Tag Archives: Trump

Memorial Day

Monday was Memorial Day. In my city of Indianapolis, Memorial Day concludes a “big deal” weekend that features the City’s famous 500 Mile Race and numerous attendant festivities. The original meaning of the holiday tends to get buried in the weekend’s hustle and bustle, as thousands of visitors descend on the city to drink, eat and watch the race.

I hope that–in the midst of the festivities–at least some of us stop to remember that Memorial Day is intended to honor those who have lost their lives serving in the U.S. Military.

In The Contrarian, Jennifer Rubin recently issued that reminder. Memorial Day was intended to “memorialize” the sacrifices of the American soldiers who fought to preserve democracy around the globe. Writing from Spain, where she is traveling, she noted that but for America’s military and financial sacrifices, the world we inhabit today would look very different. If not for the young men and women who were ready to lay down their lives for others, Europe today would not be free.

It’s an appropriate time, as Donald Trump and his MAGA know-nothings throw aside American values (e.g., empathy, selflessness, ingenuity, inclusion), to appreciate the sacrifice of all those who have served. In the midst of debates about Medicaid cuts, debt, and tax cuts for billionaires, we should not lose track of honoring our veterans, whom Trump has nonchalantly kicked to the curb…

While he cuts billions from the Veterans Affairs Department and lays off tens of thousands of vets, Trump wants to throw away tens of millions on a cringeworthy military parade on his birthday, which also happens to be the US Army’s 250th birthday and Flag Day. Rather than honor others’ service by keeping our commitments, he preens amid military pomp like every two-bit dictator on the planet.

Trump cares not one wit about those who, unlike him, risked their lives. Quite the opposite: he has made life notably challenging for vets. Thanks to some masterful Washington Post reporting on the trauma he intentionally inflicted on tens of thousands of government workers, we have learned about the inexcusable toll on veterans in particular, who disproportionately serve in the federal government. Sadly, “Phone operators for the Veterans Crisis Line said they’d seen a rise in calls from federal employees and others worried about cuts to the VA.”

Given that Trump considers those who serve to be “losers and suckers,” it’s hardly surprising that concern for veterans is nowhere on his “to do” list. And the damage isn’t limited to the reckless and illegal DOGE cuts. As Rubin notes, almost every part of the horrific MAGA budget will hit vets especially hard. From the federal personnel firings (vets make up 30% of the federal workforce) to the draconian cuts to Medicaid and VA spending, to the layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, to the petty purge of the Pentagon archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been disproportionate targets of Trump’s cruelest actions. 

That cruelty has prompted the emergence of veterans’ organizations challenging the administration and the MAGA Republicans who are complicit–even enthusiastic–in the Trumpian assault. Vote Vets has proved to be a particularly effective voice for the nation’s veterans, but there are many others.

One wonders how those lawmakers who actually served–Senator Todd Young comes to mind–rationalize their support for the constant assault on veterans’ well-being. During the Memorial Day recess (ending June 2), constituents should ask them.

As Rubin concludes,

Veterans and their families have remained undaunted in military service and in the face of grotesque betrayal by the MAGA ingrates. They deserve better than this president, his cronies, and MAGA flunkies have offered. During their Memorial Day recess, Republican lawmakers who have enabled Trump’s cruelty should take a moment to reflect on what it truly means to put country above self.

Unfortunately, putting country above self is a concept absolutely foreign to MAGA and to the racist madman who occupies–and routinely desecrates–the Oval Office.

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Borowitz Shames Legacy Media

Sometimes it takes comedy to cut through the fog and propaganda. Back in the day, my husband and I were devoted watchers of The Daily Show–a time when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert skillfully skewered the pompous and self-important. (Admittedly, these days, we look at those we thought of as the “bad guys” with something approaching fondness. Compared to Trump and his collection of nutcases and incompetents, they look positively cuddly…)

Recently, the satirical Borowitz Report took on the legacy media’s obsession with President Biden’s decline while in office–an obsession fed by a book accusing his staff of “hiding” the effects of aging. His take was perfect.

In a bombshell report that stirred controversy on Tuesday, a prominent conspiracy theorist claimed that Joe Biden concealed his health problems by making the American economy boom for four straight years.

“Biden thought he could hide his health issues by making the U.S. economy the envy of the world,” the conspiracist, Harland Dorrinson, said. “Low unemployment, a surging stock market, and a stable dollar all played their parts in the cover-up.”

Strengthening NATO and bolstering relationships with allies were also key components of Biden’s elaborate scheme to hide his health woes, Dorrinson said.

“Biden kept the media distracted by making the US trusted and respected around the world,” he said. “Trump would never do that.”

The Biden presidency wasn’t perfect, but it was transformational, repairing the international damage done during Trump’s first term and growing the economy “from the middle out” as he liked to say. Perhaps, as he faded, some of those advances were managed by the highly competent people around him, but they were real. The government worked. Rather than focusing on the substantial progress being made, however, the legacy media jumped on every gaffe, every stumble. 

That disproportionate attention to the ravages of age would have been less offensive had the same degree of attention been paid to Trump’s far more obvious mental illness and decline. But the same media that criticised Biden unmercifully has continually sane-washed Trump.

I agree with Robert Hubbell, who finds the differences in coverage maddening and incomprehensible. Noting the recent “tell-all” book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson claiming that Biden’s advisors “covered up” his “decline,” he wrote:

Let’s put aside for a moment that several of the key figures who allegedly witnessed events described in the book have said publicly, “Not true. It didn’t happen.”

Let’s put aside for a moment that Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson were writing a book about an alleged “cover up” when they were actively reporting on Joe Biden’s presidency, but never mentioned the “cover up” that they were allegedly discovering through 200 interviews.

Let’s put aside the implausability of the notion that one could “cover up” the cognitive state of a man who was appearing daily at campaign events, delivering addresses to Congress where he outwitted the entire Republican caucus, providing interviews to major media outlets, and guiding America through a period of stable foreign relations and successful domestic policy.

If it was a “cover-up,” it didn’t prevent major media outlets from reporting daily on Joe Biden’s age, stutter, stiff gait, and alleged gaffes.

Hubbell does agree that there was a coverup.

Donald Trump was, and is, cognitively impaired. And that fact is being covered up by the media every single day.

We all know it. The press knows it. His advisors know it. But the media gives a fraction of the coverage to Trump’s much more serious manifestations of cognitive decline than to the anonymous reporting in Jake Tapper’s sensationalized book.

Hubbell is absolutely correct when he says that the coverage media is giving today to claims about a former president who guided our nation through one of the most successful presidencies in the modern era is shameful when compared to the normalizing coverage of an “obviously cognitively impaired president who is violating the Constitution on a daily basis and running an administration that seems to be an open cesspool of graft.”

As Norman Orenstein observed, “I have a hard time watching journalists high five each other over books on WH covering up for Biden. A diversion from their own deep culpability in Trump’s election. False equivalence, normalizing the abnormal, treating Trump as no real danger were the norm, not the exception.” 

Hubbell is entirely correct when he accuses the legacy media of failing America–of failing to provide appropriate coverage of the threat posed by Trump. “And they keep doing it. To their everlasting shame.”

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The “Naughty” List

Santa Claus isn’t the only one who is keeping a list of “who is naughty and who is nice.” Charlie Sykes recently brought some limited order out of the chaos of Trump’s first months–a real service, since most of us have been beaten down by the daily firehose of assaults on decency, the Constitution and the rule of law–the tactic Steve Bannon has called “flooding the zone with shit.”

Sykes assembled his list in order to criticize Chuck Schumer, who has finally graduated from sending “stern letters” and moved to block Trump appointees. Sykes asks “What took you so long? Why didn’t you act when”…and then he provides his list of Trumpian assaults that should have prompted active blowback when they occurred.

Granted, Sykes’ list isn’t comprehensive, so intensely has the zone been flooded, but here are the acts that he says should have triggered action from Schumer when they occurred:

  •  blanket pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, including those who assaulted police officers.
  • his purge of the FBI, targeting agents who had investigated his own misconduct.
  • suspending enforcement of the foreign bribery ban.
  • calling for the impeachment of a federal judge who ruled against him.
  • firing the head of the Office of Special Counsel who protects whistleblowers.
  • firing the head of the Office of Government Ethics.
  • firing the prosecutors who worked on Capitol riot investigations.
  • slashing the office that prosecutes misconduct by public officials.
  • dropping charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams in return for Adams agreement to work with ICE — a move that led to the resignation of the acting SDNY U.S. attorney and several other federal prosecutors.
  • Trump’s refusal to bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. — stating that he could, but wasn’t going to.
  • Trump’s suggestion to the president of El Salvador that he would send “homegrown” criminals — American citizens — to his notorious prison.
  •  Trump’s executive orders targeting individuals who had criticized him — including Chris Krebs, who had challenged his 2020 election lies.
  • stripping the security clearances of law firms who had challenged him. 
  • Trump’s threats to strip licenses from media critics.
  • allowing Elon Musk’s team to access sensitive and protected taxpayer information.
  • when his top aides were caught chatting about military action on Signal.
  • firing six National Security Council officials on advice from far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer.
  • refusing to rule out the use of military force to seize Greenland. 
  • Trump’s purge of top generals, including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
  • sending masked agents to seize people on the streets.
  • arresting international students for little more than for writing op-eds.
  • when White House aide Stephen Miller said that administration was considering suspending habeas corpus.

Sykes list–which I would emphasize is far from comprehensive–was generated as Americans learned of Qatar’s offer of a “gift”–a plane described as a “palace in the sky.”  The offer was, as Sykes says, “a very visible symbol of Trump’s susceptibility to corruption.” But–as he also reminds us– we have seen countless other examples.

Sen. Chris Murphy, for example, has been banging the drum about Trump’s potential $TRUMP crypto conflict of interest for months. “My hair has been on fire about the meme coin from day one,” Murphy told The Washington Post. “That is a level of corruption that is just absolutely stunning. It was already the most corrupt thing a president has ever done in the history of the United States.”

What didn’t make Syke’s list is the Trump administration’s effort to neuter the other two branches of government.

Under the Constitution, Congress and the courts are “co-equal” with the Executive branch, but Trump and MAGA have bullied the Republicans in Congress into submission. (Given that the GOP is currently in the majority, Democrats have been left with limited options for resistance–a good reason to put those options to maximum use.)

Unlike Congress, the courts–at least, the lower federal courts–have fulfilled their Constitutional role. They have ruled for the plaintiffs in virtually every case challenging Trump’s illegal and unconstitutional actions–but while Trump has given lip service to obeying those rulings, he continues to ignore a number of them. At the same time, he has increased his threats against judges who dare to rule against him, and MAGA thugs (Trump’s “brownshirts”) have taken to issuing threats against the judiciary and their families.

We the People need to leave a large civic lump of coal in the Trump stocking. Sooner rather than later.

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One More Time

Yesterday, I posted about Trump’s attacks on the basic research that generates medical breakthroughs, and the critical importance of the government grants that fund that research. Medical advances are obviously salient to the general public; we care about cures for the diseases that cause death and suffering, and when we understand the significance of assaults on the research that makes those breakthroughs possible, we oppose them.

What is less well understood is that basic research funded by government has given America its global dominance in technology and innovation.

A recent essay from the Washington Post reminds readers what is at stake as Musk and Trump wreak havoc with those research grants.  reminding us that “we are the nation that spawned the internet and GPS, and has the most Nobel laureates curing deadly diseases, making intelligent machines and shedding light on the dark secrets of the universe.”

Whether they are geeks in garages or eggheads in university labs, American entrepreneurs have built their ideas and fortunes on the back of basic research supported by taxpayers, who then reap the rewards. It’s not an accident of geography or artifact of culture that the United States has bred some of the best inventors of the 20th and 21st century. The hidden engine of the country’s illustrious track record has been the grants given to academic researchers by federal agencies that the U.S. DOGE Service has been decimating and that President Donald Trump proposes to shrink catastrophically in the next budget.

Lithium-ion batteries that power your smartphone and computer, weather forecasts that help you figure out what to wear, wings of airplanes that take you on vacation and all the messaging you do online can be traced to the symbiosis between research funded by government and private industry, the scaffolding for mind-melds of scholars and entrepreneurs. Moderna’s multibillion-dollar coronavirus vaccine that saved millions of lives owes its origins to decades of research on mRNA, viruses and vaccines that was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Google arose from a National Science Foundation digital libraries grant that supported then-Stanford University graduate student Larry Page. We have QR codes, barcodes and MRIs today because of basic research investments in mathematics and physics.

The essay explains why the free market will not fill the gap. Corporate and business research understandably has a narrower focus and shorter time horizon than the basic research funded by government. Its timelines are adequate for building a somewhat better gadget, but there is no business purpose to be served for funding open-ended questions with no immediate, obvious payoff–questions that, over time, have yielded the big breakthroughs.

Giving out grants for what might look frivolous or wasteful on the surface is a feature, not a bug, of publicly funded research. Consider that Agriculture Department and NIH grants to study chemicals in wild yams led to cortisone and medical steroids becoming widely affordable. Or that knowing more about the fruit fly has aided discoveries related to human aging, Parkinson’s disease and cancer.

We all benefit greatly from what the author calls “America’s innovation engine.” Yet Congress is about to allow the Trump administration to break it, because most of the general public doesn’t yet see–or understand– what’s being lost.

The most profitable companies in the country continue to trade on investments in research made decades ago, while political leaders strip the next generation of the chance to become groundbreaking inventors and innovators. Preventing such entrepreneurs from rising might even protect the big companies’ profits. Little wonder, then, that many of the richest men in the world — men who call themselves innovators — have done little to protect the invention engine from Trump’s havoc. Or that the richest of them, Elon Musk, has even been an architect of its destruction. Meanwhile, Musk keeps boosting his own companies with public funds, proving that at least his private-sector innovation depends on the government he is stripping for parts.

In the late 20th century, the United States invested in knowledge while other countries invested  in infrastructure projects that were more visible and politically palatable. As a result, their growth stagnated while America’s thrived. America’s investments in research built great universities that became magnets for the world’s brightest minds– and for the immigrants who founded major companies in the United States.

As the author concluded,

There is no plainer betrayal of the MAGA promise to restore the nation’s storied past than to destroy this legacy of invention. What we’re losing is far more important, however, than the pride one felt being part of that America. We’re losing the country’s future.­

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More Of This, Please!

If there was any lingering doubt that MAGA and Trumpism are rooted in racism, the extension of refugee status to White South Africans–at the same time Trump rescinded the similar status of vetted Afghans who had, at significant risk, worked with U.S. forces during the war–should put an end to it. That “in your face” evidence joins the administration’s barely-less-obvious measures to “protect” White folks from perceived victimhood: the dismissal of Blacks and Women from positions of authority (and their replacement with laughingly unqualified Whites), the scrubbing of websites documenting the achievements of women and minorities, and especially the disgraceful and dishonest all-out war on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).

An embarrassing number of institutions have folded under that attack, but others have not. Vernon shared an entirely appropriate response to the federal government’s anti-DEI demand from one school superintendent.

Here is that letter.

___________-

To Whom It May (Unfortunately) Concern at the U.S. Department of Education:

Thank you for your April 3 memorandum, which I read several times — not because it was legally persuasive, but because I kept checking to see if it was satire. Alas, it appears you are serious.

You’ve asked me, as superintendent of a public school district, to sign a “certification” declaring that we are not violating federal civil rights law — by, apparently, acknowledging that ci1vil rights issues still exist. You cite Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, then proceed to argue that offering targeted support to historically marginalized students is somehow discriminatory.

That’s not just legally incoherent — it’s a philosophical Möbius strip of bad faith.

Let me see if I understand your logic:

If we acknowledge racial disparities, that’s racism.

If we help English learners catch up, that’s favoritism.

If we give a disabled child a reading aide, we’re denying someone else the chance to struggle equally.

And if we train teachers to understand bias, we’re indoctrinating them — but if we train them to ignore it, we’re “restoring neutrality”?

How convenient that your sudden concern for “equal treatment” seems to apply only when it’s used to silence conversations about race, identity, or inequality.

Let’s talk about our English learners. Would you like us to stop offering translation services during parent-teacher conferences? Should we cancel bilingual support staff to avoid the appearance of “special treatment”? Or would you prefer we just teach all content in English and hope for the best, since acknowledging linguistic barriers now counts as discrimination?

And while we’re at it — what’s your official stance on IEPs? Because last I checked, individualized education plans intentionally give students with disabilities extra support. Should we start removing accommodations to avoid offending the able-bodied majority? Maybe cancel occupational therapy altogether so no one feels left out?

If a student with a learning disability receives extended time on a test, should we now give everyone extended time, even if they don’t need it? Just to keep the playing field sufficiently flat and unthinking?

Your letter paints equity as a threat. But equity is not the threat. It’s the antidote to decades of failure. Equity is what ensures all students have a fair shot. Equity is what makes it possible for a child with a speech impediment to present at the science fair. It’s what helps the nonverbal kindergartner use an AAC device. It’s what gets the newcomer from Ukraine the ESL support she needs without being left behind.

And let’s not skip past the most insulting part of your directive — the ten-day deadline. A national directive sent to thousands of districts with the subtlety of a ransom note, demanding signatures within a week and a half or else you’ll cut funding that supports… wait for it… low-income students, disabled students, and English learners.

Brilliant. Just brilliant. A moral victory for bullies and bureaucrats everywhere.

So no, we will not be signing your “certification.”

We are not interested in joining your theater of compliance.

We are not interested in gutting equity programs that serve actual children in exchange for your political approval.

We are not interested in abandoning our legal, ethical, and educational responsibilities to satisfy your fear of facts.

We are interested in teaching the truth.

We are interested in honoring our students’ identities.

We are interested in building a school system where no child is invisible, and no teacher is punished for caring too much.

And yes — we are prepared to fight this. In the courts. In the press. In the community. In Congress, if need be.

Because this district will not be remembered as the one that folded under pressure.

We will be remembered as the one that stood its ground — not for politics, but for kids.

Still Teaching. Still Caring. Still Not Signing.

_________________

May that Superintendent’s tribe increase.

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