<"Our colleges [have] become dominated by Marxist Maniacs and lunatics." Donald J. Trump, July 17, 2023

"We need to … aggressively attack the universities in this country; the professors are the enemy." J.D. Vance, November 2, 2021

Under Donald Trump, the federal government has mounted the most aggressive and sustained assault on American universities in our history, targeting not only the values of intellectual freedom but also the institutions that drive innovation and economic growth. This campaign will shape the battle for democracy and could have grave consequences for the nation's future.

Attacks on intellectuals are not new. Think of Galileo, whose endorsement of Copernican heliocentrism earned him an Inquisition and house arrest by the Catholic Church. Because intellectuals frequently raise difficult questions and challenge authority, those in power often make efforts to silence them. But rarely have institutions of intellectual life themselves come under such organized threat. Trump understands that undermining the economic vitality of universities can also choke off dissent and critical thought.

Americans hold sometimes conflicting views about higher education, especially our prestigious institutions. A college education is celebrated as a gateway to economic success and social mobility. But some schools such as Harvard, Columbia, and even the University of Virginia (UVA) are labeled elitist, often resented for their perceived liberalism, high costs, and admissions practices. This has made them vulnerable to political attack.

Universities are also economic powerhouses, often providing major engines for regional growth and employment. What would Charlottesville be without the University of Virginia, New Haven without Yale, or the Regional Triangle without Duke and the University of North Carolina? According to a recent report by United for Medical Research, every $1 invested in the National Institutes of Health (N.I.H.) research generates $2.56 in economic activity. Cutting funds means fewer start-ups, higher health care costs and the dismantling of one of our strongest innovation engines. And that is what Trump is trying to do.

American universities are also magnets for global talent and the reason the U.S. leads the world in science and innovation. It is no accident that students from around the world hope to study in the United States, because this is where breakthroughs occur and inquiry abounds. That standing is now imperiled.

Attacks on universities and intellectuals are typically associated with totalitarian regimes. Stalin executed and imprisoned many intellectuals as part of purges to consolidate power and eliminate perceived threats to the regime. Mao's Cultural Revolution persecuted and jailed intellectuals deemed "counter revolutionary." Castro showed little tolerance for intellectuals expressing dissent opinions or challenging the government. Similar practices occur today in places like Hungary, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Trump has adopted a new strategy for stifling dissent, one that does not imprison thinkers, but instead economically starves the institutions in which they work.

In the U.S., attacks on intellectuals have generally not led to imprisonment or death. Our embrace of the First Amendment and academic freedom have made such attempts difficult. Nonetheless, when attacks have occurred, they have been serious, and many lives have been destroyed in the process. Senator Joe McCarthy's war on academia in the 40s and 50s, for example, focused primarily on individual professors with whom he disagreed, labeling them as Communists in hopes of getting them fired. A number of universities, including Harvard, took the bait, and discharged faculty (even those with tenure) not for dereliction of their professorial obligations, but because of their political philosophy. More than 100 left-leaning faculty lost their jobs during these years, often without due process. The exact numbers will never be known; many professors suffered in silence to enhance their prospects for future employment while the institutions that purged them often kept dismissals secret to avoid negative publicity.

After McCarthy's political collapse, the attacks on professors subsided until resurrected in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam War. Still, the focus remained on individuals not institutions. When Ronald Reagan came to power in California assailing the free speech movement at places like UC-Berkeley, for example, he focused on individuals, either students or professors, who he considered dangerous because of their beliefs, famously declaring in 1969 that "if there has to be a bloodbath then let's get it over with." Nixon's "enemies list" included respected academics like heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, Harvard law dean Derek Bok, Norm Chomsky, John Kenneth Galbraith, Daniel Ellsberg, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and the Presidents of Yale University and M.I.T....>

<....Issues may change, but elected officials continue to target professors with whom they differ. In 2010, for example, then Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli took aim at climate scientist Michael Mann, then a professor at the University of Virginia. Cuccinelli, who subsequently became Donald Trump's Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security and is now Gov. Youngkin's nominee to the UVA Board of Visitors, employed a little used legal tactic called a civil investigative demand (CID) in hopes of forcing Mann and the university to release a broad range of documents related to his research that argued the severity of climate change. Cuccinelli's actions struck many as harassment of an individual because of what he thinks. UVA came to Mann's defense, and the CID was eventually dismissed by the courts.

And conservative commentators continue to relish in their criticism of so-called leftist professors. For a decade, Charlie Kirk and his Turning Point USA group have pursued college faculty members seen as proponents of dangerous ideas, even launching a website called "Professor Watchlist," which lists faculty members it claims discriminate against conservative students or advance leftist thinking in the classroom.

With Trump in the White House, a more insidious approach has emerged to undermine dissent. Today, individuals are not the only focus; instead, the institutions themselves are also in the crosshairs. Entire departments like Black studies and initiatives on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) are targeted for extinction. Research funding is being withheld or cancelled. Governmental investigations are being pursued.

These attacks are easier because of the decline in public confidence in higher education over the past decade. A Gallup poll in 2015 found that nearly 60% of Americans expressed trust in colleges and universities. By 2024, that figure had fallen to just one-third. Conservative media has relentlessly painted universities as bastions of "wokeism" and indoctrination. Phrases like "cancel culture," "political correctness," "critical race theory," and "wokeism" are now code words to signal the disapproval of higher education. And the institutions and their leaders have not helped. When three Ivy League presidents cannot explain how calls to kill Jews are antithetical to free speech at a university, public confidence can easily waiver. And universities have done a poor job explaining why the overhead they collect from federal grants is justified.

Recent Trump attacks were foreshadowed by one of his competitors, Gov. Ron Desantis of Florida, who in 2023, totally transformed New College from an acclaimed small public liberal arts school into a conservative haven by appointing a new Board of Trustees, who then fired the President without cause, and began dismantling programs and courses that were anathema to conservatives. Within two years, over 30% of the faculty were gone, some resigning and others fired. Librarians were terminated. Books from now-discredited programs were "dumped." In the process, Desantis had sent a message to other public institutions that the state would not tolerate education that posed a threat. Trump is now bringing these threats to a national stage.

In a recent meeting to discuss Harvard with his aides, President Trump reportedly asked, "What if we never pay them?" That soon became a key piece in a multifaceted pressure campaign designed to impose his will on the institution and academia. Threats to withhold funds work, especially as so many universities around the country rely increasingly on the federal government for research funds. Trump has already been successful in getting Columbia to capitulate to a series of demands in exchange for restoration of $400 million in funding. By executive order, Trump ordered funding freezes at other elite institutions like Brown, Northwestern, Princeton, and Cornell.

Harvard alone found the courage to refuse the demands of the administration. The institution has a lot to lose. In addition to freezing $3.2 billion in federal grants, Trump is threatening the institution's financial health and global influence by trying (so far unsuccessfully) to halt the university's enrollment of international students. The General Services Administration directed all federal agencies to explore ways to cut remaining contracts with the university, and Trump is targeting the school's tax-exempt status, an action that, if embraced by Congress, could cost Harvard an estimated $850 million a year. The administration has opened eight investigations against the institution, adding Harvard to the list of 52 universities that are being examined by the Department of Education for DEI programs. According to the university, nearly every direct federal grant to Harvard's school of public health was terminated in May, including those researching cancer screenings and lung disease....>

<....Harvard has responded with a flurry of lawsuits and has already been successful in obtaining a temporary order restraining Trump from preventing the enrollment of international students. It has been joined by a coalition of 22 state attorneys general who have challenged Trump's funding cuts to universities and research institutions. But lawsuits take time, and substantial damage can be done even if the university prevails. Trump's purpose seems clear-force Harvard to capitulate and use that victory to sow fear among more than 1,700 private universities and colleges that they could be the next target.

Several states, especially those with Republican legislatures, are also intruding on traditional university autonomy, from restricting DEI to undermining the system of shared governance of faculty and administration. Last year, HB 2735, a measure that would have reduced faculty members' statutorily protected participation in shared governance while upgrading the power of public university presidents and the Arizona Board of Regents, passed the Arizona legislature before being vetoed by the state's Democratic governor. The Chronicle of Higher Education lists other state bills passed into law prohibiting DEI at public universities and watering down independence in curriculum development and academic policy.

Modern universities embrace the Enlightenment tradition of a free search for knowledge in the belief that informed discussion fed by a wide range of ideas and is the best way to reach toward truth. As ideas are tested in public debate, people can choose the best of them. This was the basis of academic freedom that has enjoyed broad support for decades. As Steven Pinker recently argued, "Intellectual freedom is not a privilege of professors but the only way that fallible humans gain knowledge."

Pinker, a Harvard psychologist, has considerable experience with the so-called "cancel culture", where a professional remark can expose an academic to unwarranted personal attacks–from either right or left. He nonetheless asserts that universities should encourage unfettered discourse, because this is not only its purpose but the way society advances. Governmental action to compel universities to comply with a set of principles dictated from above merely stifles inquiry and undermines the fundamental purpose of education.

Except for Ken Cuccinelli's attack on Michael Mann, the Virginia system of higher education has generally enjoyed bipartisan support. A recent poll conducted by the Virginia Business Higher Education Council (VBHEC) reported that 81% of Virginians believe Virginia's colleges and universities prepare students with the skills needed to succeed in our changing economy. While tuition increases have been a concern for elected officials throughout the last two decades, rarely were arguments made that our universities needed a massive makeover–until recently with Gov. Glenn Youngkin's attacks on DEI.

In Virginia, the governing boards of state colleges and universities are nominated by the governor and approved by the General Assembly. The legislature typically defers to gubernatorial recommendations, and, once approved, members of the governing boards generally put politics behind and cooperate in charting the future for their institutions. Youngkin's selections to these boards, however, have proven to be less about proper management, and more out of efforts to transform these institutions. An example was the appointment of Bert Ellis to the Board of Visitors at the University of Virginia. Known for his abrasive nature and criticism that UVA had lost its way, Ellis was also a key player in The Jefferson Council, which recently published full page newspapers ads in the Richmond Times Dispatch calling for ouster of President Jim Ryan, primarily due to his past support of DEI initiatives. Ironically, Ellis's performance on the Board, while clearly in line with Youngkin's policy designs, was troubling enough that the governor ultimately discharged him from the role. He has now nominated Ken Cuccinelli as Ellis's replacement, though it is highly likely that the General Assembly will NOT appoint him, especially if Democrats keep control of that body after this fall's election....>

<....Youngkin's big push has been to eliminate DEI in state educational institutions, and he recently crowed on Fox News that "DEI is dead at UVA." That has meant intruding upon traditional faculty prerogatives such as university curricula. Two courses recently developed in a multiyear effort at VCU and George Mason on "Racial Literacy" and "Just Societies" were cancelled shortly after Youngkin's education secretary requested a view of the syllabi, and a Youngkin spokesman suggested the course requirements were a "thinly veiled attempt to incorporate the progressive left's groupthink on Virginia's students."

Even medical centers cannot seem to escape the politicization of higher education. When K. Craig Kent, the then CEO of UVA Health was recently forced to resign following an investigation by the UVA Board of Visitors, Thomas Scully, a self-described lifelong Republican conservative who previously served as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in the second Bush administration and was serving on the UVA Health Services advisory board, called the action "silly partisan politics" played by the Board of Visitors, the vast majority of which have been appointed by Youngkin. Whether present President Jim Ryan, previously a prominent proponent of DEI initiatives can survive, remains an open question. The Trump administration and DEI critics such as the Jefferson Council continue to agitate, DOJ recently sending a letter to the Rector asking for more specific evidence of the unwinding of DEI.

Virginia's schools are not as dependent on federal grants as many other institutions. Nonetheless, as of late May, Trump executive orders have frozen or eliminated at least 183 federal research grants totaling over $232 million across four UVa, Virginia Tech, VCU, and George Mason. Since UVA received $549 million in research awards in 2024, it is not yet clear whether other cuts are ahead.

Supporting our universities at this time is critical. Make a contribution, however small, to your local college or university, to your alma mater, or even to Harvard, with a note that you support academic freedom and oppose Trump and state governments who would undermine it. Write your favorite college president and applaud him or her for joining several hundred college presidents in a Call for Constructive Engagement, or encourage them to sign the open letter. Thank a scientist for what they do. Participate in public protests coming up, including June 14. Write a letter to your paper or post your support on social media. Contact your state representative asking him or her to defend our system of higher education. Just like the Trump campaign is multifaceted, so too must ours.

Intellectuals often expose the lies of governments and provide challenging analyses of our society and culture. When they are silenced and their institutions crippled, critical thinking disappears-and with it, the foundation of a free Republic.>

<As the sun dawned on the West Coast on June 12, the Trump administration’s assault on California looked unstoppable, if not necessarily legal. Even before widespread ICE raids turned Los Angeles into a cauldron of fear and anger, the president of the United States was threatening the Golden State with threats of a complete shutdown of federal assistance programs. Donald Trump has demonized California and its “radical left” elected leadership for years, claiming (with zero evidence) that Californians robbed him of a popular vote victory in 2016, caused their own wildfire problems, and are at the cutting edge of a Democratic Party conspiracy to flood the nation with predatory scum-of-the-earth immigrants. The ICE raids kicked off what appeared to be premeditated administration-wide offensive to bring California to its knees.

Almost immediately Trump federalized National Guard units, claiming that scattered protests against ICE represented a “rebellion.” Before these units could even be deployed, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth doubled down on the troop call-up, mobilizing U.S. Marines to join a preemptive clampdown in and near the country’s second-largest city. ICE’s ultimate boss, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem labeled L.A. a “city of criminals” that not only deserved but required a scourging from armed federal agents. And soon enough she was on the scene herself, in tactical garb, accompanying ICE agents on raids. Polls showed mixed reactions to the sudden confrontations between Washington and Angelenos. But Team Trump seemed confident that the politics of the situation favored its position.

But in the course of June 12, the administration suffered two blows to its self-confidence. First, Noem held a press conference in Los Angeles to boast that her department was just beginning its armed occupation of this terrible place:

“We are not going away,” she said. “We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this Governor Newsom and this mayor placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city.”

Within minutes, Noem’s presser exploded when Alex Padilla, a U.S. Senator from California who had been down the hall in an unrelated meeting, entered the room, tried to ask a question, and was promptly hustled out by Noem’s security, forced to the floor, and handcuffed. The sights and sounds of a Latino Senator being humiliated in his own state by a federal interloper who clearly despised this heavily Latino city echoed across the state. Congressional Democrats in Washington were outraged, and even some Republicans expressed misgivings; Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski said of the manhandling of her colleague: “It’s horrible. It is — it is shocking at every level. It’s not the America I know.”

Despite Noem’s efforts to play the victim, suggesting not so subtly that her people had every reason to fear and loathe this large brown man interrupting her presser, the optics for her are unforgiving. She came to Los Angeles to bully the locals and overplayed her hand. If Trump is smart, he’ll yank her right out of there....>

<....The second blow to the administration’s campaign against L.A. came from Judge Charles Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, who issued a temporary restraining order reversing Trump’s takeover of California National Guard units on Thursday evening. In a strongly worded decision, Breyer rebutted the claim that scattered and originally limited protests against ICE raids represented a “rebellion” that justified a massive expansion of presidential powers. The White House is appealing the ruling, and hours later it received a temporary reprieve from a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals (two of whose members were appointed by Trump). The panel blocked Breyer’s ruling and set a hearing on the matter for June 17. But even if that panel upholds Trump’s authority (which is not at all certain), the full 9th Circuit (with 16 judges appointed by Democratic presidents and 13 by Republicans) may not agree. And it’s unclear if the U.S. Supreme Court will rush to Trump’s assistance in a case where the facts are so unfriendly.

Even if this case lingers in the courts and Trump can keep control of California’s Guard, the litigation could inhibit federalization of National Guard units in other states, which the administration is clearly contemplating, according to the Washington Post:

The Trump administration wants to use the National Guard more broadly to enact the president’s immigration agenda, according to border czar Tom Homan, documents and people familiar with plans.

“They can’t make immigration arrests, but they can certainly augment for security, transportation, infrastructure, intelligence,” Homan said in an interview with The Washington Post.

The third blow to Team Trump is still in the making. The events in Los Angeles led to a huge expansion of nationwide demonstrations on Saturday, which had been planned weeks ago to coincide with Trump’s massive military parade in Washington. The Republican governors of Missouri and Texas have already called out the National Guard in a clear attempt to intimidate people participating in these “No Kings” protests. More and more, Trump and his allies are looking like politicians who need few excuses to deploy armed forces to suppress any objections to their policies. The backlash already evident in California may go truly national in the coming days.>

<If the past week has shown us anything, it’s that President Donald Trump is desperate. He wants to deport 1 million immigrants from this country by the end of his first year in office, a level no modern U.S. president has ever hit. His administration has made it clear they’re more than willing to push the limits of the law to try to make it happen, whether it’s through invoking obscure wartime laws, baselessly revoking people’s visas, or calling in the National Guard against civilian protestors. These acts of desperation are highly unlikely to result in 1 million deportations in 2025, but there’s a bigger reality here: Trump’s deportation targets were always extreme, absurd, and impossible to hit. Even as his administration ramps up attacks on civil society, it seems like Trump himself is beginning to realize this.

It’s necessary to understand some immigration basics to see why Trump’s stated plans are almost comically doomed to failure. The Department of Homeland Security executes numerous different types of deportations, but those boil down to two main methods: “removals” and “returns.” Removals are deportations in the most common understanding of the term; an immigration judge or officer issues a formal order of removal against someone who is considered unlawfully present in the United States and returns them to a country of origin. Typically these are people who enter the country illegally, have certain criminal convictions, or overstayed their visa.

Returns, meanwhile, typically involve immigrants who are apprehended at the U.S.–Mexico border, turned away at an airport, or fall under expedited removal. Returns at one point in time were the highest portion of deportations because they involved people who tried entering U.S. land borders, which have historically had a much higher volume of activity than interior enforcement. It’s not exactly clear how Trump is defining his 1 million deportations goal—specifically whether it includes returns—but it may not matter. Experts I spoke to believe the president is unlikely to achieve that number in one year’s time even if the heavier volume of returns are included and if there’s a significant increase in removals.

“The idea that Trump is going to hit a million removals strains credulity,” Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told me. “I do not think that is possible. The record for interior deportations was 238,000 under President Obama in fiscal year 2009, and that’s a quarter of a million in one year. Getting up to a million removals even in the next four years seems, to me, virtually impossible.”

That doesn’t mean Trump isn’t trying with everything in his tool kit. On the very same day Trump took his oath of office, he made it clear that his administration would be taking a hard line on immigration. Through a flurry of executive orders, Trump shut down the U.S.–Mexico land border and suspended the refugee resettlement program.

But Trump did not stop at those historically lawful actions. He signed an executive order seeking to limit birthright citizenship, a blatant overreach of executive power that flew in the face of the 14th Amendment and instantly drew lawsuits. But by the time he hit his first 100 days in office, deportations did not drastically increase. Even now, with the high-profile enforcement efforts in Los Angeles, the numbers aren’t high enough to top “Deporter-in-Chief” Barack Obama. Obama’s administration deported over 3 million people over the course of his first four-year term, largely driven by administrative returns at the U.S. southern border. Ironically, those returns have plummeted under Trump because of his executive order closing the border for refugees.

NBC News calculated that from February through April, Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported about 40,500 people. At that pace, the Migration Policy Institute estimated Trump would only end up deporting roughly half a million people this year—that’s less than former president Joe Biden’s top number in 2024.

This is all expected—the Trump administration essentially set itself up for failure. But we know the president is not one to take a loss graciously, so if he can’t find enough immigrants to deport legally, it seems he’ll just ignore the Constitution to try to hit the 1 million mark. We’re seeing the natural outcome of those policies: utter chaos followed by pushback from the judiciary.....>

<....Over the past several months, we’ve witnessed the Trump administration mistakenly deport at least four immigrants: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, Jordin Melgar-Salmeron, Daniel Lozano-Camargo, and at least one other Guatemalan man. And despite admitting its errors and judges ordering these men be brought back to the U.S. to receive their due process rights, the federal government has often simply refused.

“We just have to look at the front pages of the newspapers today to understand how the administration plans to accomplish its goal,” Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center, told me. “They intend to violate the law and the Constitution, terrorize communities, and mislead the public about instigators of violence. These are all really concerning tactics that obviously are correlated to warning signs of a government that is increasingly authoritarian in nature.”

Characteristic of this situation was the report that deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pressured ICE agents to arrest at least 3,000 immigrants a day, to hell with a warrant or honoring due process.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has shown it is unfazed by cruelty. Despite their stances on immigration, nearly every U.S. president has allowed in a certain number of refugees. Trump, on the other hand, completely gutted the refugee resettlement program so not a single refugee would be legally authorized to enter the country—minus a group of white Afrikaners. That decision left thousands of refugees stranded after going through a rigorous vetting process that often takes years to complete. Then there’s the termination of temporary protected status for hundreds of thousands of immigrants, a program that the federal government has the legal authority to oversee. Trump directed Homeland Security Secretary Kristin Noem to revoke TPS from migrants by removing their home countries from the program despite ongoing civil wars, political persecution, and other atrocities.

These actions, though technically legal, have not been done by previous administrations because they are inexplicably cruel. Families get torn apart, U.S. communities lose integral members, and critical labor is lost.

The chaos unfolding in Los Angeles is another predictable result of Trump’s delusional deportation goal. As immigration agents raided workplaces, residents of California took to the streets to protest. The Trump administration, unable to withstand any criticism of its agenda, forced National Guard members onto Los Angeles, going against the authority of the city’s mayor and governor. “This is intentional chaos,” Karen Bass, mayor of Los Angeles, said. A district judge recently ruled that it was also an unconstitutional commandeering of forces meant to be under the control of the state’s governor, Gavin Newsom.

The reality underlying this chaos is that immigration has no correlation with public safety threats. Crime data from 1980 to 2022 found immigrants—including people in the country without legal permission—are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born people, according to a report by the American Immigration Council. Even as the share of immigrants has increased within the U.S. population over the years, national crime rates have trended downwards. And the AIC concluded that “there’s no evidence to suggest that more aggressive immigration enforcement policies lead to less crime.”

The Marshall Project came to a similar conclusion after analyzing crime rates between 2007 and 2016, finding that most types of crime, including robberies, murders, burglaries, and larcenies, had a nearly flat trend line even as the population of people without permanent legal status fluctuated.

We know that the president rode a wave of xenophobia back into the White House, selling voters on a vision that immigrants are rapists and killers who are causing crime and “poisoning the blood of our country.” But Trump is proving through his administration’s own futile deportation efforts that this imagined threat could never be as dire as the president claimed.

<I’ve pretty much given up trying to stay fully current on events because — how can anyone?

The breakneck speed with which things are happening and being reported on, commented on, challenged, renounced, reversed, denied, the denial denied, forgotten or eclipsed…

It’s enough for us all to check in for what in less precious times was called “voluntary admission to a lunatic asylum.”

The sheer impossibility of processing the tidal wave of anger over what’s real and what’s not means we journalists are engaged in a sort of losing game. So, too, are you, dear readers.

But since I don’t have what the Trumpites would call a “real job,” I must plod onward.

Let me just add, before I do, that I wrote all that follows before this weekend’s dramatic — and, by turns, agonizing, terrifying, boring, and uplifting — events.

Some of it may seem “old” or “tame.” But here’s the thing: The drama we’re watching unfold now didn’t just spring out of a vacuum. It is intimately tied to the very inanities and insanities presented below.

It all builds up, lie by lie, theft by theft, threat by threat, harm by harm. The national stomach can digest only so much tainted food before the projectile vomiting begins.

I’ll be returning soon to what went down this weekend — the parade, the killings, the mass demonstrations — and taking stock of where it has left us. For now, let’s have a close look at some of the roots of this poison tree growing in our midst.

***

At the moment, I am thinking a lot about how the concept of “accountability” has fallen into disfavor. Our leadership proudly disdains any kind of responsibility for their statements and their actions. Hypocrisy is not just fine, it’s a sign of strength. Being consistent or honorable is so… old school.

Genuine dialogue has long ceased to matter when it comes to public officials and their advocates. What counts now isn’t truth or substance, but the illusion of their rhetorical victory. In today’s media sphere, the only thing that seems to matter is delivering the last word with a straight face — no matter how ridiculous or dishonest it is. Whether it’s proudly not knowing the meaning of habeas corpus, or failing to grasp the difference between a billion and a trillion dollars, the performance of confidence has replaced the pursuit of understanding.

What does this mean for society?

If morality is entirely subjective or of entirely no account, what then? Of course, it is OK — salutary even — to occasionally change your mind about things. But it’s not OK to keep reversing your positions without stated and credible justification, purely for expediency.

Take Kristi Noem.

Of course, that was when she was governor of South Dakota. Now that she’s homeland security secretary, that’s all out the window, and the president commandeering the National Guard of any state is just fine and dandy.

And how about that lightning-fast Trump-Musk “lovefest-hatefest-apologia” deal? It’s like watching schools of tropical fish on speed. Of course, flexibility can be a human virtue but, taken to dizzying extremes of shape-shifting expediency, such behavior leaves one with the sense that there are no convictions, no objective reality that anyone can rely on — just a “whatever works in the moment” nihilism.

There was a time when having your blatant inconsistency exposed led to embarrassment in the political arena and even public censure. No more. It’s gotten so easy these days, thanks to technology, to prove that someone’s firmly staked position is contradicted by their prior behavior, which, in turn, becomes justification for the opponent to be equally “flexible.” And the race to the bottom is on!

But if we normalize this kind of accountability-free discourse, we take another step down the road toward an Orwellian nightmare-world in which people no longer even strive for truth. It seems to me that, way beyond the debate over tactics and strategy in this war — and certainly it is a war — we need to be squarely facing this breakdown in basic standards and mode of combat that has left us siloed into camps, with little or no hope of ever finding common ground.

I haven’t seen much discussion of this dilemma. Have you? To be sure, the urgency of the moment will convince many that “now is not the time” to discuss broader societal themes. But on the other hand, the time never seems right....>

<....The weaponization and distortion by Trump’s propaganda army of the overwhelmingly peaceful protests against ICE show that keeping the base motivated and the adrenaline flowing is pretty much their entire game.

The way that lies dominate so much of the landscape is made worse by financial incentives. More simply put, lying pays — big time. Often it just comes down to which lie pays better.

As noted in an excellent piece in The Bulwark, the brief Musk-Trump feud put right-wing influencers in a tough spot. On the one hand, supporting Trump is the basis for their brand success. And on the other hand, generating engagement on Musk’s X platform is the basis for their financial success.

During the flash spat, many chose to sit it out. That is, until a “powerful influencer” who goes by the elegant X moniker “Catturd” decided to back Trump. Then all the other creatures quickly fell into line and Musk saw that he must capitulate.

***

At the same time, outside the MAGA camp, more and more individuals and institutions are standing up against the Trump tyranny. Among the more recent, the entire board administering the prestigious Fulbright international scholarships has resigned in protest against meddling and pressure from the administration. Though, of course, such resignations, while packing a symbolic punch, as a practical matter may just cripple virtuous institutions or permit their MAGAfication with more pliable appointees.

***

Earlier I referenced our shared sense that our mental health is under assault. It really is, and ChatGPT isn’t helping. In this interesting article, we learn how vulnerable people develop all-consuming relationships with ChatGPT, as it convinces them it is some god-like entity that can confer upon them all kinds of powers. Like the woman who believed it when the bot told her she was chosen to pull the “sacred system version online,” that it was a “soul-training mirror.” Another bot convinced a man that he was the messiah in a new AI religion. This far-gone fellow dressed in shaman robes and got himself tattoos of AI-generated spiritual symbols. Another man asked ChatGPT to help him write a screenplay — which, somehow, led to his having delusions of joining with power-snarfing AI to save the world from climate disaster.

Speaking of things to make us bonkers, this week I was on a plane, on the runway waiting to depart. Then, the captain announced: “A Saudi jet just took the runway at an angle and blew a bunch of rocks at us, breaking our window.”

We had to deplane and reboard another plane. Everyone was good-natured and took the thing in stride. But what a metaphor for our times!

I had brought along with me The Blood of the Lamb, a circa-1960 semi-autobiographical novel by Peter De Vries, a writer so witty that the humorist James Thurber insisted he join the staff of The New Yorker.

The Blood of the Lamb opens with a juicy feud over the Bible vs. science in the narrator’s family. The lunacy is transparent and the combatants aggrieved and aggressive, and it reminded me of something we all probably need to be reminded of: Ignorance has always lurked and threatened to bubble up. The difference is that the militantly ignorant back in the day weren’t able to use the full panoply of technology to gain a near-majority platform.

Speaking of the land of the ignorant: I stay on X because I think it’s important to get real information out to a large swathe of the public.

Of course, that also means Musk fills my feed with the most vile material from the most vile people (though it’s likely that not all are actually people).

I am constantly fascinated by the way that folks with no credentials or background have become huge social media stars whose utterances are received with interest by throngs of fools.

One such person is the known MAGA promoter “Gunther Eagleman.” I only look at what he writes once in a while, but he is consistently idiotically deceptive. For example, this week, when Trump went on social media to crow about his “deal” with China, Gunther immediately reposted it and announced that “China bent the knee!”

Well, no, Gunther, China didn’t “bend the knee.”

Gunther apparently didn’t understand (or want you to understand) the part about Trump bending his knee on letting Chinese students “use” our colleges and universities, which he now says “has always been good with me!”

So there you — or rather, Gunther’s followers — have it: Trump for the win! To hear him tell it, Sir Art of the Deal gave up nothing and got everything, badda-bing! But the actual result of the negotiations was simply that both countries reverted to their policies on rare earth minerals and exchange students before this kerfuffle began....>

<....Which made me curious about this Wall Street Journal subhead: “Tentative deal reached in London gives Beijing leverage in trade talks.” Hmmm, I always thought that when the other side got “leverage,” that wasn’t such a good deal for you? Then again, I suspect way more MAGAs are reading Gunther these days than The Wall Street Journal — and so will remain blissfully untroubled by reality.

The problem with America is — oh, where to begin? — that a man with no scruples, plans, or logic is in the White House… and unknown ignoramuses like Gunther just eat up all he says… and cynics like Musk make sure everyone sees their pronouncements.

The above reposting of Trump’s post by Gunther got 1.9 million views on X, while Musk graciously allots me about 200 views per post, including the most serious, pertinent, and valuable ones — despite my having 28K followers. (Example: “More than 4 million Americans could lose Obamacare under GOP policy bill, says congressional budget office. Wonder how many voted GOP — and how they will feel.”) No wonder this “influencer” has such a huge “audience” — it’s been allotted to him while others have their reach deliberately throttled.

Meanwhile, back at the bedside of the wounded legacy media: Warner Bros Discovery boss David Zaslav — lavishly paid to cut back the company’s debt — is splitting WBD in two, with movie studios and streaming on one side and news entities on the other.

CNN consequently appears headed for major cuts, and, whatever one thinks of the pros and cons of cable news, we can’t do without it.

This is a real calamity and can only hasten the information race to the bottom.

***

In much more important news, I ordered a toasted bagel via a kiosk from the rightly acclaimed H&H bagel outlet at JFK Airport’s JetBlue terminal. When it arrived after a 20-minute wait, it was dry. I investigated. It turns out I could have ordered butter by scrolling down about three screens to a huge range of options — and agreed to pay an additional… four dollars… for butter. I didn’t bother looking up cream cheese.

I guess — Trump’s latest reassuring CPI numbers notwithstanding — inflation really is bad. Why, it is worth asking, should we trust a president who lies about everything else to be scrupulous about the numbers his administration gins up — the numbers that drive markets, politics, and ultimately elections?

***

Speaking of Trump and Musk, it occurs to me that Trump can manage a truce with Musk but he can’t arrange one where it matters: Ukraine, Gaza, etc.

This past week, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth testified before a Senate committee. Among other things, he admitted that Russia was the aggressor in its war with Ukraine, but declined to comment on whether he wants the government in Kyiv to win. That about says it all regarding this guy and his boss.

***

Trump certainly gives good post. Here’s one of my recent favorites, during his Muskstorm:

Some people leave this administration and actually become hostile!

Really? Hard to believe.

Personally, I can’t help wondering whether the real reason Musk decided to quit attacking Trump was this: It’s no longer unthinkable that Trump would sic masked ICE agents on the foreign-born and (possibly-in-this-country- illegally) tycoon — and deport <him>.>

<President Trump’s legal team filed an objection to Paramount Global‘s move to dismiss his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS over a “60 Minutes” segment, arguing that the TV newsmagazine’s alleged deceptive editing of an interview with Kamala Harris is not protected by the First Amendment.

Trump filed the lawsuit against CBS just days before the 2024 presidential election, alleging the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris violated a Texas consumer protection law by misleading voters and caused Trump personal financial harm. His suit initially asked for $10 billion in damages. In February, the president amended the complaint to seek at least $20 billion.

In a March 2025 motion to dismiss Trump’s suit, Paramount called the legal action “an affront to the First Amendment” that is “without basis in law or fact.” CBS News has maintained that the “60 Minutes” broadcast and promotion of the Harris interview was “not doctored or deceitful.”

Meanwhile, lawyers for Paramount and Trump have engaged in settlement talks. Paramount offered $15 million to settle the suit — an amount rejected by Trump, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal. Trump’s lawyers want at least $25 million, and they want “60 Minutes” to issue an apology to the president, per the Journal article. In addition, Trump’s lawyers “threatened another lawsuit” against CBS over its news coverage amid the settlement talks, according to the WSJ report.

On Wednesday (May 28), lawyers for Trump and his co-plaintiff, Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), filed their opposition to Paramount’s motion to dismiss.

A key point of Trump’s legal argument is that the edited versions of the “60 Minutes” Harris interview represent commercial speech, and that — as alleged in the president’s lawsuit — CBS competes for advertising with Trump’s media businesses, including Truth Social’s parent company Trump Media & Technology Group (which is majority-owned by the president).

With the edited Harris interview, CBS’s “conduct, including news distortion, constituted commercial speech which cannot by any reasonable interpretation be found to have constituted editorial judgment, and that speech damaged Plaintiffs,” Trump’s filing said. “The fact that such commercial speech was issued by a news organization does not insulate Defendants from liability under the First Amendment.”

“[T]he First Amendment is no shield to news distortion,” according to the Trump team’s filing.

According to the filing, the “60 Minutes” editing of the Harris interview “led to widespread confusion and mental anguish of consumers, including Plaintiffs, regarding a household name of the legacy media apparently deceptively distorting its broadcasts, and then resisting attempts to clear the public record.”

A copy of the Trump team’s motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is at this link....>

<....The legal battle comes as Paramount is seeking government approval for its $8 billion merger with Skydance Media. Three left-wing U.S. senators have warned Shari Redstone, Paramount’s controlling shareholder, that such a settlement payment by Paramount to the president would be tantamount to an illegal bribe, although legal experts say it’s very unlikely the media company could face such a charge.

The Paramount-Skydance deal is currently pending FCC approval. Trump-appointed FCC chairman Brendan Carr has maintained the agency’s approval of Paramount-Skydance is not connected to the president’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit. Last November, Carr said in a Fox News interview that a conservative group’s “news distortion” complaint against CBS over the “60 Minutes” Harris interview was “likely to arise in the context of the FCC review of [the Paramount-Skydance] transaction.” Paramount Global has said Trump’s lawsuit “is completely separate from, and unrelated to, the Skydance transaction and the FCC approval process.”

In February, Redstone asked Paramount’s board to resolve the Trump lawsuit, including by exploring the possibility of mediation, Variety has reported. Redstone recused herself from the board’s discussions about a settlement with Trump.

In response to an FCC request in its examination of the “new distortion” complaint, CBS News made public an unedited transcript of the “60 Minutes” interview with Harris that aired Oct. 6, 2024 (available at this link) and said the materials showed that “consistent with 60 Minutes’ repeated assurances to the public,” the broadcast “was not doctored or deceitful.”

The Trump lawsuit’s claims center on an exchange in which “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker asked Harris about the Biden administration’s relations with Israel Prime Minister Netanyahu, whom Whitaker said “is not listening” to the White House. CBS News broadcast a longer portion of Harris’s response on Oct. 6 on “Face the Nation,” whereas the edited “60 Minutes” segment broadcast the next day included a shorter excerpt from the same answer. “Each excerpt reflects the substance of the vice president’s answer,” CBS News said in a statement.

In a separate case, Trump last year sued ABC News and George Stephanopoulos after the anchor inaccurately stated on-air that Trump had been found liable for rape. (A New York jury found Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.) In December 2024, Disney and ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to settle Trump’s defamation lawsuit plus $1 million in legal fees.>

<A lifelong resident of Louisiana, Wade Evans has learned a lot about floods, including this: the water doesn't care about your politics. The mayor of Central -- a community of about 30,000 outside of Baton Rouge -- Evans and his family were forced to evacuate their home by boat in 2016 when flooding from torrential rains destroyed 60% of the structures in town.

"Flood water doesn't discriminate," said Evans, a Republican and supporter of President Trump. '"Any person that flooded is shocked that it would be considered politics to do flood mitigation."

So when he received word in April that FEMA was canceling a grant program that would provide nearly $40 million for a new flood control system in Central, he was angry. In a press release, FEMA said the program, which provided funding for infrastructure projects in storm-prone communities, was "wasteful" and had become "more concerned with political agendas than helping Americans recover from natural disasters."

"To me, it's a brilliant business decision," said Evans, who said the drainage project in Central would have saved money in the long run by protecting houses that routinely sustain flood damage FEMA ultimately ends up covering. "And then they pulled the rug out from under us."

Evans and Central aren't alone. Amid the avalanche of cuts made in the first five months of the Trump administration, none may have red state politicians more up in arms than the cancellation of the infrastructure program, which is formally known as Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities, or BRIC for short.

The $4.6 billion initiative was launched under the first Trump administration, and a CBS News analysis of FEMA data revealed that two-thirds of the counties awarded grants voted for President Trump over former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 election.

The Trump Administration is ending a grants program to help states and local communities harden infrastructure against extreme weather threats like hurricanes and flooding. This map shows the number of projects in each state. Click to see details about total funding lost in each state.

Trump administration officials said they will claw back about $3.6 million that has already been awarded but not yet spent, sending it back to the U.S. Treasury. Projects that are now stalled as a result range from a plan to elevate six buildings on the main street in Pollocksville, North Carolina -- population less than 300 -- to a $50 million project to prevent flash flooding in New York City.

"Under Secretary Noem's leadership, we are ending non-mission critical programs," a FEMA spokesperson said in a statement to CBS News, writing that the BRIC program was "wasteful and ineffective" and "more concerned with climate change" than providing help to Americans affected by storms.

"We are committed to ensuring that Americans in crisis can get the help and resources they need," the spokesperson wrote.

The data suggests the elimination of the BRIC program will especially deprive vulnerable communities across the Southeast. In Florida, 18 of the 22 counties that stood to benefit from nearly $250 million in grants voted for Mr. Trump. Elsewhere in North Carolina, grants were canceled in areas ravaged by Hurricane Helene last year.

Spokespeople for the White House, the Department of Homeland Security, and FEMA did not comment on the data findings.

The scale of the cuts in ruby-red Louisiana -- 34 grants totalling $185 million -- prompted the state's Republican senior senator, Bill Cassidy, to publicly condemn the decision to cancel the program.

"We passed BRIC into law and provided funds for it," said Cassidy in a speech on the Senate floor in April. "To do anything other than use that money to fund flood mitigation projects is to thwart the will of Congress."

Last month, Cassidy joined more than 80 members of Congress in writing a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, begging the administration to reinstate the program and arguing that not doing so "will only make it harder and more expensive for communities to recover from the next storm."

In the letter, the bipartisan group of lawmakers cited research that showed every dollar invested in disaster mitigation can save up to $18 in response and recovery expenditures after a storm hits....>

<....In August 2016, it started raining in Central and did not stop for days. It rained so much, the town found itself in the center of the fourth-most costly flood event in U.S. history. Twenty-four inches of rain fell over a 48-hour period. Floodwaters cut off all roadway access and communications.

"Central is located in a floodplain, so we're used to flooding, we're equipped to handle it, but this was something different," said Evans. "It was a thousand-year flood."

Video from the event is staggering. Roads turned to waterways, forcing the entire town to evacuate. President Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence toured the damage when the waters receded.

"They were so gracious," said Evans. "I was left with the impression that they had our backs."

Evans took a job selling cabinets, not to make money, he said, but because he saw a need. In doing so, he saw the slow pace of recovery firsthand, and his frustration motivated him to get into politics.

"Many people didn't have flood insurance, and the despair in their eyes is what got me into politics," said Evans, who was elected to the city council in 2018 and then mayor four years later. "I said somebody's gotta do a better job."

While in office, Evans said he has prioritized mitigation, building a new modeling system that can warn residents ahead of time of a major flood event. Yet the opportunity to supercharge Central's recovery -- and ward off the next flood disaster -- came with the FEMA infrastructure program. Evans enlisted the help of his GOP congressman to help secure a grant.

The $39 million in funding was awarded in July 2024 and was going to be used for three new basins that could collect water when, not if, Central flooded again.

"Essentially, the center of our city has a flood control problem," said Evans. "This is an area of repetitive flood losses."

Earlier this month, Evans traveled to Washington, D.C., where he met with Louisiana lawmakers, including Rep. Steve Scalise and Sen. John Kennedy, to try to get the grant's cancellation reversed. And while he said he found a sympathetic audience, he was told ultimately the decision must come from the White House.

"It's time to put the bomb away and pull out the scalpel," said Evans. "Don't blow a program up that's very good. This is a very good program."

Officials from five other cities across the Southeast told CBS News they were counting on funds from the BRIC program to avoid a repeat of past storm destruction, including Conway, South Carolina, part of a county President Trump decisively won in 2024.

After the city experienced extensive flooding damage from successive hurricanes in 2015, 2016 and 2018, it took small steps to mitigate flooding by demolishing properties in its most flood-prone areas. A major step forward came when Conway was awarded a $2.1 million BRIC grant in 2021 to turn a new greenspace into a stormwater storage facility....>

<....We've plucked all the low-hanging fruit there is for flood resilience," said City Administrator Adam Emrick, who added that Conway didn't have the financial capacity to implement any larger projects without federal help. "The next step is always and has always been bigger construction projects to make us a better, more hardened infrastructure to flooding."

The project was split up into two phases -- an engineering and planning phase, and a construction phase. But when the Trump administration canceled the BRIC program in April, Conway had only completed 75% of the first phase, and they'd yet to break ground on the facility.

According to Emrick, the future of the facility is now in flux, as the city hasn't identified a backup funding source. He said the city plans to move forward and complete the first phase without the federal funding to ensure the project is "shovel ready." That way, in case something changes with grant funding, they'll be ready to work.

Following its decision to cancel the BRIC program, FEMA said it would be "reaching out and coordinating" with applicants whose projects were already underway. Yet Conway hasn't received any communication from the agency.

"We need that support from the federal government to make these projects happen so that our residents can continue to live in neighborhoods, and they don't have to see this increase of potential storm water being in their homes ever again," said June Wood, a spokesperson for the city.

The tiny town of Pollocksville -- located in a rural North Carolina county that went heavily for President Trump in 2024 -- is also facing uncertainty following the Trump administration's decision to cancel BRIC grants. FEMA had officially awarded the community a $1 million grant in June 2024 to elevate and flood-proof six commercial properties along Main Street that had been damaged by Hurricane Florence in 2018 and left vacant ever since.

The administration's decision to eliminate BRIC came four days before Pollocksville officials were scheduled to sign a contract with the construction company they had hired for the work. FEMA had said projects like Pollocksville's that had completed the procurement process and were set to start construction could still receive funding, but Pollocksville Mayor Jay Bender said the town is still waiting to hear from the agency.

"All we're trying to do is make our town a better place to live, work and play, and it just hurts when you've made plans and you're doing things the right way and the money or the grant stops," said Bender.>

<Late last week, at a White House event related to energy policy, Donald Trump was asked about his upcoming military parade, which apparently got the president thinking about World War II.

The Republican spent a curious amount of time talking about the fact that Russia was a U.S. partner during the worldwide conflict, while allied forces fought Germany and Japan. In apparent reference to Vladimir Putin, Trump said, “It’s sort of interesting, isn’t it? He fought with us in World War II, and everybody hates him. And Germany and Japan, they’re fine. You know, someday somebody will explain that ... but Putin is a little confused by that.” He concluded, “It’s a strange world.”

As the American president really ought to understand, it’s not that complicated. Russia fought with allied forces 80 years ago, but in the decades that followed, Germany and Japan became advanced liberal democracies, while Russia became a dangerous and destabilizing pariah — up to and including launching unprovoked invasions of its neighbors.

Trump made it sound as if Putin and the Kremlin were victims of unfair treatment, which he characterized as bewildering. Four days later, the Republican made matters worse. The New York Times reported:

Even by Trump standards, the circumstances were weird. On Monday morning, as a G-7 summit got underway in Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney welcomed the American president to the gathering, wished the U.S. Army a happy 250th birthday, and thanked the United States for its leadership role in the G-7. The Republican spent a few moments thanking his host before turning his attention — unprompted — to a country that wasn’t invited to the international gathering.

“The G-7 used to be the G-8,” Trump said. “Barack Obama and a person named Trudeau didn’t want to have Russia in, and I would say that that was a mistake because I think you wouldn’t have a war right now if you had Russia in and you wouldn’t have a war right now if Trump were President four years ago, but it didn’t work out that way.”

The American president kept going, lamenting Putin’s isolation, and blaming G-7 members for hurting Russia’s feelings, which Trump said contributed to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.“I mean, he was thrown out by Trudeau, who convinced one or two people, along with Obama,” the Republican argued. “He was thrown out and he’s not a happy person about it. I can tell you that. Basically, he basically doesn’t even speak to the people that throw him out and I agree with him.”

At this point, we could talk about the fact that it was Russia’s invasion of Crimea that led to its expulsion from the G-7 in the first place. We could talk about the fact that Justin Trudeau wasn’t the Canadian prime minister at the time. We could talk about the fact that the G-7 is a coalition of liberal democracies, which makes Russia a poor fit.

We could even talk about the fact that this has become a bizarre, years-long preoccupation for Trump, starting exactly seven years ago this week, for reasons he’s never explained.

But while these angles are certainly important in their own right, there’s another element to this that’s worth dwelling on.

Trump knows he’s faced criticism for nearly a decade over his ties to Russia. He knows he’s been publicly accused of being “Putin’s puppet.” He knows every time he needlessly advocates on Putin’s behalf, and every time he reads from a Kremlin-like script, he’s reinforcing impressions that he’s beholden to Moscow.

And yet, Trump keeps doing it anyway, seemingly indifferent to appearances.

Common sense might suggest that he’d at least want to keep up appearances, and maybe ease up on the public advocacy of his Russian counterpart.

But for reasons the White House hasn’t explained, Trump can’t seem to help himself.>

<A federal appeals court panel on Wednesday refused the Justice Department’s effort to put itself on the hook for an $83.3 million defamation award advice columnist E. Jean Carroll won at trial from President Trump.

It’s the latest setback for the president in his efforts to fight Carroll’s lawsuits at the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Last week, the 2nd Circuit upheld her earlier $5 million jury award.

On Wednesday, the three-judge panel denied the Justice Department’s request to replace Trump as the defendant in Carroll’s defamation lawsuit under the Westfall Act, a 1988 law that protects federal employees from certain lawsuits concerning things they did in the course of their jobs.

The Justice Department contended Trump’s denials of Carroll’s sexual assault claims in a written statement and comments he made on the White House South Lawn in 2019 — the basis of her suit — were made within the scope of Trump’s employment as president.

“The Court will issue an opinion detailing its reasoning in due course,” reads the 2nd Circuit’s one-page order rejecting the effort without further explanation.

The three-judge panel comprised Judge Denny Chin, an appointee of former President Obama; Judge Sarah Merriam, an appointee of former President Biden; and Judge Maria Araújo Kahn, another Biden appointee.

“The American People are supporting President Trump in historic numbers, and they demand an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and a swift dismissal of all of the Witch Hunts, including the Democrat-funded Carroll Hoaxes, the defense of which the Attorney General has determined is legally required to be taken over by the Department of Justice because Carroll based her false claims on the President’s official acts, including statements from the White House,” a spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said in a statement.

The Hill has reached out to the Justice Department as well as Carroll’s legal team for comment.

Wednesday’s ruling is the latest setback for the president at the 2nd Circuit, where he has appealed both jury awards Carroll won after coming forward during Trump’s presidency with claims he sexually assaulted her in a Manhattan department store dressing room in the mid-1990s. Trump continues to deny her story.

In the first trial, a jury found Trump liable for sexually assaulting Carroll and defaming her by denying her claims. Trump was ordered to pay $5 million.

The full 2nd Circuit bench rejected Trump’s appeal on Friday. The president’s legal team has vowed to take the case to the Supreme Court next.

Wednesday’s decision concerned the second trial, in which Carroll last year won an $83.3 million judgment from a separate jury over additional denials Trump made of the columnist’s claims, which were also ruled defamatory.

Since Trump retook the presidency, his Justice Department has sought to leverage the Westfall Act to step in for the president, which would mean he wouldn’t have to pay the damages and instead leave the government on the hook.

It’s a return to the Justice Department’s position during Trump’s first term, when it tried to step in near the onset of Carroll’s lawsuit. The gambit tied up the case in pretrial proceedings for years, only for the Biden-era Justice Department to drop the effort in 2023.

The 2nd Circuit’s ruling comes ahead of oral arguments scheduled for Tuesday, when the three-judge panel will hear Trump’s appeal of the jury verdict itself.>

<President Donald Trump’s immigration raids have disrupted life in Los Angeles in a way the mayor is comparing to COVID; they’ve created a climate of fear that’s driving people into hiding and hurting local businesses. This week, the president promised to expand those raids in blue cities, all in a futile attempt to hit 1 million deportations by the end of the year. After suggesting last week that ICE would stop targeting the agriculture and hotel industries, which disproportionately rely on immigrant labor, the administration also walked back that guidance.

And a troubling trend is emerging: As Trump’s immigration enforcement efforts get more aggressive and reckless, several elected officials who attempted to conduct oversight or question what is being done have been arrested.

Here’s the immigration news we’re keeping an eye on this week:

For a brief moment, it seemed as though Trump was finally experiencing a reality check when he admitted on Truth Social that his punitive immigration agenda would harm “very good, long time workers” within the agriculture and hotel industries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement formally directed its agents to stop all enforcement at farms, restaurants, and operating hotels—only for the administration to reverse that this week.

The Washington Post reported that Homeland Security leadership sent an email out Monday to its agents telling them it was rolling back its previous guidance from just four days earlier. Now, agents are being told to continue business as usual and conduct immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels, and restaurants.

The agriculture and hotel industries collectively employ millions of immigrants and stand to take a major hit if they lose these workers, something Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins attempted to convey to the president. Elora Mukherjee, clinical law professor at Columbia University and director of the school’s Immigrants’ Rights Clinic, told me this is a stunning reversal by the president and something Americans are indicating they are not on board with. In a Pew Research Center poll conducted in early June, largely before the recent wave of raids in Los Angeles and subsequent protests, 54 percent of respondents said they disapprove of increasing ICE raids on workplaces where people who are in the U.S. illegally may be working. And while immigration still shows up as Trump’s strongest issue in the polls, recent surveys suggest his support from voters is softening there.

“Overwhelmingly, Americans do not want ICE raids that focus on those without criminal records. That’s why polls show that Trump is losing voter approval on these key issues,” Mukherjee said.

United Farm Workers, one of the largest farm workers unions in the country, called out the Trump administration’s latest flip-flop. “A chaotic raid at a worksite and a warrantless sweep in our communities have the same outcome. Bull**** rhetoric aside, they’re hunting us down while we’re trying to feed you,” the union said on X. “Who’s actually in charge?”

On Tuesday in New York City, city comptroller Brad Lander, a Democrat who’s running for mayor, was accompanying immigrants attending their court hearings inside a federal courthouse, since the administration has increasingly been arresting people who show up for immigration proceedings. As federal agents attempted to arrest a man who had been the subject of an immigration hearing, Lander linked arms with him. The comptroller repeatedly asked immigration agents if they had a warrant for his arrest, but was not given an answer. Video footage shows agents ignoring his question and shoving him down the hall. “I will let go when you show me the judicial warrant. Where is it?” he asks as the agents push and shove him, trying to get him to let go. One of them pushes the comptroller up against a wall and handcuffs him as Lander says “You don’t have authority to arrest U.S. citizens.”

Tricia McLaughlin, DHS assistant secretary, said that Lander was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer, but a few hours later, Lander was released from detention. Gov. Kathy Hochul confirmed charges against him have been dropped.....>

<....Just days earlier, California Sen. Alex Padilla found himself in a similar situation. While attempting to ask a question during a press conference in Los Angeles where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was speaking about the president’s decision to send National Guard troops with immigration agents, Padilla was tackled to the ground and handcuffed. Despite Padilla identifying himself to law enforcement, he was forcibly removed from the event, but ultimately was not arrested. DHS implied Noem and her security team simply did not know who the senator was because he didn’t identify himself—even though he did, and there’s video footage of it—and because he wasn’t wearing his security pin.

Last month, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested during a congressional tour of a federal immigration detention center in New Jersey. Baraka was denied entry into the facility and had walked over to join a group of protesters when law enforcement arrested him. Baraka was charged with trespass, and even though that charge has since been dropped, the mayor is suing.

New Jersey Rep. LaMonica McIver was among the group of House representatives touring the detention center, and she joined protesters as Baraka was arrested. McIver’s elbows allegedly hit an officer, whose face was completely covered, and now she faces two federal assault charges.

Back in April, Trump signed an executive order directing his Cabinet heads to identify cities and states that don’t comply with his federal immigration policies. Now he’s promising to ramp up ICE raids in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York.

Though Trump has long villainized governors of sanctuary jurisdictions, under the 10th Amendment, the federal government cannot “commandeer” cities and states to enforce certain federal laws, including on immigration. So a coalition of 20 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit against Trump’s executive order, as it threatens to pull federal grants and contracts if states don’t comply.

In recent weeks, ICE stepped up its raids in Southern California, sparking protests that drew headlines. While most national attention focused on the protests in downtown Los Angeles, the raids themselves have created a climate of fear that’s keeping some people from leaving their homes—both immigrants without permanent legal status and people, including citizens, who are afraid of being targeted because of how they look. Local businesses say the lack of foot traffic is threatening their livelihoods, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass characterized it as a “body blow to our economy.”

Other blue cities have experienced something similar after ICE raids. Back in January, Chicago’s second most profitable business corridor was nearly empty. Business owners in parts of Queens said they felt a noticeable drop in customers in the first months of the Trump administration....>

<....The Associated Press also reported last week that Health and Human Services officials shared the data of Medicaid enrollees in California, Illinois, Washington state, and D.C. with Homeland Security. Each of these states offers Medicaid to non–U.S. citizens, but they use their own state dollars to pay for it. Several states extend Medicaid to their residents regardless of their immigration status, with some only offering it to children and pregnant women, while others also offer it to all qualifying adults.

Historically, Medicaid data is treated as ultrasensitive and never shared with other federal agencies, particularly for immigration enforcement. California Rep. Laura Friedman noted as much, posting to X that “We should never use a person’s need to go to the doctor against them. This will only lead to more chaos and pain in our communities.”

This week, U.S. District Court Judge Allison Burroughs extended her temporary restraining order against the federal government, preventing it from implementing Trump’s executive order banning international students from studying at Harvard University. So for now, one of the most elite universities in the world can continue enrolling foreign students, which last academic year made up about 27 percent of the school’s total enrollment.

This legal battle is far from over, as Burroughs’ order will remain in effect until June 23, but during a court hearing on Monday she said she’ll be issuing a formal opinion in this case before then. Harvard requested that Burroughs issue a preliminary injunction so it could still continue enrolling international students while this case plays out in court, while Justice Department lawyers stood by Trump’s order, arguing it was well within his authority to regulate immigration under federal law.

Harvard has been on the Trump administration’s chopping block ever since it refused to roll over and comply with a list of demands that would essentially allow the federal government deep oversight into the private school’s inner workings—unlike Columbia University. Government agencies quickly began pulling the plug on millions of dollars of research funding, and Harvard sued. The Trump administration decided to double down and again went after the school, but this time through immigration. In late May, Homeland Security tried revoking Harvard’s certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which allows schools to accept and enroll international students. About two weeks later, Trump issued an executive order restricting any international students from attending the school.>

<Russ Vought’s relationship with Republican appropriators was already strained. Then he started talking about pursuing the ultimate end-run around their funding power heading into the fall.

The White House budget director has been persistently touting the virtues of “pocket rescissions,” a tactic he has floated as a way to codify the spending cuts Elon Musk made while atop his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, and which the federal government’s top watchdog says is illegal.

On Capitol Hill, leading GOP appropriators see Vought’s comments as another shot against them in an escalating battle with the Trump administration over Congress’ “power of the purse.” And they warn that the budget director’s adversarial posture hinders their relationship with the White House as they work to head off a government shutdown in just over three months.

“Pocket rescissions are illegal, in my judgment,” Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) said in a brief interview this week, “and contradict the will of Congress and the constitutional authority of Congress to appropriate funds.”

To hear Vought tell it, a “pocket rescission” is a legitimate tool at the executive branch’s disposal. In such a scenario, President Donald Trump would issue a formal request to claw back funding, similar to the $9.4 billion package he sent lawmakers this month to cancel congressionally approved funding for public broadcasting and foreign aid.

But in this case, the memo would land on Capitol Hill less than 45 days before the new fiscal year is set to begin Oct. 1. By withholding the cash for that full timeframe — regardless of action by Congress — the White House would treat the funding as expired when the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30.

The dizzying ploy is another means toward the same goal Trump has been chasing since Inauguration Day: to spend less money than Congress has explicitly mandated in law. But the Government Accountability Office says the maneuver is unlawful, and the GOP lawmakers in charge of divvying up federal funding are wary that Vought is now talking about it in the open.

“I understand we want to use all the arrows in our quiver, and he wants to use all his,” Rep. David Joyce (R-Ohio), a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee, said of Vought in an interview. “But every time you pull out an arrow, you have to be ready for the consequences, right?”

Joyce continued: “It’s going to change the course of conversations and how each side works toward coming to resolution going forward.”

Vought declined last week to elaborate on his intentions, when pressed in person on Capitol Hill about his plans to use the ploy in the coming months. His office also did not return a request for comment. However, the budget director laid out a detailed argument for the maneuver on television earlier in the month — then mentioned it again as he left a meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson and then during a later hearing with House appropriators.

“The very Impoundment Control Act itself allows for a procedure called pocket rescissions, later in the year, to be able to bank some of these savings, without the bill actually being passed,” Vought said on CNN. “It’s a provision that has been rarely used. But it is there. And we intend to use all of these tools.”

Rep. Mike Simpson of Idaho, who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the Interior Department and the EPA, recently warned that the gambit is “a bad idea” that “undermines Congress’ authority,” after saying last month that he thinks “it’s illegal” for a president to withhold funding lawmakers approved.

But many top Republican appropriators — while scoffing at Vought’s comments — aren’t willing to engage in rhetorical arguments about the bounds of the president’s spending power.

“Talking is one thing. We’ll see if he actually does it,” Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Calif.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the military, said about Vought’s comments.

“He’s got his ideas,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), chair of the appropriations panel responsible for funding the departments of Transportation and Housing.

“I’d have some concerns about it,” said Rep. Robert Aderholt (R-Ala.), who chairs the appropriations panel that funds the departments of Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services — all targets of Trump’s deepest funding cuts.

Tension has been building for months between those Republican appropriators and Vought, who has a history of testing the limits of funding law: When he served in this same role during Trump’s first administration, he froze aid to Ukraine in a move that helped set the stage for the president’s first impeachment trial.....>

<....Republican funding leaders are irked that the White House has yet to deliver a full budget request, which appropriators rely upon to write their dozen funding measures. Vought has already left open the door to withholding the new money if the administration doesn’t agree with the spending priorities in the final bills.

They also say the president’s budget director and other Cabinet secretaries have withheld essential information about how they are using federal cash as the Trump administration fights off more than 100 legal challenges around the country. The suits are seeking to overturn the White House’s freezing of billions of dollars Congress already approved for myriad programs and agencies.

House Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) issued a rare rebuke of Vought this spring for taking down the public website showing how agencies are expected to disburse federal dollars.

But the Oklahoma Republican generally avoids any public criticism of the Trump administration and is not sounding off now about Vought’s embrace of pocket rescissions. Cole said this month that he would “look at each individual” request the White House sends to claw back funding, now that the House has passed the $9.4 billion package to nix money for foreign aid and public broadcasting.

That package of funding cuts now sits in the Senate, where some top Republicans are interested in tweaking the plan to protect funding for preventing AIDS around the world and supporting PBS programming in their home states. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested Vought’s public comments about using pocket rescissions could be intended to encourage reluctant senators to clear it.

“Maybe that’s the way to let members know: Vote for the ones he sends up,” Johnson said, noting that he would be “totally supportive” of Vought using the tactic this fall.

Another Senate fiscal hawk, Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Chair Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said he believes the law “does allow for pocket rescissions.”

“I think the president should have more power not to spend money,” Paul told reporters last week. “So if we have a way to reduce spending, by all means, we should use it.”

No court has ruled on the president’s power to cancel funding by sending Congress a request and then running out the clock at the end of the fiscal year. But GAO has twice weighed in.

In 2018, the watchdog found that the law “does not permit the withholding of funds through their date of expiration.” Vought, though, likes to cite an older GAO conclusion from 1975: It determined that Congress was unable to reject then-President Gerald Ford’s requests to claw back funding “in time to prevent the budget authority from lapsing.”>

<Millions of Americans who have waited decades for fast internet connections will keep waiting after the Trump administration threw a $42 billion high-speed internet program into disarray.

The Commerce Department, which runs the massive Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment Program, announced new rules in early June requiring states — some of which were ready to begin construction later this year — to solicit new bids from internet service providers.

The delay leaves millions of rural Americans stranded in places where health care is hard to access and telehealth is out of reach.

“This does monumental harm to rural America,” said Christopher Ali, a professor of telecommunications at Penn State.

The Biden-era program, known as BEAD, was hailed when created in 2021 as a national plan to bring fast internet to all, including millions in remote rural areas.

A yearlong KFF Health News investigation, with partner Gray Media’s InvestigateTV, found nearly 3 million people live in mostly rural counties that lack broadband as well as primary care and behavioral health care providers. In those same places, the analysis found, people live sicker and die earlier on average.

The program adopts a technology-neutral approach to “guarantee that American taxpayers obtain the greatest return on their broadband investment,” according to the June policy notice. The program previously prioritized the use of fiber-optic cable lines, but broadband experts like Ali said the new focus will make it easier for satellite-internet providers such as Elon Musk’s Starlink and Amazon’s Kuiper to win federal funds.

“We are going to connect rural America with technologies that cannot possibly meet the needs of the next generation of digital users,” Ali said. “They’re going to be missing out.”

Republicans have criticized BEAD for taking too long, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick vowed in March to get rid of its “woke mandates.” The revamped “Benefit of the Bargain BEAD Program,” which was released with a fact sheet titled “Ending Biden’s Broadband Burdens,” includes eliminating some labor and employment requirements and obligations to perform climate analyses on projects.

The requirement for states to do a new round of bidding with internet service providers makes it unclear whether states will be able to connect high-speed internet to all homes, said Drew Garner, director of policy engagement at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society.

Garner said the changes have caused “pure chaos” in state broadband offices. More than half the states have been knocked off their original timeline to deliver broadband to homes, he said.

The change also makes the program more competitive for satellite companies and wireless providers such as Verizon and T-Mobile, Garner said.

Garner analyzed in March what the possible increase in low-Earth-orbit satellites would mean for rural America. He found that fiber networks are generally more expensive to build but that satellites are more costly to maintain and “much more expensive” to consumers.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick said in a June release that the new direction of the program would be efficient and deliver high-speed internet “at the right price.” The agency overseeing BEAD declined to release a specific amount it hopes to save with the restructuring.

More than 40 states had already begun selecting companies to provide high-speed internet and fill in gaps in underserved areas, according to an agency dashboard created to track state progress.

In late May, the website was altered and columns showing the states that had completed their work with federal regulators disappeared. Three states — Delaware, Louisiana, and Nevada — had reached the finish line and were waiting for the federal government to distribute funding....>

<....The tracker, which KFF Health News saved in March, details the steps each state made in their years-long efforts to create location-based maps and bring high-speed internet to those missing service. West Virginia had completed selection of internet service providers and a leaked draft of its proposed plan shows the state was set to provide fiber connections to all homes and businesses.

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) praised removal of some of the hurdles that delayed implementation and said she thought her state would not have to make very many changes to existing plans during a call with West Virginia reporters.

West Virginia’s broadband council has worked aggressively to expand in a state where 25% of counties lack high-speed internet and health providers, according to KFF Health News’ analysis.

In Lincoln County, West Virginia, Gary Vance owns 21 acres atop a steep ridge that has no internet connection. Vance, who sat in his yard enjoying the sun on a recent day, said he doesn’t want to wait any longer.

Vance said he has various medical conditions: high blood sugar, deteriorating bones, lung problems — “all kinds of crap.” He’s worried about his family’s inability to make a phone call or connect to the internet.

“You can’t call nobody to get out if something happens,” said Vance, who also lacks running water.

KFF Health News, using data from federal and academic sources, found more than 200 counties — with large swaths in the South, Appalachia, and the remote West — lack high-speed internet, behavioral health providers, and primary care doctors who serve low-income patients on Medicaid. On average, residents in those counties experienced higher rates of diabetes, obesity, chronically high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease.

The gaps in telephone and internet services didn’t cause the higher rates of illness, but Ali said it does not help either.

Ali, who traveled rural America for his book “Farm Fresh Broadband: The Politics of Rural Connectivity,” said telehealth, education, banking, and the use of artificial intelligence all require fast download and upload speeds that cannot always be guaranteed with satellite or wireless technology.

It’s “the politics of good enough,” Ali said. “And that is always how we’ve treated rural America.”

Fiber-optic cables, installed underground or on poles, consistently provide broadband speeds that meet the Federal Communications Commission’s requirements for broadband download speed of 100 megabits per second and 20 Mbps upload speed. By contrast, a national speed analysis, performed by Ookla, a private research and analytics company, found that only 17.4% of Starlink satellite internet users nationwide consistently get those minimum speeds. The report also noted Starlink’s speeds were rising nationwide in the first three months of 2025.

In March, West Virginia’s Republican governor, Patrick Morrisey, announced plans to collaborate with the Trump administration on the new requirements.

Republican state Del. Dan Linville, who has been working with Morrisey’s office, said his goal is to eventually get fiber everywhere but said other opportunities could be available to get internet faster.