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برچسب: Trump

  • Trump Halts ICE Raids at Farms, Restaurants, Hotels


    Social media was ablaze yesterday and today with videos of ICE agents grabbing farm workers as they did their jobs in the fields and arriving at hotels and other places of employment to arrest undocumented workers.

    Trump must have been bombarded with calls from farmers and business owners, outraged that their long-time workers were seized. Who will pick the fruits and vegetables? Who will clean the hotel rooms? Who will staff the kitchen and bus tables?

    These were his supporters. They wanted the illegals deported, but not their workers. How would they function without their staff and their laborers?

    Trump heard them. Late Friday he issued an order to ICE to avoid farms, restaurants, hotels, and meat packing facilities.

    Maybe it suddenly occurred to him that removing the workforce from so many basic industries would be bad for the economy. Maybe Stephen Miller was out of town and turned off his cell phone.

    The New York Times reported on his sudden change of plans:

    The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.

    The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.

    The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.

    The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.

    “Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.

    The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “non-criminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any other crime.



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  • Federal Judge Orders Trump to Return Control of CA National Guard to Gov. Newsom

    Federal Judge Orders Trump to Return Control of CA National Guard to Gov. Newsom


    Just in: as reported by The New York Times:

    A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

    The restraining order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which takes effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of an American city, a move has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country. 

    “His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote of Mr. Trump’s orders. But he gave the administration a chance to appeal.

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to “return control” of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom after the president issued an extraordinary order deploying them to Los Angeles over the weekend.


    U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, presiding over the case, granted California’s request for a temporary restraining order, granting the federal government a stay until Friday to appeal the ruling.

    Breyer had expressed skepticism at a hearing Thursday over the matter, questioning whether President Trump had operated within his authority.

    “We’re talking about the president exercising his authority, and of course, the president is limited in his authority,” Breyer said. “That’s the difference between the president and King George.”

    “We live in response to a monarchy,” the judge continued, adding: “Line drawing is important, because it establishes a system of process.

    In the lengthy decision, Breyer wrote that he is “troubled by the implication” inherent in Trump administration’s argument “that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”



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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Open the link from Military.com to continue reading.

    Trump speech at Fort Bragg.



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  • Trump Shows His Fascist Face

    Trump Shows His Fascist Face


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The best response: show up for a “No Kings” rally on Saturday. Check the website http://www.nokings.org to find one or create one where you live.

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



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  • Six Nobel Laureates in Economics Denounce Trump Budget Bill

    Six Nobel Laureates in Economics Denounce Trump Budget Bill


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

    They wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Daron Acemoglu
    MIT Economics

    Peter Diamond
    MIT Economics

    Oliver Hart
    Harvard University

    Simon Johnson
    MIT Sloan School of Management

    Paul Krugman
    Graduate Center, City University of New York

    Joseph Stiglitz
    Columbia University



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  • Trump Will Cut More Federal Workers Next Year

    Trump Will Cut More Federal Workers Next Year


    Since his second inauguration, Trump has fired tens of thousands of federal workers, based on snap recommendations by Elon Musk’s team of whippersnappers. They have gone into government departments and agencies and decided in a day or so which workers to fire and which contracts to terminate. They don’t have enough information or time to make considered judgments, so they treat every federal worker as dispensable. The numbers fired are hard to determine, because federal judges have repeatedly reversed their actions. Some have been approved by the courts. The outcome is still in flux, though we do know that little is left of USAID or the U.S. Departnent of Education.

    Government Executive reports that Trump plans a new round of layoffs in his second year. It’s unclear what his end goal is: is he destroying the federal government for some reason? With all the laid-off workers, he hasn’t reduced the budget. It’s grown, due to greater expenses for ICE, border security, and defense.

    Some agencies, like FEMA and the National Weather Service, are being stripped to the bone. What will remain of our government at the end of his term?

    Government Executive reports:

    The Trump administration is looking to slash a net of 107,000 employees at non-defense agencies next fiscal year, which would lead to an overall reduction of more than 7% of those workers. 

    Agencies laid out their workforce reductions in an expanded version of President Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget released on Friday, which includes both ideas they can implement unilaterally and proposals that will require congressional approval. If agencies follow through on their plans, the cuts will likely be even steeper, as the Defense Department and some other agencies did not include their announced cuts in the new budget documents. 

    The cuts represent changes projected to take effect next year relative to fiscal 2025 staffing levels. The ongoing cuts that have already occurred were generally not factored into the current workforce counts and the White House noted those figures “may not reflect all of the management and administrative actions underway or planned in federal agencies.” 

    Agencies are currently operating under a directive from Trump to slash their rolls, though those plans are largely paused under court order and awaiting resolution at the Supreme Court. 

    Under the budget forecasts, the Education Department will shed the most employees, followed by the Office of Personnel Management, General Services Administration, Small Business Administration and NASA. Education has already moved to lay off one-third of its workforce, but those reductions in force are currently paused by a separate court order. 

    The departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development and Agriculture are also expecting to cut more than 20% of their workforces. 

    The Trump administration will seek to eliminate more than 107,000 jobs across government, but the net impact is mitigated by targeted hiring at certain agencies and offices. The Transportation Department is the only agency to project an overall staffing increase, driven by hiring at the Federal Aviation Administration and for IT. The Homeland Security Department will seek to significantly staff up at Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement as the administration ramps up its border crackdown and deportation operations, though DHS will see an overall cut due to planned reductions at the Federal Emergency Management Agency—which is set to shed 13% of its workforce—and the Transportation Security Administration—which will cut around 6%. 

    Many offices will be cut nearly entirely, such as the research and state forestry offices within USDA’s Forest Service. The department’s Natural Resources Conservation Service would shed nearly 4,000 employees, including two-thirds of employees providing technical assistance on conservation planning and forecasting on snowpack and water supply.  

    HHS, which has already laid off 10,000 employees, would eliminate 10 offices entirely, though some of the impacted employees are being absorbed into the new Administration for Health America or other reorganized areas. NASA is planning to shutter its Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Engagement office and would cut its Science office in half. DHS would eliminate its Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction office. Cuts at the Treasury Department would be driven by reductions at the Internal Revenue Service— which would zero out its Business Systems Modernization office—though the Bureau of Fiscal Service is also planning to slash one-quarter of its staff.

    At the Interior Department, the National Park Service is planning to cut about 27% of its employees, Fish and Wildlife Service would cut 19% and U.S. Geological Survey would cut 32%.  

    The full scope of the cuts across government will likely expand over time: The Veterans Affairs Department is set to shed more than 80,000 employees and layoffs—assuming a court injunction is lifted—are expected as soon as this month, though they are not a part of the budget. The Defense Department has said it will cut around 60,000 civilian employees, but it has yet to detail those plans in Trump’s budget. 



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

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


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

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

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

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

    Brian Stelter of CNN described the decision:

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

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

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



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

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


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

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

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

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

    She wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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  • Federal Appeals Court Allows Trump to Exclude AP from Press Pool

    Federal Appeals Court Allows Trump to Exclude AP from Press Pool


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    The New York Times reported:

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

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

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

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



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  • Is Harvard Teaching Remedial Math? Trump Says It Is.

    Is Harvard Teaching Remedial Math? Trump Says It Is.


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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