A tiny Pete Hegseth preaches to America's military giants
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
Why are we so quiet about Trump's clearly worsening dementia?
Over the weekend, on Truth Social, Trump shared a video purporting to be a segment on Fox News — it wasn’t — in which an AI-generated, deepfaked version of himself sat in the White House and promised that “every American will soon receive their own MedBed card” that will grant them access to new “MedBed hospitals.”
What?
Believers in the “MedBed” conspiracy theory think certain hospital beds are loaded with futuristic technology that can reverse any disease, regenerate limbs, and de-age people. No one has an actual photo of these beds because they don’t exist.
Trump also posted (again, without any basis in fact) that the FBI “secretly placed … 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during” the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol, during which they were “probably acting as Agitators and Insurrectionists.”
Trump added that this “is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again!” and went on: “Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two in a row, Comey and Wray, who got caught LYING.”
In fact, the Department of Justice’s inspector general reported that there were no undercover FBI agents at the January 6 riots. (FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed that the few FBI agents present on January 6 were there on “a crowd control mission after the riot was declared.”)
Trump also announced Saturday that he intends to send the U.S. military to Portland, Oregon, authorizing “Full Force, if necessary” to “protect War ravaged Portland, and any of our ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa, and other domestic terrorists.”
Hello? Although protesters have been camping on the sidewalks outside the ICE office for months, the demonstration has dwindled to almost nothing. Of the 29 related arrests, 22 happened on or before July 4, when the protests were at their peak.
What’s been the media’s response to Trump’s bonkers postings and announcements this weekend? Nada. The media either ignored them, mentioned them as part of Trump’s “strategy,” or assumed Trump was just being Trump.
But there’s another explanation.
Trump is showing growing signs of dementia. He’s increasingly unhinged. He’s 79 years old with a family history of dementia. He could well be going nuts.
You might think this would be covered in the news, but he isn’t facing anything like the scrutiny for dementia that Joe Biden did.
Perhaps the most telling evidence of Trump’s growing dementia is his paranoid thirst for revenge, on which he is centering much of his presidency.
The paranoia was becoming evident in the lead-up to the 2024 presidential election. On Nov. 11, 2023, he pledged to a crowd of supporters in Claremont, New Hampshire, that:
“We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible — they’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”
Most media commentators chalked this up to overheated campaign rhetoric.
But since occupying the Oval Office, Trump has demanded that his attorney general target political opponents, urged the head of his FCC to threaten a major network for allowing a late-night comedian to say things Trump disliked, suggested that the government revoke TV licenses of network broadcasters that allow criticism of him, and pulled government security clearances from former officials whom he deems his enemies.
Less than two weeks ago, he demanded that the Justice Department prosecute a handful of named political opponents “now!” — including James Comey, whom Trump fired from his post in 2017 after Comey oversaw the FBI’s investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election; Letitia James, the attorney general of New York, who indicted Trump; and Adam Schiff, U.S. senator from California, who played an active role in the House hearings on January 6.
On Sept. 19, Erik Siebert, the acting U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia (initially selected for the position by Trump) resigned after Trump told reporters “I want him out.” Siebert had concerns about the strength of the evidence against both Comey and James.
The following day, Trump posted a message to his attorney general, Pam Bondi.
“Pam,” it began, “Nothing is being done. What about Comey, Adam “Shifty” Schiff, Leticia??? They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done.’”
He said he was promoting Lindsey Halligan, one of his former personal attorneys, to take Siebert’s place, and fumed: “We can’t delay any longer, it’s killing our reputation and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!”
On Sept. 22, three days after Halligan assumed office, she secured a simple, two-count indictment against Comey for allegedly lying to Congress and for allegedly obstructing justice.
“JUSTICE IN AMERICA! One of the worst human beings this Country has ever been exposed to is James Comey,” Trump exalted on social media following the indictment. “He has been so bad for our Country, for so long, and is now at the beginning of being held responsible for his crimes against our Nation.”
The Comey indictment was a blip in the weekly news cycle. The media appeared to shrug: Yes, of course Trump is vindictive, so what else is new?
But wait. Are his acts those of a sane person? Or of an aging paranoid megalomaniac?
Even if it’s unclear to which category Trump belongs, shouldn’t this question be central to the coverage of his presidency? At the very least, shouldn’t the media be actively investigating?
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
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This chilling Trump directive is the thought police on steroids
Donald Trump and many of the people surrounding him have become explicit threats to what’s left of our democratic republic. And now they’re saying that my (or your) simply saying those words may be enough to get us locked up or otherwise legally, financially, or physically destroyed.
In 1964, like Hillary Clinton, I went door-to-door with my dad for Barry Goldwater, and later read both of his autobiographies, Conscience of a Conservative and With No Apologies. There’s no way Goldwater — or any Republican of that era — would tolerate the ways Trump and his toadies are ripping apart our constitutional order and flagrantly violating our laws and traditions.
And now he’s trying to pick a Made-For-Fox “News” fight in Portland. If one kid throws a Molotov cocktail, it will become the justification for another massive loss of our constitutional rights of free speech and assembly all across the nation. Cheered on by rightwing media for profit.
If Republicans don’t stand up soon and impeach Trump — and demand Vance reflect the traditional values of republican democracy or similarly face impeachment — history will judge them beyond harshly.
Trump is moving so fast, in fact, to turn America into an autocracy that this may be the GOP’s last chance to claw back the rule of law for our nation.
Democrats can’t do this themselves. Republicans control the House, Senate, and the Supreme Court, as well as a majority of the states. If our republic is to be saved, it’ll require at least a large handful of Republicans to step up and honor the oath to defend our Constitution they took when they were sworn into office.
Consider the ways Trump is tearing our nation apart, trying to pit us against each other and encouraging violence against constitutionally-protected free speech and protest.
Most recently, Trump signed a National Security Directive (this one is labeled as NSPM-7) saying that “anti-American” (aka “anti-Trump”) or “anti-Christian” rhetoric is — in Minority Report fashion — an indicator that a person may, in the future, commit a crime and therefore should be targeted now by our federal government at virtually every level.
National Security Directives are not like Executive Orders, which can be challenged. They’re often secret or even top secret documents that instruct the police and military branches of the federal government how to behave under certain circumstances.
Specifically, what they’re targeting with this one is our free speech right to criticize Trump and his administration. As journalist Ken Klippenstein reported on Saturday:
“The Trump administration isn’t only targeting organizations or groups but even individuals and ‘entities’ whom NSPM-7 says can be identified by any of the following ‘indica’ (indicators) of violence: anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United States Government, extremism on migration, extremism on race, extremism on gender, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on religion, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on morality.”
This is the thought police, the speech police, the writing police on steroids. As Klippenstein notes, the directive says:
“The United States requires a national strategy to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence so that law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts…” (emphasis Ken’s)
Impeachment at this point isn’t optional. It’s the one constitutional mechanism designed for exactly this type of assault on the foundations of our democracy.
Consider Trump’s record:
- The January 6 insurrection and attempted assassination of our Vice President, incited by Trump himself, was an effort to overturn a lawful election. No greater betrayal of the Constitution exists.
- Indicting former FBI Director James Comey — and going after other former Republican officials including James Clapper and John Bolton — as acts of revenge shows his willingness to weaponize justice.
- Pressuring red states to gerrymander congressional maps reveals his contempt for free and fair elections.
- Deploying troops and masked secret police to U.S. cities to intimidate citizens undermines civil liberties.
- Harassing comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert signals his hostility toward free speech.
- Taking $2 billion from the UAE for his personal company as a blatant bribe in exchange for directing our government to sell that nation — which has joint military exercises with China — the AI chips that are forbidden to such foreign governments flaunts his corruption.
- Disappearing protesters off the streets erodes due process.
- Separating legal immigrant families and deporting brown-skinned legal residents tears at the moral fabric of our nation.
- Elevating conspiracy figures like Bob Kennedy at the CDC undermines public health.
- Rolling out the red carpet for Putin while abandoning allies like Ukraine weakens global democracy.
- Destabilizing the economy with chaotic and unconstitutional tariffs hurts working families.
- Escalating conflicts in Venezuela to the point of violence in international waters risks global war.
- Burying the Epstein list raises questions about corruption and blackmail.
There comes a time when history demands a choice. For Republicans, that time is now.
Donald Trump has attacked America’s democratic institutions, unleashed chaos at home and abroad, and put his own personal power and family financial interests above the Constitution and the good of our nation.
The only remedy is impeachment. Anything less is complicity.
Republicans control the entire federal government: they can’t pass this buck to anyone else. If they refuse to impeach Trump, they’ll go down in history as the party that enabled an authoritarian coup and ended America’s 250-year experiment with democracy.
If they do impeach him, they may well save both our nation, democracy around the world, and their own integrity. The stakes couldn’t be higher.
We all must help Republicans understand the cost of inaction. By refusing to impeach, they aren’t simply protecting Trump; they’re aligning themselves with his crimes. They’re staking the future of their party, their reputations, and possibly their own freedom on a man whose every instinct is authoritarian.
Failure to stand up to Trump at this critical moment could spell the end of the modern Republican Party. Voters may forgive bad policies like tax cuts for billionaires or gutting healthcare for average Americans, but dismantling democracy itself is an unforgivable sin.
Like the leaders of the Confederacy, they’ll stain their own names forever. Just like McCarthyism and segregation taint the legacies of past politicians, Trump’s stench will follow them down the echoing halls of history for all time. Their children and grandchildren will carry that shame forever.
Cracks are already appearing: current Republican members of Congress Thomas Massey and Marjorie Taylor Greene are defiantly demanding the release of the Epstein files. Ted Cruz, Don Bacon, and Rand Paul took on Trump when they objected to his attempt at censoring late-night comedians.
Former GOP politicians openly calling out Trump’s authoritarianism or opposing his previous candidacy because of his antidemocratic and unconstitutional behavior include Liz Cheney, Adam Kinzinger, Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Jeff Flake, Ben Sasse, Larry Hogan, Charlie Baker, Jeb Bush, Christine Todd Whitman, Tom Ridge, Charlie Dent, Barbara Comstock, Fred Upton, Joe Walsh, Will Hurd, Denver Riggleman, Susan Molinari, and Ken Buck.
Former senior Republican officials who’ve awakened to the danger Trump represents to our republic include James Mattis, Mark Esper, HR McMaster, John Bolton, Rex Tillerson, Bill Barr, John Kelly, Miles Taylor, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Olivia Troye, Stephanie Grisham, Sarah Matthews, and Anthony Scaramucci.
And former GOP leaders, strategists, consultants, and conservative thinkers who’ve called out Trump’s authoritarian behavior include Karl Rove, Bill Kristol, David Frum, Peter Wehner, Mona Charen, Charlie Sykes, Tim Miller, Amanda Carpenter, Lev Parnas, SE Cupp, George Will, Michael Steele, Joe Scarborough, Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, George Conway, Reed Galen, Mike Madrid, Jennifer Horn, Ron Steslow, Stuart Stevens, Tara Setmayer, Jeff Timmer, Chris Vance, and Fred Wellman.
As you can see, today’s elected Republicans — who hold the power of impeachment in their hands — are not without allies if they choose to take on Trump and impeach him from office.
And not without role models: from Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Nixon to Ronald Reagan, no previous president has ever openly proclaimed their “hatred” of Democrats or non-Republicans and set about to openly destroy the lives of those who’d opposed them or called them out.
If Trump isn’t held accountable, these could become the new norms for America and shatter our constitutional order. Republicans have spent decades waving “Don’t Tread on Me” flags and wearing slogans against government that reaches into individual lives with threats and intimidation. Will they stand up for our nation now?
Impeachment isn’t just a political strategy; it’s the last defense of our Constitution. Elected Republicans must act now, decisively and unapologetically. If they do, they may yet save America and themselves. To let them know, the phone number for the congressional switchboard is 202-224-3121.
If they fail, their legacy will be sealed forever. Not as patriots or conservatives, but as cowards willing to abandon the American experiment in exchange for momentary power and the praise of an autocrat.
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This laughable J6 rewrite isn't funny when you see the sinister motive behind it
January 6 was one of the single most devastating days in American history. In the months and years after, Donald Trump and MAGA manufactured a nearly inconceivable whitewashing of the whole insurrection. Now, Trump and his supporters are engineering a direct reversal of the underlying plot, as a further means to criminalize the left, leaving their opponents flailing.
A 21st-century iron curtain is descending on American democracy — but there is little hope for resistance without understanding the gravity of the latest moves.
Trump and MAGA are promoting a cynically manipulated reading of an FBI document pertaining to plainclothes federal agents present at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, to claim such agents agitated the crowd in a "fedsurrection."
The now all-too-familiar rewriting of history marches on, unabated.
As most know, FBI agents were present within the crowd on January 6 in order to gather intelligence on potential threats, not to incite violence. Trump and MAGA are using a reverse-reading of an email simply noting that informants provided tips on Proud Boys/Oath Keepers plans. But the FBI never spurned anyone on. Real reports have always shown that only four to eight agents entered the Capitol with the rioters, all passively observing.
But Trump supporters, and Trump himself, are using the misreading of documents to further undermine the FBI as another "deep state" actor attempting to thwart Trump. Of course, Trump et al fail to explain why any anti-Trump agent would help attack the Capitol, thereby hindering Congress's certification of Joe Biden's win in the 2020 election.
The fact that this reading makes absolutely no sense is simply papered over.
On Saturday, Trump posted: “It was just revealed that the FBI had secretly placed, against all Rules, Regulations, Protocols, and Standards, 274 FBI Agents into the Crowd just prior to, and during, the January 6th Hoax.
“This is different from what Director Christopher Wray stated, over and over again! I want to know who each and every one of these so-called ‘Agents’ are, and what they were up to on that now ‘Historic’ Day.
“Christopher Wray, the then Director of the FBI, has some major explaining to do. That’s two [FBI directors] in a row, [James] Comey and Wray.”
Clearly, Trump simply wants his supporters in a rage. The fury-fueled war drums beat to better buttress support for Trump's next step in his personal retribution tour — one that threatens the very foundation of democracy in the United States.
He is doing nothing less than criminalizing opposition, then and now.
After all, Trump already manipulated facts to demand that Comey be prosecuted. This move would have once been seen as automatic grounds for impeachment. Trump has normalized it such that the stage is set for more dictatorial criminal charges by a radicalized Department of Justice.
Rightwing influencers on X are already demanding that Wray and Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) (speaker of the House on January 6) be prosecuted.
One guesses that Trump's earlier characterization of January 6 as "peaceful" with "a lot of love in the air" is no longer useful and thus tossed aside as if he never uttered the words.
All of the above is set forth only to emphasize an overriding point. Trump and MAGA are using Soviet-level propaganda to take this country down a dark path, one in which nearly every prominent figure who publicly opposed any Trump narrative is labeled an enemy who must go down. Trump's post expressly states that the country "can never let this happen again." He is saying he wants prosecutions over it.
But what he more fully means is that anyone daring to aggressively oppose his personal ambitions will face the almost unlimited power of his personalized government. It all conjures Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Notice the call to prosecute Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who merely opposed Trump in his work in Congress.
Where we stand now is bad enough, but look to the future.
Democrats and independents place their faith in the 2026 and 2028 elections to reverse course and restore sanity. But given Trump's fact-free war against all opposition, faith in elections becomes terrifyingly tenuous. Is there any indication that Trump and his supporters will allow a mere vote to push them aside? Because that is what this is about, every bit as much as it is a personal vendetta.
Project 2025 was always about laying the foundation for permanent authoritarian one-party minority rule, not unlike Russia. The GOP now controls the entirety of the government. The old maxim that possession is nine-tenths of the law, married to a fact-free movement, and a vindictive president could shatter a lot of hope.
Many might now lose faith that democracy will retake its place in American government.
It is almost comically ironic that the left's best weapon against this foreboding future almost surely includes a partnership with the business elite. In such a desperate hour, Democrats might not so much Occupy Wall Street as hug those rascals. Big Corp. might rebel against such volatile rule, perhaps draining much of the financial support needed to throw the country beyond the point of no return.
There is also the chance that the Trump administration's unadulterated incompetence in governance may sour some MAGA mystique.
And "We the People" are powerful in many unexplored ways, making it absolutely critical to retain conviction and hope no matter how dark reality may be. After all, if history shows us anything, it is that things change. But anyone fully committed to a democratic America better do it with clear eyes.
Such needed vision includes understanding that the full power of the federal government is now utterly twisting January 6th's entire fact-based premise around to support the possible prosecution of people who simply opposed Trump- a blindingly bright light blinking red over the American horizon.
Opportunities to thwart this drive to a Saddam-type future are narrowing. Violence is never acceptable, it is immoral, it is counter-productive, it must be utterly rejected by all. But a near-battle-like conviction better take hold if democracy remains the goal.
We all watched January 6 play out on live television. Trump supporters cheered the attack on the Capitol, hoping it would stop Congress. The level of insanity and the danger it represents in reversing the story, all in order to prosecute more Trump enemies, had better be fully understood to counter this new outrage.
The people must wake, rise, and peacefully partner with all powerful opposition to turn this around. It can be done, but not without fully understanding the MAGA rationale for a breathtaking rewrite of January 6.
- Jason Miciak is a past Associate Editor of Occupy Democrats, American attorney, author, and can also be found on Politizoom. He can be reached at jasonmiciak@gmail.com
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Trump finally meets an executive order he doesn't like
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
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.
- Robert Reich is an emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/
- Robert Reich's new memoir, Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org.
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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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