All posts tagged "Salon"

An explosive new piece in Salon claims that recruits signing up to become ICE agents under President Donald Trump are motivated more by power and aggression rather than "a sense of noble duty."

Dr. Geoffrey Grammer, a retired U.S. Army colonel and psychiatrist, wrote that before Trump, "ICE agents were typically motivated by integrity, courage, resilience, and a strong sense of duty and allegiance to the Constitution."

Today, however, Grammer claims the emphasis on very public raids and heavy-handed tactics attracts recruits with "authoritarian and punitive traits" who relish the "satisfaction from the suffering they cause" to vulnerable populations. ...

President Donald Trump's repeated claims that girls will have to get along with fewer dolls as his tariffs work their economic magic reveals an underlying MAGA misogyny that reinforces the beliefs of the manosphere, according to Salon's Amanda Marcotte.

A week ago, Trump seemed to speak off the cuff when he said, "maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls." But Marcotte wrote that the "doll" talk became an actual talking point, as evidenced by the fact he told NBC's Kristen Welker, "I don't think a beautiful baby girl that's 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls. I think they can have three dolls or four dolls," then told reporters , "All I’m saying is that a young lady, a 10-year-old-girl, 9-year-old girl, 15-year-old-girl, doesn’t need 37 dolls."

Marcotte argued that "Trump defended his trade-destroying tariffs by lecturing parents about not spoiling their daughters" who are inherently "frivolous" due to their gender, a point that speaks directly to the MAGA base that helped Trump get elected....

The guardrails that existed during Donald Trump's first administration have now completely disintegrated, allowing Trump's "arrogance, cruelty and hostility toward anyone who does not believe in a white nationalist future" to run rampant, wrote journalist Steven Beschloss for Salon.

But the Democratic resistance is gaining momentum, according to Beschloss, even if it got off to a slow start during the first 100 days of Trump's second term.

Beschloss wrote that he makes an effort "to spotlight the defenders of democracy and the good and decent people who oppose Trump’s gleeful arson and the forces that applaud the flames." It hasn't been "easy" this time, however, Beschloss wrote, as Trump shifts from "nationalist mode" to "imperialist mode" right before our eyes....

President Donald Trump's efforts to eradicate federally funded arts and humanities programs may look like an attack on liberal ideals, but a new article argues that "deep red rural America" is being hurt the most — and pushing back the hardest.

That's because the arts and humanities programs Trump is cutting are "vital to the economic revitalization and wellbeing of many rural communities which leverage them in their local economic development initiatives, ranging from tourism to automotive investment," wrote sociology professors Michèle Lamont and Daniel B. Cornfield for Salon.

The professors argued that the arts and humanities organizations "do much more than organizing cultural events: they play a crucial role in fostering social bonds, as well as community and local identity and pride." ...

Even the staunchest MAGA Republicans who vehemently argue in favor of President Donald Trump's tariffs could jump ship in the case of a full-blown recession, a new opinion piece in Salon posited.

Columnist Heather Digby Parton wrote in Monday's column that the weekend "performances" of Trump's economic and trade team members who ran the gamut of cable news interviews no doubt pleased the president because they told him "exactly what he wanted to hear."

Parton continued, "Unfortunately for him, these people sounded to the rest of America like they had just flown in on a spaceship and virtually no one but the most die-hard MAGA cultist or a member of the Trump administration is buying any of that."...

Amanda Marcotte with Salon is lifting the lid on a scandal of somewhat Biblical proportions involving the evangelical MAGA acolytes behind the hugely successful podcast "Girls Gone Bible."

Nicole Ardrete, a former friend of L.A. actresses and self-professed "Jesus freaks" Angela Halili and Arielle Reitsma, told Marcotte they all once worked together as underground "poker girls" who dressed sexy and were expected to flirt with high-end male customers in Los Angeles.

According to Marcotte, Halili and Reitsma put all that behind them to build a cult following for their hyper-feminine focus on purity, modesty, "submission" in marriage, and support of President Donald Trump's agenda. According to Marcotte, the Girls Gone Bible YouTube channel has more than 730,000 subscribers and nearly a million followers on Instagram, while their podcast "sits at the top of Spotify's podcast charts in the Religion & Spirituality category." ...