The Conversation -- May 25, 2025
~~~ Thanks to RAS for the link.
Marie: Trump seems to be so over Bibi, because here's the international diplomat he sent to Israel:
Jerusalem Post: "Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem landed in Israel on Sunday following the murder of Israeli embassy employees in Washington, per the instructions of ... Donald Trump. Noem is expected to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar, and will arrive at the Western Wall on Sunday." MB: I hope she found the right outfits to wear for this trip.
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Erica Green of the New York Times: Donald “Trump told cadets in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Saturday that they were the first graduates to serve in a 'golden age' of the nation that was a result of his efforts to rebuild the military and reshape American society.... Wearing his red 'Make America Great Again' hat, Mr. Trump leaned into his aggressive agenda to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the government, military and virtually every facet of American life, in making his pitch that the nation was worth fighting for again.... Mr. Trump’s crusade against diversity has been particularly pronounced in the military, where there has been an aggressive erasure of the valor of Black people, women and other groups, down to eliminating and obscuring content honoring those buried at Arlington National Cemetery. Mr. Trump has also sought to overhaul the military by making its ranks less diverse. He removed a Black four-star general as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and dismissed high-ranking women. He also banned transgender people from serving in the military.” ~~~
~~~ Giselle Ewing of Politico: “... Donald Trump addressed West Point graduates in a Saturday morning speech that quickly veered from remarks about American military prowess to what sounded more like a political rally — tying an institution refashioned under his administration’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion policies to his broader political agenda.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: I know Trump is the commander-in-chief, but I hope that had I been the top officer at the West Point ceremony, I would have politely asked him to remove his MAGA hat and offered him an apolitical cap to ward off the sunshine. Had he refused, I would have acknowledged his presence on the stage but would not have given him an opportunity to speak. In light of the political content in the speech he did give, that would have been the better part of valor. And if the West Point campus was the battlefield on which my career died, I would know I had fallen for the American ideal.
Ours is not the only government Donald Trump is corrupting: ~~~
~~~ The Biggest Grifter. Damien Cave of the New York Times: A “$1.5 billion golf complex outside [Vietnam's] capital, Hanoi, as well as plans for a Trump skyscraper in Ho Chi Minh City, are the Trump family’s first projects in Vietnam — part of a global moneymaking enterprise.... And as that blitz makes the Trumps richer, it is distorting how countries interact with the United States. To fast-track the Trump development, Vietnam has ignored its own laws, legal experts said, granting concessions more generous than what even the most connected locals receive. Vietnamese officials, in a letter obtained by The New York Times, explicitly stated that the project required special support from the top ranks of the Vietnamese government because it was 'receiving special attention from the Trump administration and ... Donald Trump personally.'... Vietnamese officials ... face intense pressure to strike a trade deal that would head off President Trump’s threat of steep tariffs, which would hit about 30 percent of Vietnam’s exports.... The line between Trump the president and Trump the tycoon is now seen by diplomats, trade officials and corporations worldwide as so obviously blurred that governments feel more compelled than ever to favor anything Trump-related.”
Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times: “How can Americans best defend their democracy from their president? In my last column, I recounted three lessons from other countries where popular movements have made headway challenging authoritarian rulers. Critics of ... [Donald] Trump have frankly been fairly ineffective — witness his election and the way his approval ratings have risen in some polls lately — but Trump does give us a great deal to work with. He is immensely vulnerable. Drawing upon these lessons from my last column, here are what I see as the most promising lines of attack for his critics: [1] Trump is deeply corrupt.... [2] Trump is hurting you in the pocketbook.... [3] Trump looks down on you and thinks he can manipulate you.” See also Akhilleus's commentary in today's thread on the necessity to defend against Trump.
I thought Donald Trump was so upset about possible antisemitism that he has been forced to heavily sanction universities and law firms. So how did this happen? ~~~
~~~ Gabby Deutch of the Jewish Insider (May 23): "Kingsley Wilson, a deputy press secretary at the Department of Defense who has come under fire from Democratic and Republican lawmakers and Jewish communal organizations for promoting antisemitic conspiracy theories, has been promoted to serve as the department’s press secretary, the Pentagon announced on Friday."
Sam Biddle of the Intercept (May 22): “The U.S. intelligence community is now buying up vast volumes of sensitive [personal] information that would have previously required a court order, essentially bypassing the Fourth Amendment. But ... there’s simply too much data on sale from too many corporations and brokers. So the government has a plan for a one-stop shop. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence is working on a system to centralize and “streamline” the use of commercially available information, or CAI, like location data derived from mobile ads, by American spy agencies, according to contract documents reviewed by The Intercept.... The ODNI has previously defined 'sensitive' CAI as information 'not widely known about an individual that could be used to cause harm to the person’s reputation, emotional well-being, or physical safety.'” Thanks to RAS for the link. MB: Great news for hackers, too! Now they have to hack into only one place to get all your personal data. Hey, guys, start with Drunk Pete's phone. Easy peasy. ~~~
(~~~ See also this Washington Post report, linked here May 7.)
The Law & Order Party sure went belly-up right quick: ~~~
~~~ Martin Kaste of NPR: "The Justice Department has drastically scaled back its support for anti-crime initiatives across the country, leaving law enforcement agencies and private groups scrambling to try to replace the money. The cuts were announced in late April, and the Council on Criminal Justice estimates 373 grants were terminated, totaling about $500 million. The sweeping nature of the cuts took many public safety groups by surprise." ~~~
~~~ And How 'bout That New Pardon King? Ed White of the AP: “The U.S. Justice Department’s new pardon attorney said he is going to take a 'hard look' at two men who are serving long prison terms for leading a conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. 'On the pardon front, we can’t leave these guys behind,' Ed Martin Jr. said this week on 'The Breanna Morello Show.... In my opinion these are victims just like January 6,' Martin said, referring to 1,500 people pardoned by ... Donald Trump for crimes related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The arrests of Barry Croft Jr., Adam Fox and other anti-government extremists rocked the home stretch of the 2020 presidential election. Authorities said the cabal wanted to grab Whitmer, a Democrat, at her vacation home and start a civil war. Croft, 49, and Fox, 42, were portrayed as leaders of the scheme. They were convicted of conspiracy in federal court in Grand Rapids, Michigan, in 2022. Croft, a trucker from Delaware, was also found guilty of a weapons charge.” ~~~
~~~ Marie: Apparently it is never a crime, no matter how odious, if it is planned or committed against a Democrat.
Abigail Hauslohner & Emily Wax-Thibodeaux of the Washington Post: “The Trump administration’s move to end deportation protections for wartime allies who fled to the United States after the fall of Afghanistan has infuriated veterans of the 20-year conflict there, who say the U.S. government is betraying a sacred promise made to some of America’s most vulnerable partners. This month Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem announced the administration’s termination of temporary protected status, or TPS, for Afghans, exposing thousands, potentially, to deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as soon as July, when the policy is to take effect. The fear, veterans and other advocates say, is that anyone who returns to Afghanistan will almost certainly face reprisal by the Taliban.... In announcing an end to Afghans’ TPS, the administration said there have been 'notable improvements; in Afghanistan under the Taliban’s authoritarian rule.... Human Rights Watch wrote in its 2025 report on Afghanistan that the situation there has 'worsened' over the past year as 'Taliban authorities intensified their crackdown on human rights, particularly against women and girls.' More than half the population needed urgent humanitarian assistance last year, the group found, including nearly 3 million people who faced 'emergency levels of hunger.'”
Trump's EPA Plans Slow Death of Life on Earth. Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: “The Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States, according to internal agency documents reviewed by The New York Times. In its proposed regulation, the agency argued that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels 'do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution' or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions. Eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the agency said. But in the United States, the power sector was the second biggest source of greenhouse gases, behind transportation, according to the most recent data available on the E.P.A. website. And globally, power plants account for about 30 percent of the pollution that is driving climate change.”
Josh Marshall has a nice, short post on the Supreme's do-it-yourself Constitution. Marshall's commentary is in line with Justice Kagan's dissent in yesterday's decision to let Trump run roughshod over "independent" agencies -- except the Federal Reserve.
Abha Bhattarai of the Washington Post: “Millions of Americans are suddenly facing dramatically lower credit scores from delinquent student loans, making it tougher for them to secure housing, insurance, car loans, even employment at a vulnerable time for the U.S. economy.... The slide in credit scores could lead to pricier loans for millions as borrowing costs are near 20-year highs. The Federal Reserve has signaled that it doesn’t plan to cut interest rates right away. Already there are signs that lower credit scores are making it harder for more Americans to get loans.... Federal student loan payments were paused early in the coronavirus pandemic in March 2020.... Although payments started back up in late 2023, the Biden administration offered a year-long grace period. That ended on Sept. 30, but millions of borrowers have yet to make a payment on their student loans. This month the federal government restarted collection efforts for defaulted student loans and said it plans to resume seizing wages, tax returns and Social Security payments this summer, making the stakes even higher. Nearly 1 in 4 borrowers required to make loan repayments were more than 90 days behind at the end of March....” ~~~
~~~ Marie: An "educational system" that puts millions of young Americans deep in debt, so deep many cannot escape, is a disgrace. We know how to run a system that gives young people the opportunities they need to receive quality educations that prepare them for life and work opportunities. We had one in the 1960s. We not only abandoned that system, the institutional memory of that system is dying with my generation. We cannot blame this critical lapse on Donald Trump, though of course he and his ilk are making it worse. While we bemoan what Trump is doing to scientific research and international students, we should also address what is happening to our own young people seeking university educations.
2020 Presidential Election. Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "As part of his endless promotional tour, Jake Tapper repeats the very commonly repeated fiction that Joe Biden was imposed on an unwilling party by a backdoor elite conspiracy[.] In some detail, Lemieux explains why the nomination was not engineered by an elite cabal of Democratic insiders.
Katharine Seelye of the New York Times: “Susan Brownmiller, the feminist author, journalist and activist whose book 'Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape' helped define the modern view of rape, debunking it as an act of passion and reframing it as a crime of power and violence, died on Saturday. She was 90.... 'Against Our Will,' published in 1975, was translated into a dozen languages and ranked by the New York Public Library as one of the 100 most important books of the 20th century.”
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Marie: This is definitely not what I had in mind when I opined we needed a better educational system: ~~~
Texas. Jessica Priest of the Texas Tribune: "The Texas House gave preliminary approval Saturday to a bill that would grant political appointees unprecedented oversight of the state’s public universities. Other conservative-led states, including Florida and North Carolina, have sought to influence who leads colleges and what gets taught in classrooms. Texas is poised to go further by shifting some of those responsibilities, traditionally held by professors, to politically appointed university regents. The legislation would also create a state office with the power to investigate universities and would threaten their funding if they don’t comply with the law."
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Scott Roxborough of the Hollywood Reporter: "Dissident Iranian director Jafar Panahi has won the Palme d’Or for best film for It Was Just an Accident at the 78th Cannes international film festival. Panahi, who just a few years ago was imprisoned in Tehran and under a 20-year travel and work ban, returned triumphantly to Cannes, accepting his award from jury president (and vocal Panahi fan) Juliette Binoche. Panahi’s film, his first since being released from prison in 2023, is a direct assault on Iran’s authoritarian regime. The thriller follows a former political prisoner who kidnaps a man he believes to be his torturer and then debates with other dissidents whether to kill or forgive him." ~~~
~~~ Manohla Dargis of the New York Times: “... Panahi had until recently been barred from making movies in Iran or traveling outside the country. Although the restriction has been lifted, he shot]Un Simple Accident' clandestinely.... Panahi, who has been imprisoned several times, drew his inspiration from stories he heard from other inmates while he was at Evin Prison in Tehran.”
Ukraine/Russia, et al. Zelensky Shames Trump. Siobhán O’Grady & Serhiy Morgunov of the Washington Post: “Russia launched another massive missile and drone attack across Ukraine early Sunday, killing 12 people, including at least three children — casting further doubt on Moscow’s intentions in an already shaky peace process brokered by ... Donald Trump. he attack, which lasted several hours and followed another large attack the night before, came even as Russia and Ukraine proceeded with a days-long prisoner exchange the two sides agreed to during a rare summit in Istanbul last week. 'The world may go into weekend mode, but the war does not stop for weekends or weekdays. This cannot be ignored,' President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote on Telegram. 'Silence of America and others around the world only emboldens Putin.'” ~~~
~~~ Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: “Russia’s battlefield strength in Ukraine has started to wane and it could run into serious shortages of manpower and weaponry by next year, even as ... Donald Trump retreats from pressure on Moscow to end the war, according to senior U.S. and European officials and military experts.”
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Ha! Another Wordle, brought to you by the current administration*. Note that "Ha!" is said in a wry, almost mournful voice.
I don't do Wordles, and I don't know what they're about, but I'll go way out on a limb here and guess this is the Wordle NiskyGuy references.
I do Wordle and the other Times puzzles before I go to bed so I’ll have to wait a while to see what’s what in that regard, but now I’ll have a little something extra to look forward to.
Marie: I've removed this comment as it gave the Wordle answer, and as Akhilleus suggested in his comment above, doing the Wordle is something some of you will want to save for later. Otherwise, the comment was fine.
American filmmakers (and everyone else who isn’t a MAGA collaborator) take note.
Regarding the Palme d’Or winning film at Cannes, we’re not quite there yet, but we’re not far off. The evil emanating from the Blight House is wrapping its stinking tentacles around almost every aspect of American life, befouling everything it touches, the media, the economy, education, even baseball. The source of that evil is gluttonous, vicious, ravenous, powered by an entire political party, its media and business collaborators, and the Supreme Court.
But resistance isn’t futile. It’s absolutely necessary. Don’t wait until it’s too late and you too are hearing horrible tales of political abuse from fellow prisoners. People who still say “that can’t happen here” have not been paying attention. The goal of all authoritarian regimes is total control. Look at Texas. Collaborators there are taking over the schools. In Oklahoma, teachers are now forced to drill the Big Lie into young minds. Look at Harvard, law firms, quisling media CEOs, the military, Wall Street.
Resistance isn’t futile, but with each passing day, its legality is becoming less and less protected.
Struck me again this morning about how little the Pretender (and self-styled conservatives more generally) have to say about what they really believe.
They make pretty clear what they don't like but seldom say what they do.
The don't like regulation, brown people, poor people, gays, worker unions, liberals, taxes, universities, science (other than the science that makes their lights, smart phones and automobiles work), Marxism, woke-ism, skeptics or agnostics.
But what do they like? What do they want? What kind of world would they like to see? Other than a world absent all of the above?
Their safety lies in vagueness--in intellectual vacuity
Heather Cox provides a fine Sunday Sermon.
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-24-2025
I read it it my earlier rant. Heather does a much better job.
Would add a nod to Richard Hofstadter's "Anti-intellectualism in American Life," which I read many years ago. For me, it was formative.
Special permission, Canada
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/us/politics/trump-money-plane-crypto.html
A version of my comment to the Times:
The bedrock notions of public service and public institutions have been replaced by private (read: self-) interest, which is antithetical to any possibility of democratic governance, of government for the people instead of for the self.
We are finally running government like a business.
Also in the Texas Tribune, Sameea Kamal writes about the republican effort to require the Ten Commandments to be displayed in classrooms, with a final vote possibly today. Texas is one of 16 states where lawmakers have pursued the Ten Commandments bills
I will never understand the hypocrisy of legislators like Rep Candy Noble, who is quoted as saying " It is incumbent on all of us to follow God’s law [the commandments] and I think we would all be better off if we did,” while also supporting a president* who routinely breaks them as carelessly as he breaks his oath of office.
"The bill passed the House on second reading 88-49 — on the Jewish Sabbath day, which the Ten Commandments forbids, as Rep. James Talarico said in an effort to highlight legislative hypocrisy. The lower chamber’s approval came after more than two hours of debate and despite last-ditch Democratic efforts to water down the law, including giving school districts the opportunity to vote on the policy, and adding codes of ethics from different faiths into the bill."
Jonathan Chait, in The Atlantic on the coming wonky debate about the 'abundance agenda'
"The abundance agenda is a collection of policy reforms designed to make it easier to build housing and infrastructure and for government bureaucracy to work. Despite its cheerful name and earnest intention to find win-win solutions, the abundance agenda contains a radical critique of the past half century of American government.
....
- The first, and most familiar, is the need to expand the supply of housing by removing zoning rules and other legal barriers that prevent supply from meeting demand.
...
-The second focus of abundance is to cut back the web of laws and regulations that turns any attempt to build public infrastructure into an expensive, agonizing nightmare.
...
-The third domain, and the one that has received the least attention from commentators, is freeing up the government, especially the federal government, to be able to function. Policy wonks call this issue 'state capacity.' The government itself is hamstrung by a thicket of rules that makes taking action difficult and makes tying up the government in lawsuits easy. The abundance agenda wants to deregulate the government itself, in order to enable it to do things."
More rhyming of history
So yesterday, I was listening to the Met opera broadcast, a broadcast premiere of John Adams’ “Antony and Cleopatra”. I heard several passages which, if they weren’t actual quotes from other works, had at least enough about them to serve as strong reminders of those pieces.
One was from “Das Rheingold”, the first of Wagner’s Ring operas. The passage was from early in the piece. The dwarf Alberich has fashioned a magic Tarnhelm out of gold stolen from the Rhinemaidens (I know, I know…). Anyway, the Tarnhelm allows the wearer to change into anything (the Giant, Fafnir, changes into a dragon to protect his stash of gold).
But by saying the magic words “Nacht und nebel”(night and fog), Alberich can disappear. This is the passage I heard. When I looked up the lyrics to find the exact spot (and other stuff he was saying) I ran across a reference to an order issued by Adolf Hitler called the Nacht und Nebel Decree. (Hitler, you will recall, was a massive Wagner fan so this might have been a sick little joke of his.)
It sounds very much like what Fat Hitler, Himmler Miller, and Cosplay Kristi are trying to do. Make people they hate disappear.
From Wikipedia, a pronouncement by Heinrich Himmler, December, 1941:
“After lengthy consideration, it is the will of the Führer that the measures taken against those who are guilty of offenses against the Reich or against the occupation forces in occupied areas should be altered. The Führer is of the opinion that, in such cases, penal servitude or even a hard labor sentence for life will be regarded as a sign of weakness. An effective and lasting deterrent can be achieved only…by taking measures which will leave the family and the population uncertain as to the fate of the offender. Deportation… serves this purpose.”
We are in the middle of our own Nacht und Nebel. So, at her next insulting congressional appearance, if Cosplay Kristi refuses once again to answer straightforward questions and simply leans into the mic and, with an evil smirk whispers “Night and fog”, you’ll know what she’s talking about.
As Mark Twain would say, this is history rhyming.
By the way, “Night and Fog” (Nuit et brouillard) is the title of Alain Resnais’ 1956 documentary of the Holocaust. His conclusion: this could happen again.
We already see red states rushing to build concentration camps for Fat Hitler.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/05/25/us/politics/trump-politics-democrats.html?
In other words, Republican policies that keep people poor and uneducated are good for them.
Thinking of Hitler’s fascination for Wagner’s Ring operas, I was recalling a comment from the other day (from Laura, I believe) that considered a similar obsession by tech bros for Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, and the very warped lessons they took from his trilogy.
I was a big fan of Tolkien’s books when I was a kid, but the conclusions I drew from that story was very different. I saw it as a lesson of how even the most seemingly insignificant citizens, if they stick together, can stand up to authoritarian power.
Similarly, Hitler (the first one—although the second one is dim enough), had he paid attention to the entire storyline, might have come away with a much different lesson. For Hitler, it seems he was enthralled and fascinated by a tale involving greed and a desire for control in which mythological gods ignored the rules and simply took whatever they wanted in order to obtain ultimate power.
Had he stuck around til the end, he’d have seen that it was exactly that greed, desire for power, and disdain for the rules that brought about the cataclysmic downfall and, ultimately, the death of the gods and the fiery destruction of Valhalla, their castle in the clouds.
I don’t know if a similar fate awaits Fat Hitler and his scheming, evil gang, but one can always hope.