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  • Thom Hartmann: Fight Trump’s Fascism Now

    Thom Hartmann: Fight Trump’s Fascism Now


    Thom Hartmann has warned us again and again about Trump’s fascist plans. Now they are turning into action, and there’s no denying that every part of our democracy is being transformed into a tool of Trump’s ambitions for dictatorial power. Every government department is now led by a Trump sycophant. In his first term, Trump appointed some reputable people to burnish his credibility. In his second term, however, he has appointed people who have minimal experience or credibility. The chief qualification of his appointees is personal loyalty to Trump, not competence. E.G., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was named Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite the fact that his hostility to vaccines and science are well known. Pete Hegseth, FOX News host, was made Secretary of Defense despite his absence of managerial experience. Kristi Noem’s main qualification was her obsequious devotion to Trump. This group will never consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump.

    Thom Hartmann writes;

    There’s no sugarcoating the truth: As fascism‘s grip tightens under Trump and the GOP, America’s government no longer operates as a constitutional republic. 

    Every federal institution now performs in synchronous mimicry of Dear Orange Leader’s unraveling psyche: false justifications, lop-sided pretenses of accountability, cosplay theater designed more for emotional spectacle than legal legitimacy, accelerating escalation at every turn. 

    The ostensible oaths to “support and defend the Constitution” are hollow, a ghost script read aloud while the regime marches America toward authoritarian collapse in the mode of Russia and Hungary. 

    Nothing — literally nothing organized or passed by Republicans in the last 44 years — was built to uplift average Americans. It’s all been engineered for power consolidation, GOP single-party rule, the wealth of the morbidly rich, and narrative control.

    Consider the Justice Department. Once the nation’s arbiter of lawful conduct, it’s now Trump’s personal legal hit squad. Pam Bondi, who claimed she would end “weaponization” of the DOJ, created the novel “special prosecutor” role and appointed Ed Martin — an extremist QAnon promoter and January 6th fan — to target political enemies like Letitia James and Adam Schiff under what appear to be bogus pretexts. 

    The resulting spectacle, the parade of propaganda on rightwing TV and the circumvention of norms are all unconstitutional fascist grandstanding.

    Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., a carjacking narrative involving two Black minors and a neo‑Nazi hacker nicknamed “Big Balls,” boosted by Elon Musk and Fox, has been seized upon to manufacture a crime panic. 

    It’s strikingly defiant of DOJ data, which confirms a 30‑year low in violent crime in the capital city. Trump harnessed the stunt to justify mobilizing ICE, the FBI, and the National Guard, weaponizing fear and fabrications to execute a federal coup on the city’s civil fabric. 

    This isn’t safety, it’s occupation.

    At the FBI, Kash Patel is purging anyone not MAGA‑approved: long‑serving agents loyal to the institution, or even just connected to cases that charged Trump or January 6th insurrectionists, are being run out. 

    Patel’s attack on federalism reached a chilling new level when the FBI agreed to hunt down Texas Democratic state lawmakers who had fled to prevent mid‑cycle gerrymandering. No federal crime was under investigation, just a brazen attempt to subvert state sovereignty and tilt an election. 

    This is not law enforcement; it’s authoritarians seizing our nation’s legal infrastructure.

    And then the propaganda arm roars in lockstep. Jesse Watters didn’t even bother to murmur coded dog whistles. He publicly declared the GOP must “kick illegal aliens out of the census,” gerrymander “to the hilt,” and lock Democrats into a “permanent minority.” 

    It’s open advocacy for one‑party rule rooted in gaslighting and cultural hatred. There are no quiet parts anymore: every word is a confession.

    Public health and science have also been hijacked. Bob Kennedy oversaw the cancellation of 22 federal mRNA vaccine projects — including promising research into cancer and bird flu — with half a billion dollars cut. mRNA vaccines have already saved millions: Stopping that research amid emergent threats isn’t policy, it’s mass eugenics masquerading as public health.

    Within the military, Pete Hegseth, a Trump loyalist, is rewriting history and norms: he wants Confederate base names restored, monuments to the traitors resurrected, public prayer institutionalized, and the values of supremacist preacher Doug Wilson — who believes women don’t deserve the vote and empathy is Satanic — amplified throughout the military. 

    That this is being done under the flag of “service” is a grotesque betrayal of the constitutional order.

    ICE is being transformed into Trump’s personal masked, unaccountable, violent paramilitary. Official tweets now celebrate postings that solicit thugs — no degree required, no age limit — and glorify sadistic enforcement. This isn’t border control; it’s paramilitary recruitment for a fascist secret police force.

    And now come the arrests. 

    Yes, the political arrests have already begun. In Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka attempted to participate in a congressional oversight visit to Delaney Hall, an ICE concentration camp. Federal agents arrested him. Charges were later dropped, and he is now suing for malicious prosecution and defamation, but the precedent was established. 

    At the same event, Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was indicted on three counts of assaulting, impeding, and interfering with federal officers, charges that carry up to 17 years. Her crime? Trying to protect the mayor and uphold legislative oversight. Multiple lawmakers and faith leaders have condemned the prosecution as politically motivated intimidation.

    At the same time, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly detained — assaulted, handcuffed, and violently dragged out — after attempting to question DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He identified himself as a sitting senator; no charges were filed. Still, the message was clear: dissent has been criminalized and there will be a next time.

    Add to that the targeting of a Wisconsin judge, Hannah Dugan. The FBI arrested and indicted her after she tried to help an undocumented immigrant evade arrest. She’s been suspended by the state Supreme Court. This is a judge facing prison for expressing compassion.

    And let’s not forget the investigations aimed at AG Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff. Trump’s federal authorities are now targeting elected officials over their political stances, without a shred of legal basis. These investigations are not about justice: they’re about vengeance, performative brutality, and raw power.

    When institutional coercion becomes the norm, when political arrests replace constitutional rule, the democratic state has collapsed. Authoritarian regimes don’t wait until they hold 100% of power; they erode the system until the system can no longer resist them and democracy collapses. That’s exactly what we’re witnessing.

    History echoes in every violation. 

    Remember Hitler writing Mein Kampf in prison, outlining Lebensraum, cloaking aggression as defense and reunification, always positioning himself as the reluctant warrior. He broke treaties, grabbed territory the way Trump is now threatening Greenland and Central America, and used the language of “peace” — always claiming that was his only goal — to mask aggression. 

    Churchill warned early in the 1930s, but was dismissed as a warmonger. Chamberlain chose to believe he could negotiate with a tyrant, and, as Churchill predicted, war followed. 

    Trump’s playbook is nearly identical: aggressive power grabs framed as patriotism, defenses against imaginary threats, mythmaking that declares “they made me do it.” And like in the 1930s, the enablers are eating it up.

    But here’s the crucial difference: this fight isn’t a continent away; it’s in our towns, our courts, and our statehouses. 

    The Greatest Generation fought fascism overseas. Now we must fight it at home, in the institutions built on their sacrifice.

    For that, we must act. 

    We can’t expect Congress to help: they’re under the control of Republicans completely subservient to their billionaire overlords. 

    We can’t expect the media to save us: they folded under Trump‘s threats and even handed him tens of millions of dollars for his personal use. CBS has even installed a “bias monitor” to make sure they don’t offend Trump or his people.

    We can’t expect our corporate overlords to rescue our republic: they’ve already sold out for tax breaks, subsidies, and an end to limitations on their monopoly power.

    We must become this century’s Greatest Generation: no passive hope, no waiting for saviors. Organize, protest, support independent journalism, call your representatives incessantly, primary the handful of craven “problem solver” Democrats, and support those who are willing to fight. 

    In Blue states, support those governors and legislators who are willing to gerrymander and otherwise use partisan power, including voter purges in Republican areas, when that’s what it takes to rescue our country. 

    The Republicans never waited for fairness: Democrats have to fight fire with fire.

    When they go low, we mustn’t go high: we must fight ferociously, methodically, and effectively. Like the soldiers who landed on Normandy Beach and burned swastikas, we must disrupt, dismantle, and hold accountable every authoritarian ambition.

    Trump is in collapse, his psyche fracturing, his infrastructure mirroring his breakdown, his institutions weaponized around his rage. 

    The rupture is real, and it’s here, now. There will be no more subtle signals. It’s confrontation or collapse.

    Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light they are trying to force upon us.



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  • Did Trump’s Hiring Freeze Raise the Death Toll in Texas Floods?

    Did Trump’s Hiring Freeze Raise the Death Toll in Texas Floods?


    The Texas Monthly points out that the state was supposed to get an emergency coordinator for its weather service. But that person was never hired because Trump ordered a freeze on all federal hiring the day he took office.

    The Texas Monthly reported:

    The prospective hire was meant to help solve a persistent problem in dealing with Texas’s many natural disasters: translating warnings about extreme weather into appropriate action. By late January, the National Weather Service’s Fort Worth office had selected a meteorologist to serve as an “emergency response specialist” within the Texas Division of Emergency Management, which coordinates the state’s emergency-management program. The new hire, part of a nationwide reorganization of the National Weather Service, would have “embedded” at the TDEM to help decision-makers prepare for and respond to extreme weather. If all had gone according to plan, the federal meteorologist would have been working elbow to elbow with state emergency responders during the July flooding in Central Texas that killed at least 135.

    But when Donald Trump took office on January 20 and announced a federal hiring freeze that day, the new hire hadn’t yet started. The role was left unfilled. “We just couldn’t quite dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s before the federal hiring freeze hit,” said Victor Murphy, the climate-service program manager in the Fort Worth office who took early retirement in April after 45 years with the NWS. “Lives may have been saved or could have been saved, but we’ll never know.”

    In the aftermath of the floods in Kerr County and others parts of Central Texas, officials questioned whether staffing shortages in the National Weather Service—the result of the hiring freeze as well as DOGE-led early retirements and firings—had damaged the federal agency’s ability to accurately forecast the extreme rainfall and warn about the extraordinary flooding that would quickly follow. Many meteorologists pushed backhard on this narrative. They said the Austin/San Antonio office, which covers much of the Hill Country, performed adequately despite the cuts, with reasonably accurate forecasting and timely flood watches and warnings. Still, others have asked whether the NWS’s messaging to the public and to emergency responders could have been more aggressive. 

    The axed TDEM role would have worked to make sure the NWS’s forecasts and warnings were understood and heeded, serving as a liaison between the local, state, and federal governments, according to a job description and interviews with those involved in the hiring process. The emergency specialist would’ve “provided TDEM with eye-to-eye, one-on-one expert analysis,” including during weather emergencies, Murphy said. Texas gets a lot of wild weather. Residents and even decision-makers may need help distinguishing between a typical gully washer and extremely dangerous flooding, between a hard freeze and a life-threatening winter storm. 

    The TDEM job was part of a sweeping reorganization of the National Weather Service that began under the Biden administration. As part of the modernization effort, NWS officials were in the process of placing meteorologists in each state emergency-management office to help decision-makers. But the Trump administration effectively scuttled the project and decimated the agency’s existing workforce. NWS staffing levels were reduced by roughly 600 employees, to fewer than 4,000, in just a few months, according to Tom Fahy, the legislative director for the National Weather Service Employees Organization, a labor union. Texas weather offices lost between 25 and 30 employees—a count that doesn’t include positions left unfilled because of the hiring freeze. “The arbitrariness and capriciousness of it is just really, really sad,” said Murphy. “This TDEM job getting axed is an example of that.” 

    This week, media outlets reported that the Trump administration is planning to fill up to 450 jobs at the federal agency. It’s unclear whether the TDEM position is included.

    Hindsight is 20/20. We will never know.



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  • Trump’s Energy Department Hires Climate Change Deniers

    Trump’s Energy Department Hires Climate Change Deniers


    Is the climate changing? Most scientists who study the environment believe that it is. They agree that human-caused pollution degrades the climate and that the health of the planet requires less reliance on fossil fuels. The Biden Administration passed landmark legislation to encourage the transition from oil and gas to electricity. Trump has rolled back whatever he could of Biden’s contribution to green energy. No more tax credits for electric vehicles or solar panels. Every program that promotes green energy has been dismantled.

    The New York Times reported that the Department of Energy has added three scientists to its roster who are known for their criticism of mainstream climate science. The Secretary of Energy is Chris Wright, an entrepreneur who was CEO of Liberty Energy.

    The Energy Department has hired at least three scientists who are well-known for their rejection of the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, according to records reviewed by The New York Times.

    The scientists are listed in the Energy Department’s internal email system as current employees of the agency, the records show. They are Steven E. Koonin, a physicist and author of a best-selling book that calls climate science “unsettled”; John Christy, an atmospheric scientist who doubts the extent to which human activity has caused global warming; and Roy Spencer, a meteorologist who believes that clouds have had a greater influence on warming than humans have.

    Their hiring comes after the Trump administration dismissed hundreds of scientists and experts who had been compiling the federal government’s flagship report on how climate change is affecting the country. The administration has also systematically removed mentions of climate change from government websites while slashing federal funding for research on global warming.

    In addition, Trump officials have been recruiting scientists to help them repeal the 2009 “endangerment finding,” which determined that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare, and which now underpins much of the government’s legal authority to slow global warming, according to two people briefed on the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly…

    Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, expressed alarm that the Energy Department had hired the three scientists.

    “What this says is that the administration has no respect for the actual science, which overwhelmingly points in the direction of a growing crisis as we continue to warm the planet through fossil-fuel burning, the consequences of which we’ve seen play out in recent weeks in the form of deadly heat domes and floods here in the U.S.,” Dr. Mann wrote in an email.

    Dr. Mann added that the Trump administration appeared to have fired hundreds of “actual government science experts” and replaced them with “a small number of reliable foot soldiers.”

    Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, said it would be troubling if these three scientists were involved in repealing the 2009 endangerment finding, which cleared the way for the government to regulate the planet-warming gases emitted by cars, power plants and other industrial sources.



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  • Trump’s law reshapes federal loans and Pell Grants, impacting California students

    Trump’s law reshapes federal loans and Pell Grants, impacting California students


    UC Berkeley students stroll around campus near the landmark Sather Gate on April 19, 2017.

    Photos by Alison Yin for EdSource

    Top Takeaways
    • The law blocks graduate students from taking out new Grad PLUS loans and caps Parent PLUS loans starting in 2026.
    • To maintain access to federal student loans, academic programs must soon show alumni earn more than peers without the same degree. 
    • The law expands Pell Grants to short-term workforce training and nixes an earlier proposal that likely would have reduced aid to many Pell recipients.

    The domestic policy law signed by President Donald Trump will have major implications on how students in California and across the country pay for college, with analysts describing it as the most consequential federal higher education legislation in decades.

    The most significant changes will impact access to federal loans and borrower repayment plans. The law also amends Pell Grant eligibility standards, expands qualified expenses for 529 college savings accounts, and is expected to raise the endowment tax on a few private universities, including Stanford. 

    Republican lawmakers say their suite of higher education policies aims to make college more affordable and reel in student debt while broadening access to career and technical education. Critics warn the package’s financial aid measures will do just the opposite, making higher education more expensive for low- and moderate-income students.

    “This is the biggest set of changes to higher education policy in America since at least 1992,” said Robert Kelchen, a professor of higher education at the University of Tennessee, noting that the Higher Education Act hasn’t been reauthorized since 2008. “In this reconciliation bill, there are effectively pieces of legislation that congressional Republicans have been working on for years.”

    The Grad PLUS program will stop accepting new borrowers

    The federal Grad PLUS program, loans which make it possible for graduate students to borrow up to the cost of attendance minus other financial aid, will stop accepting borrowers this time next year. Current borrowers, however, will be grandfathered in and allowed to continue accessing those loans.

    Graduate students will still have access to direct unsubsidized federal loans, but the bill caps those at $50,000 per year for students in professional programs, such as those studying to become lawyers or doctors, and most other graduate degrees at $20,500 per year. 

    The changes will reduce access to graduate school, particularly for low-income students who don’t have other funding options, said Melanie Storey, president and CEO of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, a nonprofit membership organization representing financial aid professionals at colleges across the country. “Very capable students who come from more modest backgrounds may be unwilling to pursue graduate or professional education.”

    Some of those students may borrow from private lenders, but those loans “won’t come with the same kinds of terms and conditions and protections that a federal loan has,” she added.

    The University of Southern California may be hit particularly hard by the loss of those PLUS loans. “They have so many graduate programs, and they have a lot of students who do not get financial aid,” Kelchen said.

    The Grad PLUS program disbursed about $2 billion to students at California colleges and universities in the 2023-24 school year, federal data shows.

    Lower caps on Parent PLUS loans will limit borrowing

    Under the federal Parent PLUS loan program, parents used to have the ability to borrow up to the total cost of a student’s college education. A new cap starting July 2026 will limit borrowers to $20,000 per year and a lifetime maximum of $65,000 per student. Supporters argue that borrowing limits will slow rising tuition. 

    Parent PLUS loans have been “the loans of last resort” for students whose parents don’t qualify for private loans because of their credit, Kelchen said, so reducing the borrowing limit may hit students with substantial financial need the hardest. A brief by the Education Trust characterized them as “a double-edged sword for Black borrowers” in particular, who tend to have fewer resources to pay for college due to long-standing inequities in wealth and income.

    Capping the Parent PLUS program will likely either “discourage students from attending college or limit their choices,” Storey said. 

    Institutions will need to get creative to ensure low-income and first-generation students can continue enrolling, said Emmanual Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education. 

    “It’s hard to say that institutions will just find a way to make up the difference and will offer more institutional aid for low-income students to help them be able to cover the cost,” he said.

    Former students’ earnings will determine loan access

    The reconciliation bill puts postsecondary programs to a new test: In order to access federal student loans, alumni must earn more than peers who didn’t study for the same degree. 

    Congressional Republicans say the idea is to hold colleges and universities accountable for what alumni ultimately earn when they join the workforce. Loosely, for a given field of study, an undergraduate degree program can continue accessing federal loans if the median earnings of former students exceed the median earnings of high school graduates in the same state. Graduate programs maintain access to federal loans by comparing former students to similarly situated bachelor’s degree holders.

    “It’s a really significant step towards the kind of focus on educational outcomes that we have seen both Republicans and Democrats talk about in recent years,” said Clare McCann, policy director at the Postsecondary Education & Economics Research Center. But McCann said it’s problematic that the measure doesn’t apply a similar standard to undergraduate certificate programs. 

    An analysis by Preston Cooper, a senior fellow at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, found that many associate degree programs could lose access to student loans, although associate degree students may be less likely to finance their educations in the first place. 

    “The promise of a lot of these programs is that you shouldn’t have to borrow,” Cooper said. “I kind of think that if these programs do have earnings outcomes that are so low, we probably shouldn’t be giving students loans for those programs, because it’s very unlikely that they’ll be able to repay their loans in full.”

    SAVE, other repayment plans will close to new borrowers

    The repayment terms will also change, reducing the number of plan choices to just two: a standard repayment plan and the Repayment Assistance Plan, which ties payment size to the borrower’s income. Supporters argue that doing so simplifies the options available to borrowers while putting them on a path to repay loan balances in full. 

    Most existing income-driven plans will later close to new borrowers, including the popular Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan, a Biden administration initiative aimed at lowering monthly payments. In California, about 600,000 borrowers are enrolled in the SAVE plan, according to the Student Borrower Protection Center.

    “For most borrowers, their payments will be drastically more expensive on a monthly and annual basis,” said Aissa Canchola Bañez, policy director of the Student Borrower Protection Center. 

    Loan deferments for economic hardship will be eliminated, and new limits will be placed on forbearance.

    Lawmakers nixed a Pell proposal that worried colleges

    The version of the reconciliation bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives would have increased academic credit requirements per semester to be considered a part-time or full-time student under the Pell Grant program. That proposal sparked concern among officials at California State University and the University of California that tens of thousands of their students would receive less money from Pell — or would lose eligibility altogether because they don’t take enough classes each term. 

    The universities may now breathe a sigh of relief: The final law makes more incremental adjustments to Pell, such as making students who receive full scholarships from other sources ineligible for Pell.

    Students can use Pell for short-term workforce training

    Starting in July 2026, Pell Grant recipients will be able to spend their awards on educational programs that last more than eight but less than 15 weeks at accredited institutions. Supporters of extending Pell to shorter programs say doing so will make educational programs more accessible to adult students who are already in the workforce.

    Kelchen said workforce Pell Grants have gained traction among a broad spectrum of policymakers due to frustration regarding the value of a college degree. “The goal is, by trying to encourage short-term credentials, you get people in through [an educational program] fast and back out into the economy,” he said. 

    But some are skeptical about the return on investment of weeks-long credential programs. Wesley Whistle, a project director who monitors higher education policy at the left-leaning think tank New America, said student earnings after completing short-term certificate programs “aren’t good on average” and that even when they do boost earnings, the positive effect “tends to fade after a year or two.” Researchers with the Institute of Education Sciences reported similar findings.

    Families with 529 plans will have more spending options

    The law also makes several changes to 529 plans, investment accounts typically used to save money for college, in which earnings are tax-deferred and withdrawals for qualified educational expenses are tax-exempt. The new law, starting in 2026, adds items including tutoring, standardized testing fees and some educational therapies to the list of qualified expenses while students are in K-12. After high school, the law also allows funds to be used for some professional credentials, not just college. 

    Researchers at the Brookings Institution have found that 529 plans mainly benefit wealthy families while costing the federal government billions in tax revenue. “Low-income people don’t have enough money to be able to save in this way,” McCann said.

    In California, the state’s 529 plan — ScholarShare 529 — managed more than $15.6 billion in more than 439,000 accounts as of June 2024. 

    A few selective universities will see an endowment tax hike 

    Critics, including the American Council on Education, have also warned that another provision of the law — increasing the endowment tax at a relatively small number of private universities from 1.4% to as much as 8% — could indirectly reduce the institutional financial aid available to their students. However, proponents argue that elite colleges hoard wealth while charging students exorbitant tuition. Based on their current endowment-to-student ratios, Stanford University and the California Institute of Technology would likely be among the universities to see a tax increase, while the University of Southern California, with its much larger student body, would probably be exempt.





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  • What Trump’s budget and tax law means for California students

    What Trump’s budget and tax law means for California students


    Students at Wilson Elementary School in Selma participate in mental health awareness activities on May 24, 2023. Students are seen trying toys that can be used as coping mechanisms.

    Credit: Kristy Rangel

    Top Takeaways
    • Cuts to social safety net programs for the United States’ poorest will partly offset the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts weighted toward the wealthy.
    • $170 billion to immigration enforcement likely to harm student mental health, research shows.
    • Up to 151,000 children could lose health care in California, though advocates say the number is likely higher, as cuts may impact school-based health services.

    Hundreds of thousands of California’s low-income children and their families will likely see federally funded food support and health care shrink or vanish in the coming years under the mammoth budget and tax law that President Donald Trump rammed through a divided Congress and signed last week.

    Education cuts to come

    The $12 billion in cuts to K-12 schools and colleges that Trump proposed in May and the related $6.2 billion in federal funding that he ordered withheld from schools last week are not connected to the tax and budget bill that Congress just passed. They are the next target of Trump’s plan to hollow out funding for public education.

    The $12 billion cut — about 15% of what the U.S. Department of Education last appropriated for schools and universities — would take effect on Oct. 1, the start of the 2026 federal fiscal year. Trump’s plan would kill funding for educating migrant children and English learners, and end grants to attract candidates to become teachers, while maintaining current funding levels for Title I aid for poor children and students with disabilities.

    Because the forthcoming budget bill will require 60 votes in the Senate to pass, unlike the simple majority that Trump squeezed by last week with the budget and tax bill, opponents are optimistic they’ll be able to blunt some of the proposed cuts. They also believe they’ll get courts to reinstate the $6.2 billion that Trump withheld as of July 1. Congress already appropriated that money for states last February, in effect, to tide them over, since their fiscal year starts earlier, on July 1.

    “The bill will put young people and families at significant risk,” said Dave Gordon, Sacramento County superintendent of schools. “There’s nothing good about any of that. It’s cruel and it’s mean-spirited.”

    Immigrant families are bracing for ramped-up immigration enforcement as those efforts are now infused with an additional $170 billion. Those billions will be pulled in part from the $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid — known as Medi-Cal in California — and $186 billion cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides monthly payments for food to about 5 million Californians, including nearly 2 million under 18.

    State legislators did not set aside funds to account for cuts before approving the state budget, potentially leaving school districts to “absorb the shortfall,” as Visalia Unified stated it is prepared to do.

    Each district is facing a different reality. Some might have enough reserves to maintain current programming, while small and rural districts often heavily rely on federal dollars just to maintain basic educational infrastructure and services, said Fresno County’s schools Superintendent Michele Cantwell-Copher.

    Reduced spending on the poorest Americans will partly offset the $4.5 trillion in tax cuts weighted toward the wealthy, along with other features like a small increase in the $2,000 child tax credit. But the remaining $3 trillion will add to the federal deficit and be piled onto a record national debt to become a burden for the next generation of Americans. The higher interest payments on the debt they’ll pay as a portion of the federal budget will crowd out new spending options, including education and child care.

    What follows is a summary of what’s in the 2026 budget law, which will be phased in over several years, and its implications for families and children.

    Cuts to food assistance

    Around $186 billion is cut from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, also known as CalFresh in California, where over 55% of participants are families with children.

    An estimated 735,000 people are expected to lose their benefits, mainly because of new work requirements, according to the governor’s office.

    “Work requirements do not increase employment, it increases the red tape for vulnerable populations, causing more strain on hospitals with uninsured patients,” said Clarissa Doutherd, executive director of Parent Voices Oakland and a commissioner with First 5 Alameda County.

    The bill extends work requirements to a greater number of people, including those aged 55 to 64 and parents whose children are 14 or older.

    “Schools don’t exist in a vacuum. Cutbacks that impact the health and welfare of families create additional challenges for student support and academic success,” said Troy Flint, chief communications officer with the California School Boards Association.

    Since SNAP participation also determines eligibility for school lunch programs, a drop in enrollment could cut federal meal subsidies and raise state costs for meeting all students’ daily nutritional needs.

    Under the newly signed bill, states will also be required to front a greater amount of the program’s cost.

    States may need to cover between 5% and 15% of the benefits cost starting in 2028 if they have an error rate over 6% for recipients. This is a threshold that data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture shows only eight states met last year. California was not one of those states.

    It remains unclear what impact the cuts will have on schools, but the state has not provided any additional funding to backfill the cuts.

    Medi-Cal cuts

    Over half of all children in California are enrolled in Medi-Cal, as Medicaid is called in the state. An analysis of the House bill found that up to 151,000 children in California would lose health care coverage, largely due to changes in work requirements and eligibility.

    Mike Odeh, senior director of health policy at Children Now, said the number will likely be higher. The final bill exempts parents of children age 13 and under from meeting work requirements. Odeh said families with children over the age of 14 who do not report monthly work hours will likely lose coverage.

    Medicaid is the fourth-largest federal funding source for K-12 schools nationwide, providing roughly $7.5 billion in school-based health services every year. California is one of 25 states that bill Medi-Cal for school-based health services, including vision and hearing screenings, nursing services, school counseling services and environmental support for special education students.

    If local clinics shut down as a result of Medicaid cuts, more kids are likely to turn to school-based health services for care, Odeh said. “So there will be less resources available for school-based medical services as there’s also more demand for them,” Odeh added.

    Medi-Cal billing is also a core source of sustainable funding for nearly 300 school-based health centers statewide, offering services such as mental health counseling, primary care and speech or occupational therapy.

    School-based health centers are funded by a combination of grant funding and Medi-Cal reimbursements, with no state-funded grants to rely on, according to a spokesperson from the California School-Based Health Alliance.

    The bill also cuts the provider tax, a key source of funding for rural community hospitals, and prohibits the use of Medicaid dollars toward reproductive care at Planned Parenthood clinics, two main sites of health care used by young people in rural, high-poverty communities.

    In recent years, California has expanded efforts to include school-based mental health support in Medi-Cal reimbursement, including support for mental health clinicians, wellness coaches and peer support programs that were initially funded by the Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative. Newly hired school-based mental health providers may lose a critical portion of funding when some students are no longer eligible to have those services reimbursed by Medi-Cal, according to the California School-Based Health Alliance.

    “We know that kids who are enrolled in Medicaid do better in school,” said Odeh. “They miss fewer school days, they’re more likely to graduate high school and less likely to drop out, they’re more likely to go to college and have fewer emergency room visits and hospitalizations as adults.”

    School choice for states that want it

    The budget law will establish the first big federally funded program granting tax credits to underwrite private school tuition. If it proves popular, the program would potentially divert billions of dollars in federal tax revenue that opponents argue would be better spent supporting public schools.

    All but the wealthiest parents would be eligible to receive up to $1,700 in direct tax credits to defray tuition to private schools or potentially use it for homeschooling. Other taxpayers could receive the same tax credit by donating to “Scholarship Granting Organizations,” which would award scholarships to attend private or religious schools in states that take on the program and manage the scholarships. The number and size of the scholarships would depend on the number of Americans who make tax-deductible contributions and the states that offer the program.

    That’s the catch: Congress included an opt-in provision, and California is one of 20 states that currently don’t have a private school choice program. Gov. Gavin Newsom has shown no interest in signing up, and a state Senate committee in March killed a bill that proposed a statewide education savings account. Teachers unions are unalterably opposed, charging that it will primarily subsidize parents who already send their kids to private schools.

    Lance Christensen, a longtime advocate of school choice and a former candidate for state superintendent of public construction, criticized Newsom and state leaders for locking California out of a program “providing billions of dollars in K-12 scholarships to poor and middle-class families in other states so their kids can get an education tailored for their needs.”

    California proponents of school choice, however, are hopeful that the federal tax credits could enhance passage of their own Children’s Educational Opportunity Act, establishing a state-controlled Education Savings Account. Supporters are collecting signatures to place the initiative on the 2026 statewide ballot. It would provide parents with $17,000 — the equivalent of public school funding per student — to enroll their children in a private school or cover expenses such as tutoring or special education services.

    Billions to Immigration and Customs Enforcement

    The massive infusion to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, will likely increase anxiety among immigrant families, lead to more absences from schools and harm children’s mental health, according to research.

    “The children of immigrants, any time they’re away from their families, we hear examples that they’re worried at school about what might happen to their parents. That’s a huge mental toll that we’re asking every one of these kids that is an immigrant or lives in a mixed-status family to carry with them every day, 24 hours a day,” said Xilonin Cruz-Gonzalez, deputy director of Californians Together and co-chair of the National Newcomer Network.

    The funding is aimed at expanding detention centers to hold adults and families with children while their immigration cases are pending, and increasing the number of ICE agents.

    Immigration raids in California increased significantly toward the end of the latest school year, causing upheaval and fear among students whose family members — and sometimes themselves — were detained or deported.

    ICE’s methods in the state have included arresting U.S. citizens, detaining toddlers and elementary school students, and arresting immigrants with active legal asylum cases at their scheduled court appointments.

    “We already see families keeping their kids home from school and keeping their kids home from summer activities because they’re fearful to leave their houses,” Cruz-Gonzalez said.





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  • CBS Sells Out, Capitulates to Trump’s Demand for Payoff

    CBS Sells Out, Capitulates to Trump’s Demand for Payoff


    During the 2024 Presidential campaign, “60 Minutes” invited both Trump and Harris to sit for an interview. Harris accepted, Trump declined. The interview took about an hour. As is customary, the editors cut the interview back to 20 minutes, the customary time slot.

    CBS used a short response from Harris about the war in Gaza to promote the show. In the show itself, the promotional clip was replaced by a different response. To the editors, it was a distinction without a difference, a routine editorial decision.

    Trump, however, saw the switch in the short clip and the longer one as a financial opportunity. He sued “60 Minutes” and CBS for $10 billion (later raised to $20 billion) for portraying Harris in a favorable light, interfering in the election, and damaging his campaign.

    Since he won the election, it’s hard to see how he could demonstrate that his campaign was damaged. Most outside observers thought it was a frivolous lawsuit and would be tossed out if it ever went to trial.

    But Trump persisted because the owner of CBS and its parent company Paramount, Shari Redstone, needed the FCC’s approval to complete a deal to be purchased by another company. Trump could tell his friend Brendan Carr to approve the deal or to block it. Shari Redstone would be a billionaire if the deal went through.

    A veteran producer at “60 Minutes” resigned in anticipation of corporate leaders selling out their premier news program. The president of CBS News followed him out the door.

    As expected, corporate caved to Trump. CBS will pay $16 million towards the cost of his Presidential library. He once again humbled the press. He did it to ABC, he did it to META, he did it to The Washington Post.

    Will any mainstream media dare to criticize him?

    Larry Edelman of The Boston Globe wrote about Trump’s humbling of the most respected news program on network TV:

    💵 A sell-out

    The show is almost over for National Amusements, the entertainment conglomerate with humble beginnings as a Dedham drive-in movie theater chain.

    Unlike most Hollywood endings, this one is a downer.

    Shame on Shari Redstone.

    Recap: Redstone is the daughter of Sumner Redstone, the larger-than-life dealmaker who transformed the theater company started by his father into the holding company that owns CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the Paramount movie studio.

    On Tuesday, Paramount Global, controlled by Shari Redstone, said it agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Trump’s widely criticized lawsuit stemming from the “60 Minutes” interview of Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s election campaign. The payment, after legal fees, will go to Trump’s presidential library.

    Why it matters: It’s impossible not to see this as an unabashed payoff intended to win the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of Redstone’s multibillion-dollar deal to sell Paramount to Skydance Media, the studio behind movies including “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.”

    Everyone involved denied the settlement was a quid pro quo. If you believe that, I have some Trump meme coins to sell you.

    In a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS last year, Trump alleged that “60 Minutes,” part of CBS News, deceptively edited the Harris interview in order to interfere with the election.

    Legal experts said Trump’s chances of winning the case were slim to none given CBS’s First Amendment protections for what was considered routine editing. But his election victory in November gave him enormous leverage over Redstone.

    Reaction: “With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration’s approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement after the settlement was announced.

    “CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyers said. The president was holding “the fake news accountable,” the spokesperson said. 

    Of course, the lawsuit was all about putting the news media under the president’s thumb.

    “The enemy of the people” — Trump’s words — is a power base Trump wants desperately to neutralize, along with other perceived foes such as elite universities and big law firms.

    Columbia University and law firms including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison have already caved. Harvard University had no choice but to come to the negotiating table, though it also is battling the White House in court.

    “The President is using government to intimidate news outlets that publish stories he doesn’t like,” the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote.

    For what it’s worth: The two points I’d like to make here may seem obvious but are worth repeating.

    First: The ownership of news outlets by big corporations is a double-edged sword. 

    Yes, they can provide financial shelter from devastation wrought by Google and Meta — and the brewing storm coming from artificial intelligence. 

    But they also own bigger — and more profitable — businesses that need to maintain at least a civil relationship with the federal government.

    That’s why Disney ended Trump’s dubious defamation case against ABC News by agreeing to “donate” $15 million to the presidential library, and why Meta, the parent of Facebook, coughed up $25 million to settle a Trump lawsuit over the company’s suspension of his accounts after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. 

    Second: Private sector extortion — multiple law firms promised $100 million in pro-bono work for causes favored by Trump — dovetails with the president’s use of the power of the office to make money for himself and his family.

    Trump’s crypto ventures, including the shameless $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, have added at least $620 million to his fortune in a few months, Bloomberg reported this week. Then there are all those real estate deals in the Middle East, the Qatari jet, and the licensed products, from bibles to a mobile phone service.

    Shari Redstone’s $16 million payment is chump change by comparison. And it makes perfect business sense. It smooths the way for National Amusements to salvage at least $1.75 billion from the sale of its stake in Paramount. Sumner Redstone, a consummate dealmaker, would have done the same thing.

    Skydance, by the way, was launched by another child of a billionaire, David Ellison.

    His father, Larry Ellison, founded software giant Oracle and is worth nearly $250 billion. Oracle is negotiating to take a role in the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner, a transaction being orchestrated by Trump.

    Small world, eh?

    Final thought: After nearly 90 years in business, National Amusements, now based in Norwood, is going out with a whimper, not a bang.

    The company has struggled with heavy debt, declining cable network profits, and huge costs for building out its streaming business. Paramount’s market value has dropped to $9 billion from $26 billion when Viacom recombined with CBS to form the new company in 2019.

    To get the Skydance rescue deal done, Redstone, 71, sold out the journalists at CBS News — the onetime home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, and still one of the most respected names in the business.

    That’s one bummer of an ending.



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  • The Senate Passes Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Deal, and Vouchers Are in It

    The Senate Passes Trump’s Big Ugly Budget Deal, and Vouchers Are in It


    The U.S. Senate just passed Trump’s massive budget bill, which renews tax cuts for the rich and makes deep cuts to Medicaid, about $1 trillion. Three Republican Senators voted against it: Rand Paul of Kentucky, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Susan Collins of Maine. Vice-President JD Vance cast the tie-breaking vote. Many hoped that Lisa Murkowski of Alaska would also oppose the bill but the leadership bought her off by adding special exemptions and benefits for Alaskans.

    In The Washington Post:

    Combined with the impact of Trump’s tariffs — which the White House has argued will help pay for the bill’s tax cuts and new spending — the bottom 80 percent of households would see their take-home incomes fall, according to the Yale Budget Lab.

    “The right way to understand this bill is it is the largest wealth transfer from the poorest Americans to the richest Americans in modern history,” said Natasha Sarin, the Budget Lab’s president.

    Shortly before the bill passed, I received two reports on the education section. Contrary to earlier reports, the Republicans restored vouchers. Apparently they satisfied the objections of the Senate Parliamentarian or decided to ignore them.

    Leigh Dingerson, public school advocate who works for “In the Public Interest,” sent out this update shortly before the Senate passed the bill. The biggest takeaway: Vouchers are in again.

    For the last 24 hours (more, actually), the Senate has been voting on a slew of amendments to the bill. Most are going down along party lines. At the same time, the Senate parliamentarian has been reviewing the bill for germaneness.  She has struck out several provisions including, initially, the voucher language (this was Friday). But it was reinserted Saturday morning. Since then, some tweaks to the voucher language were made in an effort to win over some reluctant senators. Each time the language was changed, it had to go back through the parliamentarian. 

    This morning at about 2:15 am, Senator Hirono, along with Senators Reed, Kaine and van Hollen, presented their amendment on the floor of the Senate — an amendment to strike the voucher section altogether.  That amendment needed 51 votes to pass.  It got 50.  All the Democrats voted in favor. All Republicans with the exception of Senators Fischer, Collins and Murkowski opposed it.

     The voucher language currently in the bill has some important differences from where it started. Here are some key changes to the bill:

    • The tax credit is permanent, and now unlimited. There is no federal ceiling on how much can be spent. Republicans removed the $4 billion volume cap on the total amount of donations.
    • But!!  Current language limits the amount a donor can get a tax credit on: The text now allows any individual to donate to an SGO for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit worth $1,700 (rather than 10% of adjusted gross income originally).
    • States can now “opt in” to the program and must provide a list of approved scholarship granting organizations. And the bill clarifies that SGOs can only administer school vouchers within their state. This eliminates our worry that an SGO in Florida, for example, could hand out vouchers in Nebraska.
    • The Senate has removed the provision asserting that there shall be no Federal control over private or religious schools.  In other words, the door has been opened to federal regulation of schools funded with federal vouchers.
    • The bill provides broad authority for the Secretary of Treasury to regulate the program, including explicit authority to regulate scholarship granting organizations and opening the door to regulate private schools.

    So as you can see, there have been a lot of changes, some good, some bad. 

    ###############

    The NATIONAL COALITION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION released the following statement:

    National Coalition for Public Education Denounces Senate Vote on Private School Voucher Program in “OBBB”

    Today, the Senate voted to include an uncapped national private school voucher program in its budget reconciliation bill. This represents the first time a majority of the lawmakers in the U.S. Senate have ever supported sending public dollars to private schools. Now that both chambers have voiced their support for private school voucher provisions, it is likely to become law this year, forcing tax dollars to support private religious schools that can pick and choose who they educate and discriminate explicitly against students with disabilities.

    Vouchers divert critical funds from public schools, which 90% of American families choose for their children to attend. Vouchers often go to students who never attended public schools in the first place, which drains taxpayer funds to subsidize private school tuition for well-off families who could afford it without money from the government. Under this harmful program, there will be no accountability for money sent to private schools, nor would the private schools be bound by key provisions of federal civil rights laws, which public schools follow.

    If this becomes law, the federal government will give a dollar-for-dollar tax credit to people who give money to use for payments for children to attend private schools or be homeschooled. This was not done previously with any other 501(c)3 donation in our history, and no other non-profit classified as a 501(c)3) would benefit from this one-to-one tax lowering scheme.

    America’s public schools educate all students in every community. Private schools that take taxpayer-funded vouchers, however, often discriminate against students for any number of reasons, including based on their disability status, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, English language ability, academic abilities, disciplinary history, ability to pay tuition, or what their family looks like. The language that was in the House-passed bill about private schools maintaining policies that do not take into account whether or not a student has an Individualized Education Program (though these are not full protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) was stripped in the Senate bill and supporters of the voucher provision criticized this language.

    Public schools are a cornerstone of American democracy. NCPE condemns Congress diverting billions of dollars away from public education and toward discriminatory, ineffective private school vouchers



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  • Randi Weingarten: Trump’s Big Bad Bill Is Good for His Billionaire Buddies

    Randi Weingarten: Trump’s Big Bad Bill Is Good for His Billionaire Buddies


    The American Federation of Teachers released a statement by its President Randi Weingarten:

    Contact:
    Andrew Crook
    607-280-6603
    acrook@aft.org

    AFT’s Weingarten on Senate’s Big, Ugly Betrayal of America’s Working Families

    As we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.’

    WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Senate passed President Trump’s billionaire tax scam:

    “This is a big, ugly, obscene betrayal of American working families that was rammed through the Senate in the dead of night to satisfy a president determined to hand tax cuts to his billionaire friends.

    “These are tax cuts paid for by ravaging the future: kicking millions off healthcare, closing rural hospitals, taking food from children, stunting job growth, hurting the climate, defunding schools and ballooning the debt. It will siphon money away from public schools through vouchers—which harm student achievement and go mostly to well-off families with kids already in private schools. It’s the biggest redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich in decades—far worse, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, than the version passed by the House.

    “But if you only listened to those who voted yes, you wouldn’t have heard anything like that. You would’ve heard bad faith attempts to rewrite basic laws of accounting so they could assert that the bill won’t grow the deficit. You would’ve heard false claims about what it will do to healthcare and public schools and public services, which are the backbone of our nation.

    “The reality is that the American people have rejected, in poll after poll, this bill’s brazen deception. As it travels back to the House and presumably to the president’s desk, we will continue to sound the alarm and let those who voted for it know they have wounded the very people who voted them into office. But it is also incumbent on us to fight forward for an alternative: for working-class tax cuts and for full funding of K-12 and higher education as engines of opportunity and democracy.

    “Sadly, as we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.”

     ###

    The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.



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  • Joyce Vance: The Kids Are Alright Despite Trump’s Efforts to Kill Public Education and Academic Freedom

    Joyce Vance: The Kids Are Alright Despite Trump’s Efforts to Kill Public Education and Academic Freedom


    Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor for North Alabama. She writes an important blog called Civil Discourse, where she usually explains court decisions and legal issues. Today she turns to education.

    Today I’m recovering from the graduation tour, one in Boulder and one in Boston in the last two weeks, and getting back into the groove of writing as I continue to work on my book (which I hope you’ll preorder if you haven’t already). The graduations came at a good moment. 

    Watching my kids graduate, one from college and one with a master’s in science, was an emotional experience—the culmination of their years of hard work, sacrifice, and growth, all captured in a single walk across the stage. They, like their friends, my law students, and amazing students across the county, now enter society as adults. Even beyond the individual stories of hardships overcome and perseverance, witnessing these rites of passage makes me feel profoundly hopeful. The intelligence and commitment of the students—many of whom are already tackling big problems and imagining new, bold solutions—gives me a level of confidence about what comes next for our country. In a time when it’s easy to get discouraged, their commitment and idealism stands as a powerful reminder that they are ready to take on the mess we have left them. 

    The kids are alright, even though they shouldn’t have to be. Talking with them makes me think they will find a way, even if it’s unfair to ask it of them and despite the fact that their path will be more difficult than it should be. Courage is contagious, and they seem to have caught it. Their educations have prepared them for the future we all find ourselves in now.

    As students across the country prepared to graduate this year, Trump released his so-called “skinny budget.” If that’s how they want to frame it, then education has been put on a starvation diet—at least the kind of education that develops independent thinkers who thrive in an environment where questions are asked and answered. Trump pitches the budget as “gut[ting] a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security.” Defense spending would increase by 13% under his proposal.

    The plan for education is titled, “Streamline K-12 Education Funding and Promote Parental Choice.”Among its provisions, the announcement focuses on the following items:

    • “The Budget continues the process of shutting down the Department of Education.” 
    • “The Budget also invests $500 million, a $60 million increase, to expand the number of high-quality charter schools, that have a proven track record of improving students’ academic achievement and giving parents more choice in the education of their children.”

    As we discussed in March, none of this is a surprise. Trump is implementing the Project 2025 plan. In December of 2024, I wrote about how essential it is to dumb down the electorate if you’re someone like Donald Trump and you want to succeed. A rich discussion in our forums followed. At the time I wrote, “Voters who lack the backbone of a solid education in civics can be manipulated. That takes us to Trump’s plans for the Department of Education.” But it’s really true for the entirety of democracy.

    Explaining the expanded funding for charter schools, a newly written section of the Department of Education website reads more like political propaganda than education information: “The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it has reigned [Ed: Note the word “”reigned” is misspelled] in the federal government’s influence over state Charter School Program (CSP) grant awards. The Department removed a requirement set by the Biden Administration that the U.S. Secretary of Education review information on how states approve select entities’ (e.g., private colleges and universities) authorization of charter schools in states where they are already lawful authorizers. This action returns educational authority to the states, reduces burdensome red tape, and expands school choice options for students and families.”

    There are already 37 lawsuits related to Trump’s changes to education. Uncertainty is no way to educate America’s children. Cutting funding for research because you want to score political points about DEI or climate change is no way to ensure we nurture future scientists and other thinkers and doers…

    I am reminded again of George Orwell’s words: “The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.” The historians among us, and those who delve into history, will play a key role in getting us through this. Our love and understanding of history can help us stay grounded, understanding who we are, who we don’t want to become, and why the rule of law matters so damn much to all of it….

    Thanks for being here with me and for supporting Civil Discourse by reading and subscribing. Your paid subscriptions make it possible for me to devote the time and resources necessary to do this work, and I am deeply grateful for them.

    We’re in this together,

    Joyce



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  • Anand Girihadaras: Why Trump’s Birthday Parade Failed

    Anand Girihadaras: Why Trump’s Birthday Parade Failed


    The crowds were larger and more animated at the No Kings rallies than on Constitution Avenue, where Trump summoned up a parade in honor of his 79th birthday.

    Yesterday evening, I saw tweets comparing the demeanor of the American service members to their parade counterparts in Russia, North Korea, and China. The soldiers in other countries marched in perfect symmetry, with not an eye or a boot out of place. The Americans seemed to be strolling. The tweets were meant to mock us. Some were posted by someone in another country. I responded, “Those Russian troops in perfect formation have not been able to beat Ukraine in three years. If they engaged American troops, our army would kick them all the way back to Moscow.”

    Anand Girihadaras wrote a wonderful reflection on the same videos:

    The country that invented jazz was never going to be good at putting on a military parade. It was never going to be us.

    In the wake of Donald Trump’s flaccid, chaotic, lightly attended, and generally awkward military parade, a meme began doing the rounds. Its basic format was the juxtaposition of images of the kinds of parades Trump presumably wanted with the parade he actually got.

    Over here, thousands of Chinese soldiers marching in perfectly synchronized lockstep; over there, a lone U.S. soldier holding up a drone. Over here, North Korean legs kicking up and coming back down with astounding precision; over there, a dozen U.S. soldiers walking somewhat purposelessly through Washington.

    Trump’s biggest mistake was wanting a military parade in the first place. The United States military is not a birthday party rental company. Any therapist will tell you that no number of green tanks on the street is enough to heal the deep void left by a father’s withheld love.

    But, setting aside the wisdom of wanting a military parade, there is the issue of execution. Even if you’re going to do the wrong thing, do it well. Do it with flair. With the most powerful military in history at his disposal, Trump couldn’t even pull off a decent parade.

    But I’m here to say it’s not his fault alone. It’s hard to wring a military parade of the kind he dreamed of from a people free in their bones.

    You see, it is a good thing not to be good at some things. The great beauty of his terrible parade is the reminder that Trump is waging a war against the American spirit, and this fight he is struggling to win.

    No matter how much money and effort you throw at the parade, you cannot escape the fact that America is not the country of North Korean unity. We’re the country of Korean tacos.

    The Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho once described those tacos, as made famous by the chef Roy Choi, of similar heritage, thus: “There were so many things happening: The familiarity of the iconic L.A. taco, the Korean tradition of wrapping food, the falling-apart short rib that almost tastes like barbacoa, the complementing sweetness of the corn tortilla.” Korea running into Mexico, running into North Carolina, and beyond. Today on the website of the Kogi food empire that Choi built, these are some of the recipes: a Korean barbecue pizza, a Korean Philly cheesesteak, a kimchi fried chicken sandwich, a Korean gyro, and Korean pulled pork nachos. I may be wrong, but here is my hypothesis: the kinds of places good at putting on parades like North Korea’s will never come up with food like this; and the kinds of places good at making food like this will never rival the give-me-synchronicity-or-give-me-death parades of places like North Korea.

    America is not the country of perfectly synced swinging arms. It’s the country of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” That song, by the legendary Duke Ellington, belongs to a genre of music that could only have been invented in America — jazz. As the documentarian Ken Burns explained, jazz was born in New Orleans when and because people from so many heritages were jammed together — the sounds of Africa and the sounds of Appalachia and the sounds of Germany and the sounds of indigenous people colliding to make something new. It was never scripted, always improvisational. Ellington himself made the connection to democracy:

    Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom…In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.

    I may be wrong, but it seems to me societies that have the thing Trump wanted in his parade don’t got that swing, and societies that got that swing don’t have the thing he craved.

    America is not a country of uniformity, even in its uniforms. It’s a big multicolored mess.

    What is striking in the images of Chinese and North Korean and Iranian parades is the uniformity, right down to the uniforms themselves. The soldiers are often seen wearing the same thing. It gives the kind of picture Trump likes. But the images this weekend were not like that at all. In America, different units wear different uniforms. Images from the parade this weekend showed one uniform after another. The military is not a monolith. It is made up of units with their own histories and traditions and identities and loyalties. There are rivalries and competing slogans.

    I may be wrong, but I would wager that societies that have first-rate matchy-matchy uniform aesthetics may look good but fight wars mediocrely, and societies that allow for variety and diversity may give less pleasant aerial shots during parades but fight wars better.

    Today is ten years to the day since Trump came down the escalator and changed the course of the country and, in so many ways, changed us. It is a moment to think back and think of how much coarser, uglier, crueler the nation has become in the hands of an unwell man. The daily drumbeat of abductions and cuts and eviscerations and illegal actions and sadistic policy ideas slowly corrodes the heart. We are being remade in Trump’s sickness.

    And yet. And yet what the parade reminded me is that Trump, in one regard, at least, faces steep odds. His project depends on turning Americans into something we are deeply not: uniform, cohesive, disciplined, in lockstep.

    But we are more hotsteppers than locksteppers. We are more improvised solo than phalanx. We are more unruly than rule-following. Trump has a lot working in his favor as he seeks to build a dictatorship for his self-enrichment. But what will always push against him is this deep inner nature that has stood through time: the chaotic, colorful spontaneity of the American soul. We don’t march shoulder to shoulder. We shimmy. 



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