crush opposition to his immigration raids.” Singh identified the administration’s escalation as the trigger for “a roaring backlash.”
Singh noted federal agents carried out arrests in L.A. without judicial warrants and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding families in the basements of federal buildings, refusing them access to lawyers and family members. Agents in riot gear attacked protesters with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, turning peaceful protests into clashes.
Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the protests an “insurrection,” and last night Trump activated at least 2,000 members of California’s National Guard over the protests of California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
Administration officials are continuing their emphasis on spectacle and performance to try to bring popular opinion back their way. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported today that television personality Dr. Phil McGraw and his camera crew were embedded with ICE during the raids.
According to Dr. Phil’s right-wing TV channel, he was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations.” He also had “exclusive” access to Tom Homan, the man known as Trump’s “border czar,” and recorded interviews with him before and after the L.A. sweeps.
But that, too, is spectacle. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Homan and Miller are the public face of border enforcement and anti-immigrant policies. But Homan is not part of ICE. He is a White House advisor, working in a civilian capacity. And yet, as Marshall records, he has taken to showing up before the cameras “in either faux military uniforms or, in most cases, civilian garb clearly meant to appear like military-style fatigues along with a ever-changing run of camo or olive drab baseball caps.”
Trump seems happy to let these White House officials take the lead in the immigration performance. On Saturday, Homan threatened to arrest anyone who obstructed immigration enforcement, refusing to exempt L.A. mayor Bass or California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom responded: “What the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let’s just get it over with. Tough guy. You know? I don’t give a damn, but I care about my community. I care about this community. The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up, they need to stop, and we need to push back, and I’m sorry to be so clear, but—that kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
As he arrived back at the White House this morning after spending the weekend at Camp David, Trump told reporters: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great…. I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job.” Homan does not have the authority to arrest anyone. Using him to threaten to arrest a governor enables Trump to make the threat while also being able to deny that he made it.
Although members of Congress have legal authority to enter ICE detention facilities to conduct oversight, Jesus Jiménez, Chelsia Rose Marcius, and Nate Schweber of the New York Times reported that over the weekend, five members said officials barred them from doing so. New York Democratic representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez say they were prevented from checking on the well-being of those detained in New York. In California, Democratic representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez, and Norma Torres were turned away from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Waters said she was trying to see David Huerta, the popular president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was injured when officers threw him to the ground and arrested him on Friday. Huerta’s arrest has mobilized union workers to protest the immigration sweeps, and today the Department of Justice announced it was charging him with felony conspiracy to impede an officer, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in federal prison. Crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., as well as in L.A. to call for Huerta’s release, and this evening he was released from custody on a $50,000 bond.
In a statement following his arrest, Huerta said: "What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”
Today Mayor Bass reminded protesters that “LA has a proud history of peaceful protests for immigrants rights.” She called for them to “continue that legacy—don’t fall into the Trump Administration’s trap. Protest peacefully. Looting and vandalism will not be tolerated.” She added: “Trump didn’t inherit a crisis—he created one. To those stoking the fire of lawlessness and chaos alongside him—LA will hold you accountable.” Observers today said the L.A. protests, most of which take place within a five-block radius, are overwhelmingly peaceful, characterized by Tejano music and celebrations of local culture.
This afternoon, a government official told Reuters that it is deploying about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until Wednesday. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in Los Angeles. The state and city have the means to control the protests. Donald Trump is getting involved to intentionally make the situation more violent. And potentially to create a pretext for some sort of martial law.”
David Dayen of The American Prospect posted: “The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.”
Today, California attorney general Rob Bonta and Governor Newsom sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for their order to federalize the California National Guard without authorization from the governor and against the wishes of local law enforcement, calling it “an inflammatory escalation unsupported by conditions on the ground.” They have asked the court to set aside the order, calling it unlawful.
In addition to being unlawful, it appears the deployment was not terribly well thought through. Matthias Gafni of the San Francisco Chronicle reported tonight that the National Guard troops sent by Trump to Los Angeles received no federal funding for food, water, fuel, equipment, or lodging. Gafni shows a photo of “wildly underprepared” troops sleeping in their clothes on a cement floor. Nonetheless, Trump called another 2,000 California National Guard troops into federal service today “to support ICE.”
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times looked around at events and wrote: “what i see is a white house whose ambitions outstrip its resources, who did not count on facing mass resistance, and which is scrambling to escalate the situation in hopes that a display of force will make people shut up.”
This evening, Trump posted on social media a photograph of what appeared to be border patrol and ICE agents with the caption: “THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL Boosts Border Patrol and ICE Agents on the Frontlines with the Largest Border Security Investment in History.”
Governor Newsom said: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country—defending democracy. They are not political pawns. The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend. It’s a blatant abuse of power. We will sue to stop this. The courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling. This is a red line—and they’re crossing it. WAKE UP!”
Also tonight, about 400 people turned out in Dallas, Texas, against ICE in solidarity with Los Angeles. At about 9:40 p.m. Dallas police said the protest was an unlawful assembly. At 10:15, officers moved in with pepper spray and smoke to disperse the crowd.
A final note: While the oxygen in the country was taken up by the administration's escalations, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today got rid of all 17 of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy, who has taken a public stand against vaccines, told the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he would not change existing vaccine approval systems. But in an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal, he said “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
Laura Unger and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press report that Kennedy intends to replace the fired committee members with his own picks.
It’s happening but it sure as hell ain’t going to be the summer of love.
Today President Donald J. Trump made it clear that the provocations he and his administration are escalating in Los Angeles and now elsewhere are using the issue of immigration to suppress dissent entirely.
In the Oval Office today, Trump said of the military parade scheduled for this Saturday: “If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force…. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”
His statement comes after the administration instituted aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) met the few hundred protesters with violence.
Then, over the protests of both Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump federalized 4,000 members of California’s National Guard and ordered 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He and his advisors have repeatedly threatened to arrest anyone who does not cooperate with ICE, including Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom.
Trump has said he based his decision to federalize the National Guard on his insistence that Los Angeles is staggering under violent riots, but in fact the protests are largely peaceful and local officials maintain they can handle the situation.
Still, Trump described Los Angeles as “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” and said “violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals,” and other MAGA lawmakers have gotten into the act. Will Sommer of The Bulwark pointed out today that MAGA influencers are also pushing for more crackdowns and more cruelty in a feedback loop as they and White House officials push each other toward more and more cruelty toward immigrants.
But the narrative that L.A. is under siege is hard to make stick. Protesters have been filming the bands playing and people dancing at the protests, which remain small. They have also filmed the ICE agents shooting less-lethal bullets at individuals, including an Australian journalist who was speaking to a camera when she was shot from behind. The complaint against SEIU leader David Huerta, who has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer, says that he walked and sat on a public sidewalk in such a way that he blocked an ICE van before an officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him.
Economist Paul Krugman notes that “Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been,” and Newsom has been meeting the claims of MAGA politicians that the city is a hellscape with actual statistics showing that California is safer than their own states. He reminded Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin that Oklahoma’s murder rate is 40% higher than California’s and, after Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called for Newsom to be arrested, retorted: “Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country. Stick to football, bro.”
As Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post noted today, California recently became the fourth largest economy in the world. It has the highest number of immigrants in the country—although many have moved in the past few years to more affordable states—and unemployment numbers are close to the national average.
But Trump has always managed his public affairs by projecting dominance in a fake world; his political instincts for keeping attention on himself have been compared to the kayfabe of professional wrestling.
This afternoon he upped the ante again. In a speech at the Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Trump delivered a fiercely partisan speech that sounded like it was written by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. In front of a crowd of enlisted personnel who journalist Jane Coaston reported had been carefully selected to be Trump supporters and “to be fit and not look fat,” Trump claimed the U.S. was under a “foreign invasion” because of “stupid people or radical Left people or sick people.” He goaded the personnel into booing Newsom and Bass.
Since the days of George Washington, the American armed forces have been strictly nonpartisan, declaring their allegiance to the U.S. Constitution itself rather than to any leader.
Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted that Trump is “turning the world’s powerful military away from its focus on Russia and China toward a new enemy—the American people themselves.” He mused: “I’ve been saying that I felt Trump’s dramatic escalation in recent days was driven in part by Musk’s emasculation of him last week. I also wonder whether it’s being driven by Zelensky’s profound humiliation of Putin, and Putin lashing out at Trump for not delivering Ukraine to him.”
Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported today that right-wing bots, trolls, conspiracy theorists, and MAGA influencers are flooding social media with messages designed to attack immigrants and Democrats and defend Trump. Many of those accounts are linked to Russia and Russian disinformation.
It certainly feels as if administration officials are going for broke in ways that benefit Russia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard today released a video warning that the world is close to a nuclear war caused by a political elite that expects it can survive one in special bunkers. Gabbard has a history of parroting Russian propaganda, and famously, Russian president Vladimir Putin has used the threat of nuclear war to press his demands against Ukraine.
A YouGov poll out today shows that only 34% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of Marines to the Los Angeles area to respond to protests over the enforcement of immigration laws while 47% do not approve. Only 38% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to L.A., while 45% disapprove. A strong majority—56%—of Americans think state and local officials should take the lead in responding to the L.A. protests, while only 25% think the federal government should.
Strikingly, 50% of adults disapprove of the administration's handling of deportations, while only 39% approve.
Those numbers were gathered before Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell told the House Defense Appropriations Committee today that the Pentagon estimates the cost of federalizing the National Guard and deploying the Marines to Los Angeles at $134 million.
Today the Department of Justice announced it was indicting Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on three counts of “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers” after a May 19 event in front of a Newark, New Jersey, ICE detention center. McIver was at the detention center with others as part of her oversight responsibilities, and a video shows her being jostled with a crowd that includes an ICE officer, but no one breaks stride. McIver called the charges “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”
Tonight Governor Newsom delivered a prime-time address about the events of the past few days. He outlined the story of the ICE raids and Trump’s escalation of conflict. He urged protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully and warned that anyone participating in violence would be held accountable.
Then the governor launched into a wholesale condemnation of the Trump regime. He warned that “[i]f 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.”
Newsom called Trump out for firing the government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for fraud, and for declaring 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…. [H]e’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…, in his own words, ‘for getting elected.’”
“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “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 under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.”
Newsom urged Americans to stand up for the country. “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he said. “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,” Newsom said.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Absolutely. She'll be in prison or dead by this date next year. Get loyal or get gone.
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While President Donald Trump is trying to project strength by ordering a federalized National Guard and the Marines into Los Angeles, a new Quinnipiac poll of American registered voters out today reinforces that both Trump and his policies are unpopular. The numbers are remarkable.
The poll shows that 38% of registered voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president; 54% disapprove. Voters aren’t keen on Trump’s appointees, either. Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of the way Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is handling his job; 53% disapprove. Thirty-seven percent of voters approve of the way Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is handling his job, while 46% disapprove. Thirty-eight percent approved of the work billionaire Elon Musk did, while 57% said it was either “not so good” or “poor.”
More voters disapprove than approve of Trump’s handling of immigration issues (43% approval to 54% disapproval), deportations (40% approval to 56% disapproval), the economy (40% approval to 56% disapproval), trade (38% approval to 57% disapproval), universities (37% approval to 54% disapproval), the Israel-Hamas conflict (35% approval to 52% disapproval), and the Russia-Ukraine war (34% approval to 57% disapproval).
Voters are opposed to the budget reconciliation bill the Republicans have dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (and Democrats have called the “Big, Beautiful Betrayal”) by 53% to 27%. While the measure cuts almost $800 billion out of Medicaid over the next ten years, only 10% of registered voters believe the federal funding for Medicaid should decrease.
There is little good news for the administration in economic numbers, either. Yesterday, the World Bank, an international organization of 189 countries, joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in concluding that Trump’s trade war would cut U.S. economic growth sharply. The World Bank estimates that growth will fall by half in 2025 compared to 2024. In 2024 U.S. economic growth was 2.8%; in 2025, the World Bank predicts growth of just 1.4%. It forecasts that Trump’s trade wars will cut global economic growth from 2.8% in 2024 to 2.3% in 2025.
After promising 90 tariff deals in 90 days, Trump has been desperate for a deal with China. In retaliation for Trump’s high tariffs, China tightly controlled exports of rare earth minerals and the magnets made from them, which the U.S. needs to build cars, electronic products, and missiles. Rare earth minerals are valuable minerals that are not uncommon, but are present in such small concentrations the amount of labor it takes to refine them is enormous. Most of them are currently mined in China. As Ana Swanson reported yesterday in the New York Times, late last month Ford had to close a Chicago factory temporarily and other companies have been forced to suspend some of their operations.
On Sunday, on CBS’s Face the Nation, top White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said: “The point is we want the rare earth, the magnets that are crucial for cellphones and everything else, to flow just as they did before the beginning of April,” that is, before Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Today Trump posted, “OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE,” although China simply called it a “framework” and neither Trump nor Xi has agreed to it. Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic wrote that the proposed deal simply revives a May deal that rolled tariffs back for 90 days. Further, the rare earth deal only lasts for six months.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers wrote: “The US & Chinese trade negotiators have negotiated a handshake agreement to seek signoff to agree that a previously-agreed agreement was still their agreed upon agreement. (That agreement is not an agreement but a framework for seeking future agreements).” He added: “Notice that not only are we not getting a better deal, we’re not even getting back to where we were at the start of the Administration.”
Before the House Ways and Means Committee today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Trump is likely to extend the 90-day pause on his tariffs with countries to whom the administration is speaking.
Meanwhile, Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon of Military [dot] com confirmed today that the troops Trump addressed in a partisan speech at Fort Bragg had been handpicked Trump supporters with a fit physical appearance. (One message simply read: “No fat soldiers.”) Toropin and Beynon reported: “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.” They also reported that an Oklahoma-based retailer was selling pro-Trump and right-wing campaign-style merchandise at the event, a violation of military policy.
When questioned about Trump’s undermining of the traditional nonpartisanship of the military, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told the journalists: “Believe me, no one needs to be encouraged to boo the media. Look no further than this query, which is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ruin the lives of young soldiers.”
But a commander at Fort Bragg commented, “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution,” speaking with Military [dot] com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “This was shameful. I don’t expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term.”
Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) and chair of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers (R-AL) have said nothing. Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch, who served as a Marine, called their silence “a betrayal of their duty to the military and the Republic.”
The administration’s policies continue to gather opposition. More than 90 scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, signed and another 250 supported anonymously a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH leader Jay Bhattacharya titled the Bethesda Declaration. The scientists used as a model Bhattacharya’s own October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which echoed the political plan of the first Trump White House and called for ending any attempt to control Covid-19 and instead simply letting it spread.
The Bethesda Declaration said: “[W]e dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.” It said the leaders of NIH and members of Congress who oversee it are prioritizing “political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.” They called out the politicization of research by stopping high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts, thus throwing away “years of hard work and millions of dollars,” risking the health of participants in studies, and damaging public trust.
They noted that some of the signers felt they had to remain anonymous while others, “due to a culture of fear and suppression created by this Administration[,] chose not to sign their names for fear of retaliation.”
Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing of Politico reported today that former Trump allies are turning on Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino. Both of them had pushed a number of conspiracy theories on right-wing media before Trump appointed them to office, and supporters expected that they would expose the “Deep State” once they were in power. But they have not released new information about the Jeffrey Epstein case, which right-wing adherents believe will show a list of people who are implicated in the convicted sex offender’s actions. Micah Morrison at the right-wing Judicial Watch wrote: “Conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the FBI.”
Yesterday, voters in districts in Florida, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma chose state House and Senate members in special elections. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes that in five of the six, Democrats continued to overperform relative to their 2024 numbers.
Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky, Calen Razor, and Mia McCarthy reported today that of the 50 Republican members of Congress they surveyed, only 7 said they planned to go to the June 14 military parade in Washington, D.C. Although the parade is in honor of the 250th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Army, the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees do not plan to attend.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has criticized Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, yesterday said: “I love parades, but I’m not really excited about $40 million for a parade. I don’t really think the symbolism of tanks and missiles is really what we’re all about…. All the images that come to mind are Soviet Union and North Korea.”
Today, Paul told Jordain Carney of Politico that the White House has uninvited him from the annual White House picnic for members of Congress and their families, a move that Paul learned of only when he tried to pick up the tickets and that he called “incredibly petty.” He commented that the “level of immaturity is beyond words.”
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
At a press conference for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles today, Noem’s security assaulted Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), dragged him into the hallway, forced him to the floor, and handcuffed him as he tried to ask the secretary a question.
Senator Padilla is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, and border safety. That subcommittee has “oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.”
After the attack, Senator Padilla explained: “I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference room, awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing…, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially…over the course of recent weeks, I—several of my colleagues—have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries.
“And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information…. At one point, I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained.
“I will say this. If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable.”
Secretary Noem implied that neither she nor her security knew who the senator was, but even if she had forgotten speaking with him in Senate hearings, a video of the encounter records him saying clearly: “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.” Senator or not, he did not behave in a way that suggested a threat to the secretary. The Department of Homeland Security said Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater and interrupted a live news conference” and claimed that he “lunged” toward the secretary.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) answered: “This is a lie. We all saw the video. The Senator clearly identified himself, and he did not ‘lunge’ toward anyone.” She added: “If these miserable propagandists will lie to you about roughing up a U.S. Senator in a room full of reporters, what won't they lie to you about?”
The assault on Padilla comes days after the Department of Justice under Trump indicted Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on federal charges saying she impeded immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center.
While Democratic senators and representatives are outraged, they are having little success getting their Republican colleagues to join them. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested that Padilla had charged Noem—the videos show no such thing—and suggested the Senate should censure Padilla for “wildly inappropriate” behavior.
While much focus has been on the assault itself, what Noem was saying before Padilla spoke out is crucially important. "We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."
In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those government officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Priscilla Alvarez and Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported today that, although the Trump administration said its federalization of the National Guard and mobilization of Marines into Los Angeles was an emergency response to rioting, in fact White House officials began talking about using the National Guard and the military as support for immigration enforcement as early as February. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and officials from the Department of Homeland Security led the talks. They also want to use military facilities to hold detainees.
Andrew Gumbel of The Guardian reported today that the National Guard troops and Marines deployed to Los Angeles do not want to be caught in a political battle and are deeply unhappy about their position. Marine Corps veteran Janessa Goldbeck, who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, told Gumbel: “The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”
Yesterday, Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Lieutenant General Dan Caine, told the Senate that the United States is not, in fact, “being invaded by a foreign nation,” the argument Trump used to send Venezuelans to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Caine said: “[A]t this point in time I don’t see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading.” Asked by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) if there was “a rebellion somewhere in the United States,” he answered simply, “I think there’s definitely some frustrated folks out there.”
Alvarez and Bertrand note that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday confirmed what California governor Gavin Newsom has been calling out: that Trump’s Saturday order activating the National Guard was not specific to California. It could apply to other states. “Part of it was about getting ahead of the problem, so that if in other places, if there are other riots, in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there, if necessary,” Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Texas announced plans to deploy 5,000 troops, and Dionne Searcey of the New York Times reported today that Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Kehoe, activated the Missouri National Guard as well. “While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” Kehoe said in a press release.
It certainly appears as though militarization is no longer about deportations. This morning, Trump posted on social media: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
This afternoon he told reporters: “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they've worked for them for 20 years, they're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not. And you know what's going to happen and what is happening? They get rid of some of the people, because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't, they've been there for 20, 25 years and they've worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else. And then you're supposed to throw them out, and you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in. The murderers from prisons and everything else. So we're gonna have an order on that pretty soon, I think. We can't do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels. We're gonna have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
So if it is no longer administration policy to engage in the sweeps that are causing such chaos and sparking protests, why are Republican authorities mobilizing troops?
After today’s events, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional scholar, stood in front of the Capitol and reminded Americans: “We have no kings here, we have no queens here, we have no emperors, we have no dictators, we have no despots, and we have no serfs and no slaves and no subjects, and none of us is a subject to Donald Trump. None of us is a subject to Mike Johnson. We are all citizens, those of us who aspire and attain to public office are nothing but the servants of the people. And the minute that somebody in public office thinks that they're a king, they're a queen, they're an emperor, they're a dictator, that is time for the people to evict, eject, reject, impeach, try, convict, and start all over again, because the most important words of our Constitution are the three first words of the Constitution: ‘We the people.’”
Tonight, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that Trump broke the law when he federalized the California National Guard and that he must return those troops to the control of California governor Gavin Newsom. Breyer granted California’s request for a restraining order but delayed enforcement of his order until Friday at noon. Just before midnight Eastern Time, a panel of the 9th Circuit granted a stay that permits Trump to retain control until a June 17 hearing.
Tonight, Israel launched what it called “a pre-emptive strike on Iran, and declared a state of emergency in Israel” in anticipation of a retaliatory strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also currently Trump's national security advisor, issued a statement for the White House saying that the U.S. was not involved in the strikes and that “our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” He urged Iran not to “target U.S. interests or personnel.”
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Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”
And thus Congress established the Continental Army.
The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”
In 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.
With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:
“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty's own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”
After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.
It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.
After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about 18 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.
Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.
By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.
By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.
The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.
In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”
With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”
Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.
It is the story of this Army, 250 years old tomorrow, that President Donald J. Trump says he is honoring with a military parade in Washington, D.C., although it also happens to be his 79th birthday.
But the celebration of ordinary people who fought against tyranny will be happening not just in the nation’s capital but all across the country, as Americans participating in at least 2,000 planned No Kings protests recall the principles American patriots championed 250 years ago.
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0
brianlux
Moving through All Kinds of Terrain. Posts: 43,422
Yesterday began with the horrific news that a gunman had shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in what Minnesota governor Tim Walz said appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.” State representative Melissa Hortman, who was the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, both died in the attack at their home in Brooklyn Park, a city near Minneapolis. The gunman also shot Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman nine times and his wife, Yvette, eight at their home in Champlin. The hospital reports they are in stable condition after surgery.
Law enforcement officers encountered the suspected gunman, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, coming out of Hortman’s house. He was dressed as a police officer. Officers exchanged gunfire with him before he fled, leaving behind his vehicle, which looked much like a police car. In it was a list of dozens of people he wanted to kill. They were mostly Democrats or people connected to abortion rights efforts. Law enforcement officers captured Boelter tonight.
MAGA Republicans are working hard to identify Boelter with what Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called “Marxism” and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called “the extreme left,” but as investigative journalist Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 Nashville notes, public databases show Boelter was in the past a registered Republican. His evangelical religion and his anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion stances reflect MAGA positions. Boelter’s roommate told reporters that Boelter was a “strong” supporter of President Trump.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that MAGA has been “bathed in political violence” for the last five years. Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters, including those convicted of extreme violence, “became a clear endorsement of violence committed in his name.” Trump has encouraged violence and cozied up to brutal dictators, while MAGA has fetishized guns. When he celebrates violence, unhinged people listen. Murphy points out that while people of all political persuasions commit violence, no Democratic leader encourages violence as a political norm the way Trump and MAGA have done, citing “a straight line from Jan 6 to the pardons to the assault on Sen[ator] Padilla to Minnesota.”
After the shootings, Andrew Solender of Axios reported that lawmakers of both parties are concerned about their own safety as political violence increases. The Minnesota attacks happened just days after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security guard shoved Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) to the ground and handcuffed him after he asked a question. This assault sparked apparent fury among the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they challenged their Republican colleagues—largely unsuccessfully—to speak up against the assault on a senator.
The entire Minnesota delegation to the U.S. Congress issued a joint statement on politically motivated shootings. Democrats and Republicans together wrote: “Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated violence. We are praying for John and Yvette’s recovery and we grieve the loss of Melissa and Mark with their family, colleagues, and Minnesotans across the state. We are grateful for law enforcement’s swift response to the situation and continued efforts.”
After that start to the day, the country turned to the “No Kings” protests. In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.
In contrast to the huge turnout for the protests, the military parade in Washington, D.C., was a bust. Although Trump had claimed it would be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Army, it was also his 79th birthday and was widely interpreted primarily as a celebration of that occasion. Trump has wanted a parade since 2017, when he viewed the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris. At the time, he told reporters: “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen…. We’re going to have to try to top it.”
But organizers had had only two months to arrange for the parade, and the result was badly organized, with relatively few people turning out, especially after forecasts of storms that evening. Far from the crisp marching of the military parades that Trump seemed to want to top, the U.S. soldiers appeared to shuffle, leading to a social media debate over whether they had been ordered to march in an “at ease march” instead of a more rigorous step, or whether they were silently protesting. Photographers recorded empty bleachers and thin crowds. Few Republican lawmakers attended, but cameras caught Trump looking miserable and Secretary of State Marco Rubio yawning.
The contrast between the protests and the military parade suggested an important shift in political culture. The momentum and the joy, as well as the American flags, were on the side of those protesting Trump’s growing authoritarianism. Trump looked weak and discouraged, and the crowds were clearly on the side of the protesters. Today, social media, including a Russian account, got into the act of making fun of Trump's military parade.
At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch noted that “the flag is mightier than the tank.”
The rejection Trump faced yesterday, podcaster Jack Hopkins noted, “was a big tub of rock salt poured on his wounds of lifelong insecurity.” That profound injury to Trump’s sense of self braced observers for a lashing out of epic proportions as he tries to demonstrate that he is, in fact, powerful.
We got that anger and fear in a social media post at 8:43 p.m. tonight. In a post almost certainly not written by Trump, his account backed off on Trump’s recent retreat from mass deportations. Instead, the account said “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
The account then declared war on Democrats. The day after a gunman shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in their homes, Trump’s account posted:
“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities—And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports—And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”
The post promised ICE that “REAL Americans are cheering you on every day” and urged them to “reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” It doubled down on the neo-Nazi idea of “REMIGRATION” and concluded: “To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT”
Will Trump’s demands swing people behind him? Americans have already turned against Trump’s handling of immigration and deportations by significant margins. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers summarized the polls from June 9–13. Answering the question “Do you approve of the way the president is handling…immigration?” respondents for YouGov/Economist were the only ones to produce a majority—of just four points—saying yes. For AP-NORC, Quinnipiac, and Washington Post/GMU, the answer was no by as much as 15 points. On every other question dealing with immigration, more people opposed Trump’s policies than supported them by as much as 16 points.
Trump’s other policies are underwater—meaning more people oppose them than approve of them—as well. Only 27% of registered voters support the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, while 53% oppose it. As for Trump himself, a Quinnipiac Poll from June 11 showed that 38% of registered voters approve of the way he is handling the job of the presidency, while 54% disapprove. Only 30% of registered voters approved “strongly” of the way he is handling the job, while 49% strongly disapprove.
While Trump and his loyalists are trying to project an image of invincibility, their actual power seems to be faltering.
Ten years ago tomorrow, on June 16, 2015, Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to a lobby filled with extras, to announce he was running for president. One reporter called his speech, in which he claimed that Mexico was sending criminals and rapists to the United States, "eccentric."
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At a news conference today, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump just two weeks ago, said that Minnesota suspect Vance Boelter went to the homes of two more politicians than the two he eventually shot along with their spouses. One was on vacation with her family, and at another home, a police officer apparently scared him off.
Thompson said Boelter had “voluminous” writings that showed he had been planning the attacks for “quite some time.” “But,” Thompson added, “I have not seen anything involving some sort of political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. They were all elected officials. They were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just way too speculative for anyone that’s reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues.”
Zoe Sottile of CNN reported that Boelter is facing federal charges of two counts of stalking, two counts of murder, and two counts of firearms offenses. He is facing state charges of first-degree murder, second degree murder, and attempted murder.
MAGA loyalists have continued to radicalize in the wake of the shootings, spreading disinformation that blamed the violence on Democrats or joking about the event. Walker Orenstein of the Minnesota Star Tribune debunked the disinformation spread by MAGA loyalists, noting that Boelter was not close to Walz, who simply okayed his reappointment to a bipartisan board that then-governor Mark Dayton had put him on in 2016. According to his roommate, Boelter was a “strong supporter” of Trump.
Emily Anderson Stern and Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake Tribune called out Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) for his behavior in the aftermath of the shootings. Lee joked about the killings and falsely blamed the violence on his political opponents, tying the shooting to Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) responded: “This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids—yesterday on Father’s Day, there was no Father’s Day for them. They lost both their parents…. This is not a laughing matter, and certainly what we’re seeing is an increase in violence, and this evil man who did this—this is not a joke.”
Of Lee’s behavior, influencer George Takei wrote: “Utah voters: Are these really your values? Mike Lee is the best you can do?” After Lee pinned one of his disturbing tweets to the top of his social media timeline, Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “This is less of a political matter than a sign of deep mental illness.”
As of this afternoon, Trump had not called Walz, calling him “a terrible governor” and “a grossly incompetent person.”
Trump drew criticism of his own incompetence today at the meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) in Kananaskis, Alberta, in Canada. The G7 is a forum of democracies with advanced economies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. During today’s meetings, Trump seemed to think the United Kingdom and the European Union were the same thing.
Trump also parroted Russian talking points, telling reporters: “The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago.”
In fact, the members of the G7 kicked Russia out of the forum after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014. And former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t take office until 2015.
On Friday, journalist Dean Blundell reported that Washington insiders and observers from abroad had noticed how rarely Trump appears in public and how often he falls asleep when he does, prompting speculation that he is not physically able to do the work of the presidency. Blundell suggested Trump’s team would look for a way to get the president out of the G7 early to avoid exposure.
After today’s meetings, at which it appears the U.S. was delaying a joint statement in which G7 members called for an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran, Trump posted on social media: “Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign,” although it was Trump who pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the “Iran nuclear deal” that limited Iran’s nuclear program. He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.
Then Trump’s team announced the situation in the Middle East required the president to leave the G7 a day early.
Twelve minutes after his post about evacuating Tehran, Trump reposted a Newsmax story saying that Trump “deserves an A+ for his job performance so far,” and less than an hour later, he posted an attack on right-wing personality Tucker Carlson and then posted: “AMERICA FIRST means many GREAT things, including that fact that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Just before midnight, he posted an attack on California governor Gavin Newsom.
It’s unclear what Trump’s abrupt departure from the G7 indicates for events in the Middle East and U.S. involvement in them. As Brian O’Neill of The Contrarian noted, Trump had said he hoped to negotiate a deal with Iran, and indeed, talks were scheduled for Sunday in Oman when Israel launched its attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Friday. O’Neill notes that when Israel struck Iran last Friday without U.S. coordination, the Trump administration was left “scrambling to respond.”
Being sidelined in foreign affairs at the same time as the American people turned out in huge numbers to protest his administration and as his military parade fizzled shows Trump has less power than he tries to project.
How decisions are being made in the administration is unclear. Notably, after Trump wrote last Thursday that “changes are coming” in deportation orders because it made no sense to deport workers who had been here for a long time and were vital to farms, hotels, and restaurants, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today reversed that decision.
Carol D. Leonnig, Natalie Allison, Marianne LeVine, and Lauren Kaori Gurley of the Washington Post reported that after Trump’s post and comments to reporters, a DHS official told agents to pause raids on agriculture, including meatpacking plants, as well as restaurants and hotels. But on Sunday, DHS leadership suggested a reversal was coming because, as the journalists write, “the White House did not support” the new policy. In a call this morning, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told agents to continue immigration raids at the businesses Trump had said he was going to protect.
This shift makes it seem as if White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a white nationalist who insists that the U.S. must deport a million immigrants this year, is determining White House policies, just as he did on the Signal chat about the military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen when his statement that Trump wanted a strike appeared to shut down any further debate of the question.
If Trump is leaving the work of the presidency to others, his family is certainly using the prestige of the presidency to make money. In what it says is in honor of the tenth anniversary of Trump’s trip down the Trump Tower escalator into presidential politics, the Trump Organization has launched a mobile phone service. As Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone explains, the plan is essentially another licensing deal, with the disclaimer specifying that the service simply uses the Trump name after contracting with another provider.
The announcement claims that new made-in-America gold phones will be available in September, but as David Pierce of The Verge notes, the photoshopped image of the phone and the wonky specs on it, as well as the impossible promise to make them in America within three months, mean the phone “looks both bad and impossible.” The phone, too, is simply branded with the Trump name; the family business will not design or manufacture it.
The family was evidently in a hurry to get this venture up and running. Kelcee Griffis of Bloomberg reported that the Trump Organization only applied for the trademarks for it last Thursday.
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Yesterday at the meeting of the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7), a forum of democracies with advanced economies, President Donald Trump told reporters: “The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like them, that's why. That's the ultimate protection.”
Commenters often note that Trump talks like a mob boss, but rarely has his organized-crime style of governance been clearer than in yesterday’s statement.
Also yesterday, Ana Swanson and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported that Trump has taken unprecedented control over U.S. Steel. Japan’s Nippon Steel has been trying to take over U.S. Steel since 2023, but the Biden administration blocked the deal for security reasons. In order to move it forward, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick demanded an agreement that gives to the president and his successors, or a person the president designates, a single share of preferred stock, known as class G, or “gold.” The deal gives the president permanent veto power over nearly a dozen actions the company might want to take, as well as power over its board of directors.
Swanson and Hirsch note that the U.S. government historically takes a stake in companies only when they are in financial trouble or when they play a significant role in the economy. “We have a golden share, which I control, or the president controls,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Now I’m a little concerned whoever the president might be, but that gives you total control.”
This kind of deal echoes those of the authoritarians Trump appears to admire. His ongoing support for Russian president Vladimir Putin was on display at the G7, when he echoed Russian talking points that blamed European countries and the United States for Putin’s war against Ukraine, rather than acknowledging that it was Russia that attacked Ukraine after giving assurances that it would respect Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up the Soviet nuclear weapons stored there.
Also yesterday, Rene Marsh and Ella Nilsen of CNN reported that officials from the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump have been telling staff in the Midwest—which the authors note has a legacy of industrial pollution—to “stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies.” At the same time, the Department of Justice has cut its environmental division significantly, leaving “no one to do the work.”
Trump vowed that if he were reelected he would slash the oil and gas regulations he claims are “burdensome.” Now, one EPA enforcement staffer told Marsh and Nilsen, “The companies are scoffing at the cops. EPA enforcement doesn’t have the leverage they once had.”
Also yesterday, outdoor journalist Wes Siler reported in Wes Siler’s Newsletter that while language inserted in the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill requires the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of publicly owned land, an amendment authorizes the sale of 258 million acres more over the next five years. The amendment comes from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and was written by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Steve Daines (R-MT).
It includes Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands in 11 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. As Siler notes, while the measure does not currently include national monument lands, the Department of Justice under Trump is arguing that the president can revoke national monument protections. If it did so, that would make another 13.5 million acres available for purchase.
Siler notes the process for selling those lands calls for an enormous rush on sales, “all without hearings, debate, or public input opportunities.”
Today, Eliot Brown of the Wall Street Journal reported that Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, is now one of the many wealthy foreign real estate developers “pouring money” into the Trump Organization. Brown noted that the Trump family is aggressively developing its businesses while Trump is in the White House, reaching past real estate into cryptocurrency and other sectors.
The growing power of international oligarchs to use the resources of the government for their own benefit recalls a speech Robert Mueller, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, gave in New York City in 2011. In it, he explained that globalization and modern technology had changed the nature of organized crime. No longer regional networks with a clear structure, he said, organized crime had become international, fluid, and sophisticated, with multibillion-dollar stakes. Its operators were cross-pollinating across countries, religions, and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. They did not care about ideology; they cared about money. They would do anything for a price.
These criminals “may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military,” he said. “They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”
These criminal enterprises, he noted, were working to corner the market on oil, gas, and precious metals. And to do so, Mueller explained, they “may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called 'iron triangles' of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”
The FBI’s increasing focus on organized crime and national security is what prompted its interest in the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
The willingness of Republicans to enable Trump’s behavior is especially striking today, since June 17 is the anniversary of the 1972 Watergate break-in. On that day, operatives associated with President Richard M. Nixon’s team tried to tap the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington’s Watergate complex. Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard, noticed that a door lock had been taped open. He ripped off the tape and closed the door, but on his next round, he found the door taped open again. He called the police, who found five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the building.
The story played out over the next two years with Nixon insisting he was not involved in the affair, but in early August 1974 a tape recorded just days after the break-in revealed Nixon and an aide plotting to invoke national security to protect the president. Republican senators who had not wanted to convict their president of the charges of impeachment being considered in the House knew the game was over. A delegation of them went to the White House to tell Nixon they would vote to convict him.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign.
Chris Geidner of LawDork notes that despite the lawmakers in our own era who are unwilling to stop Trump, “the pushback…is very real.” Geidner notes not just the No Kings Day protests of the weekend, but also a lawsuit by the American Bar Association (ABA) suing Trump for his attacks on law firms and lawyers, calling Trump’s actions “unprecedented and uniquely dangerous to the rule of law.”
Geidner also notes that lower court judges are upholding the Constitution, and he points especially to U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan. In a hearing yesterday, Young insisted on holding the government accountable “for both Trump's actions and the follow-up actions from those Trump has empowered to act.”
Young called cuts to funding for National Institutes of Health research grants “illegal” and “void” and ordered the NIH to restore the funds immediately. “I am hesitant to draw this conclusion—but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it—that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.”
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Young said during the hearing. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.” He added: “You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that.… Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
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Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.
That announcement came as late as it did because, while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.
Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”
Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.
Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.
But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.
In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.
Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.
By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.
Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.
Three months later the federal government, eager to explain to Black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation. The next year, the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America.
In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war’s end. In 1866 it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived.
Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.
But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy means reducing the power of the federal government and centering the power of the state governments, where voters—registered according to state laws—can choose the policies they prefer…even if they are discriminatory. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.
In 2025, as the Trump administration echoes those people, celebrations of Juneteenth are being cut back or even canceled. Corporate sponsors and local governments, as well as the national government, are pulling back their support for festivals and Juneteenth events.
Our history matters. Juneteenth is the celebration of a new nation, one that would honor the equality of all Americans—and one that, 160 years after it was established, we are in danger of losing as those in power set about rewriting the record.
To make sure people can still get the real story of Juneteenth and why it matters, my team produced this short video.
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Just a week ago, the Trump administration was preparing for a sixth round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, scheduled to be held in Oman on June 15.
In 2018, President Donald J. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 by President Barack Obama, under which the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program. With the U.S. withdrawal, the agreement fell apart.
Trump launched a “maximum pressure campaign” of stronger sanctions to pressure Iran to renegotiate the JCPOA, which lasted throughout his first term. Back in office, Trump relaunched that campaign in February 2025. Then, in March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that the assessment of the Intelligence Community was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
In the same month, Trump said on the Fox News Channel that he had written a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging the Iranians to negotiate “because if we have to go in militarily it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would not “enter any direct negotiations with the U.S. so long as they continue their maximum pressure policy and their threats.”
But Iran’s allied militant actors Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been badly hurt by Israeli strikes since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Iran’s major ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, fell in December 2024. Discussions began in April of this year, and negotiators met for five rounds by the end of May.
Israel was not included in the negotiations, and on Thursday, June 12, it launched strikes against nuclear and military targets in Iran. The strikes killed a number of nuclear scientists and senior military personnel. Iran retaliated, and the countries have been in conflict ever since.
After the strikes, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also became the acting national security advisor after Trump fired his first national security advisor for inviting a journalist onto a Signal chat about a military strike against the Houthis, issued a statement distancing the U.S. from Israel’s attack on Iran. “Tonight,” he said, “Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”
But by early Friday morning, Trump appeared to be trying to take credit for the strikes and demanded that Iran make a deal. The next day—Saturday, June 14—was the day of No Kings protests in which at least 2% of the U.S. population turned out to oppose his presidency, as well as the sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C., an embarrassing contrast for the president.
The U.S. possesses a 30,000-pound bomb that would perhaps be able to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear sites, which are fortified against attack. According to Alex Horton, Maham Javaid, and Warren P. Strobel, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP) can penetrate the ground up to at least 200 feet. The U.S. B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only Air Force aircraft that can deploy the heavy MOP.
On June 16, while at the G7 meeting in Canada, Trump posted that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign.” He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.
Then Trump abruptly left the G7 and on the trip home told reporters on Air Force One that he didn’t care what Gabbard said, and thought Iran was close to achieving nuclear capabilities. When France’s president Emmanuel Macron suggested Trump left to work on a ceasefire, Trump posted: “Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay tuned!” Later that day, he posted that “[w]e”—a word suggesting U.S. involvement—“now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” and he credited U.S. weaponry with that dominance.
About a half-hour later, he posted: “We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”
As Trump’s “Stay tuned!” suggested, his hints that he could bring the U.S. into the conflict monopolized the news. It has pushed the No Kings Day protests and the military parade to the background, putting Trump back on the front page.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo interpreted Trump’s shift to back Israel as a typical Trump branding opportunity: “Israel has got a product ready to go to market and they’ve offered Trump the opportunity to slap the Trump name on it.” In the short term, that product offers a quick way to get rid of the Iranian nuclear program, which has long been a U.S. goal.
But Trump’s flirting with joining a Middle East war has badly split his supporters. Led by Steve Bannon, the isolationist wing is strongly opposed to intervention and suggests that the U.S. will once again be stuck in an endless war.
In contrast, the evangelical MAGA wing sees support for Israel as central to the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in the end times. Earlier this month the U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, said the U.S. was abandoning its longstanding support for a Palestinian state. Huckabee is a strong supporter of the expansion of Israel’s settlements. After the Israeli strikes, Huckabee messaged Trump to urge him to listen to the voice of God. In an apparent reference to Truman’s decision to drop a nuclear weapon on Japan at the end of World War II, Huckabee told Trump: “No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Harry Truman in 1945.”
At the unveiling of two 88-foot-tall (30.5 meters) flagpoles at the White House yesterday, Trump told reporters who asked what he planned to do about Iran: “I mean, you don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” He added, “Nothing’s finished until it’s finished. You know, war is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made.”
He told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final—I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”
Meanwhile, in a hearing yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) pointed out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the $1 billion mission he led against the Houthis—who do not have a navy—has not restored the ability of U.S.-flagged commercial vessels to go through the Red Sea. Instead, it cost the U.S. two F18 Hornets, which cost $60 million apiece, and seven Reaper drones that cost another $200 million. Duckworth accused Hegseth of “blowing through money” and said: “Your failures…since you've taken office, have been staggering. You sent classified operational information over Signal to chest thump in front of your wife, who, by the way, has no security clearance, risking service member lives in the process…. You’ve created such a hostile command environment that no one wants to serve as your chief of staff or work with you in other senior lead [Department of Defense] leadership roles.”
“But what we should all be talking about more than all of this,” she added, “is that you have an unjustified, un-American misuse of the military in American cities, pulling resources and attention away from core missions to the detriment of the country, the war fighters, and, yes, the war fighting that you claim to love.”
Warren P. Strobel, Alex Horton, and Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Hegseth and Gabbard have been sidelined in discussions of whether the U.S. will get involved in the conflict. The White House is also operating without a full complement of professional staffers at the National Security Council, since Rubio fired many of them when he took over from Waltz, apparently with the goal of replacing the think-tank mentality of past NSCs with a group that would simply implement the president’s ideas.
Talking Points Memo’s Marshall noted Tuesday that “there is really, literally no one in the inner discussion of U.S. foreign policy today who has any level of foreign policy or military crisis experience at all.”
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing back on the idea that Trump can unilaterally decide to take the United States into a war. On Monday, Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia introduced a measure to reassert Congress’s power over the authority to make war. The Constitution explicitly gives that authority to Congress, not the president, but presidents have chipped away at that power for decades. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced another measure to bar the use of federal funds for military force without authorization by Congress.
Today, after Iranian missiles hit an Israeli hospital, Trump seemed to change direction. He issued a statement through White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, falling back on his usual tactic of promising something “in two weeks.” “Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
Stay tuned.
Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted today: “A through-line through the last five months is that uncertainty is Donald Trump's personal comfort zone, where he feels *his* power is maximized. But in basically every domain in which he operates uncertainty *in itself* is damaging to everyone else involved.”
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Individuals in plain clothes with their faces covered and without badges or name tags are snatching people off the streets and taking them away. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, claimed that such measures for anonymity are imperative because “ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.”
Philip Bump of the Washington Post looked into that claim and noted that by using a percentage, ICE avoids the question of just how many assaults there have actually been. He points out that year-to-date assaults against Customs and Border Protection are currently 20% lower than they were in 2024 and that at least one ICE news release blurred the distinction between “threatening to assault” and “assaulting.” ICE would not provide evidence for their claims.
Bump concludes: “[W]e should not and cannot take ICE’s representations about the need for its officers to obscure their identities at face value.” After Bump’s article appeared yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media: “New data reveals that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500% increase in assaults while carrying out enforcement operations.”
Bump noted that ICE “has been eager to level dubious charges against Democratic legislators,” and the message from Homeland Security bears that claim out. After claiming a 500% increase in assaults, it continued: “Make no mistake, sanctuary politicians are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE. This violence against ICE must end.”
The Department of Homeland Security appears to be trying to convince Americans that their agents must cover their faces because their opponents, especially Democrats, are dangerous.
On Tuesday, masked, plainclothes ICE agents assaulted and arrested New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, the city’s chief financial officer. Lander was accompanying an immigrant to a scheduled court hearing to try to protect him from arrest in one of ICE’s sweeps of those showing up for their court hearings. Lander asked the agents to produce an arrest warrant for the man they were arresting, and was himself arrested.
Homeland Security said it would charge him with impeding a federal officer and “assaulting law enforcement.” As Bump notes, a video of the incident shows that Lander “assaulted the officers in the sense that a bully might accuse you of having gotten in the way of his fist.” Lander was later released, and New York governor Kathy Hochul said the charges against him had been dropped.
The same pattern occurred last month, when federal prosecutors charged Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka with trespassing and interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, broke the Department of Justice rule that it would not comment on ongoing investigations by posting that Baraka had “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”
Ten days later, Habba quietly dropped the case and announced another one, this time against U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), charging her with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” during Baraka’s arrest.
U.S. Magistrate Judge André Espinosa, a federal judge, rebuked the officials who had charged Baraka, warning them that their rush to charge the mayor suggests “a failure to adequately investigate, to carefully gather facts, and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power.”
But the point of these arrests is almost certainly not an attempt to see justice done. They continue the longstanding Republican policy of seeding the media with a false narrative of bad behavior by their opponents—voter fraud, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, and so on—in order to convince voters that their opponents are dangerous to America.
President Donald J. Trump relied on this political technique so thoroughly that in 2019 he tried to discredit his primary challenger for the 2020 presidential election, then former vice president Joe Biden, by getting Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into the Ukrainian company for which Biden’s son Hunter had worked.
Trump didn’t want an actual investigation; he wanted an announcement that an investigation was being launched. He could trust that media reports would carry the story and its suggestion of corruption from there, even in the absence of evidence, leaving behind his own administration's deep involvement with Russia. Similarly, during Biden’s presidency, Republicans launched a sprawling investigation of what they insisted on calling the “Biden Crime Family” although there was never a Biden family business, their star witness went to prison after confessing to lying to the FBI, and they never produced any evidence that the president had taken foreign bribes. Now, though, with the Trump Organization—a family business—openly making deals with foreign governments, Republicans are silent.
Today, after a week of embarrassing news, Trump continued this pattern by announcing that he is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate claims that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. There has never been any evidence of this Big Lie, and courts dismissed the many cases brought over it. But raising it now, when MAGA is deeply divided over U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict, could create a distraction and reinforce his loyalists’ support.
There was, of course, a special counsel appointed to look into Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election. His name was Jack Smith, and after his investigation, in 2023 a grand jury, made up of American citizens, indicted Trump for engaging in “dishonesty, fraud and conceit” to obstruct American democracy by stopping the counting of votes by which citizens choose their government officials. “Despite having lost,” the indictment reads, Trump “was determined to remain in power.”
Now he is back in office, but he remains unpopular. A new Fox News poll released yesterday shows that only 38% of registered voters like the Republicans’ budget reconciliation omnibus bill, while 59% oppose it, a difference of 21 points. The poll also showed that 55% of registered voters are worried about the economy, 84% are worried about inflation, and 57% think tariffs hurt the economy. Only 46% of respondents approve of Trump’s job performance, while 54% disapprove.
This week’s Economist/YouGov poll shows that 52% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling deportations, while only 42% approve, and that Trump’s job approval rating among those from 18 to 29 years old has dropped 44 points since he took office. Many of Trump’s supporters believed he would be deporting only undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes, but an investigation by CNN reporters published on Monday showed that fewer than 10% of those taken into custody since October have been convicted of violent crimes.
So members of his administration are centering power in the White House while obscuring who, exactly, is giving orders that either are or might be violating the law. Administration lawyers are still hiding who was actually the head of the Department of Government Efficiency in its first months and who gave the order to send Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to prison in El Salvador. Making lawbreaking opaque makes it harder to prosecute those doing the breaking. It is possible at least some of the drive to hide agents’ faces comes from that impulse, just as members of the Ku Klux Klan hid their faces in the 1860s and 1870s.
There is another important parallel to the Klan in the administration's defense of masked agents who are terrorizing Americans even as they insist they are the ones under attack by dangerous Democrats. The Klan set out to “reform” governments elected by a majority of voters and take control themselves, permanently. In Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, about two thousand armed white Democrats overthrew a government of black Republicans and white Populists. The Democrats agreed that the town officials had been elected fairly, but they rejected the outcome of the election nonetheless, insisting that such people were “socialists” and had no idea how to run a government.
On June 12, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in Los Angeles, “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
When California senator Alex Padilla, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, tried to ask Noem a question, he was assaulted and handcuffed by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Yesterday, he noted in a New York Times op-ed that “public safety is not the point; the spectacle is.” Trump “is testing the boundaries of his power,” Padilla wrote, “[a]nd he’s using the theatrics around his immigration policies to do it.”
“If federal troops can deploy to Los Angeles against the wishes of the governor, the mayor and even local law enforcement, they can do the same tomorrow in your hometown,” he wrote. “This is a fundamental threat to the rule of law nationwide.”
But Padilla noted that the attempt to force minority rule on the U.S. through violence shows that the administration is weak. “If the Trump administration was this afraid of one senator with a question,” he wrote, “imagine what the voices of tens of millions of Americans organizing will do.”
Today, at a news conference in Los Angeles, a reporter asked Vice President J.D. Vance if Trump’s administration is “cracking down on Democrats.” Vance, who served with Alex Padilla in the Senate, called his former colleague by the wrong name. Once again seeding the idea that a Democratic lawmaker must be a criminal, Vance called the California senator “José Padilla,” using the name of a man convicted in 2007 of conspiring to commit murder and fund terrorism.
The vice president’s press secretary said the vice president “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
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At 7:50 this evening, Eastern Time, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Then he reposted a message referring to the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, assumed to be at the center of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, saying: “Fordow is gone.”
Then he posted a statement saying: “I will be giving an Address to the Nation at 10:00 P.M., at the White House, regarding our very successful military operation in Iran. This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!”
Then he posted an American flag.
Just after 10:00 tonight, flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump spoke briefly to the nation. He said:
“The U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.
“For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs,with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate. In particular, so many were killed by their general, Qasem Soleimani [whom Trump ordered assassinated in 2020]. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue.
“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team, like perhaps no team has ever worked before. And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they've done.
“And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades. Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan “Razin” Caine, spectacular general, and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack
“With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.
“There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There's never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, will have a press conference at 8:00 a.m. at the Pentagon.
“And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
In The Atlantic, foreign affairs scholar Tom Nichols noted: “President Donald Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East.”
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In July 2024, according to an article published today by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey in the New York Times, billionaire Elon Musk texted privately about his concerns that government investigations into his businesses would “take me down.” “I can’t be president,” he wrote, “but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.”
After appearing on stage with Trump on October 5, Musk texted a person close to him: “I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.” About an hour later, he added: “This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised. “‘Lasers’ from space.”
Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election and, when Trump took office, became a fixture in the White House, heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” It set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds, a practice that courts have ruled unconstitutional and Congress expressly prohibited with the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.
Musk vowed that his “Department of Government Efficiency” would cut $2 trillion from the U.S. budget, but he quickly backed off on those numbers. In the end, DOGE claimed savings of $175 billion, but that claim is unverifiable and CNN’s Casey Tolan says it’s probably wrong: less than half of it is backed up with any documentation.
Instead, as CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf reported today, since DOGE cut staffing at the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service, for example, and cut employees at national parks, which also generate revenue, its cuts may well end up costing money. Max Stier, who heads the Partnership for Public Service, suggests DOGE cuts could cost U.S. taxpayers $135 billion because agencies will need to train and hire replacements for the workers DOGE fired. Stier called DOGE’s actions “arson of a public asset.”
Grind and Twohey reported that Musk’s drug consumption during the campaign—they could not speak to his habits in the White House, although he appeared high today at a White House press conference—was “more intense than previously known.” He was a chronic user of ketamine, took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and traveled with a box that held about 20 pills for daily use. Those in frequent contact with him worried about his frequent drug use, erratic behavior, and mood swings. As a government contractor, Musk should receive random drug tests, but Grind and Twohey say he received advance warning of those tests.
It was never clear that Musk’s role at DOGE was legal, and the White House has tried to maintain that he was only an advisor, despite Trump’s February 19 statement, “I signed an order creating [DOGE] and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency,” saying the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’”
Trump posted today on social media: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” In a press conference today, Trump reiterated that Musk “is not really leaving.”
Musk’s time at the helm of DOGE might not have saved taxpayer money, but it has changed the world in other ways. Musk has used his time in the government to end investigations into his companies, score government contracts, and get the government to press countries to accept his Starlink communications network as a condition of tariff negotiations. According to John Hyatt of Forbes, Musk’s association with Trump has made him an estimated $170 billion richer.
The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”
Today, Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik of the New York Times reported that Musk put billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir data analysis firm into place across the government, where it launched its product Foundry to organize, analyze, and merge data. Thiel provided the money behind Vice President J.D. Vance’s political career. Wired and CNN had previously reported how the administration was using this merged data to target undocumented immigrants, and now employees are detailing their concerns with how the administration could use their newly merged information against Americans more generally.
Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication.
In the New York Times today, Michelle Goldberg recalls how Musk appeared uninterested in learning what USAID actually did—prevent starvation and provide basic healthcare—and instead called it a “radical-left political psy-op,” and reposted a smear from right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos calling USAID “the most gigantic global terror organization in history.” Goldberg also recalls Musk’s tendency to call people he disdains “NPCs,” or non-player characters, which are characters in role-playing games whose only role is to advance the storyline for the real players.
Aside from DOGE, the focus of Trump’s administration—other than his own cashing in on the presidency—has been on tariffs and immigration. Like the efforts of DOGE, those show a disdain for the law in favor of concentrating power in the executive branch.
During the campaign, Trump fantasized that constructing a high tariff wall around the U.S. would force other countries to fund the national deficit, enabling a Republican Congress to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In fact, domestic industries and consumers bear the costs of tariffs. Trump’s high tariffs, many of which he imposed by declaring an economic emergency and then using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), created such havoc in the stock and bond markets that he backed off.
Yesterday, Sayantani Ghosh, David Gaffen, and Arpan Varghese of Reuters reported that although most of the highest tariffs have yet to go into effect, Trump’s trade war has cost companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs.
Trump has changed tariff policies at least 50 times since he took office, and traders have figured out they can buy stocks cheaply when markets plummet after a dramatic tariff announcement, and sell when Trump changes his mind. This has recently given rise to Trump’s nickname “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”
This moniker has apparently irritated Trump so much he has taken to social media to defend his abrupt dropping of tariffs on China, saying he did it to “save them” from “grave economic danger,” although in fact, China turned to other trading partners to cushion the blow of U.S. tariffs. Trump went on to suggest China did not live up to what he considered its part of the bargain, and he would no longer be “Mr. NICE GUY!”
On Wednesday a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs based on the IEEPA are illegal. The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to levy tariffs. Trump launched a social media rant in which he attacked the judges, insisted that “it is only because of my successful use of Tariffs that many Trillions of Dollars have already begun pouring into the U.S.A. from other Countries,” and said that he could not wait for Congress to handle tariffs because it would take too long—in fact, most of Congress does not approve of the tariffs—and that following the Constitution “would completely destroy Presidential Power.” “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”
Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal. White House senior counsel for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, the key proponent of Trump’s trade war, said: “Even if we lose, we’ll do it another way.”
Today Trump said he will double the tariff on steel imports from 25% to 50%.
The other major focus of the administration has been expelling undocumented immigrants from the U.S. During the 2024 campaign, Trump whipped up support by insisting that former President Joe Biden had permitted criminals to walk into the U.S. and terrorize American citizens. Trump vowed to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and often talked of deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., although his numbers have ranged as high as 21 million without explanation.
The administration has hammered on immigration to promote the idea that it is keeping Americans safe. But its first target of arresting at least 1,200 individuals a day has fallen far short. In Trump’s first 100 days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it arrested an average of about 660 people a day.
On Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who along with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is the face of the administration’s immigration policy, told the Fox News Channel that the administration is now aiming for “a minimum of 3,000 arrests…every day.” Administration officials hope to deport a million people in Trump’s first year in office.
CNN reported yesterday that those officials are putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies to meet that goal. This means that hundreds of FBI agents have been taken off terror threats and espionage cases involving China and Russia to be reassigned to immigration duties. Some FBI offices are offering overtime pay if agents help with “enforcement and removal operations.” Officers from other agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have also been deployed against immigrants in place of their regular duties.
Steven Monacelli of The Barbed Wire noted today that local law enforcement and state troopers have also been diverted to immigration, using a national network of cameras that read license plates. Joseph Cox and Jason Keobler of 404 Media reported yesterday that a Texas sheriff used the same system over the course of a month to look for a woman whom he said had a self-administered abortion, saying her family was worried about her safety.
Their attempt to appear effective has led to very visible arrests and renditions of undocumented migrants to prisons in third countries, especially the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. The administration has deliberately flouted the right of persons in the United States to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. The administration has met court orders with delay and obfuscation, as well as by attacking judges and the rule of law.
The administration continues to insist those it has arrested are dangerous criminals who must be deported without delay, but more and more reporting says that many of those expelled from the country had no criminal convictions. Today, ProPublica reported that the Trump administration’s own data shows that officials knew that “the vast majority” of the 238 Venezuelans it sent to CECOT had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. even as it deported them and called them “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and “the worst of the worst.”
ICE has increasingly met quotas by arresting immigrants outside of immigration check-ins and courtrooms: yesterday Dina Arévalo of My San Antonio reported that ICE arrested five immigrants, including three children, outside of an immigration court after a judge had said they were no longer subject to removal proceedings. The officers used zip ties on all five individuals.
At stake is the turn of the United States away from democracy and toward the international right wing. Yesterday the U.S. State Department notified Congress that it intends to use the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to promote “Democracy and Western Values.” On Tuesday a senior advisor for that bureau, Samuel Samson, who graduated from college in 2021, explained that the State Department intends to ally with the European far right to protect “Western civilization” from current democratic governments.
It also plans to turn the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which manages the flow of people into the U.S., into an “Office of Remigration” to “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries and “advance the president’s immigration agenda.”
“Remigration” is a term from the global far right. As Isabela Dias of Mother Jones notes, its proponents call for the “mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.” Of the congressional report, a person who works closely with the State Department told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket: “All of it is pretty awful with some pieces that definitely violate existing law and treaties. But institutionalizing neo-Nazi theory as an office in the State Department is the most blatantly horrifying.”
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The court decided the case on the shadow docket, without briefings or explanation. In a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “[S]omehow, the Court has now apparently determined…that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”
Jackson added a crucial observation. The court, she wrote, “allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless [of the consequences], rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”
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Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
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“I would like to speak briefly and simply about a serious national condition,” Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine told her colleagues on June 1, 1950. “It is a national feeling of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear…. I speak as a Republican, I speak as a woman. I speak as a United States senator. I speak as an American.”
“Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism,” she pointed out. Americans have the right to criticize, to hold unpopular beliefs, to protest, and to think for themselves. But attacks that cost people their reputations and jobs were stifling these basic American principles, and the ones making those attacks were in her own party.
Wisconsin senator Joe McCarthy, who was sitting two rows behind her, led a faction that had cowed almost all of the Republican Party into silence by accusing their opponents of “communism.” Smith recognized the damage McCarthy and his ilk were doing to the nation. She had seen the effects of his behavior up close in Maine, where the faction of the Republican Party that supported McCarthy had supported the state’s Ku Klux Klan.
“Freedom of speech is not what it used to be in America,” Senator Smith said. “It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others.”
Senator Smith wanted a Republican administration, she explained, but to replace President Harry Truman’s Democratic administration—for which she had plenty of harsh words—with a Republican regime “that lacks political integrity or intellectual honesty would prove equally disastrous to this nation.”
“I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.”
“I doubt if the Republican party could do so,” she added, “simply because I do not believe the American people will uphold any political party that puts political exploitation above national interest. Surely we Republicans are not that desperate for victory.”
“I do not want to see the Republican party win that way,” she said. “While it might be a fleeting victory for the Republican party, it would be a more lasting defeat for the American people. Surely it would ultimately be suicide for the Republican party and the two-party system that has protected our American liberties from the dictatorship of a one-party system.”
“As an American, I condemn a Republican Fascist just as much as I condemn a Democrat Communist,” she said. “They are equally dangerous to you and me and to our country. As an American, I want to see our nation recapture the strength and unity it once had when we fought the enemy instead of ourselves.”
Smith presented a “Declaration of Conscience,” listing five principles she hoped her party would adopt. It ended with a warning: “It is high time that we all stopped being tools and victims of totalitarian techniques—techniques that, if continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come to cherish as the American way of life.”
In 1950, six other Republican senators signed onto Senator Smith’s declaration, leading McCarthy to sneer at “Snow White and the Six Dwarves.” Other Republicans quietly applauded Smith’s courage but refused to show similar courage themselves with public support.
In a statement in honor of the 75th anniversary of Smith’s Declaration of Conscience, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) noted that our time resembles hers, and decried the “character assassination, baldfaced lies, petty insults, and round-the-clock disinformation” of MAGA Republicans.
“[T]he hollowing out of American political language…tracks the corruption of American government and the disappearance of serious policy debate,” he wrote. “These movements of thought are not just part of one politician’s campaign for power. They are in service of a ruling public philosophy, which treats the government as an instrument for class plunder and private self-enrichment, a get-even-filthier-rich-quick scheme for the president and his family and friends.”
But for those who believe “that the government should be an instrument for the common good of all and the defense of our freedoms and civil rights, the state of politics in the country is a…serious threat to the survival of democratic institutions and the possibility of democratic progress.”
“The essential work of democracy is being trashed by the rule-or-ruin politics of the MAGA party,” Raskin wrote. “This is not a partisan exercise we are engaged in today to save and strengthen democracy in America…. MAGA and [the Department of Government Efficiency] are engaged in a hostile takeover of all the political institutions and programmatic achievements of American democracy.”
“Here in America we have a supreme Constitution, not a supreme leader,” Raskin wrote. “Democracy is not just a static collection of rules and practices. It is an unfinished project in motion, a constant work in progress. And we must never forget that democracy is the political system in service of human freedom.”
A month ago, another Maine senator, Independent Angus King, recalled Smith’s Declaration of Conscience in a speech to his colleagues in the Senate. “I fear that we are at a similar moment in history,” he said. “And…today’s ‘serious national condition’ [involves] the President of the United States. Echoing Senator Smith, today’s crisis should not be viewed as a partisan issue; this is not about Democrats or Republicans, or immigration or tax policy, or even the next set of elections; today’s crisis threatens the idea of America and the system of government that has sustained us for more than two centuries.”
“What’s at stake,” he said, is “the driving force behind the basic design of our Constitution—the grave danger to any society is the concentration of power in one set of hands.” King quoted framer of the Constitution James Madison, who warned: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands…may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”
And yet, King said, “this ‘accumulation of all powers’ is exactly what is happening today, before our very eyes. Although many in this body unfortunately seem determined to ignore it, deliberately ignore it, the evidence is everywhere: from the elimination of Congressionally-established agencies to the withholding of appropriated funds…to issuing executive orders purporting to be law in place of legislation to sidestepping if not ignoring court orders: This President is engaged in the most direct assault on the Constitution in our history, and we in this body, at least thus far, are inert—and therefore complicit…. [T]his President is attempting to govern as a monarch, unbound by law or Constitutional restraint, not as a President subject to the constraints of the Constitution and the rule of law.”
King implored his colleagues to “reclaim our power…. You know, do our job.” He reminded them: “Each of us swore—swore, mind you—to ‘support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic’; [and that we would] ‘bear true faith and allegiance to [the Constitution].’ Clearly,” he said, “the Framers knew there might someday be ‘domestic’ enemies of the Constitution and made it our sacred obligation to defend the Constitution from them,” and he called for his colleagues to stand alongside him to do so.
Last night, Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) told host Jimmy Kimmel that Republican senators are indeed unnerved by Trump’s behavior and the actions of the administration. The problem, Booker said, is what Thomas Jefferson said: “‘When the public fears their government, there is tyranny. When the government fears its people, there is liberty.’”
Republicans in office “are so afraid of Donald Trump that they are letting things go,” Booker said “We the people have to make our politicians fear the consequences of…doing wrong more than they fear that Donald Trump will run a primary against them, or put $100 million, or troll them on the internet. This is…one of those moments when we are not going to see change in Washington unless more of us have said enough.”
Recalling the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., Booker said that “the problem today we have to repent for is not just the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people, but also the appalling silence and inaction of the good people. This is the time Americans have to step up and let their voices be heard.”
Seventy-five years ago, Senator Smith’s voice was largely ignored in the public arena. But she was right. Four years later, the Senate condemned McCarthy, and after his death in 1957, Wisconsin voters elected Democrat William Proxmire, who held the seat for the next 32 years. And while Senator Smith was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, McCarthy has gone down in history as a disgrace to his state and to the United States of America.
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Even as government agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ramp up their arrests and confrontations, the lug nuts on the wheels of the White House bus continue to loosen.
On Wednesday, officers from the Federal Protective Service, which is part of DHS, handcuffed an aide in the Manhattan office of Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY). Someone sitting in the office captured the confrontation on video.
Federal agents are trying to meet the quotas the administration has set for arrests by detaining individuals outside immigration courtrooms after they show up for their scheduled hearings. According to Christopher Maag of the New York Times, peaceful protestors gathered on Wednesday outside the Manhattan federal building that holds an immigration court and immigration advocates gathered outside the courtroom. As officers detained immigrants outside the courtroom, advocates reminded the immigrants they had a right to remain silent. Officers threatened to arrest the advocates for loitering, and a member of Nadler’s staff invited some of the advocates to Nadler’s office a floor above the court to defuse the situation.
The video shows a federal agent demanding access to a private area of Nadler’s office, saying “You’re harboring rioters in the office.” When an aide tried to stop them, agents handcuffed the aide. When another aide asked for a search warrant, an agent said they didn’t need one and pushed past her.
In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said that its officers entered Nadler’s office because they were concerned about the safety of his staff members and that the agents detained the aide so they could complete their safety check.
Nadler, who is the highest-ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, identified the invasion of his office as an attempt to intimidate a member of Congress. “The Trump administration is really using totalitarian or even authoritarian practices,” he said. “We have to fight them. We don’t want to be a fascist country.”
Late Friday afternoon, agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided a popular San Diego restaurant, Buona Forchetta, just before it was supposed to open in what immigration advocate Aaron Reichlin-Melnick identified as an attempt to get local governments to work with them.
J.W. August of the Times of San Diego reported that, according to the restaurant’s manager, twenty to twenty-five ICE officers “surrounded the building and then came inside,” pushed him against a wall and handcuffed him and the staff, many of whom are students. The agents looked at a computer and at employees and, apparently not finding what they were searching for, arrested two employees because “they didn’t have a physical ID.” When an angry crowd tried to stop them from taking the two workers, the officers threw two flash-bang grenades to push the crowd back.
After the Department of Homeland Security published a list of sheriffs it claimed were noncompliant in working with DHS, the National Sheriffs’ Association issued a statement yesterday saying the publication of the list “has not only violated the core principles of trust, cooperation, and partnership with fellow law enforcement, but it also has the potential to strain the relationship between Sheriffs and the White House administration” and “could create a vacuum of trust that may take years to overcome.”
The organization, many of whose members are Trump loyalists, tried to distance DHS from the president, saying that “DHS has done a terrible disservice to President Trump and the Sheriffs of this country,” and demanded DHS apologize “to the Sheriffs and the American people.”
While apparently using its immigration policies to tighten its grip on the country, the administration itself appears to be in disarray. The acknowledgement in the New York Times that billionaire Elon Musk frequently used drugs during the 2024 campaign was only one weak spot in the administration.
Musk had fought with other administration officials, leading to rumors about the black eye he was sporting in Friday’s press conference. Recently, he had spoken out against the Republicans’ omnibus bill, and after reports that his Department of Government Efficiency had actually cost the government money, President Donald J. Trump reportedly asked his aides, “Was it all bullsh*t?”
After the press conference in which Trump thanked him for his service, the White House withdrew the nomination of Musk’s ally Jared Isaacman to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
On Thursday, Emily Kennard and Margaret Manto of NOTUS, the digital publication that covers U.S. politics, noted that the report of the “Make America Healthy Again” Commission, released a week earlier, is full of errors, including misrepresentation of experiments and nonexistent studies.
Margaret Manto of NOTUS wrote that the report appeared to confirm exactly what Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. expected it would: that the primary drivers of chronic disease in children are “ultra-processed foods, environmental toxins, technology and medications, including vaccines.” It calls for a “coordinated national lifestyle-medicine initiative” to improve health with “movement, diet, light exposure, and sleep timing.”
It also calls for the government to apply artificial intelligence to “federal health and nutrition datasets” to “detect harmful exposures and childhood chronic disease trends.”
After news broke of the errors in the report, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called the problems “formatting issues.” But AI experts told Lauren Weber and Caitlin Gilbert of the Washington Post that it appears the report’s authors relied heavily on AI. Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, told Weber and Gilbert, “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point. It cannot be used for any policymaking. It cannot even be used for any serious discussion, because you can’t believe what’s in it.”
Trump also appears to be having trouble with the demands of governance. Yesterday, Courtney Kube, Carol E. Lee, Gordon Lubold, Dan De Luce, and Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner of NBC News reported that the director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, is trying to figure out how to change Trump’s intelligence briefings to hold his attention. She is apparently considering creating a video of the President’s Daily Brief (PDB) that’s made to look like a broadcast on the Fox News Channel. “The problem with Trump is that he doesn’t read,” one person with direct knowledge of the discussions told the reporters. “He’s on broadcast all the time.”
Since he took office on January 20, 2025, Trump has taken just 14 PDBs, or fewer than one a week on average. In the same period, President Barack Obama took 63, and President Joe Biden took 90.
In a statement, DNI press secretary Olivia Coleman called the NBC story “laughable, absurd, and flat-out false.” But there is no doubt people from within the administration are talking to reporters and the administration is fixated on leaks: Today, Adam Goldman of the New York Times reported that Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Kash Patel is forcing employees to take polygraph tests to find leakers.
Goldman’s story was informed by insiders, though, who told him that Patel has fired so many people that he and his deputy, former political commentator Dan Bongino, have, as Goldman wrote, “obliterated decades of experience in national security and criminal matters at the FBI.” Goldman also reported that the top female agents at the FBI were told to take different jobs in the agency or retire.
There is also no doubt Trump continues to demonstrate that he is more committed to fantasy than reality.
Last night, he reposted a longstanding conspiracy theory that former president Joe Biden was executed in 2020 and that “Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see…. Democrats don’t know the difference.” The post was followed by MAGA and MAHA hashtags.
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The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government. On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”
The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ," she said.
Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.
But, as Linda Qiu noted in the New York Times today, most of the bill’s provisions have little to do with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans talk about. They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.
House speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that those losing coverage will be 1.4 million unauthorized immigrants, but this is false. As Qiu notes, although 14 states use their own funds to provide health insurance for undocumented immigrant children, and seven of those states provide some coverage for undocumented pregnant women, in fact, “unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally funded Medicaid, except in emergency situations.” Instead, the bill pressures those fourteen states to drop undocumented coverage by reducing their federal Medicaid funding.
MAGA Republicans claim their “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—that’s its official name—dramatically reduces the deficit, but that, too, is a lie.
On Thursday, May 29, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the measure would carry out “the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.” She echoed forty years of Republican claims that the economic growth unleashed by the measure would lead to higher tax revenues, a claim that hasn’t been true since Ronald Reagan made it in the 1970s.
In fact, the CBO estimates that the tax cuts and additional spending in the measure mean “[a]n increase in the federal deficit of $3.8 trillion.” As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, the CBO has been historically very reliable, but Leavitt and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to discount its scoring by claiming, as Johnson said: “They are historically totally unreliable. It’s run by Democrats.”
The director of the CBO, economist Philip Swagel, worked as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the George W. Bush administration. He was appointed in 2019 with the support of Senate Budget Committee chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) and House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth (D-KY). He was reappointed in 2023 with bipartisan support.
Republican cuts to government programs are a dramatic reworking of America’s traditional evidence-based government that works to improve the lives of a majority of Americans. They are replacing that government with an ideologically driven system that concentrates wealth and power in a few hands and denies that the government has a role to play in protecting Americans.
And yet, those who get their news by watching the Fox News Channel are likely unaware of the Republicans’ planned changes to Medicaid. As Aaron Rupar noted, on this morning’s Fox and Friends, the hosts mentioned Medicaid just once. They mentioned former president Joe Biden 39 times.
That change shows dramatically in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is an agency in the Commerce Department, established under Republican president Richard Nixon in 1970, that monitors weather conditions, storms, and ocean currents. The National Weather Service (NWS), which provides weather, wind, and ocean forecasts, is part of NOAA.
NWS forecasts annually provide the U.S. with an estimated $31.5 billion in benefits as they enable farmers, fishermen, businesspeople, schools, and individuals to plan around weather events.
As soon as he took office, Trump imposed an across-the-board hiring freeze, and billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” fired probationary employees and impounded funds Congress had appropriated. Now, as hurricane season begins, experts in storms and disasters are worried that the NOAA will be unable to function adequately.
Cuts to the NWS have already meant fewer weather balloons and thus less data, leaving gaps in information for a March ice storm in Northern Michigan and for storms and floods in Oklahoma in April. Oliver Milman of The Guardian reported today that 15 NWS offices on the Gulf of Mexico, a region vulnerable to hurricanes, are understaffed after losing more than 600 employees. Miami’s National Hurricane Center is short five specialists. Thirty of the 122 NWS stations no longer have a meteorologist in charge, and as of June 1, seven of those 122 stations will not have enough staff to operate around the clock.
On May 5, the five living former NWS, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote a letter to the American people warning that the cuts threaten to bring “needless loss of life.” They urged Americans to “raise your voice” against the cuts.
Trump’s proposed 2026 budget calls for “terminating a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs” and cutting about 25% more out of NOAA’s funding.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also suffered dramatic cuts as Trump has said he intends to push disaster recovery to the states. The lack of expertise is taking a toll there, too. Today staff members there said they were baffled after David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season. (It does, and it stretches from June 1 to the end of November.) Richardson had no experience with disaster response before taking charge of FEMA.
Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are even more draconian. On Friday, in a more detailed budget than the administration published in early May, the administration called for cuts of 43% to the NIH, about $20 billion a year. That includes cuts of nearly 40% to the National Cancer Institute. At the same time, the administration is threatening to end virtually all biomedical research at universities.
On Friday, May 23, the White House issued an executive order called “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” The order cites the COVID-19 guidance about school reopenings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claim that the federal government under President Joe Biden “used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.” (Schools closed in March 2020 under Trump.) The document orders that “[e]mployees shall not engage in scientific misconduct” and, scientists Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann, and Brian Nosek explain in The Guardian, gives political appointees the power to silence any research they oppose “based on their own ‘judgment.’” They also have the power to punish those scientists whose work they find objectionable.
The Guardian authors note that science is “the most important long-term investment for humanity.” They recall the story of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who is a prime example of the terrible danger of replacing fact-based reality with ideology.
As Sam Kean of The Atlantic noted in 2017, Lysenko opposed science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century in favor of the pseudo-scientific idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. This idea reflected communist political thought, and Lysenko gained the favor of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Lysenko claimed that his own agricultural techniques, which included transforming one species into another, would dramatically increase crop yields. Government leaders declared that Lysenko’s ideas were the only correct ones, and anyone who disagreed with him was denounced. About 3,000 biologists whose work contradicted his were fired or sent to jail. Some were executed. Scientific research was effectively banned.
In the 1930s, Soviet leaders set out to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, and when their new state-run farming collectives failed, they turned to Lysenko to fix the problem with his new techniques. Almost everything planted according to his demands died or rotted. In the USSR and in China, which adopted his methods in the 1950s, at least 30 million people died of starvation.
“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.”
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On June 1, Ukrainian forces struck deep inside Russia in “Operation Spider Web.” One hundred and seventeen drones, each operated by its own pilot, hit airfields in five regions. Ukraine says the drones hit 41 strategic bombers that had been attacking Ukrainian cities and destroyed at least 13 of them. Russia does not have the industrial capabilities to replace them.
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) head Vasyl Malyuk emphasized that military airfields and the aircraft that are bombing Ukraine are “absolutely legitimate targets…[a]ccording to the laws and customs of war.” The SBU estimates the drones did $7 billion of damage, hitting 34% of the aircraft that delivered cruise missiles.
The operation took more than 18 months of planning. It apparently involved sending trucks loaded with wooden cabins that had detachable roofs that could be opened remotely. Unsuspecting truck drivers hauled the cabins to locations near airbases, where the drones launched.
Once the drones were in the air, the vehicles carrying the cabins exploded. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said the people who helped with the operation from within Russia had been withdrawn and “are now safe.”
Russia denied that the damage was that extensive, but there is no doubt that the attack was a significant blow to Russia’s war effort, demonstrating as it does that Ukraine can bring the war home. As Kateryna Bonder of the Washington, D.C., think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies notes, June 1 was Military Transport Aviation Day in Russia, a significant holiday for the armed forces. Russian president Vladimir Putin frequently ties operations to significant dates—as when he hosted a number of American lawmakers in Moscow on July 4, 2018—and the choice of this date for an attack on military aircraft threw that habit back at him.
Analysts recognize the Ukrainian attack as a new moment in warfare. Using apparently unwitting civilians, the Ukrainians managed to get their drones close enough to their targets to avoid Russia’s air defense systems; then, Bonder explains, the drones relied on a system that allowed operators to pilot them to the planes’ strategic weaknesses. The drones themselves cost between $600 and $1,000 apiece—and by using deception, technology, and strategic surprise, the Ukrainians managed to destroy billions of dollars worth of aircraft.
Bonder notes that the attack heralds a change in modern warfare, in which technological agility will trump industrial capacity and advantage will go to those countries that can adapt quickly to changing conditions.
Some observers are calling the attack the Russian Pearl Harbor, a reference to the attack by the Japanese Navy on the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor Naval Base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, an attack that led to U.S. entry into World War II. But Russia has been attacking Ukraine since 2014 and launched a full-scale invasion in 2022. This attack illustrates extraordinary vulnerability at this point, rather as if Pearl Harbor had happened in early 1945.
A former commander of U.S. Army Europe, retired U.S. Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, posted: “For months, some believed that Ukraine didn't 'hold any cards.' Many of us have refuted that claim, saying an inflection point—due to failing Russian war economy and continued lack of Russian leadership adaptation, but especially due to a continued strong Ukrainian government, military and population support and will mixed with their innovative use of Special Operations, un-crewed systems (various drones), and fiber optic capabilities to counter Russian EW—would soon be felt on the battlefield. The coordinated and synchronized attack today, which appears to have decimated much of the Russian air fleet that were based over 4,000 km from the front line, is showing that Ukraine certainly has many aces in the hole.”
Hertling’s comment that some thought Ukraine didn’t hold any cards is a reference to President Donald J. Trump, who ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28, warning him that Ukraine must cut a deal with Putin because Zelensky didn’t “have the cards” to win the war. With that meeting, Trump signaled that U.S. policy, which has supported Ukraine since 1994, would change to favor Russia.
In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assistances, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., the United Kingdom, and Russia that they would honor the sovereignty and borders of Ukraine, a promise Russia broke when it invaded Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014.
During the 2024 U.S. presidential election campaign, Trump vowed that he would end the war in Ukraine in a single day, maybe with a single phone call, and as other victories have slipped away from him, he has appeared frustrated that such an achievement has proved more difficult than he thought.
After the Oval Office meeting, the Ukrainians agreed to a 30-day ceasefire on March 11, but Russia has consistently refused to agree unless Ukraine accepts major territorial concessions and permits Russia to dictate that it not join the defensive North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Rather than negotiating, Putin has launched repeated attacks on Ukrainian civil targets. On Sunday, May 25, Russia launched the largest air attack on Ukraine since the war began, and the week before, it launched its largest drone attack.
Those attacks happened even as Trump was talking directly with Putin, allegedly about a ceasefire. The White House policy has skewed heavily toward Russia against Ukraine even to the point that Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff relied on Putin’s own translators during negotiations on February 11, March 13, and April 11. While Putin speaks English, Witkoff does not speak Russian.
Trump claims to be frustrated with Putin, at one point calling him “absolutely crazy,” which prompted Putin’s spokesperson to suggest that Trump was suffering from “emotional overload.” On May 27, Trump appeared to acknowledge his longstanding relationship with Putin when he posted on his social media site: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”
And yet, although more than 80 senators from both parties have co-sponsored a bill to impose stronger sanctions against Russia, Trump has refused to back it, thus stalling it. Meanwhile, Benedict Smith of The Telegraph today covered State Department acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs Darren Beattie, who dismantled the office that countered disinformation from Russia, China, and Iran. In 2021, Smith notes, Beattie married a Russian national whose uncle has ties to Putin.
Beattie was dismissed from the first Trump administration after attending a white nationalist rally. He has attacked the United States as the “globalist American empire” and said that Putin should infiltrate western institutions to fight “woke” ideology. In 2021, Beattie wrote that the “position [of the U.S.] in the global order [is] rapidly deteriorating” and that he looked forward to its “prestige and power” collapsing. Praising Putin as “brave and strong,” he said that Putin had “done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican” and that “just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin.”
Beattie also wrote: “NATO is a far worse threat to the health, liberty, freedom, and flourishing of American citizens than Russia and China combined.”
Administration officials said the Ukrainians did not notify them before launching Operation Spider Web.
On Tuesday, Ukrainian forces detonated underwater explosives attached to the Kerch bridge connecting Russia to the occupied Crimean Peninsula. This is Ukraine’s third attack on the bridge since 2022. The SBU said the explosives “severely damaged” bridge supports, but the bridge reopened hours later.
The Ukrainian operations are only the most dramatic developments in ongoing stories today that show the Trump administration is not calling all the shots.
Trump’s vow to negotiate trade deals in place of his tariff walls has not yet produced any of those deals, and the White House today said it’s “likely” that a call will take place this week with China’s leader Xi Jinping. But Lingling Wei of the Wall Street Journal explained yesterday that Xi has made it clear China will play hardball with the U.S.
Daniel Russel, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, told Phelim Kine, Daniel Desrochers, Megan Messerly, and Ari Hawkins of Politico: “Beijing has a sharp nose for weakness, and for all his bravado, Trump is signaling eagerness—even desperation—to cut a direct deal with Xi. That only stiffens Beijing’s resolve.”
Biden administration National Security Council deputy senior director for China and Taiwan Rush Doshi noted that Chinese officials see Trump as “unpredictable” and that Chinese diplomats don’t usually put the leader “at risk of a potentially embarrassing or unpredictable encounter.”
Jake Lahut of Wired reported yesterday that Trump advisors are themselves tired of right-wing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who has Trump’s ear. Their comments to Lahut appear designed to put pressure on Trump to push her away, a sign that for now, anyway, she is entrenched.
Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka, whom Department of Homeland Security agents arrested on May 9, 2025, has sued the acting U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, and the special agent in charge of the Newark Division of Homeland Security Investigations, Ricky J. Patel, for false arrest and malicious prosecution. He is suing Habba alone for defamation.
The suit outlines Habba’s public statements against Democrats in New Jersey and her vow to “turn…New Jersey red.” It says Habba acted “as a political operative” “in her individual personal capacity” “outside of any function intimately related to the judicial process” when she posted on her social media account that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law.” After repeated similar public statements, Habba dropped all charges.
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem took down her list of “sanctuary cities” she said weren’t cooperating with federal immigration authorities after the National Sheriffs’ Association demanded an apology.
Trump began today by attacking Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) for his opposition to the extraordinary cost of Republicans’ omnibus bill, insisting that the bill would create “tremendous GROWTH.” But this afternoon, billionaire Elon Musk took a firm stand against Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) released a report showing that Musk’s net worth has increased by more than $100 billion since Election Day. The report listed the many ways in which he used his position in the federal government to stop investigations into his companies, undercut regulations, win federal contracts, gain access to data and sensitive information, attack his enemies, meddle in elections, and secure foreign deals, all without informing the American people of his conflicts of interest.
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Just hours after President Donald J. Trump posted on social media yesterday that “[b]ecause of Tariffs, our Economy is BOOMING!” a new report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said the opposite. Founded in 1961, the OECD is a forum in which 38 market-based democracies cooperate to promote sustainable economic growth.
The OECD’s economic outlook reports that economic growth around the globe is slowing because of Trump’s trade war. It projects global growth slowing from 3.3% in 2024 to 2.9% in 2025 and 2026. That economic slowdown is concentrated primarily in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and China.
The OECD predicts that growth in the United States will decline from 2.8% in 2024 to 1.6% in 2025 and 1.5% in 2026.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released two analyses today of Trump’s policies that add more detail to that report. The CBO’s estimate for the effect of Trump’s current tariffs—which are unlikely to stay as they are—is that they will raise inflation and slow economic growth as consumers bear their costs. The CBO says it is hard to anticipate how the tariffs will change purchasing behavior, but it estimates that the tariffs will reduce the deficit by $2.8 trillion over ten years.
Also today, the CBO’s analysis of the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is that it will add $2.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade because the $1.2 trillion in spending cuts in the measure do not fully offset the $3.7 trillion in tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. Republicans have met this CBO score with attacks on the CBO, but its estimate is in keeping with those of a wide range of economists and think tanks.
Taken together, these studies illustrate how Trump’s economic policies are designed to transfer wealth from consumers to the wealthy and corporations. From 1981 to 2021, American policies moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. After Biden stopped that upward transfer, the Trump administration is restarting it again, on steroids.
Just how these policies are affecting Americans is no longer clear, though. Matt Grossman of the Wall Street Journal reported today that economists no longer trust the accuracy of the government’s inflation data. Officials from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which compiles a huge monthly survey of employment and costs, told economists that staffing shortages and a hiring freeze have forced them to cut back on their research and use less precise methods for figuring out price changes. Grossman reports that the bureau has also cut back on the number of places where it collects data and that the administration has gotten rid of committees of external experts that worked to improve government statistics.
There is more than money at stake in the administration’s policies. The administration's gutting of the government seeks to decimate the modern government that regulates business, provides a basic social safety net, promotes infrastructure, and protects civil rights and to replace it with a government that permits a few wealthy men to rule.
The CBO score for the Republicans’ omnibus bill projects that if it is enacted, 16 million people will lose access to healthcare insurance over the next decade in what is essentially an assault on the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The bill also dramatically cuts Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Plan (SNAP) benefits, clean energy credits, aid for student borrowers, benefits for federal workers, and consumer protection services, while requiring the sale of public natural resources.
These cuts continue those the administration has made since Trump took office, many of which fell under the hand of the “Department of Government Efficiency.” But, while billionaire Elon Musk was the figurehead for that group, it appears his main interest was in collecting data. His understudy, Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought, appears to have determined the direction of the cuts, which did not save money so much as decimate the parts of the government that the authors of Project 2025 wanted to destroy.
Vought was a key author of Project 2025, whose aim is to disrupt and destroy the United States government order to center a Christian, heteronormative, male-dominated family as the primary element of society. To do so, the plan calls for destroying the administrative state, withdrawing the United States from global affairs, and ending environmental and business regulations.
Yesterday the White House asked Congress to cancel $9.4 billion in already-appropriated spending that the Department of Government Efficiency identified as wasteful, a procedure known as “rescission.” Trump aides say the money funds programs that promote what they consider inappropriate ideologies, including public media networks PBS and NPR; the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food and basic medical care globally; and PEPFAR, the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief that was established under President George W. Bush to combat HIV/AIDS in more than 50 countries and is currently credited with saving about 26 million lives.
Vought appeared today before the House Appropriations Committee, where members scolded him for neglecting to provide a budget for the year, which they need to do their jobs. But Vought had plenty to say about the things he is doing. According to ProPublica’s Andy Kroll, he claimed that under Biden “every agency became a tool of the Left.” He said the White House will continue to ask for rescissions, but also noted that, as Project 2025 laid out, he does not believe that the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which requires the executive branch to spend the money that Congress has appropriated, is constitutional, despite court decisions saying it is.
Representative Rosa DeLaur0 (D-CT) told Vought: “Be honest, this is never about government efficiency. In fact, an efficient government, a government that capably serves the American people and proves good government is achievable is what you fear the most. You want a government so broken, so dysfunctional, so starved of resources, so full of incompetent political lackeys and bereft of experts and professionals that its departments and agencies cannot feasibly achieve the goals and the missions to which they are lawfully directed. Your goal is privatization, for the biggest companies to have unchecked power, for an economy that does not work for the middle class, for working and vulnerable families. You want the American people to have no one to turn to, but to the billionaires and the corporations this administration has put in charge. Waste, fraud, and abuse are not the targets of this administration. They are your primary objectives.”
The use of the government to impose evangelical beliefs on the country, even at the expense of lives, also appears to be an administration goal. Yesterday, the administration announced it is ending the Biden administration’s 2022 guidance to hospital emergency rooms that accept Medicare—which is virtually all of them—requiring that under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act they must perform an abortion in an emergency if the procedure is necessary to prevent a patient’s organ failure or severe hemorrhaging. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act requires emergency rooms to stabilize patients.
The Trump administration will no longer enforce that policy. Last year, an investigation by the Associated Press found that even when the Biden administration policy was being enforced, dozens of pregnant women, some of whom needed emergency abortions, were turned away from emergency rooms with advice to “let nature take its course.”
Finally tonight, in what seems likely to be an attempt to distract attention from the omnibus bill and all the controversy surrounding it, Trump banned Harvard from hosting foreign students. He also banned nationals from a dozen countries—Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen—from entering the United States, an echo of the travel ban of his first term that threw the country into chaos.
Trump justified his travel ban by citing the attack Sunday in Boulder, Colorado, on peaceful demonstrators marching to support Israeli hostages in Gaza. An Egyptian national who had overstayed a tourist visa hurled Molotov cocktails at the marchers, injuring 15 people.
Egypt is not on the list of countries whose nationals Trump has banned from the United States.
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Today the U.S. political world was consumed by a public fight between President Donald J. Trump and his former sidekick, billionaire Elon Musk. Musk invested about $290 million into the 2024 election, vowing to elect Trump in order to get rid of government investigations into his businesses he worried would “take [him] down.”
When Trump took office, Musk became a fixture in the White House, attending Cabinet meetings and heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” That group set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds at the same time that its staff sucked up information on Americans that could feed the training of artificial intelligence and killed the investigations into his businesses Musk had worried about.
In February, Musk posted on social media: “I love [Donald Trump] as much as a straight man can love another man.”
But Musk overstepped boundaries and overstayed his welcome even as his antics hurt sales of his signature car, the Tesla, inspiring Trump to do a car commercial for him on the White House grounds. Just a week ago, Musk officially left the White House on the same day that an article in the New York Times documented his heavy drug use on the campaign.
Then, on Tuesday, June 3, he took a public stand against the omnibus bill Trump desperately wants Congress to pass, posting on X: “I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”
And with that, the falling out began.
This morning, Trump told reporters he was “disappointed” in Musk. Ron Filipkowski of Meidas followed the saga from there.
“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House, and the Republicans would be 51–49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”
Trump then suggested that “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”
Musk promptly said he would begin decommissioning SpaceX’s spacecraft, which supply the International Space Station.
The two men continued to go back and forth, with Musk saying that “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” a reference to the records compiled by convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, with whom Trump was friendly. Musk also said Trump's tariffs will cause a recession, and agreed with another poster who suggested that Trump should be impeached and replaced with Vice President J.D. Vance.
Trump responded to that attack far more weakly than one would have expected, simply turning back to the omnibus bill and insisting it “is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress.”
Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”
It’s quite a gamble, since Trump controls the government contracts on which Musk’s fortune was built and on which he still relies. Some MAGA loyalists appear to see the fight as a victory for Trump and are thrilled to see Musk’s star fall. MAGA influencer Steve Bannon told Tyler Pager of the New York Times that he has advised Trump to cancel all of Musk’s federal contracts and launch a formal investigation of his drug use and his immigration status.
Kylie Robison and Aarian Marshall of Wired noted that TrumpCoin lost more than $100 million in value during the fight. Tesla stock lost $152 billion of value from its market capitalization, prompting Filipkowski to note that the total came to about $9 billion per tweet.
Economist Robert Reich had perhaps the best summary of the fight today when he noted, “That any of us have to care about the messy breakup of these two massive narcissists—and that they both individually wield such massive power—is an indictment of our political system and further proves the poisonous influence of Big Money on our democracy.”
Indeed, today’s White House and today’s America are very different from what they were eighty-one years ago.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt gave his twenty-ninth Fireside Chat on June 5, 1944, and had good news for the American people. The day before, on June 4, Rome had fallen to Allied troops. “The first of the Axis capitals is now in our hands,” Roosevelt said.
The president pointed out that it was “significant that Rome has been liberated by the armed forces of many nations. The American and British armies—who bore the chief burdens of battle—found at their sides our own North American neighbors, the gallant Canadians. The fighting New Zealanders from the far South Pacific, the courageous French and the French Moroccans, the South Africans, the Poles and the East Indians—all of them fought with us on the bloody approaches to the city of Rome. The Italians, too, forswearing a partnership in the Axis which they never desired, have sent their troops to join us in our battles against the German trespassers on their soil.”
This group of ordinary men from many different countries had worked together to defeat the forces of fascism.
But FDR warned Americans that the fall of Rome was only the beginning. “We shall have to push through a long period of greater effort and fiercer fighting before we get into Germany itself,” he said. [T]he victory still lies some distance ahead. That distance will be covered in due time—have no fear of that. But it will be tough and it will be costly.”
FDR knew something his audience did not. On the other side of the Atlantic, paratroopers, their faces darkened with cocoa, were already dropping into France, and the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Allies were on their way across the English channel.
The order of the day from their commander Dwight D. Eisenhower that day had read: “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms on other Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German war machine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed people of Europe, and security for ourselves in a free world.
“Your task will not be an easy one,” it read, but it assured the troops that the Germans had suffered great defeats and Allied bombing had reduced German strength, while “[o]ur Home Fronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitions of war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men. The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together to Victory!”
Eisenhower’s public confidence did not reflect his understanding that the largest amphibious invasion in military history was a gamble. On June 5, in pencil on a sheet of paper, he had written a message to be communicated in case the invasion failed.
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops,” it read. “My decision to attack at this time and place was based upon the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and dedication to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”
On the morning of June 6, 1944, five naval assault divisions stormed the beaches of Normandy. Seven thousand ships and landing craft operated by more than 195,000 naval personnel from eight countries brought almost 133,000 troops to beaches given the code names UTAH, OMAHA, GOLD, JUNO, and SWORD. By the end of the day, more than 10,000 Allied troops were wounded or killed, but the Allies had established a foothold in France that would permit them to flood troops, vehicles, and supplies into Europe. When FDR held a press conference later that day, officials and press alike were jubilant.
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Last night, billionaire Elon Musk indicated he would be willing to paper over his fight with President Donald J. Trump, perhaps remembering, as Paresh Dave of Wired noted, that his companies stand to lose $48 billion over the next ten years if they lose their government contracts.
Trump spent this morning calling news anchors and telling them he’s not bothered by the fight. According to Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone, Trump today called CNN’s Dana Bash, the Fox News Channel’s Bret Baier, ABC News’ Jonathan Karl, and CBS News’ Robert Costa to claim he’s “not even thinking about Elon,” before bashing him as “the man who has lost his mind.”
Yesterday, Lauren Goode of Wired reported that big tech investors and executives were trying to walk a fine line between the two men, trying not to take a stand for or against either. J.V. Last of The Bulwark noted that no one was more hesitant to take a side than Vice President J.D. Vance, who wants to keep the favor of his Silicon Valley patrons but also needs Trump’s backing. At 10:28 last night, after Musk was already retreating, Vance posted on social media: “President Trump has done more than any person in my lifetime to earn the trust of the movement he leads. I’m proud to stand beside him.” As Last notes, this was a pretty weak statement, and “Trump is smart enough to understand that this is a confession.”
“Do not doubt, don’t second guess, and do not challenge the President of the United States Donald Trump,” House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) warned Republican lawmakers. “He is the leader of the party. He’s the most consequential political figure of our time.”
After Russian officials said they were prepared to offer Musk political asylum, Musk spent the day posting or reposting material that boosted his businesses and complaints about Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill.” This evening, he announced: “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”
How the fallout from this fight will affect the country remains unclear, but the announcement that the Pentagon is investigating whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s aides were asked to delete Signal messages may well be related to Musk’s fall from favor. In April, Hegseth arranged for Musk to have a top-secret briefing on U.S. military plans in case of war with China. According to Marc Caputo of Axios, Trump himself stepped in to stop the briefing from going forward. Now Hegseth is under investigation.
It does seem likely that the administration will try to pin blame on Musk for the chaos that the “Department of Government Efficiency” launched against the United States government.
Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman of ProPublica reported today on the AI prompts the Department of Government Efficiency used to “munch”—the word DOGE employee Sahil Lavingia used for “cancel”—contracts related to the Department of Veterans’ Affairs. Lavingia, who worked for two months for DOGE, said the idea was to go after anything that wasn’t “directly supporting patient care.” But the code was deeply flawed, resulting in wildly off-base contract values and a deep misunderstanding of what contracts actually did. “[M]istakes were made,” Lavingia said. “Mistakes are always made.”
Hannah Natanson, Adam Taylor, Meryl Kornfield, Rachel Siegel, and Scott Dance of the Washington Post took a broader view. They reported that “[a]cross the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.” They outlined how the administration is trying to patch the holes DOGE ripped in agencies: trying to rehire employees who were fired or left voluntarily and, if that doesn’t work, offering overtime, asking for volunteers, and asking employees to serve in new roles. Some new job offerings look a lot like the positions of people agencies just fired.
A White House official told the reporters: “If by chance mistakes were made and critical employees were dismissed, each individual agency is working diligently to bring these people back to work to continue the adequate functions of the federal government.” But morale is terrible, one worker at the Food and Drug Administration told the reporters. “Everyone is stressed and feels the absence of our colleagues.… I’m looking for another job.”
Still, DOGE is not the only group in the administration that has made poor decisions. Hannah Allam of ProPublica reported on Wednesday that the White House has put a 22-year-old recent college graduate with no experience in national security in charge of overseeing the government’s main center for preventing terrorism. Thomas Fugate’s main credentials for his position in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which includes overseeing $18 million in grants to local authorities to combat violent extremism, appear to be his time spent as an intern at the right-wing Heritage Foundation and his loyalty to Trump.
Fugate’s appointment appears to reflect that the administration is downplaying domestic terrorism to shift resources to immigration. In its budget proposal, DHS has called for eliminating the threat prevention grant program Fugate oversees, saying it “does not align with DHS priorities.” One former Homeland Security official told Allam the shift “means that the department founded to prevent terrorism in the United States no longer prioritizes preventing terrorism in the United States.”
Today, after months of maintaining it could not bring back Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully rendered to the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador, the Trump administration returned him to the U.S. A grand jury in Tennessee has charged Abrego Garcia with participating in a ten-year conspiracy to carry undocumented migrants from Texas to other parts of the country. The indictment alleges Abrego Garcia participated in more than 100 trips that moved children as well as members of the MS-13 Salvadoran gang.
The indictment has issues. Abrego Garcia is the only person named in the “conspiracy,” and the investigation into it began only in April, after the courts ordered the administration to bring Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. The indictment is based on a 2022 incident in which Abrego Garcia was stopped in Tennessee for speeding with eight passengers in his vehicle. He told police they were construction workers and was neither ticketed nor charged. While the indictment alleges that Abrego Garcia lied to the officer by not revealing he was coming from Texas, the referral report says he told the officer he was coming from Houston, Texas.
Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 in Nashville, Tennessee, noted that the chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville, Ben Schrader, resigned on May 21, saying: “It has been an incredible privilege to serve as a prosecutor with the Department of Justice, where the only job description I’ve ever known is to do the right thing, in the right way, for the right reasons.” Williams notes that May 21 is the same day as Abrego Garcia’s indictment.
ABC News reported that Schrader resigned out of “concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons.”
Meanwhile, government raids against immigrants are escalating and seem designed to provoke conflict. Today, masked officials in tactical gear, apparently from the Department of Homeland Security, carried out a number of raids in Los Angeles. Agents pepper sprayed and arrested David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU).
In a statement, the union called for “an end to the cruel, destructive, and indiscriminate ICE raids that are tearing apart our communities, disrupting our economy, and hurting all working people,” adding: “Immigrant workers are essential to our society: feeding our nation, caring for our elders, cleaning our workplaces, and building our homes.”
Andy Craig, who studies election law and policy, noted today that “[m]ass deportation and immigration enforcement in the interior requires a police state, and the more of that you want, the more obviously it will look and act like a police state.”
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council agreed. He wrote: “In order to build a mass deportation machine to round up and deport 4% of the entire goddamn population, you must first build the police state.”
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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 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.”
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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.
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At 10:19 last night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media: “Stand with ICE. Pass the B[ig] B[eautiful] B[ill].”
And there it is. The Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is the MAGA regime’s attempt to replace the American government we’ve had since the 1930s with one that reflects the antidemocratic values of Project 2025. The measure is unpopular. According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 60% of Americans think the bill will help wealthy people, while 54% think it will hurt poor people. Forty-seven percent think it will hurt the middle class, while only 31% think it will help the middle class. As Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted, it’s “[s]tunning how badly Trump and the Rs have lost the debate on what their reconciliation bill will do.”
The measure changes the nature of the American government by extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and adding significantly more money to immigration enforcement and defense spending. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure will add as much as $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years; with interest costs of that new debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded the measure would increase the debt by nearly $3 trillion.
At the same time that it moves money upward and into the white nationalist project of expelling immigrants, the measure guts federal policies and agencies that serve the American people, apparently with the goal of pushing such policies and agencies to the states. The CBO estimates that as many as 13.7 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the measure passes, and cuts of nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will mean cuts of about 30% to the programs on which millions of Americans depend.
Miller’s post underscores the administration’s need to change the conversation around the measure, whose 1,000-plus pages lay out the MAGA vision for the United States. “Don’t kid yourself,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) posted. “[T]hey know they are absolutely getting cooked politically w[ith] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”
Maanvi Singh of The Guardian put the right lens on events in Los Angeles today, noting “Trump’s dramatic escalation” and his vow “to crush opposition to his immigration raids.” Singh identified the administration’s escalation as the trigger for “a roaring backlash.”
Singh noted federal agents carried out arrests in L.A. without judicial warrants and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding families in the basements of federal buildings, refusing them access to lawyers and family members. Agents in riot gear attacked protesters with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, turning peaceful protests into clashes.
Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the protests an “insurrection,” and last night Trump activated at least 2,000 members of California’s National Guard over the protests of California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
Administration officials are continuing their emphasis on spectacle and performance to try to bring popular opinion back their way. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported today that television personality Dr. Phil McGraw and his camera crew were embedded with ICE during the raids.
According to Dr. Phil’s right-wing TV channel, he was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations.” He also had “exclusive” access to Tom Homan, the man known as Trump’s “border czar,” and recorded interviews with him before and after the L.A. sweeps.
But that, too, is spectacle. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Homan and Miller are the public face of border enforcement and anti-immigrant policies. But Homan is not part of ICE. He is a White House advisor, working in a civilian capacity. And yet, as Marshall records, he has taken to showing up before the cameras “in either faux military uniforms or, in most cases, civilian garb clearly meant to appear like military-style fatigues along with a ever-changing run of camo or olive drab baseball caps.”
Trump seems happy to let these White House officials take the lead in the immigration performance. On Saturday, Homan threatened to arrest anyone who obstructed immigration enforcement, refusing to exempt L.A. mayor Bass or California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom responded: “What the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let’s just get it over with. Tough guy. You know? I don’t give a damn, but I care about my community. I care about this community. The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up, they need to stop, and we need to push back, and I’m sorry to be so clear, but—that kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
As he arrived back at the White House this morning after spending the weekend at Camp David, Trump told reporters: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great…. I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job.” Homan does not have the authority to arrest anyone. Using him to threaten to arrest a governor enables Trump to make the threat while also being able to deny that he made it.
Although members of Congress have legal authority to enter ICE detention facilities to conduct oversight, Jesus Jiménez, Chelsia Rose Marcius, and Nate Schweber of the New York Times reported that over the weekend, five members said officials barred them from doing so. New York Democratic representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez say they were prevented from checking on the well-being of those detained in New York. In California, Democratic representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez, and Norma Torres were turned away from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Waters said she was trying to see David Huerta, the popular president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was injured when officers threw him to the ground and arrested him on Friday. Huerta’s arrest has mobilized union workers to protest the immigration sweeps, and today the Department of Justice announced it was charging him with felony conspiracy to impede an officer, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in federal prison. Crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., as well as in L.A. to call for Huerta’s release, and this evening he was released from custody on a $50,000 bond.
In a statement following his arrest, Huerta said: "What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”
Today Mayor Bass reminded protesters that “LA has a proud history of peaceful protests for immigrants rights.” She called for them to “continue that legacy—don’t fall into the Trump Administration’s trap. Protest peacefully. Looting and vandalism will not be tolerated.” She added: “Trump didn’t inherit a crisis—he created one. To those stoking the fire of lawlessness and chaos alongside him—LA will hold you accountable.” Observers today said the L.A. protests, most of which take place within a five-block radius, are overwhelmingly peaceful, characterized by Tejano music and celebrations of local culture.
This afternoon, a government official told Reuters that it is deploying about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until Wednesday. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in Los Angeles. The state and city have the means to control the protests. Donald Trump is getting involved to intentionally make the situation more violent. And potentially to create a pretext for some sort of martial law.”
David Dayen of The American Prospect posted: “The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.”
Today, California attorney general Rob Bonta and Governor Newsom sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for their order to federalize the California National Guard without authorization from the governor and against the wishes of local law enforcement, calling it “an inflammatory escalation unsupported by conditions on the ground.” They have asked the court to set aside the order, calling it unlawful.
In addition to being unlawful, it appears the deployment was not terribly well thought through. Matthias Gafni of the San Francisco Chronicle reported tonight that the National Guard troops sent by Trump to Los Angeles received no federal funding for food, water, fuel, equipment, or lodging. Gafni shows a photo of “wildly underprepared” troops sleeping in their clothes on a cement floor. Nonetheless, Trump called another 2,000 California National Guard troops into federal service today “to support ICE.”
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times looked around at events and wrote: “what i see is a white house whose ambitions outstrip its resources, who did not count on facing mass resistance, and which is scrambling to escalate the situation in hopes that a display of force will make people shut up.”
This evening, Trump posted on social media a photograph of what appeared to be border patrol and ICE agents with the caption: “THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL Boosts Border Patrol and ICE Agents on the Frontlines with the Largest Border Security Investment in History.”
Governor Newsom said: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country—defending democracy. They are not political pawns. The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend. It’s a blatant abuse of power. We will sue to stop this. The courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling. This is a red line—and they’re crossing it. WAKE UP!”
Also tonight, about 400 people turned out in Dallas, Texas, against ICE in solidarity with Los Angeles. At about 9:40 p.m. Dallas police said the protest was an unlawful assembly. At 10:15, officers moved in with pepper spray and smoke to disperse the crowd.
A final note: While the oxygen in the country was taken up by the administration's escalations, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today got rid of all 17 of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy, who has taken a public stand against vaccines, told the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he would not change existing vaccine approval systems. But in an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal, he said “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
Laura Unger and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press report that Kennedy intends to replace the fired committee members with his own picks.
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WAKE UP, PEOPLE!
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Today President Donald J. Trump made it clear that the provocations he and his administration are escalating in Los Angeles and now elsewhere are using the issue of immigration to suppress dissent entirely.
In the Oval Office today, Trump said of the military parade scheduled for this Saturday: “If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force…. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”
His statement comes after the administration instituted aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) met the few hundred protesters with violence.
Then, over the protests of both Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump federalized 4,000 members of California’s National Guard and ordered 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He and his advisors have repeatedly threatened to arrest anyone who does not cooperate with ICE, including Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom.
Trump has said he based his decision to federalize the National Guard on his insistence that Los Angeles is staggering under violent riots, but in fact the protests are largely peaceful and local officials maintain they can handle the situation.
Still, Trump described Los Angeles as “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” and said “violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals,” and other MAGA lawmakers have gotten into the act. Will Sommer of The Bulwark pointed out today that MAGA influencers are also pushing for more crackdowns and more cruelty in a feedback loop as they and White House officials push each other toward more and more cruelty toward immigrants.
But the narrative that L.A. is under siege is hard to make stick. Protesters have been filming the bands playing and people dancing at the protests, which remain small. They have also filmed the ICE agents shooting less-lethal bullets at individuals, including an Australian journalist who was speaking to a camera when she was shot from behind. The complaint against SEIU leader David Huerta, who has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer, says that he walked and sat on a public sidewalk in such a way that he blocked an ICE van before an officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him.
Economist Paul Krugman notes that “Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been,” and Newsom has been meeting the claims of MAGA politicians that the city is a hellscape with actual statistics showing that California is safer than their own states. He reminded Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin that Oklahoma’s murder rate is 40% higher than California’s and, after Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called for Newsom to be arrested, retorted: “Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country. Stick to football, bro.”
As Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post noted today, California recently became the fourth largest economy in the world. It has the highest number of immigrants in the country—although many have moved in the past few years to more affordable states—and unemployment numbers are close to the national average.
But Trump has always managed his public affairs by projecting dominance in a fake world; his political instincts for keeping attention on himself have been compared to the kayfabe of professional wrestling.
This afternoon he upped the ante again. In a speech at the Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Trump delivered a fiercely partisan speech that sounded like it was written by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. In front of a crowd of enlisted personnel who journalist Jane Coaston reported had been carefully selected to be Trump supporters and “to be fit and not look fat,” Trump claimed the U.S. was under a “foreign invasion” because of “stupid people or radical Left people or sick people.” He goaded the personnel into booing Newsom and Bass.
Since the days of George Washington, the American armed forces have been strictly nonpartisan, declaring their allegiance to the U.S. Constitution itself rather than to any leader.
Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted that Trump is “turning the world’s powerful military away from its focus on Russia and China toward a new enemy—the American people themselves.” He mused: “I’ve been saying that I felt Trump’s dramatic escalation in recent days was driven in part by Musk’s emasculation of him last week. I also wonder whether it’s being driven by Zelensky’s profound humiliation of Putin, and Putin lashing out at Trump for not delivering Ukraine to him.”
Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported today that right-wing bots, trolls, conspiracy theorists, and MAGA influencers are flooding social media with messages designed to attack immigrants and Democrats and defend Trump. Many of those accounts are linked to Russia and Russian disinformation.
It certainly feels as if administration officials are going for broke in ways that benefit Russia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard today released a video warning that the world is close to a nuclear war caused by a political elite that expects it can survive one in special bunkers. Gabbard has a history of parroting Russian propaganda, and famously, Russian president Vladimir Putin has used the threat of nuclear war to press his demands against Ukraine.
A YouGov poll out today shows that only 34% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of Marines to the Los Angeles area to respond to protests over the enforcement of immigration laws while 47% do not approve. Only 38% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to L.A., while 45% disapprove. A strong majority—56%—of Americans think state and local officials should take the lead in responding to the L.A. protests, while only 25% think the federal government should.
Strikingly, 50% of adults disapprove of the administration's handling of deportations, while only 39% approve.
Those numbers were gathered before Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell told the House Defense Appropriations Committee today that the Pentagon estimates the cost of federalizing the National Guard and deploying the Marines to Los Angeles at $134 million.
Today the Department of Justice announced it was indicting Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on three counts of “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers” after a May 19 event in front of a Newark, New Jersey, ICE detention center. McIver was at the detention center with others as part of her oversight responsibilities, and a video shows her being jostled with a crowd that includes an ICE officer, but no one breaks stride. McIver called the charges “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”
Tonight Governor Newsom delivered a prime-time address about the events of the past few days. He outlined the story of the ICE raids and Trump’s escalation of conflict. He urged protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully and warned that anyone participating in violence would be held accountable.
Then the governor launched into a wholesale condemnation of the Trump regime. He warned that “[i]f 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.”
Newsom called Trump out for firing the government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for fraud, and for declaring 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…. [H]e’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…, in his own words, ‘for getting elected.’”
“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “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 under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.”
Newsom urged Americans to stand up for the country. “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he said. “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,” Newsom said.
“Do not give in to him.”
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While President Donald Trump is trying to project strength by ordering a federalized National Guard and the Marines into Los Angeles, a new Quinnipiac poll of American registered voters out today reinforces that both Trump and his policies are unpopular. The numbers are remarkable.
The poll shows that 38% of registered voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president; 54% disapprove. Voters aren’t keen on Trump’s appointees, either. Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of the way Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is handling his job; 53% disapprove. Thirty-seven percent of voters approve of the way Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is handling his job, while 46% disapprove. Thirty-eight percent approved of the work billionaire Elon Musk did, while 57% said it was either “not so good” or “poor.”
More voters disapprove than approve of Trump’s handling of immigration issues (43% approval to 54% disapproval), deportations (40% approval to 56% disapproval), the economy (40% approval to 56% disapproval), trade (38% approval to 57% disapproval), universities (37% approval to 54% disapproval), the Israel-Hamas conflict (35% approval to 52% disapproval), and the Russia-Ukraine war (34% approval to 57% disapproval).
Voters are opposed to the budget reconciliation bill the Republicans have dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (and Democrats have called the “Big, Beautiful Betrayal”) by 53% to 27%. While the measure cuts almost $800 billion out of Medicaid over the next ten years, only 10% of registered voters believe the federal funding for Medicaid should decrease.
There is little good news for the administration in economic numbers, either. Yesterday, the World Bank, an international organization of 189 countries, joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in concluding that Trump’s trade war would cut U.S. economic growth sharply. The World Bank estimates that growth will fall by half in 2025 compared to 2024. In 2024 U.S. economic growth was 2.8%; in 2025, the World Bank predicts growth of just 1.4%. It forecasts that Trump’s trade wars will cut global economic growth from 2.8% in 2024 to 2.3% in 2025.
After promising 90 tariff deals in 90 days, Trump has been desperate for a deal with China. In retaliation for Trump’s high tariffs, China tightly controlled exports of rare earth minerals and the magnets made from them, which the U.S. needs to build cars, electronic products, and missiles. Rare earth minerals are valuable minerals that are not uncommon, but are present in such small concentrations the amount of labor it takes to refine them is enormous. Most of them are currently mined in China. As Ana Swanson reported yesterday in the New York Times, late last month Ford had to close a Chicago factory temporarily and other companies have been forced to suspend some of their operations.
On Sunday, on CBS’s Face the Nation, top White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said: “The point is we want the rare earth, the magnets that are crucial for cellphones and everything else, to flow just as they did before the beginning of April,” that is, before Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Today Trump posted, “OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE,” although China simply called it a “framework” and neither Trump nor Xi has agreed to it. Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic wrote that the proposed deal simply revives a May deal that rolled tariffs back for 90 days. Further, the rare earth deal only lasts for six months.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers wrote: “The US & Chinese trade negotiators have negotiated a handshake agreement to seek signoff to agree that a previously-agreed agreement was still their agreed upon agreement. (That agreement is not an agreement but a framework for seeking future agreements).” He added: “Notice that not only are we not getting a better deal, we’re not even getting back to where we were at the start of the Administration.”
Before the House Ways and Means Committee today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Trump is likely to extend the 90-day pause on his tariffs with countries to whom the administration is speaking.
Meanwhile, Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon of Military [dot] com confirmed today that the troops Trump addressed in a partisan speech at Fort Bragg had been handpicked Trump supporters with a fit physical appearance. (One message simply read: “No fat soldiers.”) Toropin and Beynon reported: “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.” They also reported that an Oklahoma-based retailer was selling pro-Trump and right-wing campaign-style merchandise at the event, a violation of military policy.
When questioned about Trump’s undermining of the traditional nonpartisanship of the military, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told the journalists: “Believe me, no one needs to be encouraged to boo the media. Look no further than this query, which is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ruin the lives of young soldiers.”
But a commander at Fort Bragg commented, “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution,” speaking with Military [dot] com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “This was shameful. I don’t expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term.”
Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) and chair of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers (R-AL) have said nothing. Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch, who served as a Marine, called their silence “a betrayal of their duty to the military and the Republic.”
The administration’s policies continue to gather opposition. More than 90 scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, signed and another 250 supported anonymously a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH leader Jay Bhattacharya titled the Bethesda Declaration. The scientists used as a model Bhattacharya’s own October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which echoed the political plan of the first Trump White House and called for ending any attempt to control Covid-19 and instead simply letting it spread.
The Bethesda Declaration said: “[W]e dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.” It said the leaders of NIH and members of Congress who oversee it are prioritizing “political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.” They called out the politicization of research by stopping high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts, thus throwing away “years of hard work and millions of dollars,” risking the health of participants in studies, and damaging public trust.
They noted that some of the signers felt they had to remain anonymous while others, “due to a culture of fear and suppression created by this Administration[,] chose not to sign their names for fear of retaliation.”
Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing of Politico reported today that former Trump allies are turning on Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino. Both of them had pushed a number of conspiracy theories on right-wing media before Trump appointed them to office, and supporters expected that they would expose the “Deep State” once they were in power. But they have not released new information about the Jeffrey Epstein case, which right-wing adherents believe will show a list of people who are implicated in the convicted sex offender’s actions. Micah Morrison at the right-wing Judicial Watch wrote: “Conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the FBI.”
Yesterday, voters in districts in Florida, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma chose state House and Senate members in special elections. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes that in five of the six, Democrats continued to overperform relative to their 2024 numbers.
Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky, Calen Razor, and Mia McCarthy reported today that of the 50 Republican members of Congress they surveyed, only 7 said they planned to go to the June 14 military parade in Washington, D.C. Although the parade is in honor of the 250th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Army, the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees do not plan to attend.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has criticized Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, yesterday said: “I love parades, but I’m not really excited about $40 million for a parade. I don’t really think the symbolism of tanks and missiles is really what we’re all about…. All the images that come to mind are Soviet Union and North Korea.”
Today, Paul told Jordain Carney of Politico that the White House has uninvited him from the annual White House picnic for members of Congress and their families, a move that Paul learned of only when he tried to pick up the tickets and that he called “incredibly petty.” He commented that the “level of immaturity is beyond words.”
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At a press conference for Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles today, Noem’s security assaulted Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA), dragged him into the hallway, forced him to the floor, and handcuffed him as he tried to ask the secretary a question.
Senator Padilla is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary subcommittee on immigration, citizenship, and border safety. That subcommittee has “oversight of federal agencies with citizenship, asylum, refugee, and immigration enforcement responsibilities.”
After the attack, Senator Padilla explained: “I'm here in Los Angeles today, and I was here in the federal building in the conference room, awaiting a scheduled briefing from federal officials as part of my responsibility as a senator to provide oversight and accountability. While I was waiting for the briefing…, I learned that Secretary Noem was having a press conference a couple of doors down the hall. Since the beginning of the year, but especially…over the course of recent weeks, I—several of my colleagues—have been asking the Department of Homeland Security for more information and more answers on their increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions. And we've gotten little to no information in response to our inquiries.
“And so I came to the press conference to hear what she had to say, to see if I could learn any new additional information…. At one point, I had a question. And so I began to ask a question. I was almost immediately forcibly removed from the room. I was forced to the ground, and I was handcuffed. I was not arrested. I was not detained.
“I will say this. If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question, if this is how the Department of Homeland Security responds to a senator with a question, you can only imagine what they're doing to farm workers, to cooks, to day laborers out in the Los Angeles community and throughout California and throughout the country. We will hold this administration accountable.”
Secretary Noem implied that neither she nor her security knew who the senator was, but even if she had forgotten speaking with him in Senate hearings, a video of the encounter records him saying clearly: “I’m Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary.” Senator or not, he did not behave in a way that suggested a threat to the secretary. The Department of Homeland Security said Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater and interrupted a live news conference” and claimed that he “lunged” toward the secretary.
Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) answered: “This is a lie. We all saw the video. The Senator clearly identified himself, and he did not ‘lunge’ toward anyone.” She added: “If these miserable propagandists will lie to you about roughing up a U.S. Senator in a room full of reporters, what won't they lie to you about?”
The assault on Padilla comes days after the Department of Justice under Trump indicted Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on federal charges saying she impeded immigration officers outside a New Jersey detention center.
While Democratic senators and representatives are outraged, they are having little success getting their Republican colleagues to join them. House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) suggested that Padilla had charged Noem—the videos show no such thing—and suggested the Senate should censure Padilla for “wildly inappropriate” behavior.
While much focus has been on the assault itself, what Noem was saying before Padilla spoke out is crucially important. "We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city."
In other words, the Trump administration is vowing to get rid of the democratically elected government of California by using military force. That threat is the definition of a coup. It suggests MAGA considers any political victory but their own to be illegitimate and considers themselves justified in removing those government officials with violence: a continuation of the attempt of January 6, 2021, to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Priscilla Alvarez and Natasha Bertrand of CNN reported today that, although the Trump administration said its federalization of the National Guard and mobilization of Marines into Los Angeles was an emergency response to rioting, in fact White House officials began talking about using the National Guard and the military as support for immigration enforcement as early as February. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and officials from the Department of Homeland Security led the talks. They also want to use military facilities to hold detainees.
Andrew Gumbel of The Guardian reported today that the National Guard troops and Marines deployed to Los Angeles do not want to be caught in a political battle and are deeply unhappy about their position. Marine Corps veteran Janessa Goldbeck, who runs the Vet Voice Foundation, told Gumbel: “The overall perception was that the situation was nowhere at the level where marines were necessary.”
Yesterday, Trump’s hand-picked chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Lieutenant General Dan Caine, told the Senate that the United States is not, in fact, “being invaded by a foreign nation,” the argument Trump used to send Venezuelans to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador. Caine said: “[A]t this point in time I don’t see any foreign state-sponsored folks invading.” Asked by Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) if there was “a rebellion somewhere in the United States,” he answered simply, “I think there’s definitely some frustrated folks out there.”
Alvarez and Bertrand note that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday confirmed what California governor Gavin Newsom has been calling out: that Trump’s Saturday order activating the National Guard was not specific to California. It could apply to other states. “Part of it was about getting ahead of the problem, so that if in other places, if there are other riots, in places where law enforcement officers are threatened, we would have the capability to surge National Guard there, if necessary,” Hegseth said on Wednesday.
Earlier this week, Texas announced plans to deploy 5,000 troops, and Dionne Searcey of the New York Times reported today that Missouri’s Republican governor, Mike Kehoe, activated the Missouri National Guard as well. “While other states may wait for chaos to ensue, the State of Missouri is taking a proactive approach in the event that assistance is needed to support local law enforcement in protecting our citizens and communities,” Kehoe said in a press release.
It certainly appears as though militarization is no longer about deportations. This morning, Trump posted on social media: “Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace. In many cases the Criminals allowed into our Country by the VERY Stupid Biden Open Borders Policy are applying for those jobs. This is not good. We must protect our Farmers, but get the CRIMINALS OUT OF THE USA. Changes are coming!”
This afternoon he told reporters: “Our farmers are being hurt badly by, you know, they have very good workers, they've worked for them for 20 years, they're not citizens, but they've turned out to be, you know, great. And we're going to have to do something about that. We can't take farmers and take all their people and send them back because they don't have maybe what they're supposed to have, maybe not. And you know what's going to happen and what is happening? They get rid of some of the people, because, you know, you go into a farm and you look and people don't, they've been there for 20, 25 years and they've worked great, and the owner of the farm loves them and everything else. And then you're supposed to throw them out, and you know what happens? They end up hiring the people, the criminals that have come in. The murderers from prisons and everything else. So we're gonna have an order on that pretty soon, I think. We can't do that to our farmers and leisure too, hotels. We're gonna have to use a lot of common sense on that.”
So if it is no longer administration policy to engage in the sweeps that are causing such chaos and sparking protests, why are Republican authorities mobilizing troops?
After today’s events, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional scholar, stood in front of the Capitol and reminded Americans: “We have no kings here, we have no queens here, we have no emperors, we have no dictators, we have no despots, and we have no serfs and no slaves and no subjects, and none of us is a subject to Donald Trump. None of us is a subject to Mike Johnson. We are all citizens, those of us who aspire and attain to public office are nothing but the servants of the people. And the minute that somebody in public office thinks that they're a king, they're a queen, they're an emperor, they're a dictator, that is time for the people to evict, eject, reject, impeach, try, convict, and start all over again, because the most important words of our Constitution are the three first words of the Constitution: ‘We the people.’”
Tonight, U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer ruled that Trump broke the law when he federalized the California National Guard and that he must return those troops to the control of California governor Gavin Newsom. Breyer granted California’s request for a restraining order but delayed enforcement of his order until Friday at noon. Just before midnight Eastern Time, a panel of the 9th Circuit granted a stay that permits Trump to retain control until a June 17 hearing.
Tonight, Israel launched what it called “a pre-emptive strike on Iran, and declared a state of emergency in Israel” in anticipation of a retaliatory strike. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also currently Trump's national security advisor, issued a statement for the White House saying that the U.S. was not involved in the strikes and that “our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.” He urged Iran not to “target U.S. interests or personnel.”
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Two hundred and fifty years ago, on June 14, 1775, the Second Continental Congress resolved “That six companies of expert riflemen, be immediately raised in Pennsylvania, two in Maryland, and two in Virginia; that each company consist of a captain, three lieutenants, four serjeants, four corporals, a drummer or trumpeter, and sixty-eight privates…[and that] each company, as soon as completed, shall march and join the army near Boston, to be there employed as light infantry, under the command of the chief Officer in that army.”
And thus Congress established the Continental Army.
The First Continental Congress, which met in 1774, refused to establish a standing army, afraid that a bad government could use an army against its people. The Congress met in response to the British Parliament’s closing of the port of Boston and imposition of martial law there, but its members hoped they could repair their relationship with King George III and simply sent entreaties to the king to end what were known as the “Intolerable Acts.”
In 1775 the Battles of Lexington and Concord changed the equation. On April 19, British soldiers opened fire on colonists just as Patriot leaders feared they might. In the aftermath of that deadly day, about 15,000 untrained Massachusetts militiamen converged on Boston and laid siege to the town, where they bottled up about 6,500 British Regulars.
The Battles of Lexington and Concord made it clear the British government endangered American liberties. The Second Continental Congress met in what is now called Independence Hall in Philadelphia on May 10, 1775, to address the crisis in Boston. The delegates overcame their suspicions of a standing army to conclude they must bring the various state militias into a continental organization to stand against King George III.
With the establishment of the Continental Army, a British officer, General Charles Lee, resigned his commission in the British Army and published a public letter explaining that the king’s overreach had turned him away from service in His Majesty’s army and toward the Patriots:
“[W]henever it shall please his Majesty to call me forth to any honourable service against the natural hereditary enemies of our country, or in defence of his just rights and dignity, no man will obey the righteous summons with more zeal and alacrity than myself,” he wrote, “but the present measures seem to me so absolutely subversive of the rights and liberties of every individual subject, so destructive to the whole empire at large, and ultimately so ruinous to his Majesty's own person, dignity and family, that I think myself obliged in conscience as a Citizen, Englishman, and Soldier of a free state, to exert my utmost to defeat them.”
After they established a Continental Army, the next thing Congress members did was to name a French and Indian War veteran, Virginia planter George Washington, commander-in-chief. To Washington fell the challenge of establishing an army to defend the nation without creating a military a tyrant could use to repress the people.
It was not an easy project. The Continental Army was made up of volunteers who were loyal primarily to the officers they had chosen, and because Congress still feared a standing army, their enlistments initially were short. Different units trained with different field manuals, making it hard to turn them into a unified fighting force. Women came to the camps with their men, often bringing their children. The women worked for the half-rations the government provided, washing, cooking, hauling water, and tending the wounded.
After an initial bout of enthusiasm at the start of the war, men stopped enlisting, and in 1777 Congress increased the times of enlistment to three years or “for the duration” of the conflict. That meant that the men in the army were more often poor than wealthy, enlisting for the bounties offered, and Congress found it easy to overlook those 12,000 people encamped about 18 miles to the northwest of Philadelphia in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, for six months in the hard winter of 1777–1778. The Congress had no way to compel the states to provide money, food, or supplies for the army, and the army almost fell apart for lack of support.
Supply chains broke as the British captured food or it spoiled in transit to the soldiers, and wartime inflation meant Congress did not appropriate enough money for food. Hunger and disease stalked the camp, but even worse was the lack of clothing. More than 1,000 soldiers died, and about eight or ten deserted every day. Washington warned the president of the Continental Congress that the men were close to mutiny, even as a group of army officers were working with congressmen to replace Washington, complaining about how he was prosecuting the war.
By February 1778 a delegation from the Continental Congress had visited Valley Forge and, understanding that the lack of supplies made the army, and thus the country, truly vulnerable, set out to reform the supply department. Then a newly arrived Prussian officer, Baron Friedrich von Steuben, drilled the soldiers into unity and better morale. And then, in May, the soldiers learned that France had signed a treaty with the American states in February, lending money, matériel, and men to the cause of American independence. The army survived.
By the end of 1778, the main theater of the war had shifted to the South, where British officers hoped to recruit Loyalists to their side. Instead, guerrilla bands helped General Nathanael Greene bait the British into a war of endurance that finally ended on October 19, 1781, at the Battle of Yorktown in Virginia, where British general Charles Cornwallis surrendered to General Washington and French commander Jean-Baptiste-Donatien de Vimeur, Comte de Rochambeau.
The Continental Army had defeated the army of the king and established a nation based on the principle that all men were created equal and had a right to have a say in the government under which they lived.
In September 1783, negotiators concluded the Treaty of Paris that formally ended the war, and Congress discharged most of the troops still in service. In his November 2 farewell address to his men, Washington noted that their victory against such a formidable power was “little short of a standing Miracle.” “[W]ho has before seen a disciplined Army formed at once from such raw materials?” Washington wrote. “Who that was not a witness could imagine, that the most violent local prejudices would cease so soon, and that Men who came from the different parts of the Continent, strongly disposed by the habits of education, to despise and quarrel with each other, would instantly become but one patriotic band of Brothers?”
With the army disbanded, General Washington himself stepped away from military leadership. On December 23, Washington addressed Congress, saying: “Having now finished the work assigned me, I retire from the great theatre of action, and bidding an affectionate farewell to this august body, under whose orders I have so long acted, I here offer my commission, and take my leave of all the employments of public life.”
In 1817, given the choice of subjects to paint for the Rotunda in the U.S. Capitol, being rebuilt after the British had burned it during the War of 1812, fine artist John Trumbull picked the moment of Washington’s resignation from the army. As he discussed the project with President James Madison, Trumbull told the president: “I have thought that one of the highest moral lessons ever given to the world, was that presented by the conduct of the commander-in-chief, in resigning his power and commission as he did, when the army, perhaps, would have been unanimously with him, and few of the people disposed to resist his retaining the power which he had used with such happy success, and such irreproachable moderation.”
Madison agreed, and the painting of a man voluntarily walking away from the leadership of a powerful army rather than becoming a dictator hangs today in the Capitol Rotunda.
It is the story of this Army, 250 years old tomorrow, that President Donald J. Trump says he is honoring with a military parade in Washington, D.C., although it also happens to be his 79th birthday.
But the celebration of ordinary people who fought against tyranny will be happening not just in the nation’s capital but all across the country, as Americans participating in at least 2,000 planned No Kings protests recall the principles American patriots championed 250 years ago.
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Tonight I offer you Peter Ralston’s “Still There.”
I hope that you'll put your own photos from the day’s protests in the comments. Let’s make a record.
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I spent a good while scrolling through the photos people posted in reply to this on FB. They are inspiring and hope filled!
Yesterday began with the horrific news that a gunman had shot two Minnesota lawmakers and their spouses in what Minnesota governor Tim Walz said appeared to be a “politically motivated assassination.” State representative Melissa Hortman, who was the top Democrat in the Minnesota House, and her husband, Mark, both died in the attack at their home in Brooklyn Park, a city near Minneapolis. The gunman also shot Democratic Minnesota state senator John Hoffman nine times and his wife, Yvette, eight at their home in Champlin. The hospital reports they are in stable condition after surgery.
Law enforcement officers encountered the suspected gunman, 57-year-old Vance Boelter, coming out of Hortman’s house. He was dressed as a police officer. Officers exchanged gunfire with him before he fled, leaving behind his vehicle, which looked much like a police car. In it was a list of dozens of people he wanted to kill. They were mostly Democrats or people connected to abortion rights efforts. Law enforcement officers captured Boelter tonight.
MAGA Republicans are working hard to identify Boelter with what Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) called “Marxism” and Senator Bernie Moreno (R-OH) called “the extreme left,” but as investigative journalist Phil Williams of NewsChannel 5 Nashville notes, public databases show Boelter was in the past a registered Republican. His evangelical religion and his anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion stances reflect MAGA positions. Boelter’s roommate told reporters that Boelter was a “strong” supporter of President Trump.
Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) noted that MAGA has been “bathed in political violence” for the last five years. Trump’s pardoning of the January 6 rioters, including those convicted of extreme violence, “became a clear endorsement of violence committed in his name.” Trump has encouraged violence and cozied up to brutal dictators, while MAGA has fetishized guns. When he celebrates violence, unhinged people listen. Murphy points out that while people of all political persuasions commit violence, no Democratic leader encourages violence as a political norm the way Trump and MAGA have done, citing “a straight line from Jan 6 to the pardons to the assault on Sen[ator] Padilla to Minnesota.”
After the shootings, Andrew Solender of Axios reported that lawmakers of both parties are concerned about their own safety as political violence increases. The Minnesota attacks happened just days after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s security guard shoved Senator Alex Padilla (D-CA) to the ground and handcuffed him after he asked a question. This assault sparked apparent fury among the Democrats on Capitol Hill as they challenged their Republican colleagues—largely unsuccessfully—to speak up against the assault on a senator.
The entire Minnesota delegation to the U.S. Congress issued a joint statement on politically motivated shootings. Democrats and Republicans together wrote: “Today we speak with one voice to express our outrage, grief, and condemnation of this horrible attack on public servants. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated violence. We are praying for John and Yvette’s recovery and we grieve the loss of Melissa and Mark with their family, colleagues, and Minnesotans across the state. We are grateful for law enforcement’s swift response to the situation and continued efforts.”
After that start to the day, the country turned to the “No Kings” protests. In a dramatic rejection of Trump’s consolidation of power, at least five million Americans turned out for peaceful protests across the country. Cities turned out huge numbers of protesters at more than 2,000 planned events, and small towns, including those in Republican-dominated states, also boasted rallies. The mood was festive as people held signs with anti-Trump and pro-American images and slogans and sang Woody Guthrie’s famous American anthem, “This Land Is Your Land.” American flags were everywhere.
In contrast to the huge turnout for the protests, the military parade in Washington, D.C., was a bust. Although Trump had claimed it would be a celebration of the 250th anniversary of the American Army, it was also his 79th birthday and was widely interpreted primarily as a celebration of that occasion. Trump has wanted a parade since 2017, when he viewed the traditional Bastille Day military parade in Paris. At the time, he told reporters: “It was one of the greatest parades I’ve ever seen…. We’re going to have to try to top it.”
But organizers had had only two months to arrange for the parade, and the result was badly organized, with relatively few people turning out, especially after forecasts of storms that evening. Far from the crisp marching of the military parades that Trump seemed to want to top, the U.S. soldiers appeared to shuffle, leading to a social media debate over whether they had been ordered to march in an “at ease march” instead of a more rigorous step, or whether they were silently protesting. Photographers recorded empty bleachers and thin crowds. Few Republican lawmakers attended, but cameras caught Trump looking miserable and Secretary of State Marco Rubio yawning.
The contrast between the protests and the military parade suggested an important shift in political culture. The momentum and the joy, as well as the American flags, were on the side of those protesting Trump’s growing authoritarianism. Trump looked weak and discouraged, and the crowds were clearly on the side of the protesters. Today, social media, including a Russian account, got into the act of making fun of Trump's military parade.
At the Philadelphia Inquirer, Will Bunch noted that “the flag is mightier than the tank.”
The rejection Trump faced yesterday, podcaster Jack Hopkins noted, “was a big tub of rock salt poured on his wounds of lifelong insecurity.” That profound injury to Trump’s sense of self braced observers for a lashing out of epic proportions as he tries to demonstrate that he is, in fact, powerful.
We got that anger and fear in a social media post at 8:43 p.m. tonight. In a post almost certainly not written by Trump, his account backed off on Trump’s recent retreat from mass deportations. Instead, the account said “ICE Officers are herewith ordered, by notice of this TRUTH, to do all in their power to achieve the very important goal of delivering the single largest Mass Deportation Program in History.”
The account then declared war on Democrats. The day after a gunman shot two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in their homes, Trump’s account posted:
“[W]e must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest Cities, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, where Millions upon Millions of Illegal Aliens reside. These, and other such Cities, are the core of the Democrat Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections, and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens. These Radical Left Democrats are sick of mind, hate our Country, and actually want to destroy our Inner Cities—And they are doing a good job of it! There is something wrong with them. That is why they believe in Open Borders, Transgender for Everybody, and Men playing in Women’s Sports—And that is why I want ICE, Border Patrol, and our Great and Patriotic Law Enforcement Officers, to FOCUS on our crime ridden and deadly Inner Cities, and those places where Sanctuary Cities play such a big role. You don’t hear about Sanctuary Cities in our Heartland!”
The post promised ICE that “REAL Americans are cheering you on every day” and urged them to “reverse the tide of Mass Destruction Migration that has turned once Idyllic Towns into scenes of Third World Dystopia.” It doubled down on the neo-Nazi idea of “REMIGRATION” and concluded: “To ICE, FBI, DEA, ATF, the Patriots at Pentagon and the State Department, you have my unwavering support. Now go, GET THE JOB DONE! DJT”
Will Trump’s demands swing people behind him? Americans have already turned against Trump’s handling of immigration and deportations by significant margins. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers summarized the polls from June 9–13. Answering the question “Do you approve of the way the president is handling…immigration?” respondents for YouGov/Economist were the only ones to produce a majority—of just four points—saying yes. For AP-NORC, Quinnipiac, and Washington Post/GMU, the answer was no by as much as 15 points. On every other question dealing with immigration, more people opposed Trump’s policies than supported them by as much as 16 points.
Trump’s other policies are underwater—meaning more people oppose them than approve of them—as well. Only 27% of registered voters support the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, while 53% oppose it. As for Trump himself, a Quinnipiac Poll from June 11 showed that 38% of registered voters approve of the way he is handling the job of the presidency, while 54% disapprove. Only 30% of registered voters approved “strongly” of the way he is handling the job, while 49% strongly disapprove.
While Trump and his loyalists are trying to project an image of invincibility, their actual power seems to be faltering.
Ten years ago tomorrow, on June 16, 2015, Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower to a lobby filled with extras, to announce he was running for president. One reporter called his speech, in which he claimed that Mexico was sending criminals and rapists to the United States, "eccentric."
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At a news conference today, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Minnesota Joseph H. Thompson, who was appointed by President Donald Trump just two weeks ago, said that Minnesota suspect Vance Boelter went to the homes of two more politicians than the two he eventually shot along with their spouses. One was on vacation with her family, and at another home, a police officer apparently scared him off.
Thompson said Boelter had “voluminous” writings that showed he had been planning the attacks for “quite some time.” “But,” Thompson added, “I have not seen anything involving some sort of political screed or manifesto that would clearly identify what motivated him. Obviously, his primary motive was to go out and murder people. They were all elected officials. They were all Democrats. Beyond that, I think it’s just way too speculative for anyone that’s reviewed these materials to know and to say what was motivating him in terms of ideology or specific issues.”
Zoe Sottile of CNN reported that Boelter is facing federal charges of two counts of stalking, two counts of murder, and two counts of firearms offenses. He is facing state charges of first-degree murder, second degree murder, and attempted murder.
MAGA loyalists have continued to radicalize in the wake of the shootings, spreading disinformation that blamed the violence on Democrats or joking about the event. Walker Orenstein of the Minnesota Star Tribune debunked the disinformation spread by MAGA loyalists, noting that Boelter was not close to Walz, who simply okayed his reappointment to a bipartisan board that then-governor Mark Dayton had put him on in 2016. According to his roommate, Boelter was a “strong supporter” of Trump.
Emily Anderson Stern and Robert Gehrke of the Salt Lake Tribune called out Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) for his behavior in the aftermath of the shootings. Lee joked about the killings and falsely blamed the violence on his political opponents, tying the shooting to Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) responded: “This was an incredible woman, her husband, her two kids—yesterday on Father’s Day, there was no Father’s Day for them. They lost both their parents…. This is not a laughing matter, and certainly what we’re seeing is an increase in violence, and this evil man who did this—this is not a joke.”
Of Lee’s behavior, influencer George Takei wrote: “Utah voters: Are these really your values? Mike Lee is the best you can do?” After Lee pinned one of his disturbing tweets to the top of his social media timeline, Tim Miller of The Bulwark wrote: “This is less of a political matter than a sign of deep mental illness.”
As of this afternoon, Trump had not called Walz, calling him “a terrible governor” and “a grossly incompetent person.”
Trump drew criticism of his own incompetence today at the meeting of the Group of Seven (G7) in Kananaskis, Alberta, in Canada. The G7 is a forum of democracies with advanced economies that includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, as well as the European Union. During today’s meetings, Trump seemed to think the United Kingdom and the European Union were the same thing.
Trump also parroted Russian talking points, telling reporters: “The G7 used to be the G8. Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn't want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake, because I think you wouldn't have a war right now if you had Russia in, and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were president four years ago.”
In fact, the members of the G7 kicked Russia out of the forum after Russian president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in 2014. And former Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau didn’t take office until 2015.
On Friday, journalist Dean Blundell reported that Washington insiders and observers from abroad had noticed how rarely Trump appears in public and how often he falls asleep when he does, prompting speculation that he is not physically able to do the work of the presidency. Blundell suggested Trump’s team would look for a way to get the president out of the G7 early to avoid exposure.
After today’s meetings, at which it appears the U.S. was delaying a joint statement in which G7 members called for an end to the conflict between Israel and Iran, Trump posted on social media: “Iran should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign,” although it was Trump who pulled out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the “Iran nuclear deal” that limited Iran’s nuclear program. He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!”
More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.
Then Trump’s team announced the situation in the Middle East required the president to leave the G7 a day early.
Twelve minutes after his post about evacuating Tehran, Trump reposted a Newsmax story saying that Trump “deserves an A+ for his job performance so far,” and less than an hour later, he posted an attack on right-wing personality Tucker Carlson and then posted: “AMERICA FIRST means many GREAT things, including that fact that IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!!” Just before midnight, he posted an attack on California governor Gavin Newsom.
It’s unclear what Trump’s abrupt departure from the G7 indicates for events in the Middle East and U.S. involvement in them. As Brian O’Neill of The Contrarian noted, Trump had said he hoped to negotiate a deal with Iran, and indeed, talks were scheduled for Sunday in Oman when Israel launched its attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities on Friday. O’Neill notes that when Israel struck Iran last Friday without U.S. coordination, the Trump administration was left “scrambling to respond.”
Being sidelined in foreign affairs at the same time as the American people turned out in huge numbers to protest his administration and as his military parade fizzled shows Trump has less power than he tries to project.
How decisions are being made in the administration is unclear. Notably, after Trump wrote last Thursday that “changes are coming” in deportation orders because it made no sense to deport workers who had been here for a long time and were vital to farms, hotels, and restaurants, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) today reversed that decision.
Carol D. Leonnig, Natalie Allison, Marianne LeVine, and Lauren Kaori Gurley of the Washington Post reported that after Trump’s post and comments to reporters, a DHS official told agents to pause raids on agriculture, including meatpacking plants, as well as restaurants and hotels. But on Sunday, DHS leadership suggested a reversal was coming because, as the journalists write, “the White House did not support” the new policy. In a call this morning, officials from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told agents to continue immigration raids at the businesses Trump had said he was going to protect.
This shift makes it seem as if White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, a white nationalist who insists that the U.S. must deport a million immigrants this year, is determining White House policies, just as he did on the Signal chat about the military strikes on the Houthis in Yemen when his statement that Trump wanted a strike appeared to shut down any further debate of the question.
If Trump is leaving the work of the presidency to others, his family is certainly using the prestige of the presidency to make money. In what it says is in honor of the tenth anniversary of Trump’s trip down the Trump Tower escalator into presidential politics, the Trump Organization has launched a mobile phone service. As Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone explains, the plan is essentially another licensing deal, with the disclaimer specifying that the service simply uses the Trump name after contracting with another provider.
The announcement claims that new made-in-America gold phones will be available in September, but as David Pierce of The Verge notes, the photoshopped image of the phone and the wonky specs on it, as well as the impossible promise to make them in America within three months, mean the phone “looks both bad and impossible.” The phone, too, is simply branded with the Trump name; the family business will not design or manufacture it.
The family was evidently in a hurry to get this venture up and running. Kelcee Griffis of Bloomberg reported that the Trump Organization only applied for the trademarks for it last Thursday.
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Yesterday at the meeting of the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7), a forum of democracies with advanced economies, President Donald Trump told reporters: “The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like them, that's why. That's the ultimate protection.”
Commenters often note that Trump talks like a mob boss, but rarely has his organized-crime style of governance been clearer than in yesterday’s statement.
Also yesterday, Ana Swanson and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported that Trump has taken unprecedented control over U.S. Steel. Japan’s Nippon Steel has been trying to take over U.S. Steel since 2023, but the Biden administration blocked the deal for security reasons. In order to move it forward, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick demanded an agreement that gives to the president and his successors, or a person the president designates, a single share of preferred stock, known as class G, or “gold.” The deal gives the president permanent veto power over nearly a dozen actions the company might want to take, as well as power over its board of directors.
Swanson and Hirsch note that the U.S. government historically takes a stake in companies only when they are in financial trouble or when they play a significant role in the economy. “We have a golden share, which I control, or the president controls,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Now I’m a little concerned whoever the president might be, but that gives you total control.”
This kind of deal echoes those of the authoritarians Trump appears to admire. His ongoing support for Russian president Vladimir Putin was on display at the G7, when he echoed Russian talking points that blamed European countries and the United States for Putin’s war against Ukraine, rather than acknowledging that it was Russia that attacked Ukraine after giving assurances that it would respect Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up the Soviet nuclear weapons stored there.
Also yesterday, Rene Marsh and Ella Nilsen of CNN reported that officials from the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump have been telling staff in the Midwest—which the authors note has a legacy of industrial pollution—to “stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies.” At the same time, the Department of Justice has cut its environmental division significantly, leaving “no one to do the work.”
Trump vowed that if he were reelected he would slash the oil and gas regulations he claims are “burdensome.” Now, one EPA enforcement staffer told Marsh and Nilsen, “The companies are scoffing at the cops. EPA enforcement doesn’t have the leverage they once had.”
Also yesterday, outdoor journalist Wes Siler reported in Wes Siler’s Newsletter that while language inserted in the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill requires the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of publicly owned land, an amendment authorizes the sale of 258 million acres more over the next five years. The amendment comes from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and was written by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Steve Daines (R-MT).
It includes Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands in 11 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. As Siler notes, while the measure does not currently include national monument lands, the Department of Justice under Trump is arguing that the president can revoke national monument protections. If it did so, that would make another 13.5 million acres available for purchase.
Siler notes the process for selling those lands calls for an enormous rush on sales, “all without hearings, debate, or public input opportunities.”
Today, Eliot Brown of the Wall Street Journal reported that Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, is now one of the many wealthy foreign real estate developers “pouring money” into the Trump Organization. Brown noted that the Trump family is aggressively developing its businesses while Trump is in the White House, reaching past real estate into cryptocurrency and other sectors.
The growing power of international oligarchs to use the resources of the government for their own benefit recalls a speech Robert Mueller, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, gave in New York City in 2011. In it, he explained that globalization and modern technology had changed the nature of organized crime. No longer regional networks with a clear structure, he said, organized crime had become international, fluid, and sophisticated, with multibillion-dollar stakes. Its operators were cross-pollinating across countries, religions, and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. They did not care about ideology; they cared about money. They would do anything for a price.
These criminals “may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military,” he said. “They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”
These criminal enterprises, he noted, were working to corner the market on oil, gas, and precious metals. And to do so, Mueller explained, they “may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called 'iron triangles' of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”
The FBI’s increasing focus on organized crime and national security is what prompted its interest in the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.
The willingness of Republicans to enable Trump’s behavior is especially striking today, since June 17 is the anniversary of the 1972 Watergate break-in. On that day, operatives associated with President Richard M. Nixon’s team tried to tap the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington’s Watergate complex. Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard, noticed that a door lock had been taped open. He ripped off the tape and closed the door, but on his next round, he found the door taped open again. He called the police, who found five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the building.
The story played out over the next two years with Nixon insisting he was not involved in the affair, but in early August 1974 a tape recorded just days after the break-in revealed Nixon and an aide plotting to invoke national security to protect the president. Republican senators who had not wanted to convict their president of the charges of impeachment being considered in the House knew the game was over. A delegation of them went to the White House to tell Nixon they would vote to convict him.
On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign.
Chris Geidner of LawDork notes that despite the lawmakers in our own era who are unwilling to stop Trump, “the pushback…is very real.” Geidner notes not just the No Kings Day protests of the weekend, but also a lawsuit by the American Bar Association (ABA) suing Trump for his attacks on law firms and lawyers, calling Trump’s actions “unprecedented and uniquely dangerous to the rule of law.”
Geidner also notes that lower court judges are upholding the Constitution, and he points especially to U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan. In a hearing yesterday, Young insisted on holding the government accountable “for both Trump's actions and the follow-up actions from those Trump has empowered to act.”
Young called cuts to funding for National Institutes of Health research grants “illegal” and “void” and ordered the NIH to restore the funds immediately. “I am hesitant to draw this conclusion—but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it—that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.”
“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Young said during the hearing. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.” He added: “You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that.… Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”
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Tomorrow is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.
That announcement came as late as it did because, while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.
Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:
“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”
Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.
Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.
But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.
In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes, and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.
Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.
By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”
That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.
Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.
Three months later the federal government, eager to explain to Black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation. The next year, the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America.
In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war’s end. In 1866 it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived.
Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.
But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy means reducing the power of the federal government and centering the power of the state governments, where voters—registered according to state laws—can choose the policies they prefer…even if they are discriminatory. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.
In 2025, as the Trump administration echoes those people, celebrations of Juneteenth are being cut back or even canceled. Corporate sponsors and local governments, as well as the national government, are pulling back their support for festivals and Juneteenth events.
Our history matters. Juneteenth is the celebration of a new nation, one that would honor the equality of all Americans—and one that, 160 years after it was established, we are in danger of losing as those in power set about rewriting the record.
To make sure people can still get the real story of Juneteenth and why it matters, my team produced this short video.
Wishing you all a meaningful Juneteenth.
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Just a week ago, the Trump administration was preparing for a sixth round of negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, scheduled to be held in Oman on June 15.
In 2018, President Donald J. Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiated in 2015 by President Barack Obama, under which the U.S., China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for limits to Iran’s nuclear program. With the U.S. withdrawal, the agreement fell apart.
Trump launched a “maximum pressure campaign” of stronger sanctions to pressure Iran to renegotiate the JCPOA, which lasted throughout his first term. Back in office, Trump relaunched that campaign in February 2025. Then, in March 2025, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told Congress that the assessment of the Intelligence Community was that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon.
In the same month, Trump said on the Fox News Channel that he had written a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging the Iranians to negotiate “because if we have to go in militarily it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said Iran would not “enter any direct negotiations with the U.S. so long as they continue their maximum pressure policy and their threats.”
But Iran’s allied militant actors Hamas and Hezbollah in Lebanon have been badly hurt by Israeli strikes since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, and Iran’s major ally in the Middle East, Bashar al-Assad of Syria, fell in December 2024. Discussions began in April of this year, and negotiators met for five rounds by the end of May.
Israel was not included in the negotiations, and on Thursday, June 12, it launched strikes against nuclear and military targets in Iran. The strikes killed a number of nuclear scientists and senior military personnel. Iran retaliated, and the countries have been in conflict ever since.
After the strikes, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also became the acting national security advisor after Trump fired his first national security advisor for inviting a journalist onto a Signal chat about a military strike against the Houthis, issued a statement distancing the U.S. from Israel’s attack on Iran. “Tonight,” he said, “Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region. Israel advised us that they believe this action was necessary for its self-defense. President Trump and the Administration have taken all necessary steps to protect our forces and remain in close contact with our regional partners. Let me be clear: Iran should not target U.S. interests or personnel.”
But by early Friday morning, Trump appeared to be trying to take credit for the strikes and demanded that Iran make a deal. The next day—Saturday, June 14—was the day of No Kings protests in which at least 2% of the U.S. population turned out to oppose his presidency, as well as the sparsely attended military parade in Washington, D.C., an embarrassing contrast for the president.
The U.S. possesses a 30,000-pound bomb that would perhaps be able to penetrate Iran’s underground nuclear sites, which are fortified against attack. According to Alex Horton, Maham Javaid, and Warren P. Strobel, the “Massive Ordnance Penetrator” (MOP) can penetrate the ground up to at least 200 feet. The U.S. B-2 Spirit stealth bomber is the only Air Force aircraft that can deploy the heavy MOP.
On June 16, while at the G7 meeting in Canada, Trump posted that Iran “should have signed the ‘deal’ I told them to sign.” He continued: “What a shame, and waste of human life. Simply stated, IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON. I said it over and over again! Everyone should immediately evacuate Tehran!” More than 9 million people live in Tehran, with more than 16 million in the metropolitan area.
Then Trump abruptly left the G7 and on the trip home told reporters on Air Force One that he didn’t care what Gabbard said, and thought Iran was close to achieving nuclear capabilities. When France’s president Emmanuel Macron suggested Trump left to work on a ceasefire, Trump posted: “Wrong! He has no idea why I am now on my way to Washington, but it certainly has nothing to do with a Cease Fire. Much bigger than that. Whether purposely or not, Emmanuel always gets it wrong. Stay tuned!” Later that day, he posted that “[w]e”—a word suggesting U.S. involvement—“now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” and he credited U.S. weaponry with that dominance.
About a half-hour later, he posted: “We know exactly where the so-called “Supreme Leader” is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there—We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now. But we don’t want missiles shot at civilians, or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin.”
As Trump’s “Stay tuned!” suggested, his hints that he could bring the U.S. into the conflict monopolized the news. It has pushed the No Kings Day protests and the military parade to the background, putting Trump back on the front page.
Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo interpreted Trump’s shift to back Israel as a typical Trump branding opportunity: “Israel has got a product ready to go to market and they’ve offered Trump the opportunity to slap the Trump name on it.” In the short term, that product offers a quick way to get rid of the Iranian nuclear program, which has long been a U.S. goal.
But Trump’s flirting with joining a Middle East war has badly split his supporters. Led by Steve Bannon, the isolationist wing is strongly opposed to intervention and suggests that the U.S. will once again be stuck in an endless war.
In contrast, the evangelical MAGA wing sees support for Israel as central to the return of Jesus Christ to Earth in the end times. Earlier this month the U.S. ambassador to Israel, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, said the U.S. was abandoning its longstanding support for a Palestinian state. Huckabee is a strong supporter of the expansion of Israel’s settlements. After the Israeli strikes, Huckabee messaged Trump to urge him to listen to the voice of God. In an apparent reference to Truman’s decision to drop a nuclear weapon on Japan at the end of World War II, Huckabee told Trump: “No President in my lifetime has been in a position like yours. Not since Harry Truman in 1945.”
At the unveiling of two 88-foot-tall (30.5 meters) flagpoles at the White House yesterday, Trump told reporters who asked what he planned to do about Iran: “I mean, you don’t know that I’m going to even do it. You don’t know. I may do it, I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.” He added, “Nothing’s finished until it’s finished. You know, war is very complex. A lot of bad things can happen. A lot of turns are made.”
He told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins: “I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven’t made a final—I like to make the final decision one second before it’s due, you know, because things change.”
Meanwhile, in a hearing yesterday at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) pointed out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that the $1 billion mission he led against the Houthis—who do not have a navy—has not restored the ability of U.S.-flagged commercial vessels to go through the Red Sea. Instead, it cost the U.S. two F18 Hornets, which cost $60 million apiece, and seven Reaper drones that cost another $200 million. Duckworth accused Hegseth of “blowing through money” and said: “Your failures…since you've taken office, have been staggering. You sent classified operational information over Signal to chest thump in front of your wife, who, by the way, has no security clearance, risking service member lives in the process…. You’ve created such a hostile command environment that no one wants to serve as your chief of staff or work with you in other senior lead [Department of Defense] leadership roles.”
“But what we should all be talking about more than all of this,” she added, “is that you have an unjustified, un-American misuse of the military in American cities, pulling resources and attention away from core missions to the detriment of the country, the war fighters, and, yes, the war fighting that you claim to love.”
Warren P. Strobel, Alex Horton, and Abigail Hauslohner of the Washington Post reported yesterday that Hegseth and Gabbard have been sidelined in discussions of whether the U.S. will get involved in the conflict. The White House is also operating without a full complement of professional staffers at the National Security Council, since Rubio fired many of them when he took over from Waltz, apparently with the goal of replacing the think-tank mentality of past NSCs with a group that would simply implement the president’s ideas.
Talking Points Memo’s Marshall noted Tuesday that “there is really, literally no one in the inner discussion of U.S. foreign policy today who has any level of foreign policy or military crisis experience at all.”
Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of lawmakers is pushing back on the idea that Trump can unilaterally decide to take the United States into a war. On Monday, Democratic senator Tim Kaine of Virginia introduced a measure to reassert Congress’s power over the authority to make war. The Constitution explicitly gives that authority to Congress, not the president, but presidents have chipped away at that power for decades. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced another measure to bar the use of federal funds for military force without authorization by Congress.
Today, after Iranian missiles hit an Israeli hospital, Trump seemed to change direction. He issued a statement through White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, falling back on his usual tactic of promising something “in two weeks.” “Based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future, I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks.”
Stay tuned.
Marshall of Talking Points Memo noted today: “A through-line through the last five months is that uncertainty is Donald Trump's personal comfort zone, where he feels *his* power is maximized. But in basically every domain in which he operates uncertainty *in itself* is damaging to everyone else involved.”
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Individuals in plain clothes with their faces covered and without badges or name tags are snatching people off the streets and taking them away. Todd Lyons, the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which is housed within the Department of Homeland Security, claimed that such measures for anonymity are imperative because “ICE officers have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them.”
Philip Bump of the Washington Post looked into that claim and noted that by using a percentage, ICE avoids the question of just how many assaults there have actually been. He points out that year-to-date assaults against Customs and Border Protection are currently 20% lower than they were in 2024 and that at least one ICE news release blurred the distinction between “threatening to assault” and “assaulting.” ICE would not provide evidence for their claims.
Bump concludes: “[W]e should not and cannot take ICE’s representations about the need for its officers to obscure their identities at face value.” After Bump’s article appeared yesterday, the Department of Homeland Security posted on social media: “New data reveals that ICE law enforcement is now facing a 500% increase in assaults while carrying out enforcement operations.”
Bump noted that ICE “has been eager to level dubious charges against Democratic legislators,” and the message from Homeland Security bears that claim out. After claiming a 500% increase in assaults, it continued: “Make no mistake, sanctuary politicians are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE. This violence against ICE must end.”
The Department of Homeland Security appears to be trying to convince Americans that their agents must cover their faces because their opponents, especially Democrats, are dangerous.
On Tuesday, masked, plainclothes ICE agents assaulted and arrested New York City comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, the city’s chief financial officer. Lander was accompanying an immigrant to a scheduled court hearing to try to protect him from arrest in one of ICE’s sweeps of those showing up for their court hearings. Lander asked the agents to produce an arrest warrant for the man they were arresting, and was himself arrested.
Homeland Security said it would charge him with impeding a federal officer and “assaulting law enforcement.” As Bump notes, a video of the incident shows that Lander “assaulted the officers in the sense that a bully might accuse you of having gotten in the way of his fist.” Lander was later released, and New York governor Kathy Hochul said the charges against him had been dropped.
The same pattern occurred last month, when federal prosecutors charged Newark, New Jersey, mayor Ras Baraka with trespassing and interim U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba, broke the Department of Justice rule that it would not comment on ongoing investigations by posting that Baraka had “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW.”
Ten days later, Habba quietly dropped the case and announced another one, this time against U.S. Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), charging her with “assaulting, impeding and interfering with law enforcement” during Baraka’s arrest.
U.S. Magistrate Judge André Espinosa, a federal judge, rebuked the officials who had charged Baraka, warning them that their rush to charge the mayor suggests “a failure to adequately investigate, to carefully gather facts, and to thoughtfully consider the implications of your actions before wielding your immense power.”
But the point of these arrests is almost certainly not an attempt to see justice done. They continue the longstanding Republican policy of seeding the media with a false narrative of bad behavior by their opponents—voter fraud, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s emails, and so on—in order to convince voters that their opponents are dangerous to America.
President Donald J. Trump relied on this political technique so thoroughly that in 2019 he tried to discredit his primary challenger for the 2020 presidential election, then former vice president Joe Biden, by getting Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into the Ukrainian company for which Biden’s son Hunter had worked.
Trump didn’t want an actual investigation; he wanted an announcement that an investigation was being launched. He could trust that media reports would carry the story and its suggestion of corruption from there, even in the absence of evidence, leaving behind his own administration's deep involvement with Russia. Similarly, during Biden’s presidency, Republicans launched a sprawling investigation of what they insisted on calling the “Biden Crime Family” although there was never a Biden family business, their star witness went to prison after confessing to lying to the FBI, and they never produced any evidence that the president had taken foreign bribes. Now, though, with the Trump Organization—a family business—openly making deals with foreign governments, Republicans are silent.
Today, after a week of embarrassing news, Trump continued this pattern by announcing that he is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate claims that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. There has never been any evidence of this Big Lie, and courts dismissed the many cases brought over it. But raising it now, when MAGA is deeply divided over U.S. involvement in the Israel-Iran conflict, could create a distraction and reinforce his loyalists’ support.
There was, of course, a special counsel appointed to look into Trump’s attempt to stay in power despite losing the 2020 presidential election. His name was Jack Smith, and after his investigation, in 2023 a grand jury, made up of American citizens, indicted Trump for engaging in “dishonesty, fraud and conceit” to obstruct American democracy by stopping the counting of votes by which citizens choose their government officials. “Despite having lost,” the indictment reads, Trump “was determined to remain in power.”
Now he is back in office, but he remains unpopular. A new Fox News poll released yesterday shows that only 38% of registered voters like the Republicans’ budget reconciliation omnibus bill, while 59% oppose it, a difference of 21 points. The poll also showed that 55% of registered voters are worried about the economy, 84% are worried about inflation, and 57% think tariffs hurt the economy. Only 46% of respondents approve of Trump’s job performance, while 54% disapprove.
This week’s Economist/YouGov poll shows that 52% of Americans disapprove of how Trump is handling deportations, while only 42% approve, and that Trump’s job approval rating among those from 18 to 29 years old has dropped 44 points since he took office. Many of Trump’s supporters believed he would be deporting only undocumented immigrants who had committed violent crimes, but an investigation by CNN reporters published on Monday showed that fewer than 10% of those taken into custody since October have been convicted of violent crimes.
So members of his administration are centering power in the White House while obscuring who, exactly, is giving orders that either are or might be violating the law. Administration lawyers are still hiding who was actually the head of the Department of Government Efficiency in its first months and who gave the order to send Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to prison in El Salvador. Making lawbreaking opaque makes it harder to prosecute those doing the breaking. It is possible at least some of the drive to hide agents’ faces comes from that impulse, just as members of the Ku Klux Klan hid their faces in the 1860s and 1870s.
There is another important parallel to the Klan in the administration's defense of masked agents who are terrorizing Americans even as they insist they are the ones under attack by dangerous Democrats. The Klan set out to “reform” governments elected by a majority of voters and take control themselves, permanently. In Wilmington, North Carolina, in 1898, about two thousand armed white Democrats overthrew a government of black Republicans and white Populists. The Democrats agreed that the town officials had been elected fairly, but they rejected the outcome of the election nonetheless, insisting that such people were “socialists” and had no idea how to run a government.
On June 12, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in Los Angeles, “We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
When California senator Alex Padilla, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on immigration, citizenship and border safety, tried to ask Noem a question, he was assaulted and handcuffed by agents from the Department of Homeland Security. Yesterday, he noted in a New York Times op-ed that “public safety is not the point; the spectacle is.” Trump “is testing the boundaries of his power,” Padilla wrote, “[a]nd he’s using the theatrics around his immigration policies to do it.”
“If federal troops can deploy to Los Angeles against the wishes of the governor, the mayor and even local law enforcement, they can do the same tomorrow in your hometown,” he wrote. “This is a fundamental threat to the rule of law nationwide.”
But Padilla noted that the attempt to force minority rule on the U.S. through violence shows that the administration is weak. “If the Trump administration was this afraid of one senator with a question,” he wrote, “imagine what the voices of tens of millions of Americans organizing will do.”
Today, at a news conference in Los Angeles, a reporter asked Vice President J.D. Vance if Trump’s administration is “cracking down on Democrats.” Vance, who served with Alex Padilla in the Senate, called his former colleague by the wrong name. Once again seeding the idea that a Democratic lawmaker must be a criminal, Vance called the California senator “José Padilla,” using the name of a man convicted in 2007 of conspiring to commit murder and fund terrorism.
The vice president’s press secretary said the vice president “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
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At 7:50 this evening, Eastern Time, President Donald J. Trump posted on social media: “We have completed our very successful attack on the three Nuclear sites in Iran, including Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. All planes are now outside of Iran air space. A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordow. All planes are safely on their way home. Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this. NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE! Thank you for your attention to this matter.”
Then he reposted a message referring to the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, assumed to be at the center of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, saying: “Fordow is gone.”
Then he posted a statement saying: “I will be giving an Address to the Nation at 10:00 P.M., at the White House, regarding our very successful military operation in Iran. This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR. THANK YOU!”
Then he posted an American flag.
Just after 10:00 tonight, flanked by Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State and acting National Security Advisor Marco Rubio, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump spoke briefly to the nation. He said:
“The U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime, Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan. Everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise. Our objective was the destruction of Iran's nuclear enrichment capacity, and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world's number one state sponsor of terror. Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.
“For 40 years, Iran has been saying, ‘Death to America, death to Israel.’ They have been killing our people, blowing off their arms, blowing off their legs,with roadside bombs. That was their specialty. We lost over a thousand people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate. In particular, so many were killed by their general, Qasem Soleimani [whom Trump ordered assassinated in 2020]. I decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen. It will not continue.
“I want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. We worked as a team, like perhaps no team has ever worked before. And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel. I want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they've done.
“And most importantly, I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight, and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many, many decades. Hopefully, we will no longer need their services in this capacity. I hope that’s so. I also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Dan “Razin” Caine, spectacular general, and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack
“With all of that being said, this cannot continue. There will be either peace, or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days. Remember, there are many targets left. Tonight's was the most difficult of them all by far, and perhaps the most lethal. But if peace does not come quickly, we will go after those other targets with precision, speed, and skill. Most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes.
“There's no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight, not even close. There's never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago. Tomorrow, General Caine, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, will have a press conference at 8:00 a.m. at the Pentagon.
“And I want to just thank everybody and in particular, God, I want to just say we love you, God, and we love our great military, protect them. God bless the Middle East. God bless Israel, and God bless America. Thank you very much. Thank you.”
In The Atlantic, foreign affairs scholar Tom Nichols noted: “President Donald Trump has done what he swore he would not do: involve the United States in a war in the Middle East.”
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