J. D. Vance warns the federal courts to get in line

J. D. Vance warns the federal courts to get in line

Ruth Marcus writes: Vice-President J. D. Vance offered some unsolicited advice to Chief Justice John Roberts the other day: the federal courts need to be more deferential to Presidential authority, and the Supreme Court must do a better job of keeping lower-court judges in line. Vance was speaking to the New York Times’ Ross Douthat about the Trump Administration’s nearly unbroken string of court losses in immigration-related cases. These setbacks, in Vance’s telling, represent an undemocratic project by some federal…

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Trump’s assault on Harvard University is an astonishing act of national self-sabotage

Trump’s assault on Harvard University is an astonishing act of national self-sabotage

Yascha Mounk writes: The best way to understand Donald Trump’s administration, Ivan Krastev told me a month ago, is as a “revolutionary government in the form of an imperial court.” And the most important thing about revolutionary governments is that they quickly develop an unstoppable dynamic of their own, one in which the logic of events pushes its originators to ever more radical actions which they themselves might not have anticipated taking a few months or weeks ago. “You’re not…

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Five years after George Floyd’s murder, the white backlash takes hold

Five years after George Floyd’s murder, the white backlash takes hold

The New York Times reports: Black Lives Matter Plaza is gone from Washington, D.C. The bold yellow letters that once protested police violence are now paved over, though police killings nationally are actually up. The Justice Department has abandoned oversight agreements for police forces accused of racial bias, even as it begins an investigation of Chicago after the city’s Black mayor praised the number of Black people in top city jobs. The U.S. refugee resettlement program is effectively shut down,…

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Georgetown scholar was ‘chained, shackled’ in ICE detention

Georgetown scholar was ‘chained, shackled’ in ICE detention

  In their first broadcast interview since his release from ICE detention, Georgetown scholar Badar Khan Suri and his wife, Mapheze Saleh, spoke to PBS News’ Laura Barrón-López about Khan Suri’s recent release after nearly two months in a detention facility in Texas. The Trump administration accused Suri of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”– an accusation he denies. “One should, at this time, show courage, because courage is also contagious. We need to break the cycle…

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Say what? Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’

Say what? Trump tells West Point grads to avoid ‘trophy wives’

USA Today reports: President Donald Trump told graduates to avoid “trophy wives” during his commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on May 24. “He ended up getting a divorce, found a new wife. Could you say a trophy wife? I guess we can say a trophy wife,” Trump said, referring to real estate developer Bill Levitt. “But that doesn’t work out too well, I must tell you, a lot of trophy wives, it doesn’t it…

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Any trade deal with U.S. must be based on ‘respect not threats’, says EU commissioner

Any trade deal with U.S. must be based on ‘respect not threats’, says EU commissioner

The Guardian reports: The European Union’s trade chief has struck a defiant tone after Donald Trump threatened to place a 50% tariff on all goods from the bloc, saying any potential trade deal between Brussels and Washington must be based on “respect not threats”. The US president made his announcement after voicing frustration with the pace of progress on a trade agreement with the EU. The new rates would come into effect from 1 June. The EU trade commissioner, Maroš…

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Israel ‘killing babies as a hobby’ in Gaza, says Democrats party leader, an IDF reserve major general

Israel ‘killing babies as a hobby’ in Gaza, says Democrats party leader, an IDF reserve major general

The Times of Israel reports: Left-wing politician Yair Golan faced a wave of backlash on Tuesday from across the political spectrum after he accused Israel of killing babies in Gaza “as a hobby.” Golan, a former IDF deputy chief of staff and current head of the The Democrats party, a merger of Labor and Meretz, said in an interview with the Kan public broadcaster that “Israel is on the way to becoming a pariah state, like South Africa was, if…

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Pentagon’s newly promoted press secretary seen as an ‘unabashed white nationalist’

Pentagon’s newly promoted press secretary seen as an ‘unabashed white nationalist’

The Office of the Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs is announcing that Kingsley Wilson will serve as Press Secretary for the Department of Defense. Kingsley’s leadership has been integral to the DoD’s success & we look forward to her continued service to President Trump!… — Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellATSD) May 23, 2025 In March, Military.com reported: Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s new deputy press secretary, has a yearslong history of making social media posts that traffic in a variety of extremist…

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Trump executive order targeting Jenner law firm ruled as unconstitutional

Trump executive order targeting Jenner law firm ruled as unconstitutional

NBC reports: President Donald Trump’s executive order against the Jenner & Block law firm is unlawful because it violates the First Amendment, a judge ruled late Friday. U.S. District Judge John Bates said going after law firms the way Trump has “is doubly violative of the Constitution” because it targets Jenner & Block due to the causes the firm champions, the clients they represent, and a lawyer they once employed. “This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation…

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The opposite of making America great

The opposite of making America great

A lead editorial in the Wall Street Journal, in response to the Trump regime’s attempt to destroy Harvard University by excluding foreign students, says: Non-citizens accounted for more than half of doctoral degrees in AI-related fields in 2022. Many have gone to work at U.S. companies like Nvidia or started their own. The National Foundation for American Policy finds that “immigrants have founded or cofounded nearly two-thirds (65% or 28 of 43) of the top AI companies in the United…

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Trump’s memecoin dinner welcomed guests holding tokens linked to alt-right symbols and racist language

Trump’s memecoin dinner welcomed guests holding tokens linked to alt-right symbols and racist language

Wired reports: As US president Donald Trump left the stage at his golf club near Washington, DC, on Thursday night, he pointed to the crowd, brought his index finger to his temple—as if to say: You know what’s coming—then began to dance. To the beat of “Y.M.C.A” by The Village People, Trump shimmied, gyrated, and pumped his arms above his head. Looking on were more than 200 people who had been invited to the Trump National Golf Club for a…

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Why one branch on the human family tree replaced all the others

Why one branch on the human family tree replaced all the others

Nick Longrich writes: On the western slope of Mount Carmel, in Israel, lies the cave of Es-Skhul. About 140,000 years ago, during the Ice Age, nomadic hunter-gatherers made camp here. The sea to the west had receded, exposing a broad plain covered with groves of live oak, almond and olive, meadows filled with asphodel and anemone. Herds of fallow deer, rhinoceros and aurochs roamed the plains. People hunted animals with stone-tipped spears, and foraged wild mustard and olives. And when…

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Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny

Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny

In a commencement address given to graduates from U. Cal. Berkeley’s School of Education earlier this week, Robert Reich said: Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated citizenry. Slaveholders prohibited the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Putin and Xi censor the media. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny. America’s founders knew this. They saw how easily emperors and kings could mislead uneducated publics. The survival of the new nation required a public…

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The Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist effort that claims to combat antisemitism

The Heritage Foundation’s Christian nationalist effort that claims to combat antisemitism

The National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, created by the Heritage Foundation and spearheading Project Esther, is a group dominated by right-wing Christians. The ongoing assault by the Trump regime targeting Harvard University, along with other colleges and universities across America is at the core of NTFCA’s mission. Shortly before the November presidential election, Religion Dispatches reported: Following a time-honored Israel advocacy tradition, Project Esther frames its McCarthyist crusade as an effort to ensure the safety of Jews. But as Jewish Insider reported,…

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