Trump finally meets an executive order he doesn't like
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
This GOP assault on freedom isn't just outrageous — it's likely illegal
Florida’s institutions of higher education are in trouble.
The University of West Florida is being run by Manny Diaz Jr., a former social studies teacher (and ex-Commissioner of Education) but, given that he’s Ron DeSantis’ choice, he’ll likely get the permanent position.
Florida Atlantic and Florida International have had undistinguished former legislators imposed on them; and USF president Rhea Law has announced her resignation, creating an opening for another DeSantis-friendly politician.
At the University of Florida, our supposed flagship institution, the provost is interim, the Colleges of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Engineering, Law, and Arts are being run by interim deans, and 30 chair or director positions are vacant.
This obvious dysfunction has not gone unnoticed: The best and brightest academics are not exactly enthusiastic about working in Florida.
I’ve been teaching for more than 30 years; I love my job at Florida State — for now, at least. The students are wonderful (most of them), and I admire, even like, my colleagues (most of them).
Ron DeSantis hasn’t gotten around to trying to trash our reputation and cripple our academic freedom the way they have at New College, UWF, and UF.
Not yet, anyway.
The state’s “post-tenure review,” in which professors (who already undergo yearly reviews) must further justify their existence to the Board of Trustees, has driven some of the most productive academics out of Florida.
Nearly a third of Florida’s faculty want to leave the state.
If I were a young professor looking for a job, I’d avoid Florida.
Churn at UF
Our state government is authoritarian and proudly ignorant, hell-bent on destroying what makes universities great — freedom of expression, critical thinking, creativity, exposing students to ideas that may challenge them (or even upset them), unfettered research, scientific rigor, and advances in knowledge based on data.
Why would a scholar want to pursue a career in such a fact-resistant, small-minded, censorious state?
As has become its habit, the University of Florida has changed presidents. Again.
Dr. Donald Landry has become UF’s interim president, replacing Kent Fuchs, the former interim president and one-time actual president who stepped back in when Ben Sasse, the unqualified spendthrift former president resigned under a cloud, and then had to stay on when the trustees’ choice, Dr. Santa Ono, who’d resigned as president of the University of Michigan to take the job at Florida, fell foul of the Board of Governors’ anti-DEI hysteria.
This is not how serious institutions of higher education conduct themselves.
But then, Florida is not a serious place.
Enter Landry, late of the Columbia Center for Human Longevity and a medical doctor with “elite” Ivy degrees.
Landry seems positively giddy at becoming UF’s latest interim, calling it “the culmination of my career” and “the opportunity of a lifetime,” and demonstrates an Olympic-standard talent for sucking up, calling UF “a preeminent university in what one could argue is the preeminent state in this nation at this moment in time.”
He obviously wants the permanent job. The trustees obviously want him to have it: They’re paying him $2 million for this year, with the possibility of a $500,000 bonus.
If they don’t give him the permanent job, they have to pay him another $2 million.
Purge of academics
While the fact-based community knows Florida is Ground Zero for the climate crisis, Landry told UF’s right-wing trustees what they wanted to hear, insisting the science is “not settled,” even though the science is indeed settled: 97% of climate scientists agree on anthropogenic causes of global warming.
Maybe they should have asked him if the Theory of Gravity is sound or if the sun orbits the earth.
Or if he’ll defend professors’ freedom of speech.
DeSantis and his anti-education squad have passed laws banning anything that smells of DEI, clamped down on the honest study of American history, pitched hissy fits over pro-Palestinian campus protests, and railed against so-called “woke” professors who have the temerity to recognize that gay people exist, trans people exist, systemic racism is real, and science doesn’t care what you believe.
Now they’re going after educators who dare disparage Charlie Kirk.
Let’s stipulate that Kirk did not deserve his violent death. No one does.
He was a human being. He had as much right as the rest of us to speak his mind.
Which is the whole point.
A University of Miami neurologist was fired for posting, “What was done to Charlie Kirk has been done to countless Palestinian babies, children, girls, boys, women and men not just over the past two years of the ongoing genocide, but decades.”
A retired University of Florida law professor was stripped of his emeritus title for saying, “I did not want him to die. I reserve that wish for Trump.”
At FAU, three professors have been placed on administrative leave. One, a tenured professor of art history, didn’t comment on Kirk’s death, but re-posted others calling Kirk bigoted and racist.
It’s not illegal.
As the great Rick Wilson says, “tastelessness is not treason.”
‘Outrageous things’
Kirk identified as a “free speech absolutist,” declaring, “You should be allowed to say outrageous things,” even if you upset people.
Among the outrageous things Charlie Kirk said:
- On journalist Joy Reid, the late Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, former First Lady Michelle Obama, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson being “affirmative action picks,” he said, “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
- On women: They should “submit to a godly man,” marry early, and have babies.
- On Jews: “The philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”
- On guns: “I think it’s worth [it] to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”
As offensive, stupid, prejudiced, or karma-inviting as you or I might find what Kirk said, we live under a system of laws that protect his right to say it.
‘Civility’
The question is whether the DeSantis administration and Florida’s education establishment, including UF’s new president, understand that freedom of speech applies to all of us.
Donald Landry says he’s big on civility: “I will be locking in a culture of freedom of academic expression tempered by civility.”
Landry enjoys the support of Christopher Rufo, who calls him “a principled leader who will reverse ideological capture and restore truth-seeking within the institution” at UF.
In case you’ve forgotten Rufo, he’s yet another pious conservative who likes to claim he cherishes free expression on campus, telling PBS News Hour in May the DeSantis administration has “expanded the range of discourse in higher education,” and boasting, “At New College of Florida, for example, where I’m a trustee, we have probably the widest range of discourse of any public university in the United States.”
A habit in Florida
Getting rid of a visiting professor who focuses on Black history contradicts Rufo’s smug assertion.
No one at New College accused Erik Wallenberg of incompetence or bad teaching or any other malfeasance.
But Rufo called him “a pure left-wing mad-lib” and sniffed, “New College will no longer be a jobs program for middling, left-wing intellectuals.”
Firing a professor because you don’t like his politics is not evidence of a wide range of discourse.
It’s also likely illegal.
Landry should take note and someone should alert him to Florida’s long, shameful history of McCarthyite attacks on academics.
In the late 1950s, the Legislature started investigating universities, determined to search out communists, biology professors who taught evolution, English professors who assigned “The Grapes of Wrath” and the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, and especially gay people in the student body or the faculty.
Scores were fired or expelled.
Perhaps former president/former interim president Kent Fuchs can tell Donald Landry about the time he, and UF trustees head Mori Hosseini, tried to ban four law professors from signing onto an amicus brief opposing a state law making it hard for former felons to vote, and stop three other professors from testifying as expert witnesses on the ground that their actions might impede Ron DeSantis’ agenda.
Landry’s UF contract stipulates that a number of important decisions, including hiring, must be approved by Mori Hosseini — which means a highly partisan political appointee will exercise even more control over how the university works, what’s allowed, what’s censored.
You either have academic freedom, or you don’t.
You either have a First Amendment, or you don’t.
- Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee, which probably explains her unhealthy fascination with Florida politics. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo.
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This GOP extremist hypocrite fought unions. Guess what his new job is?
It’s ironic that a man who built his political career railing passionately about teachers “unions” will soon be running one of his own.
But in a way it’s almost fitting that it will be the next move for Oklahoma education Superintendent Ryan Walters, who has made it his mission to babble bizarre, inflammatory rhetoric and launch random witch hunts against educators and their unions.
Maybe it will help him recenter on who is vitally important to the success of our public schools — the teachers. Because if he truly wants to be successful, the role will require him to collaborate with them and show some empathy toward their needs.
Those are two skillsets that he’s been sorely lacking the past two years and 10 months in his elected position.
And maybe it will serve as a rude awakening that he’s betrayed the trust of Oklahomans who believed he could turn our schools around. They’ll now find themselves with a politically appointed leader they didn’t get to choose, for the remaining year or so of what should have been Walters’ term.
In case you weren’t randomly tuned into Fox News at 10:43 p.m. last Wednesday, Walters was allotted just under 40 seconds on a national conservative talk program to announce he has accepted a new role as CEO of the Teacher Freedom Alliance. The group bills itself as an “alternative to traditional union membership,” but provides “professional support services and resources” for educators.
The group, which so far boasts a measly 2,800 members nationwide, is a new effort of the Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit “dedicated to fighting government overreach, defending workers’ rights and protecting constitutional freedom.”
“For decades, union bosses have poisoned our schools with politics and propaganda while abandoning parents, students, and good teachers. That ends today. We’re going to expose them, fight them, and take back our classrooms,” Walters said in a statement released by the Freedom Foundation.
“At the Teacher Freedom Alliance, we’re giving educators real freedom, freedom from the liberal, woke agenda that has corrupted public education. We will arm teachers with the tools, support, and freedom they need, without forcing them to give up their values.”
The Teacher Freedom Alliance sure sounds like it has the same mission of a teachers union — you know, those groups Walters has loved to hate.
In January, Walters launched a tone deaf tirade attempting to link schools and teachers unions to the deadly truck attack in New Orleans and even used the phrase “terrorist training camps” to describe school classrooms.
This year, he also falsely claimed teachers unions love standardized testing (they don’t).
He pushed the state Board of Education to take away the teaching license of a former Norman High School educator for sharing a QR code to the Brooklyn Public Library’s free online catalog. He is trying to revoke two other educators’ licenses over social media posts related to the 2024 assassination attempt of President Donald Trump.
And most recently, he’s threatened to ban teachers for things they’ve posted on social media about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Now he’s going to be something of a union boss himself? That was not a square on my 2025 bingo card.
While the Teacher Freedom Alliance bills itself as a “viable alternative to unions,” it does appear to share many similarities with Oklahoma’s organizing groups. In Oklahoma, a few of the largest districts do have groups that collectively bargain for educators, but most don’t. However, one thing that makes Oklahoma’s associations different from unions in other states is that they cannot strike. But much like the Teacher Freedom Alliance, Oklahoma’s organizations provide their members liability insurance if they ever get sued as well as professional development training and an “engaged community of educators.”
In light of his new job, it sure appears that Walters has been spewing a whole lot of hyperbole about educators that he actually doesn’t believe. That’s pretty sad for our children and the teachers we’ve entrusted to educate them.
It also appears that Walters never intended to actually help fix our school system. Instead, he used the post that we entrusted him with to try to gain the attention of conservative groups so he could grab a cushy job.
Oklahoma voters — and teachers — deserve better. They deserve a public official who is committed to rolling up their sleeves and working together, and not someone who flees in terror when things get hard. And they need someone who is competent and understands how schools work and who isn’t motivated by grabbing headlines.
Hopefully fellow Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt will choose carefully when it comes time to fill the role. He’ll get to pick Walters’ successor once he officially resigns.
Walters has proven he doesn’t have a lot of respect for the voters who elected and believed in him if last night was any indication.
He couldn’t be bothered to let Oklahomans know he was leaving in a publicly accessible forum. Instead, he chose a late-night, cable talk show slot, which many Oklahomans don’t have access to, to announce he’s washing his hands of us.
Walters was likely a frontrunner in the 2026 gubernatorial race. I say that judging from the multitude of emails in support of him that I’ve received from people all over the state the past two years.
If he still harbored any plans to run for governor, I think he’s shot himself in the foot.
Oklahomans don’t like quitters. And they certainly don’t like hypocrites who preach one thing publicly while secretly believing something else.
- Janelle Stecklein is editor of Oklahoma Voice. An award-winning journalist, Stecklein has been covering Oklahoma government and politics since moving to the state in 2014.
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Ten ways Trump has already shut down the government
The media is reporting on the approaching government shutdown on Sept. 30, due to an impasse between the two congressional parties. President Donald Trump is threatening more mass firings of federal workers should this occur.
Der Führer Donald has already shut down vital government programs since he ascended to his elected dictatorship on Jan. 20. The shutdowns of critical agencies, lifesaving programs, and law enforcement are uniformly illegal and constitute impeachable offenses. Under the Constitution, only Congress can terminate or limit many of the programs axed by the rampaging monarch.
Here is a brief tour through the wreckage wrought by Trump, Elon Musk, and Trump’s lawless maniac, the clenched-jawed Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget.
- Trump has illegally and impeachably closed the Agency for International Development, fast winding down critical humanitarian aid — medicine, food, clean water, etc. — to millions of impoverished families in poor countries abroad. Tens of thousands have already perished, according to aid officials.
- He has illegally and impeachably paralyzed the protector of consumers — the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — that returned many billions of dollars to consumers from corporate rip-off schemes, mostly from the finance companies. Throwing corporate law and order out the window, Trump is setting records for being soft on corporate crime — ending dozens of underway prosecutions of companies by the Justice Department.
- He has illegally and impeachably closed the cabinet-level Department of Education, throwing student aid programs and the status of existing loans into dark holes of chaos.
- Across other federal agencies, Trump has closed down crucial scientific programs designed to understand and alert the people to mega storms and wildfires, infectious diseases, looming pandemics abroad, and expand basic research in medical science for the public’s health.
- With his toady Environmental Protection Agency Administrator, Lee Zeldin, Trump is chopping our protection against deadly toxic air, water, and soil pollution into pieces. He is closing down the EPA’s celebrated scientific research section; firing people everywhere; and declaring that the EPA has no authority to deal with the oil, gas, and coal fossil fuel emissions causing global warming. Crazily, he has blocked lower-priced solar energy and wind power projects, calling windmills “ugly.” This is just deranged.
- Federal Emergency Management Agency employees have signed a desperate petition to Trump to stop strip-mining the agency, stop slowing its emergency response time, and restore the staff pushed out during the Department of Government Efficiency lawlessness. For their courage, Trump fired or suspended many of these hurricane, flood, and wildfire rescuers, as he does for civil servants who sign other letters and petitions because they report they are unable to perform their work because of his actions. He has weakened an already weak Occupational Safety and Health Administration and further jeopardized the health and safety of Americans in their workplace.
- Trump has reduced successful programs such as Meals on Wheels America, Head Start, and aims to get rid of the Job Corps and AmeriCorps. Again, illegally defying congressional mandates.
- Trump, who eats well, is cutting food stamps for millions of poor Americans. This is hurting desperate families and supplying farmers.
- Earlier, Trump got through Congress a law that will cause over 10 million people to lose their Medicaid; nearly 5 million could lose healthcare coverage soon when the elimination of subsidies causes prices to skyrocket under Obamacare scheduled by the end of this year. These serious deprivations, sure to cost lives, are what the congressional Democrats are insisting be reversed before they go along with the omnibus government funding bill. GOP leaders, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.), are resisting. Of course, they have good health insurance paid for by taxpayers.
- Trump has shut down diplomacy abroad, replacing it with threats, violence, fantasies, and boastful rhetoric. The skills of the Foreign Service in the State Department are frozen under the arrogant Secretary of State and Netanyahu toady, Marco Rubio.
Many of the above-noted cuts in programs are to pay for more tax cuts to the under-taxed super rich and profit-glutted corporations. Note that Trump is NOT cutting hundreds of billions of dollars annually in corporate welfare — subsidies, handouts, giveaways, and bailouts. Nor is he going after huge fraud on the government in programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and military procurement. Trump is willing to overlook avaricious, entrenched corporate vendors and contractors bilking Uncle Sam.
Cracking down on corporate fraud and abuse would risk his own enormous self-enrichment schemes, would end his misuse of the office of the presidency and limit his use of the White House as business headquarters. Trump, regardless of his deeply phony “populism,” has always been a hardcore corporatist!
Trump, who is egomaniacal, ignorant, and often deranged with his daily blatant lies against reality, is a world-class, cunning personality. He secures the abject loyalty of his major appointees by nominating either totally inexperienced, incompetent people to run agencies and departments or turncoats who, once defiant, become obeisant.
The former are relishing their sudden unmerited upward mobility and are not about to make waves. The latter, like Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., feel they are under suspicion and double down on goosestepping with their boss. Neither recruitment category is likely to produce any whistleblowers. That’s how cunning Trump is with his widely criticized nominations.
Stay tuned. Let’s see how effective the Democratic Party’s polemics are to counter Trump, already blaming the Democrats for the Republican Party’s government shutdown. The Democrats can start by driving the point home to the American people about the terrible impacts Trump’s present government closures will quickly have on their health, safety, and livelihoods.
- Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate and the author of "The Seventeen Solutions: Bold Ideas for Our American Future" (2012). His latest book is, "Wrecking America: How Trump's Lies and Lawbreaking Betray All" (2020, co-authored with Mark Green).
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This GOP defeat suggests Trump finally has a fight on his hands
It’s premature, but so far, I think the congressional Democrats have shown some spine in the face of another government shutdown.
Let’s hope they show more. If they do not, their public reputation for wimpiness is going to balloon. And I don’t mean among Republicans and independents. I mean among their own kind. This is no time for finding a comfy spot between freedom and despotism. The Democrats must fight, even though there’s a cost, as there always is, to fighting.
Last time, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer shucked and jived about 30-day extensions, all the while scheming in the background for face-saving ways to cave. In the end, he said keeping the government open was better than closing it, as Donald Trump would then have the power to redefine “essential services” and cut them to the bone. Nine Senate Democrats acquiesced. Did they get something in return? No.
But this time at least, Schumer isn’t messing around with 30-day extensions. The House passed one last week, with one Democrat for it and two Republicans against it, but it was killed off almost immediately in the Senate by a Democratic filibuster.
If Schumer were planning to shuck and jive again, he would have gotten his caucus to vote for it — it’s called a temporary “Continuing Resolution” – while claiming party leadership is still negotiating with Trump. He didn’t, though. For now, I’ll take that as a hopeful sign.
That’s partly because there’s no one to negotiate with. GOP leaders in the House and Senate don’t want to make any moves without the president’s say so. Meanwhile, the president himself seems to believe his party doesn’t need the Democrats to keep the government open. (This assumes Trump cares, and I’m very much unconvinced that he does: “If it has to shut down, it'll have to shut down,” he said.)
That Schumer isn’t messing around (so far, at least) with a phony CR extension comes from something else — monumental upward pressure from the base of the Democratic Party to stand firm against Trump, even if doing so undermines efforts at bipartisan compromise.
Poll after poll shows Democratic voters are themselves increasingly furious with party leadership, especially with its weakness in the face of tyranny. That can be explained in the plainest of terms. Trump’s evil is no longer theoretical. It is real, and it must not be bargained with.
Schumer now thinks the situation is much different, because the president and his party are weaker than they were then.
“The BBB bill, which they have passed, is highly unpopular with the American people,” he said. “Democrats are unified. We have been strong on the same message for a very long time, which is: We need to help the American people lower their costs, particularly on health care.”
A lot of people are asking the question: what then? In exchange for keeping the government open, the Democrats want the Republicans to agree to renewing Obamacare subsidies and rolling back cuts to Medicaid. If the Republicans balk and the government closes, how will it end? Will the Senate Republicans nuke the filibuster? Then what?
How do the Democrats win the argument?
Honesty, I don’t think this question is one of politics. It’s one of punditry. It’s the kind of question you ask yourself when you think of yourself as a disinterested arbiter who stands in remove of the words used by each party, and who assesses which side “won the debate.” It’s a whole lot of fun spending your time gaming things out (trust me), but in the end, it’s still punditry, not politics. And now, it’s irrelevant.
Trump acts like the Congress doesn’t matter. (The Republicans in the Congress act like the Congress doesn’t matter. The Republicans on the Supreme Court have ruled that in some cases, the Congress really doesn’t matter.) The president has pushed his party to claw back money signed into law by previous presidents. His administration has illegally impounded hundreds of billions of dollars in congressionally approved funding, all because it’s not “consistent with his priorities.”
He has said he has the right to do whatever he wants, however he wants, to whomever he wants.
“I’m the president,” he said.
He has determined press freedoms are “really illegal.” With the Supreme Court’s blessing, he’s arresting people for the “crime” of their identity. He has ordered prosecutors to indict at least one of his enemies by declaring him “guilty as hell.” (He said there’s no “enemies list,” but more indictments are coming.) And now, he has deemed that liberal groups that criticize him are “domestic terrorist organizations.”
He said, “they are sick, radical left people, and they can’t get away with it.”
And on top of this, the Republicans control everything.
As one observer put it: “You think people are going to blame the party that controls zero branches of the government and not the guy who repeatedly says he has the power to do literally whatever he wants?”
How do you win the argument against a criminal? You don’t. Absent the power to investigate him, all the Democrats can do right now is fight, and they must fight though fighting could come at a price. Yes, the shutdown may go on indefinitely. Yes, the Senate Republicans might nuke the filibuster. Yes, a lot of bad things might happen, especially to the Democratic base pushing the leadership to fight. But guess what? A lot of bad things are already happening and they will continue to happen whether the Democrats cooperate or not.
Those who are worried about arguments fear losing and won’t fight. Those who are willing to fight know they might lose and do it anyway.
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This tipping point will bring Trump's reign crashing down — and it's close
Last week was an extraordinary week. The slumbering giant of America is awakening.
Americans forced Disney to put Jimmy Kimmel back on the air. Over 6 million people watched Kimmel’s Tuesday monologue assailing Trump’s attempt to censor him. Another 26 million watched it on social media, including YouTube. (Kimmel’s usual television audience is about 1.42 million.)
Trump’s dictatorial narcissism revealed itself nearly as dramatically in the criminal indictment of former FBI director James Comey, coming immediately after Trump fired the U.S. attorney who refused to indict him.
As did Trump’s demand that prosecutors go after philanthropist George Soros, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), New York Attorney General Letitia James, and other perceived enemies.
As did Trump’s order on Saturday, directing the “Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth” to use “full force, if necessary” to “protect War ravaged Portland,” Oregon and any “ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.” He is escalating his use of the U.S. military against Americans.
There was also his bonkers speech to the United Nations telling delegates that their nations are “going to hell.” His attribution of autism to Tylenol, even though doctors say it is safe for pregnant women in moderation. His unilateral imposition of tariffs as high as 100 percent on imports of pharmaceuticals and kitchen cabinets.
Friends, his neofascism and his dementia are both in plain sight.
Americans — including independents and many Republicans — are appalled by what we’re seeing
His polls continue to drop.
Voters are turning against him and his Republican party. On Tuesday, Democrat Adelita Grijalva won Arizona’s Seventh Congressional District in a special election, leaving House Republicans with a majority of just five.
Grijalva’s victory comes on the heels of another Democratic win: James Walkinshaw’s in Virginia.
Two more special elections are coming, in Texas and Tennessee.
Speaker Mike Johnson is struggling to hold House Republicans together, facing rebellion on issues such as the release of files relating to disgraced financier and sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Democrats are refusing to go along with Republicans to fund the government beyond Tuesday unless Republicans agree to extending Affordable Care Act subsidies — now set to expire at the end of the year and cause 24 million people to lose coverage or pay skyrocketing premiums.
Friends, I can’t tell you exactly when the tipping point will occur — when elected Republicans will rebel against him, or when his dementia becomes so apparent he’s forced to resign, or when so much of the nation rises up against his dictatorship that he’s impeached and convicted of high crimes — but we’re getting closer.
As I said a few days ago, I’ve been in and around politics for 60 years and have developed a sixth sense about the slumbering giant of America. That giant is now stirring. He about to stand. He’s angry. Soon he will roar.
Your activism is working.
Be strong. Be safe. Hug your loved ones. We’ll get through this.
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For a few precious moments, I saw something so pure even Trump couldn't destroy it
In the past two days, I have seen both horrible and wonderful things.
While sitting on the beach, er, researching information for a future piece Thursday, I spied a baby on my port side scrambling along in the sand on all fours like an oversized fiddler crab. His chubby hands doubled as chubby feet, as he expertly moved about sideways, backwards, and forwards — to and fro.
I’ve seen infants do this before, and knew the crab-like baby on the beach was within inches of doing the most human thing possible: rising up on his two back claws, to start seeing the world from a higher place.
He’d still be looking up at most things, but now also straight ahead and down at others ...
I got back to my research … and sometime later the little crab returned to the magic spot where the surf licks at the beach, with what looked to be his dad and grandpa. The little crab was still dashing about on all fours, but this time with more reliance on his back two. He’d push up hard with his front claws before crumbling to the sand off his back ones.
I realized I was about to have the incredible privilege of watching this baby take his first steps. I had only seen this one time before, when my eldest, Kaite, stood up, pushed off and toddled into my arms.
You’ll never see anything better in your life, and the lump you get in your throat while inhaling the memory and typing it out testifies to that.
I missed my younger daughter’s first steps. Kristin began her two-legged journey through life while I was banging around a newsroom that magic evening helping to manufacture the next day’s paper.
When I departed for work, she was but a crawler, when I returned many hours later, she was a cruiser, and able to bang from coffee table to chair, and chair back to coffee table, leaving spilled water glasses and TV remotes in her choppy wake.
Now the little crab on the beach was about to change everybody’s life around him, and I was going to be a fortunate witness. The grandpa had propped the little crab on his two back claws, and he precariously swayed in the wind, the surf lapping at his fat little toes. The dad was crouched just an arm’s-length away, calling for the little crab to push off and join him …
It was riveting theater.
The baby wobbled on his fat feet for what seemed like forever, before his grandpa released him. His father, eyes alight, urged his son to join him. Suddenly free and untethered, the baby wobbled again, before plopping on his ample, back padding.
They tried again … and again … but the tired baby wasn't quite up to the biggest step of his lifetime.
He never did walk that afternoon, but I learned through surf-side intel the next morning, that the Baby Jake had figured it all out overnight, and was now terrorizing coffee tables and anything that dared sit atop them.
I’m an old man and see things through worn eyes. I am slowing down, while God willing, Jake will spend the next many years of his life getting up to speed, before settling on a cruising altitude that suits his fancy.
I saw a wonderful thing on the beach that day as a baby stretched out toward boyhood.
When I returned to my research, and crashed into a couple of news sites, I saw some truly awful things. I saw financial aid being pulled that would have gone to help starving children, who very well could have been Jake had he been on the other side of the ocean he now toddled on.
I saw the ugly, abominable, orange man making a mockery of good and decency, while banging around in the knee-deep slop where he had chosen long ago to spend his worthless life.
I put my phone down and cursed that moment, before returning to the spot where Jake had grown wings.
This was the moment I would feast on.
These things replenish us. They fortify us, and give us the strength to go forward on our own two, blistered feet.
We can stand watch against the evil in our lives and celebrate the wonderful things.
In fact, we must …
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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This state shows the grim truth behind Trump's jobs claims
Michigan’s economy has been slowing over the past year, but its jobs picture may be far gloomier than the much-watched monthly reports have indicated.
Newly revised numbers show that Michigan actually lost 13,800 jobs in the 12 months ending in March, instead of the 25,900 jobs reportedly created in the period.
“It was an ouch,” said Gabe Ehrlich, director of the University of Michigan’s Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics.
The preliminary benchmark revision by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows there were 911,000 fewer U.S. jobs created in the 12 months ending in March than reported in the closely watched monthly figures. It was the largest preliminary revision by the bureau in records going back to 2000 and cut U.S. job growth in the period in half.
Michigan had 39,700 jobs wiped out in the revision, the third most in the country behind North Carolina (56,900) and Colorado (51,200). Most of those lost jobs — 31,300 — came out of metro Detroit.
But the revision added 26,800 jobs to metro Grand Rapids. That was the highest-percentage jobs jump among metro areas with populations of one million or more.
The revision covered the last nine months of President Joseph Biden’s administration and most of the first three months of President Donald Trump’s administration. It didn’t provide monthly overestimates.
Ehrlich, who has been forecasting Michigan’s economy for years, cautioned that the final benchmark revision could reveal a smaller loss when it’s tabulated early next year, as has happened in the past.
And monthly BLS data show that Michigan has added 21,300 payroll jobs since March.
The conflicting numbers illustrate how difficult it is to understand what’s happening in a state economy being roiled by Trump’s chaotic tariff and trade policies and the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
In its latest Michigan economic forecast this month, Ehrlich and his U-M colleagues took the unusual step of not estimating state government revenues for the next two years because of the unknown impact of the new federal tax-and-spending law.
“We believe there are important open questions about how these changes will interact with state revenue collections, and that these changes likely represent the largest updates to our outlook for state revenues since May,” the forecast said. “We expect to issue an updated full report and analysis with our November forecast.”
Their September outlook shows continued payroll job growth over the next two years, although at a much slower pace than the past several years. The state is expected to add 13,700 jobs next year and 12,100 in 2027, down from 38,700 this year.
But Ehrlich said he’s concerned about the state’s shrinking labor force. Employers added 5,000 jobs in August, according to the monthly report from the state Department of Technology, Management and Budget released earlier this month.
But the same report showed that 7,000 fewer people were employed than in July and that 14,000 people dropped out of the labor force last month. August’s state jobless rate fell slightly from 5.3 percent in July to 5.2 percent in August, mostly because of workers holding or seeking jobs.
“All I can say is that this month’s report is a real head-scratcher,” Ehrlich told me, adding that people shouldn’t “over-interpret” one month’s data.
But the labor force has been shrinking for five straight months and is down by 38,000 working-age adults since March.
And jobs are getting harder to find in Michigan. There were 1.44 unemployed people in the state for every available job in June, the highest level in five years.
A major part of the data confusion is the yawning gap between reported payroll jobs created by businesses and a separate household survey that determines the unemployment rate.
That’s not unusual in an uncertain, declining economy. Economists generally put more stock in the payroll numbers reported by businesses. But Ehrlich said this time what working people are reporting in government surveys might paint a more accurate picture of the job market.
“What we see right now is that the household survey may be mostly right,” Ehrlich said. “It’s tough to know.”
And it’s getting tougher, thanks to the Trump administration’s assault on the BLS, which collects a variety of crucial jobs and economic data.
In August, Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer following a weak jobs report. Trump claimed, without evidence, that the BLS rigged the jobs numbers to make him look bad.
(Just wondering: if McEntarfer, aJoe Biden appointee, was cooking the books to hurt Trump, why would she have approved the big jobs revision that diminishes Biden’s record?)
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has kept up the attack, saying the jobs numbers won’t be accurate until key people hired in Democratic administrations are purged from the agency.
Ehrlich said he still has confidence in the BLS, which he called “an unappreciated gem,” but he and other economists say data collection can be improved.
Part of the problem is that initial response rates from businesses and households have been declining since Covid, leading to big revisions as more data is collected.
“The BLS is doing the best job it can,” Ehrlich told me. “It’s a challenging job and there’s always room to improve. The resources have not been there to do that.”
It’s easier for Trump to blame the data rather than his own destructive policies, which are killing jobs, raising prices, stalling business investment and souring consumers.
- Rick Haglund writes the "Micheconomy" column for the Michigan Advance. He's a former reporter and business columnist for Booth Newspapers, now the MLive Media Group, with extensive experience covering Michigan’s economy and the auto industry. He now works as a freelance writer based in Southeast Michigan.
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AI Charlie Kirk tributes are a new version of this old response to violent American deaths
By Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton.
An AI-generated image of Charlie Kirk embracing Jesus. Another of Kirk posing with angel wings and halo. Then there’s the one of Kirk standing with George Floyd at the gates of heaven.
When prominent political or cultural figures die in the U.S., the remembrance of their life often veers into hagiography. And that’s what’s been happening since the gruesome killing of conservative activist and Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk.
The word hagiography comes from the Christian tradition of writing about saints’ lives, but the practice often spills into secular politics and media, falling under the umbrella of what’s called, in sociology, the “sacralization of politics.” Assassinations and violent deaths, in particular, tend to be interpreted in sacred terms: The person becomes a secular martyr who made a heroic sacrifice. They are portrayed as morally righteous and spiritually pure.
This is, to some degree, a natural part of mourning. But taking a closer look at why this happens – and how the internet accelerates it – offers some important insights into politics in the U.S. today.
From presidents to protest leaders
The construction of Ronald Reagan’s post-presidential image is a prime example of this process.
After his presidency, Republican leaders steadily polished his memory into a symbol of conservative triumph, downplaying scandals such as Iran-Contra or Reagan’s early skepticism of civil rights. Today, Reagan is remembered less as a complex politician and more as a saint of free markets and patriotism.
Among liberals, Martin Luther King Jr. experienced a comparable transformation, though it took a different form. King’s critiques of capitalism, militarism and structural racism are often downplayed in most mainstream remembrances, leaving behind a softer image of peaceful dreamer. The annual holiday, scores of street re-namings and public murals honor him, but they also tame his legacy into a universally palatable story of unity.
Even more contested figures such as John F. Kennedy or Abraham Lincoln show the same pattern. Their assassinations were followed by waves of mourning that elevated them into near-mythic status.
Decades after Kennedy’s death, his portrait hung in the homes of many American Catholics, often adjacent to religious iconography such as Virgin Mary statuettes. Lincoln, meanwhile, became a kind of civic saint: His memorial in Washington, D.C., looks like a temple, with words from his speeches etched into the walls.
Why it happens, what it means
The hagiography of public figures serves several purposes. It taps into deep human needs, helping grieving communities manage loss by providing moral clarity in the face of chaos.
It also allows political movements to consolidate power by sanctifying their leaders and discouraging dissent. And it reassures followers that their cause is righteous – even cosmic.
In a polarized environment, the elevation of a figure into a saint does more than honor the individual. It turns a political struggle into a sacred one. If you see someone as a martyr, then opposition to their movement is not merely disagreement, it is desecration. In this sense, hagiography is not simply about remembering the dead: It mobilizes the living.
But there are risks. Once someone is framed as a saint, criticism becomes taboo. The more sacralized a figure, the harder it becomes to discuss their flaws, mistakes or controversial actions. Hagiography flattens history and narrows democratic debate.
After Queen Elizabeth II’s death in 2022, for example, public mourning in the U.K. and abroad quickly elevated her legacy into a symbol of stability and continuity, with mass tributes, viral imagery and global ceremonies transforming a complex reign into a simplified story of devotion and service.
It also fuels polarization. If one side’s leader is a martyr, then the other side must be villainous. The framing is simple but powerful.
In Kirk’s case, many of his supporters described him as a truth seeker whose death underscored a deeper moral message. At Kirk’s memorial service in Arizona, President Donald Trump called him a “martyr for American freedom.” On social media, Turning Point USA and Kirk’s official X account described him as “America’s greatest martyr to free speech.”
In doing so, they elevated his death as symbolic of larger battles over censorship. By emphasizing the fact that he died while simply speaking, they also reinforced the idea that liberals and the left are more likely to resort to violence to silence their ideological enemies, even as evidence shows otherwise.
Digital supercharge
Treating public figures like saints is not new, but the speed and scale of the process is. Over the past two decades, social media has turned hagiography from a slow cultural drift into a rapid-fire production cycle.
Memes, livestreams and hashtags now allow anyone to canonize someone they admire. When NBA Hall-of-Famer Kobe Bryant died in 2020, social media was flooded within hours with devotional images, murals and video compilations that cast him as more than an athlete: He became a spiritual icon of perseverance.
Similarly, after Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, the “Notorious RBG” meme ecosystem instantly expanded to include digital portraits and merchandise that cast her as a saintly defender of justice.
The same dynamics surrounded Charlie Kirk. Within hours of his assassination, memes appeared of Kirk draped in an American flag, being carried by Jesus.
In the days after his death, AI-generated audio clips of Kirk styled as “sermons” began circulating online, while supporters shared Bible verses that they claimed matched the exact timing of his passing. Together, these acts cast his death in religious terms: It wasn’t just a political assassination — it was a moment of spiritual significance.
Such clips and verses spread effortlessly across social media, where narratives about public figures can solidify within hours, often before facts are confirmed, leaving little room for nuance or investigation.
Easy-to-create memes and videos also enable ordinary users to participate in a sacralization process, making it more of a grassroots effort than something that’s imposed from the top down.
In other words, digital culture transforms what was once the slow work of monuments and textbooks into a living, flexible folk religion of culture and politics.
Toward clearer politics
Hagiography will not disappear. It meets emotional and political needs too effectively. But acknowledging its patterns helps citizens and journalists resist its distortions. The task is not to deny grief or admiration but to preserve space for nuance and accountability.
In the U.S., where religion, culture and politics frequently intertwine, recognizing that sainthood in politics is always constructed — and often strategic — can better allow people to honor loss without letting mythmaking dictate the terms of public life.
- Arthur “Art” Jipson is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Work at the University of Dayton. For 11 years he was the Director of the Criminal Justice Studies program.
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All Trump's lethal buffoonery is contained in this pathetic suit
The first thing experienced defense attorneys do when they get a new complaint is read it end to end, to see if it tells a compelling story. Did my client say something so stupid, so damaging, his transcript is already at FedEx Kinkos, blown up billboard size for opening statements? Is there a hidden narrative lurking that plaintiffs’ own counsel has, miraculously, somehow missed?
But once in a while, you get a complaint so full of bombast, ignorance, and braggadocio you assume the lawyer was drunk when they filed it. Pleadings, after all, can become trial exhibits, and if your client is a self-impressed a------, you don’t want to advertise that fact to the jury.
When you get that complaint, you share it among peers, because your friends are all litigators who love a good laugh. Had I been on the receiving end of Trump’s New York Times complaint, I’d have sent it out as an early Christmas gift.
Choking on its own puffery
Now the whole world knows Trump can’t take a joke, Jimmy Kimmel should deadpan deliver a few pages of Trump’s vanity suit against the NYT as his sidekick Guillermo runs and hides.
Much like Trump’s embarrassing tirade at the UN this week, his defamation complaint pays cringing, fawning tribute to himself, literally citing his own “singular brilliance” and describing his 1.5-point election win in 2024 as “the greatest personal and political achievement in American history.”
Eighty-five pages of Trump anointing himself begins by claiming he won “in historic fashion,” securing a “resounding mandate from the American people.” Unless you watch Fox News exclusively, you know that to be a lie. Trump’s win over Kamala Harris was one of the smallest presidential victories in US history.
An experienced plaintiff’s attorney would have warned Trump that shooting his own credibility in the first pages is ill-advised. Once juries roll their eyes, it’s hard to get them to focus.
‘You’re Fired!’
Trump’s suit then whines about NYT articles that panned The Apprentice, the show that, lamentably, made him a household name. Trump boldly claims he invented the phrase, “You’re fired,” as if every single person ever fired prior to the year 2004 was told, as a matter of fact and law, “You’re terminated.”
Trump insists that he made The Apprentice a success — and not the other way around. He does not claim the NYT defamed him over The Apprentice, but that they groveled insufficiently over it. If anything, his complaint suggests the American people would have a legal claim against the producers of the show if it weren’t for the statute of limitations.
After his NDA finally expired, Bill Pruitt, producer of the first two seasons of The Apprentice, was free to tell the truth. He said Trump “was not, by any stretch, a successful New York real estate tycoon like we made him out to be… We needed to legitimize Donald Trump as someone who all these young, capable people would be clamoring over one another trying to get a job working for.”
Pruitt readily admits the whole show was a con job that worked, because Trump recognized the show would “elevate his brand.” It’s also likely where Trump grew addicted to being called “Sir,” not recognizing the sarcasm of an inside joke.
Lucky Loser
Trump’s complaint also harangues the Times about the book “Lucky Loser: How Donald Trump Squandered His Father’s Fortune and Created the Illusion of Success” by reporters Susanne Craig and Russ Buettner, now available on Kindle for $13.99.
Written by the authors who wrote the 2018 NYT exposé of Trump’s finances, Lucky Loser exposes how “one of the country’s biggest business failures lied his way into the White House:”
“Trump spun a hardscrabble fable of how he parlayed a small loan from his father into a multibillion-dollar business and real estate empire.
This feat, he argued, made him singularly qualified to lead the country.
Except none of it was true. As his wealthy father’s chosen successor, Trump received the equivalent today of more than $500 million in family money…”
One assumes defense counsel is already making oversized exhibits of Trump’s silver spoon, complete with charts and quotes.
Judge not amused
Last week, Republican-appointed Judge Steven Merryday struck down Trump’s $15 billion lawsuit, giving Trump’s counsel 28 days to file a version that complies with federal pleading rules.
Merryday wrote that the complaint included legally improper puffery, “florid and enervating” pages lavishing blind praise on Trump while indulging his nonstop grievances. Merryday dressed down Trump’s legal team for violating pleading rules “every member of the bar of every federal court knows, or is presumed to know…”
After recounting with scorn some of the more lurid absurdities in Trump’s complaint, Merryday reminded Trump’s counsel that a complaint at law is not an ego stroke for Trump, a PR tool for Fox News, or a rally speech for MAGA voters who don’t know any better.
He closed by warning counsel that if they refile the thing, the case will proceed in his courtroom in a “professional and dignified” manner — or not at all.
The joke lives on
In response, Trump told ABC, “I’m winning, I’m winning the cases.” Because of course he did.
His legal team backed him up, claiming Trump “will continue to hold the Fake News accountable through this powerhouse lawsuit… in accordance with the “judge’s direction on logistics.”
The “judge’s direction on logistics,” (writer smacks the back of her own head to dislodge her rolled eyes) is face-saving spin for the judge’s obvious smackdown: a snarly dismissal order dripping in sarcasm, a 40-page limit for any re-do, and the judge’s suggestion that counsel learn civil practice rules before they come back.
- Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.
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A shutdown looms. Here's why Dems are right to hold their ground
Until now, the debate over government funding has always boiled down to one question: which party is to blame for the shutdown.
This time, however, is there really any question? The congressional Democrats want to negotiate. The president refuses to. Since the government can’t be funded without a deal, the blame’s on him.
The Democrats want to prevent an explosion of health insurance premiums, which is expected in the coming months, by extending pandemic-era Obamacare subsidies. They want Donald Trump to agree in exchange for their vote in keeping the government open. (They also want the Republicans to backtrack on Medicaid cuts.)
But Trump won’t talk. He canceled a previously scheduled meeting, because “no meeting with their congressional leaders could possibly be productive,” he said on his social media site. That’s not something you say when you want the opposition to come to the bargaining table, which raises the question: what does Trump want?
An answer was suggested when the White House issued a threat to slash even more of the government workforce if there’s a shutdown.
Here’s Roll Call: “The budget office plans to advise federal program managers to fire employees whose paychecks are financed by annual appropriations if a partial government shutdown begins Oct. 1, rather than just furloughing them as is the usual practice.”
I don’t think the message could be clearer: either the Democrats do what Trump tells them to do or their precious government gets it.
Any other president in our lifetimes would not have done this.
First, because doing so would undermine their own demands. (Trump wants to keep the government open but also shred it if it closes? Just be honest and shut it down, because that’s what you wanted all along.)
Second, because it looks thuggish, like something a hostage-taker would do for ransom.
Third, and most important, such a move is blatant coercion, giving the opposition more incentive to say no.
The subtext is Trump is not a dealmaker. He’s a bully. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer was right to call his bluff. This is “an attempt at intimidation,” Schumer said. Trump has “been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government. These unnecessary firings will either be overturned in court or the administration will end up hiring the workers back, just like they did as recently as today.”
But the subtext is also that he’s a cheat.
Even if the president agreed to the Democrats’ demand for extended subsidies under the Affordable Care Act (and even if he said, “My bad, here’s all that Medicaid money back, all $1 trillion of it, so please, pretty please, vote to keep the government up and running!”), what’s to prevent him, a day later, from double-crossing the Democrats? In July, he rolled back $9 billion in funding for public TV and radio that the Republicans had already agreed to. He said claw it back, and they did.
The answer is nothing. There is no guarantee.
Which is all the more reason for the Democrats to say no.
The Democrats are under enormous pressure, from inside and outside the party, to act like “the adults in the room” and to pretend, at least, that the president is a reliable bargaining partner. This is, after all, the logic of Washington. Only the Democrats make choices while Trump and the Republicans are free to act as irresponsibly as they wish to.
But this “logic” should be rooted in two hard facts. One is that the president has been at war with the government workforce since taking office. (Schumer said as much.) Open or shut, it makes no difference to him. Two is that he will say whatever he wants, whenever he wants, to whomever he wants, for as long as it takes to get him to wherever he wants to go, whatever that goal might be at any given moment.
Not only does it not matter to him whether the government is open or shut, it doesn’t matter whether his words are true or false. Fraud, deceit and confabulation run in his blood, and if he were just some street crazy, rather than the president of the United States, no one would be blamed for saying no to him. Saying yes would be crazy!
Trump is the president, however. I wish I knew what the Democrats should do, but I don’t. How do you bargain with a man who either forgets what he said the day before, because he’s in the early stages of dementia, or denies he said any such thing, because it’s convenient to? How do you make a deal with a president who doesn’t want a deal? (Not to mention, how do you hold him responsible when the rightwing media complex, and the press corps, enables his forgetting/denials?)
What I do know is much of the current debate among liberals feels like it’s beside the point. Some say Schumer and the Democratic leadership should stick with health insurance. Others say they should demand Trump lift his stupid tariffs. Others still say they should trade their vote to keep the government open on a promise to defend free speech. All of these are trying to appeal to a broad majority in the hopes that a broad majority won’t blame the Democrats if negotiations fail. And all of them overlook the fact that Donald Trump never stands by his word.
As of now, the Democrats are warning of a shutdown if the president does not accept their demands. He doesn’t care, one way or another, so perhaps that’s what the Democrats should demand – that he care. He will prove he doesn’t when the government shuts down, thus bringing us back to the beginning and the question of who to blame.
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This ugly governor's race shows nothing is too low for Trump's GOP
NEW BRUNSWICK — In a crowded room on the Rutgers campus on Thursday, two state senators tried to impart the wisdom of political civility to students at the very moment our state’s gubernatorial race was devolving into the campaign’s ugliest day yet.
Sen. Jon Bramnick, a Republican, and Sen. Joe Cryan, a Democrat, are on what they’re calling a college civility tour, one they announced after conservative activist Charlie Kirk was killed on Sept. 10. I have my doubts about whether two lawmakers from New Jersey can help drag American politics out of the sewer, so I visited Rutgers to see if Bramnick and Cryan would dispel my doubts.
Momentarily, they did. Bramnick spoke somberly about the strife and violence of the 1960s and how he fears those days are returning, and Cryan was sincere when he urged the students to remember that we don’t all live life’s experiences the same way.
“Always keep in mind that somebody else’s perspective isn’t ours, and as a result of that, let’s listen, learn, and be a part of the great shared experience called this American experiment,” he said.
Well said! Unfortunately, outside the walls of that room on Rutgers’ campus, the race to succeed Gov. Phil Murphy was deteriorating into acrimony, raising doubts about Bramnick’s and Cryan’s premise that we can all just get along.
The ugliness stems from two stories that dropped Thursday, one from the New Jersey Globe that says Democrat Mikie Sherrill did not walk with her graduating class at the U.S. Naval Academy in 1994 as punishment related to a massive cheating scandal that implicated more than 100 of her classmates, and a CBS News report that the National Archives released an unredacted copy of Sherrill’s military records to an ally of her GOP opponent, Jack Ciattarelli, records the Ciattarelli campaign then distributed to reporters without shielding personal information related to her and her family.
Republicans used the Globe story to accuse Sherrill of “cheating her way” through the Naval Academy, and are calling on her to release her disciplinary records to confirm her claim that she was merely punished for not turning in students who did cheat. And Sherrill said the CBS story proves the Trump administration and Ciattarelli are “breaking the law and exposing private records for political gain.”
The problem for Sherrill: The Globe story calls into question the very thing she has centered her campaign on, her military record.
Contemporaneous reports about the cheating scandal — an unknown number of students obtained a copy of an electrical engineering exam days before the test was given — indicate the Navy believed 15 percent of Sherrill’s graduating class were implicated, and a special naval tribunal found dozens guilty of honor violations and issued them punishments like loss of privileges, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Sherrill’s claim that she didn’t walk in her graduation ceremony as punishment for not turning in fellow students who cheated is a plausible story. She could confirm it by letting us take a peek at those disciplinary records, but her campaign has nixed that idea.
What should have been a victory lap for the Ciattarelli campaign, though, was marred by the CBS story, which implicates the campaign in distributing documents that included Sherrill’s Social Security number, personal information about her parents, life insurance details … incredibly personal stuff handed out to reporters and God knows who else.
The campaign has pinned the blame on the National Archives, which appears to be 100 percent responsible for releasing the unredacted records in the first place, but had no role in giving them to members of the media.
Both stories dropped the same day a new poll said the governor’s race is all tied up, with Ciattarelli and Sherrill both at 43 percent and a whopping 11 percent of voters undecided. If this race is indeed a dead heat, things are only going to get uglier from here.
Meanwhile, David Weigel of Semafor reported Thursday that conservative super PAC American Principles Project is going to flood our airwaves with an ad to scare voters about transgender people. Really nasty stuff.
Back on the Rutgers campus, I asked Bramnick what he thought of the civility of the current gubernatorial campaign.
“Not bad, actually. I watched the debate — I didn’t really hear any personal insults. I think it’s shockingly good from that standpoint,” he said.
He’s right that Sunday’s debate was no brawl. But I think the days of this race being civil are over. Buckle up.
- Editor Terrence T. McDonald is a native New Jerseyan who has worked for newspapers in the Garden State for more than 15 years. He has covered everything from Trenton politics to the smallest of municipal squabbles, exposing public corruption and general malfeasance at every level of government. Terrence won 23 New Jersey Press Association awards and two Tim O’Brien Awards for Investigative Journalism using the Open Public Records Act from the New Jersey chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists. One politician forced to resign in disgrace because of Terrence’s reporting called him a "political poison pen journalist.” You can reach him at tmcdonald@newjerseymonitor.com.
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These GOP hypocrites know nothing about free speech
A wise man once said: “I do not believe in the cancel culture. I think redemption is necessary and even wise, and I would like others to forgive and restore with me anytime I make a mistake.”
The same wise man once told me: “I am a strong proponent of upholding our constitutional liberties, which includes freedom of the press. Our system can’t function honestly without it. When government tries to interfere with the right to speak, worship, assemble, or report what government is doing, the result is never good.”
Unfortunately, that man no longer sounds so wise.
He’s Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Wichita, who has decided to swerve hard to the right during his run for governor. He has squared off against former Gov. Jeff Colyer, who’s also aiming for the Republican nomination, in a battle to see who can most cravenly exploit this tortured political moment. Each man has called for firings of Kansans who posted horrible things online after the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Kirk’s death was shocking and contemptible, the very opposite of free speech and expression. What’s more, online celebration by a handful of leftists damaged their cause and harmed our national conversation. (I don’t mean those who thoughtfully critiqued Kirk’s career and rhetoric.)
So it might make sense that Masterson would post the following to social media.
It might make sense. Yet back in 2021, Masterson’s fellow state Sen. Gene Suellentrop was arrested on DUI charges. According to officials, he was driving the wrong way on Interstate 70 in Topeka at speeds near 100 mph. He then challenged police after they pulled him over, calling an officer “donut boy.”
By any measure, Suellentrop posed a threat to public health and welfare. He wasn’t posting online. He put his fellow motorists at deadly risk. Yet in that case, Masterson issued the plea for tolerance I reproduced at the very beginning of this column. Those words carried weight, and Suellentrop served in the Kansas Senate through January 2023.
Does Masterson believe that others deserve such grace?
As for the First Amendment, that’s a matter of law. The U.S. Constitution protects a variety of expression that broad majorities of people find tasteless, vulgar and unforgivable.
That doesn’t protect those expressing such sentiments from social opprobrium or employment consequences, especially if they work for private businesses. Those on the left made such arguments fairly recently, as movement for social justice crested in 2020 and misinformation about COVID-19 flourished. Those on the right are making such arguments now, and while they might be hypocritical, they’re not wrong. The right to speak your mind doesn’t mean the right to say it without feedback.
Problems arise, however, when the government itself tries to enforce such consequences, or when those working for the government speak in their private capacity. That’s why Masterson’s second quote at the beginning of this column struck me.
Let’s read it again: “When government tries to interfere with the right to speak, worship, assemble, or report what government is doing, the result is never good.”
Masterson still serves as Senate president. He’s running to be the state’s chief executive. Is he not a representative of government? Is he not attempting to interfere with others’ right to speak? One of those targeted by his recent posts just filed a lawsuit against the Kansas State Department of Education, claiming interference in her rights as a private citizen.
As for Colyer, the former governor appears to reside on a completely different planet.
Give him points for consistency: Back in 2018, he complained about an art exhibit at the University of Kansas that included a defaced American flag. (Expression also protected by the First Amendment, in case you wondered.) His social media channels have competed with Masterson’s for hardcore conservative attention, but I had to highlight this particular post.
Quoth the former governor: “Kansas values free speech, but glorifying murder is not free speech. It is a moral collapse!”
I don’t disagree with the moral collapse part. We can all do better. But the First Amendment safeguards pretty heinous stuff, including the right of the Westboro Baptist Church to protest at military funerals. The agreeableness of expression has nothing to do with whether the Constitution protects it. As someone running for the highest office in Kansas, Colyer should know better.
I reached out to the Masterson and Colyer campaigns to give them a chance to respond. Neither one got back to me by publication time.
A few extra words
It’s been quite the month. On Sept. 14, I ran the classic William Allen White editorial “To an Anxious Friend,” which sums up my feelings during this turbocharged political moment.
But I feel like I owe you a bit of an explanation for why I’ve approached opinion columns the way I have since Kirk’s death. I have not raced to run pieces on the topic, by myself or others. In troubled times, I believe that those of us in the opinion business can choose to calm the waters or agitate them.
I chose to focus on calm.
Not because I’m not concerned. Not because I haven’t tracked the waves of antipathy from the right and left. But because when someone’s brutal slaying becomes part of our national partisan conflict, I feel profoundly queasy. It should go without saying that political violence and violent threats have no place in these United States. Full stop. It should also go without saying that the First Amendment remains the law of the land and applies to every one of us lucky enough to live here.
Unfortunately, some folks still miss that free speech part, which is why I wrote the main part of today’s column.
I do not plan to change my approach to opinion, focusing on how Statehouse policy affects everyday folks. The point of this section has always been to lift up Kansas voices on Kansas topics. You can find abundant commentary on topics of national interest everywhere. You can’t find an array of local commentators like ours anywhere else. I take this job seriously, and I treasure the role of curating community conversations.
Thank you for reading. Let’s all keep talking.
- Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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