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Trump Administration Wants All Federal Grants to Be Subject to a Loyalty Test–Loyalty to Him and His Policies

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2026 //
7

Despite appearances, the most powerful person in the Trump administration is not Donald Trump: it’s Russell Vought, Director of Office of Management and Budget. He is the brains of this administration. Vought was at the Heritage Foundation and was one of the writers of project 2025. He controls the budget and makes the decisions about which government programs should live or die. Trump has impulses, whims, and passing fancies; Vought is methodical and determined to impose his rightwing views on the entire federal government. Every federal grant, Vought believes, should align with Trump’s anti-woke, anti-DEI agenda.

Tony Romm wrote about Vought’s strategy in The New York Times:

The White House is seeking to exert more control over billions of dollars in annual government grants, aiming to restrict a vast swath of funding — in health, housing, science and transportation — so that it primarily serves the purposes and organizations politically aligned with President Trump.

While the administration says that its primary goal is to safeguard taxpayer money, its proposal amounts to a major escalation in its attempt to reimagine the nation’s spending, even as Congress and the courts continue to rebuke the president for abusing such powers.

Mr. Trump’s ambitions were made clear in a roughly 400-page blueprint that was released to little fanfare on Friday. If finalized, it would require all federal grants to be approved by the president’s political appointees, who must ensure that the money would “demonstrably advance the president’s policy priorities.”

For the agencies that issue those awards and the nonprofit groups, local governments, universities and other entities that receive the money, the Trump administration would also impose a set of highly prescriptive and political criteria.

The government could not issue grants to projects or groups that “deny the biological reality of sex or the sex binary in humans,” for example. Nor could it seek to fund initiatives that “promote anti-American values,” contribute to illegal immigration, advance diversity, equity and inclusion or assist in voter registration.

The rules would further limit the ability of grant recipients to engage in some “issue advocacy.” Those that are funded would be scrutinized for their compliance with “religious liberty laws” and their “memberships and affiliations” with outside groups. And they could face the outright termination of their grants if the Trump administration someday determines that their actions are not in the “public interest.”

The restrictions echo the string of executive orders that Mr. Trump signed shortly after returning to office, many of which have been challenged or blocked in court. This time, however, the White House has pursued its restrictions by proposing a regulation, which is expected to become final after the government solicits public comment. The result could be applied far more broadly, and perhaps in ways that are harder to fight legally or undo later, according to budget experts.

The consequences could fall hardest on health and science, a field in which Mr. Trump has pursued some of the steepest cuts in his second term.

In exchange for federal assistance, researchers would face limits on the subjects that they can explore, the foreign labs with which they may collaborate and even the conferences at which they can appear. Dr. Georges C. Benjamin, the chief executive of the American Public Health Association, a professional organization and advocacy group, said the policy could “devastate innovation, science and research” in the United States.

Categories Bias, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Health, Research

Scott Pelley, Fired by CBS, Releases a Statement

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2026 //
8

Scott Pelley worked CBS News for 37 years. Most recently, he was part of the team at “60 Minutes,” which is the most prestigious, most watched news program on television.

After CBS was sold to the Ellison family, which is close to Trump, the entire news division was shaken up. Bari Weiss, a journalist with center-right views, was hired as editor-in-chief of CBS News. The firings began. “60 Minutes” was one of the targets.

When the program’s executive producer was fired, her replacement met with the “60 Minutes” staff. Scott Pelley lambasted him, Weiss, the firings, and the undermining of the program.

The next day, he was fired.

He released this statement:
 
There has never been anything in America like 60 Minutes.
 
The Sunday tradition is the most successful program of any kind in history. For more than a decade, its innovative growth on every major online platform has extended its reach to countless millions around the world. This spring, at the end of our 58th season, 60 Minutes grew rapidly with an unheard-of 9% jump in viewers on CBS.
 
“60” has been the number-one program in America for decades because our beloved audience finds integrity, quality, and humanity in our stories. When stewardship of the program passed to my colleagues and me, our responsibility was to expand energetically into a new age of media technology while preserving the values our audience expects. Now, the new owner of our network is casting this legend aside, apparently to curry a moment of favor with the Trump administration.
 
The waste is heartbreaking.
 
Last month, 60 Minutes lost its DNA when our entire senior leadership and two of our best on-air correspondents were cruelly fired without cause. Good people were silenced because they stood up for our audience. They stood for fairness against the forces of political bias; they stood for professionalism against chaos.
 
For my part, new management has instructed me to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story. I’ve been told to include assertions that are unverified. To date, in every case, I have managed to ignore these instructions or refuse them. Recently, politicians have been invited to choose correspondents for interviews on the broadcast. Giving politicians control over 60 Minutes interviews is not how this is done. Finally, incompetence and unprofessionalism in the new management have wreaked havoc. In a case involving one of my stories, the entire program came within 19 minutes of not getting on the air at all.
 
At 60 Minutes, we have fought harder than anyone knows to save the program that became an American icon. We owed that to our millions of viewers. I am deeply moved by the thousands of wishes we have received to “keep up the good fight.” Most of the men and women of CBS News are still in that fight. But now the collapse of values at the top has become untenable. The leadership of 60 Minutes is no longer recognizable. The principles I hold dear are gone, and so I must leave as well.
 
I depart after 37 years at CBS with one emotion—a heart brimming with gratitude for the men and women of CBS News who encouraged and enriched my work, very often at the risk of their own lives. I pray for a day when those people and their ideals are honored again—a day when sanity, competence, and courage return.
 
Scott Pelley

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Ethics, Media

Timothy Snyder on “Superpower Suicide”

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2026 //
2

Timothy Snyder is an expert on European history. He taught for many years at Yale University and held a prestigious chair in European history. In 2025, he accepted a chair at the University of Toronto. His Substack blog is titled “Thinking About…” This important essay appeared in May 9. Nothing Snyder says here has changed.

He wrote:

The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide.

On April 20th I was asked to speak in New York about ethics and power. My thinking, which I expressed in a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations, on this little video, and in the media, was that our utterly unethical war was also utterly self-destructive. The war, a catastrophe in itself, suggests the guiding principle of Trump foreign policy: superpower suicide. The term was since come into more general use, and readers have been asking me to spell it out.

Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.

It is hard to see this clearly. Even as we oppose individual Trump adventures, we hope that in some way they are based on some understanding of the national interest. They are not. To get the perspective we need to see the nature of this anti-strategic self-slaughter, it will help to consider thirteen traditional bases of state power.

1. Statehood. A superpower must, at a minimum, be a modern state. This means that it must be an arrangement that includes, via law and other institutions, a larger body of citizens within a common endeavor. There is no sign that the Trump administration regards the United States of America as a state. It treats the existence of the United States as a commercial opportunity for a select few people, American and otherwise.

2. National interest. Another minimal requirement of superpower would be a sense of why that power must be used. The Trump administration exhibits no interest in the good of the people. Theorists of international relations have differed as to how leaders understand national interests; we are intellectually unprepared, however, for a situation in which the leader simply does not care about either the state or the nation.

3. Succession. Again, for a state to maintain itself as a superpower, it must maintain itself over time. The basic requirement of such continuity is a succession principle, a means by which authority is transferred from some people to other people while institutions continue to function. In the United States, democracy enables succession. Historically, there are means of succession, for example by dynasty (or dynastic adoption, as in second-century Rome) or by the decision of a politburo, as in China or the USSR (in the US this would be a capitalist politburo, the sort of oligarchical coven that got us JD Vance). Getting from democracy to such different arrangements would end the American republic. Trump aspires to stay in power indefinitely, and says so. By putting the vote in question, he puts America in question, and thus American power.

4. Elites. For states to thrive and to accumulate and maintain power, the right people have to be in charge. There is no perfect means to achieve this, and there is the inevitable tension, as the Roman Stoics and others have noted, between the skills needed to rise to the top and those suited to serving some general interest. And those who rise to a position of authority will try to pass it on to their children; the Roman Catholic Church went to the extreme of insisting on priestly celibacy to block this tendency. Historically, powerful states seek ways to enable qualified people to serve in positions of authority, regardless of birth. Ancient China had an examination system. Napoleon established the principle of merit in both civilian and military life. The United States had a civil service that was the envy of the world as well as a military that was its most meritocratic institution. The Trump administration has chosen to disable the civil service and to purge the military command of people of quality. This process has been carried out by people who are themselves wildly unqualified to hold any sort of office, let along cabinet positions. To see where we are, we must understand that people such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, about whom one might raise other objections, had no business accepting their nominations, since they lack any qualifications. The fact that such people could be considered, let alone appointed, is a marker of superpower suicide.

5. Education. In a deeper sense, a superpower must have a mechanism to refresh its society, and thus its politics and administration, by preparing its population to understand the challenges of the world. This administration has done the contrary. University students are forbidden to gather and to speak their minds; university administrations are threatened with retaliation if they allow their faculty to teach freely; libraries around the country, including in military academies, are purged of useful books; public education generally is replaced with scams whereby tax money is transferred from the poorer to the richer while schools themselves are starved; an unregulated internet is allowed and indeed encouraged to transform the public sphere into a realm of emotions and recriminations.

6. Science. The rise of great powers often involves an alliance between politics and science. The ancient Mesopotamians were astronomers whose systems of describing the heavens still mark our ways of thought; so were the Mayans. The Romans managed to operationalize Greek science to build, defend, and cure. The Renaissance was, by no coincidence, also the age of exploration. Modern imperial powers built state institutions to fund science and attract scientists; the United States from the 1940s was the outstanding example of this trend, and science (often as practiced by immigrants) was the most important basis of American superpower. Current American policy is to fund science on the basis of primitive ideological taboos, and to discourage young scientists from immigrating to the United States. Senior scientists are also leaving; a colleague in a central position in US science just told me that he is leaving the country in part because the overall environment is better in other places. It is also US policy to cast doubt on basic scientific observations, such as that of human-caused climate change.

7. Energy. Human groups that pioneer new forms of energy technology rise; those that do not fall. This might be the most profound truth of our history; a magnificent forthcoming bookdemonstrates the significance of energy transitions at the most profound level, that of the history of life on earth itself. Humans who mastered fire could consume more energy themselves. Humans who domesticated dogs could use their energy to hunt mammoths. Humans who domesticated plants could turn solar energy to their own purposes. Humans who understood weather and climate could turn wind energy to the purpose of exploration and conquest, as did the Vikings. The United States was established on the cusp of a transition to hydrocarbon energy: coal, oil, natural gas. These forms of energy are now becoming obsolete, not only in ecological but also in economic terms. And yet this administration has chosen to cancel America’s energy transition and subsidize technologies that have no future. This is superpower suicide in perhaps the most basic form. And nothing could benefit America’s chief rival, China, more than this choice.

8. Technology. It requires little effort to associate technology with the rise of great powers. Military achievement is associated intimately with innovation; from the spur to the machine gun, the causal relationship is not really contestable. While the United States spends gigantic amounts of money on weaponry, the Trump administration has chosen to focus on weapons from the past rather than of the future. Trump’s idea is battleships named after himself based on what he remembers of a movie. The plans for “Trump-class” battleships are a mixture of the fictional and the vulnerable, which does reflect the man. The notion is to invest untold amounts of money into a kind of weapon has been understood to be obsolete since 1943, and which if somehow built would be highly vulnerable to weapons other countries now have. This strategic atavism draws the United States away from national security in its most basic sense. The shape of modern warfare is revealed by the high-tech war between Russia and Ukraine, especially in Ukraine’s successful self-defense. The Trump administration chose to ignore the lessons of that war and to demean and defund America’s Ukrainian ally, to the detriment of American interests and American warfighting.

9. Diplomacy. This art, celebrated by great powers, has been trashed by the United States. It cannot be practiced without understanding other countries, as the most focused American diplomats have stressed (for example, Henry Kissinger, who can hardly be excused of softheartedness). It has rested, in the American and other cases, on the deliberate construction of a diplomatic corps where people train in languages and trade in knowledge. Under the Trump administration, the foreign service has been trashed. The principle of diplomacy, such as it is, is that other countries will do what we want because we are big and bad. This has not worked. The bizarre notion that the president can himself “make deals” is the sign of a religious cult; like most cults, its activity is the generation of ever more creative excuses for the lack of performance. There is no evidence that Trump knows how to negotiate, and abundant evidence that he does not: for example, defeat in trade wars with China; personal vulnerability to the preferences of Russian leaders, and the disaster of Iranian nuclear enrichment, of which Trump himself is the chief sponsor. In practice, critical negotiations, with Iran and elsewhere, have been put in the hands of two people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with close personal relationships with the president and obvious economic stakes in the relevant conflicts. The diplomacy of the Huns was far more sophisticated than this. It is hard to overstate how primitive the current American approach is, and how much joy it brings to America’s enemies.

10. Alliances. Great powers have allies. To be sure, they might change these alliances rapidly for reasons of interest, as the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire famously did. The whole history of the Roman Empire, for that matter, was one of active diplomacy with neighboring barbarians (as the Romans saw matters); archaeology bears witness to the arrangements that were made. The history of modern European empires was also one considered alliances, as the architects of American superpower understood. Under the Trump administration, useful allies are mocked and marginalized for no reason other than personal whimsy and a sense of grievance. Because there is no sense of state or national interest, there can be no understanding that alliances are of service. Trump feels annoyed because he is losing a war and removes US troops from Germany; those troops are there to enable the United States to win wars. I personally cannot think of any other example in which the leaders of a great power behaved in this way, presumably because these kinds of choices are inconsistent with the maintenance of power. The United States now seems to be treating as “allies” middle eastern countries that have nothing to offer except their own interests in the use of American armed forces in their own region, permanent engagement in the disastrous politics of oil, and financial opportunities for people personally close to Trump.

11. The international system. Postwar America did something far more impressive than build a system of alliances; it essentially created a set of laws, rules, and norms that allowed American power to maintain itself and to expand. The European Union and NATO, so abused by the Trump people today, were indirect and direct results of American policies intelligently designed to maximize American trade and security interests. But the achievement was far broader than that, and indeed historically unprecedented: the construction of laws and conventions that kept one country in the center of the world. Today, the Trump people make themselves at the World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference and similar gatherings and complaining that the rules are against them — the exact opposite was the case, because America made the rules. In deliberately destroying its own international system, this American government is improving the position of its rivals China and Russia, who have been calling for exactly this to happen, but who lacked the ability to make it happen.

12. The idea of victory. A superpower wins in confrontations, at least some of the time. This administration loses again and again, and is seen to lose by others. Trump announced that his main weapon of influence would be tariffs, but then lost his trade war with China, leaving Beijing more powerful and more emboldened. The Russo-Ukrainian war is a curious case. It would serve the interests of the United States in prosperity and stability for Ukraine to win; but under Trump the United States has switched its policy to one of support for Ukraine to support for Russia. So it has lost in that way. But since the United States has made that pivot, Ukraine has performed ever better in the war, and Russia has performed worse. And so the United States, amazingly, has managed to be the loser in the same war a double sense: by failing to see its own interests, and then by failing to fail. The Iranian war is an obvious strategic defeat in every traditional sense; insofar as there were any American objectives, they were not achieved. Trump’s policies have left Iran with more enriched uranium in the hands of a more radical regime which holds new sources of economic power in the world. In the current situation, in which military options have been self-humiliatingly exhausted, the useful instruments would be those that involved communicating with the Iranian people or influencing Iranian society. Those institutions existed until very recently; they were willfully demolished, to great fanfare, in early 2026.

The United States is now governed by people who celebrate defeat in symbolic terms characteristic of states in disastrous decline. Consider Defense Secretary Hegseth’s description of the rescue of a US pilot as the resurrection of Jesus. The screaming blasphemy of this might distract us from its strategic helplessness. Christological images of this sort are used as propaganda to transform defeat in the real world into victory in some imaginary one. The US lost the war in Iran. Among other things it was not able to sustain an air campaign. The downing of a US fighter meant than an individual mission failed. It is happy news, of course, that the pilot survived. But the notion that this was a “literal miracle,” as Hegseth claimed, brings the United States, sadly, into the tradition of losers who use Jesus to claim to be winners. An historical example of this was Polish Romanticism, with its idea that the collapse of a republic (chiefly due to wealth inequality) made of Poland the “Christ of Nations.” Donald Trump’s own self-deification has to be seen in similar terms: a president who could assert power in this world would not have to claim that his real authority comes from another one. His fantasies of the total destruction of Iranian civilization are part of an apocalyptic panorama that is inconsistent with decent politics.

13. Finances. Though not the most interesting historical subject, budget disaster stands behind many of the most notable collapses of state power, ancient and modern. Under Trump our national debt now approaches $40 trillion. National debt is higher than GDP of the country for the first time since the end of the Second World War. That is a notable point of comparison: it is normal to run big deficits when facing the challenge of the scale of a world war. We are running huge deficits for an entirely different reason: because we decline to tax wealthy individuals and corporations. That is not an approach that is consistent with fighting and winning wars, nor with maintaining the social services that allow a modern society to function. More profoundly: it reflects an approach to politics — government as customer service to the very wealthy — that leads us from power to ethics.

The war can lead us to a diagnosis of superpower suicide. Wars cannot be won by people who have no idea what they are doing, because they have no frame of reference (such as the nation or the state) beyond their own feelings. They cannot be fought well when the wrong people are making the daily decisions and the wrong weapons are being deployed. They cannot be reasonably brought to an end when there is no practice of diplomacy and no notion of the value of alliances and no concern about corruption.

But even a strict focus on power will lead us back to justice. But just as the war is only a symptom of superpower suicide, so superpower suicide is only a symptom of a still deeper condition, the one that must be addressed.

Even if all we cared about were American power, we would have to ask ourselves how to undo the distortions of democracy and the drastic inequalities of that enabled world-historical levels of strategic buffoonery. After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable.

The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.

*****

PS. If you would like to help Ukrainians defend themselves from Russia’s criminal war of aggression, please consider contributing to the Sky Defense campaign. For worse but also for better, as the Ukrainians have shown us, this is a time when civil society campaigns can contribute to general security.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, International, Lies, Science, Stupid, Technology, Trump, Tyranny

Colorado: Governor Polis Bends to Trump Pressure, Frees Tina Peters

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
2

Trump has spent a lot of time rescuing, pardoning and trying to reward the people who joined him in attempting to overturn his election loss in 2020. He is a giant baby. He is a sore loser. He lost decisively, and he refuses to accept it. More than 60 federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected his appeals because there was no evidence of election fraud.

Someday, with time, we will look back on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat as a low point in our history. Of course, we will look at his two terms in office as the absolute nadir of our history, as a time he spent rolling back civil rights, environmental protections, international alliances, access to healthcare, defunding medical and scientific research, bullying universities, and censoring the mass media.

Trump bullied Governor Jard Polis of Colorado to free Tina Peters, and Polis succumbed:

Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.

Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Injustice, International, Trump

“60 Minutes” Punches Back at Firings

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
4

Oliver Darcy posts a very informative update on news of the media world. This is an unusual one, which appeared yesterday, based upon a recording of a meeting of the staff of “60 Minutes” with its new executive producer.

“60 Minutes” is the leading news program in the nation. It’s investigative reporting is known for being fearless.

When CBS was purchased by the billionaire Ellison family, they set about making the network more Trump/friendly. Part of the deal to sell CBS was the cancellation of Stephen Colbert’s show by the previous owner Shari Redstone.

After ownership changed, David Ellison hired Bari Weiss, editor of a center-right blog called “The Free Press” to be editor-in-chief of news. She was a print journalist with no experience in broadcast journalism.

There was an immediate uproar at “60 Minutes,” when Weiss delayed a segment on immigration because the producer Sharyn Alfonsi did not obtain a comment from the Trump administration. Eventually, the show aired and later Alfonsi was fired, along with other correspondents and staff, including the executive producer Tanya Simon.

The veteran staff of “60 Minutes” is clearly outraged by the firings and by the choice of an executive producer selected by Weiss.

Pelley’s ‘60 Minutes’ Revolt

In a stunning confrontation, Scott Pelley accused Bari Weiss of “murdering” the newsmagazine and relentlessly grilled her newly installed executive producer, Nick Bilton, over the show’s recent firings, according to audio obtained by Status. 

On Monday morning, the staff of “60 Minutes” convened for an introductory meeting with Bari Weiss‘ handpicked new executive producer of the program, Nick Bilton. Bilton, the technology journalist who lacks both broadcast news and managerial experience, opened the meeting by reading from some prepared notes. He didn’t get far. 

Scott Pelley, the iconic “60 Minutes” correspondent and longtime CBS News journalist, interjected and started grilling Bilton about what he dubbed “Black Thursday”—referencing the day last week in which Weiss carried out mass firings, terminating Tanya Simon as executive producer, ousting Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega as correspondents, and showing the door to other senior staffers. 

In the extraordinary back and forth, an impassioned Pelley relentlessly pressed Bilton on Weiss’ intentions for the storied newsmagazine, pointed out that he has no relevant experience to helm television’s most prestigious news program, grilled Bilton on what he knew about the firings, and more. 

“Bari loves this institution,” Bilton told staffers at one point during the highly contentious meeting. “She loves ’60 Minutes.'” 

“She’s murdering ’60 Minutes,'” Pelley countered. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it—and she’s doing exactly that.” 

This story is based on audio of the meeting obtained by Status. A CBS News spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment, but Pelley’s stunning series of remarks left staffers on the newsmagazine wondering if he will resign. 

In the meeting, Pelley pointed out that Weiss has “no qualifications for her job” and told Bilton “you have slender qualifications for this job.” Pelley, the former anchor of “CBS Evening News,” noted that the changes Weiss has made to that program “have been catastrophic.” 

“So why should we expect any of this is going to be any better?” Pelley asked Bilton. 

Bilton tried to move the meeting along, but Pelley pressed on, challenging the new executive producer’s references in interviews to “60 Minutes” creator Don Hewitt’s vision for the program as he outlined his plans. 

“I have another question,” the veteran journalist said. “Did you at any point work with Don Hewitt, telling everybody about what Don Hewitt thought, and what his inspiration was? I worked for Don Hewitt from 1999 to 2004 and Lesley Stahl probably worked with him for 30 years. Just wondering how you have such deep insight?” 

Bilton replied that he was simply quoting Hewitt’s own words from past interviews and asked Pelley whether he had any other questions. Pelley said that he did. 

“I have many questions,” Pelley responded. “What was wrong with Sharyn Alfonsi?” 

As Bilton started to say he would “defer,” Pelley interrupted: “This is not the crowd to dodge.” 

Bilton insisted he was not dodging. 

“Nobody talked to you about that?” Pelley continued, pressing him on the firing. “They’re taking one of your correspondents away and nobody mentioned to you what was wrong with Sharyn?” 

Bilton acknowledged that he “had conversations with people.” 

“And what came out of those conversations?” Pelley asked. “They are private conversations?” 

Bilton reiterated that he “did not fire” Alfonsi or Vega. Pelley pointed out that Bilton had nonetheless discussed the matter with others. Charles Forelle, a top Weiss deputy and managing editor of CBS News, interjected, telling Pelley that he was being “rude.” 

“This is not actually productive,” Forelle said. “This is not an interview.” 

“It’s working for me,” Pelley replied. 

“Anybody came into our house—this is ’60 Minutes,'” Pelley added. “I guess you wandered in expecting to read a statement off?” 

Pelley then asked Bilton “what was wrong with” Draggan Mihailovich, the executive editor of “60 Minutes” who was fired on Thursday. 

Bilton again said that he did not fire Mihailovich. Forelle one more told Pelley that he was being “rude.” 

Pelley did not let up, however. The veteran newsman told Bilton and Forelle that the way management handled the firings was “cruel.” Forelle—yet again—responded by calling Pelley “rude.” 

“I’m not being rude,” Pelley shot back. “I have some pretty—you know what was rude? Black Thursday. That was the absolute definition of rudeness. Telling Tanya Simon she had to be out of here at five o’clock. Sending Draggan Mihailovich to HR to get fired, because nobody could look him in the eye. Not talking about Tanya’s contract. Not talking about Sharyn Alfonsi’s contract. Not talking about Cecilia Vega’s contract. Just calling them up and telling they were fired. That’s rude. This is a conversation. That is rude, and you were part of that.” 

At that point, Bilton acknowledged that there were many questions about the moves that Weiss had made last week. He said he did “not feel comfortable” answering some of them and proposed going to Weiss—who was notably absent from the meeting—so that Pelley could raise his concerns to her directly. 

“What I would like to do right now is talk about what happens next,” Bilton added. 

As Bilton tried to move the discussion on to the show’s future, another staffer pointed out that it “takes years” to develop new correspondents for the program and noted that new correspondents would require training. 

Bilton pushed back, saying “these are not going to be new correspondents that have never done this before.” The remark drew laughter, to which Bilton said, “You have no idea what my plans are, so I will present those plans to you. I will present them when the time is right.” 

Pelley, who was applauded multiple times during the meeting by other staffers present, then refocused the conversation on the firings. 

“Here’s a question: Were you aware of how Black Friday was going to play out?” he asked. “I find it odd that you would take this job knowing that you would never be welcomed here.” 

“I have no problem taking a job in a place that I am not welcome, OK? I don’t believe that will be the case,” Bilton replied. 

“I am not intimidated by—I have been a journalist for 25 years, Scott. I have sat and talked with incredibly powerful people like you have,” Bilton continued. “None of it intimidates me, OK? So you are not going to intimidate me in front of this group of people.” 

“Does it show good judgment to take this job under those circumstances?” Pelley asked. 

“Yes, it does,” Bilton replied, saying he would end on this note: “The reason it takes good judgment is because I care so deeply about this institution, and I want to ensure that what happened to TIME magazine and all of these other institutions does not happen here.” 

“Well, we feel protected,” Pelley replied. “That’s great. Thank you.” 

Bilton then brought the acrimonious meeting to a close, thanking the staff for “graciously being so welcoming.” 

Categories Censorship, Disruption, Ethics, Media, Trump

The Trump Regime’s List of Forbidden Words

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2026 //
8

Certain words have been censored from government documents, most especially those that refer to diversity, equity, and inclusion, meaning race, ethnicity, gender, and LGBT status.

The New York Times has kept a running list of “forbidden” words. The list does not include the exhibits that have been removed at public museums, public libraries, National parks, and other public institutions.

As President Trump seeks to purge the federal government of “woke” initiatives, agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid, according to a compilation of government documents.

  • accessible
  • activism
  • activists
  • advocacy
  • advocate
  • advocates
  • affirming care
  • all-inclusive
  • allyship
  • anti-racism
  • antiracist
  • assigned at birth
  • assigned female at birth
  • assigned male at birth
  • at risk
  • barrier
  • barriers
  • belong
  • bias
  • biased
  • biased toward
  • biases
  • biases towards
  • biologically female
  • biologically male
  • BIPOC
  • Black
  • breastfeed + people
  • breastfeed + person
  • chestfeed + people
  • chestfeed + person
  • clean energy
  • climate crisis
  • climate science
  • commercial sex worker
  • community diversity
  • community equity
  • confirmation bias
  • cultural competence
  • cultural differences
  • cultural heritage
  • cultural sensitivity
  • culturally appropriate
  • culturally responsive
  • DEI
  • DEIA
  • DEIAB
  • DEIJ
  • disabilities
  • disability
  • discriminated
  • discrimination
  • discriminatory
  • disparity
  • diverse
  • diverse backgrounds
  • diverse communities
  • diverse community
  • diverse group
  • diverse groups
  • diversified
  • diversify
  • diversifying
  • diversity
  • enhance the diversity
  • enhancing diversity
  • environmental quality
  • equal opportunity
  • equality
  • equitable
  • equitableness
  • equity
  • ethnicity
  • excluded
  • exclusion
  • expression
  • female
  • females
  • feminism
  • fostering inclusivity
  • GBV
  • gender
  • gender based
  • gender based violence
  • gender diversity
  • gender identity
  • gender ideology
  • gender-affirming care
  • genders
  • Gulf of Mexico
  • hate speech
  • health disparity
  • health equity
  • hispanic minority
  • historically
  • identity
  • immigrants
  • implicit bias
  • implicit biases
  • inclusion
  • inclusive
  • inclusive leadership
  • inclusiveness
  • inclusivity
  • increase diversity
  • increase the diversity
  • indigenous community
  • inequalities
  • inequality
  • inequitable
  • inequities
  • inequity
  • injustice
  • institutional
  • intersectional
  • intersectionality
  • key groups
  • key people
  • key populations
  • Latinx
  • LGBT
  • LGBTQ
  • marginalize
  • marginalized
  • men who have sex with men
  • mental health
  • minorities
  • minority
  • most risk
  • MSM
  • multicultural
  • Mx
  • Native American
  • non-binary
  • nonbinary
  • oppression
  • oppressive
  • orientation
  • people + uterus
  • people-centered care
  • person-centered
  • person-centered care
  • polarization
  • political
  • pollution
  • pregnant people
  • pregnant person
  • pregnant persons
  • prejudice
  • privilege
  • privileges
  • promote diversity
  • promoting diversity
  • pronoun
  • pronouns
  • prostitute
  • race
  • race and ethnicity
  • racial
  • racial diversity
  • racial identity
  • racial inequality
  • racial justice
  • racially
  • racism
  • segregation
  • sense of belonging
  • sex
  • sexual preferences
  • sexuality
  • social justice
  • sociocultural
  • socioeconomic
  • status
  • stereotype
  • stereotypes
  • systemic
  • systemically
  • they/them
  • trans
  • transgender
  • transsexual
  • trauma
  • traumatic
  • tribal
  • unconscious bias
  • underappreciated
  • underprivileged
  • underrepresentation
  • underrepresented
  • underserved
  • undervalued
  • victim
  • victims
  • vulnerable populations
  • women
  • women and underrepresented

Notes: Some terms listed with a plus sign represent combinations of words that, when used together, acknowledge transgender people, which is not in keeping with the current federal government’s position that there are only two, immutable sexes. Any term collected above was included on at least one agency’s list, which does not necessarily imply that other agencies are also discouraged from using it.

The above terms appeared in government memos, in official and unofficial agency guidance and in other documents viewed by The New York Times. Some ordered the removal of these words from public-facing websites, or ordered the elimination of other materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included.

In other cases, federal agency managers advised caution in the terms’ usage without instituting an outright ban. Additionally, the presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with Mr. Trump’s executive orders.

Some of the Trump regime’s efforts to censor history have been reversed. For example, it lost its fight to remove the Gay Pride flag from the Stonewall bar in Greenwich Village in New York City.

The New York Times reported:

The Trump administration has agreed to officially restore the Pride flag that was removed from the Stonewall National Monument in New York’s Greenwich Village. 

The move marks a reversal by the Trump administration, which had the flag removed back in February. It comes on the heels of a lawsuit brought by several nonprofit groups against Department of Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, the National Park Service and others. The agreement to restore the flag settles the lawsuit. 

The National Park Service said it removed the flag under guidance from the Department of Interior, which had said non-agency flags could not be officially displayed on flagpoles managed by the National Park Service. 

The court agreement says it will no longer be subject to the political whims of whoever is in power.   

“The whole reason why the flag belongs at Stonewall is because it is such a big part of the history of the LGBTQ community and the struggle for equality. Stonewall itself is obviously such a part of that history and all along what we asserted was that the flag itself was a representation of that history,” attorney Alexander Kristofcak said.

Advocates say the ruling could have a national impact at other places where the Trump administration has sought to combat diversity initiatives. For example, the Trump administration removed an exhibit on George Washington’s ownership of slaves from Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia. 

But in February 2026, a federal judge ordered the restoration of the Philadelphia exhibit.

Politico reported that Judge Cynthia Rufe wrote a “withering opinion” in which she compared the Trump administration’s stance to George Orwell’s 1984. It was an effort, she said, to eliminate the truth by an administration that did so because it could. No, you can’t, she ordered.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Extremism, Gender, Propaganda, Racism, Trump

New York Court Reverses DOGE Cancellation of $100 Million for NEH Grants

By dianeravitch
May 22, 2026 //
2

Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern Districy of New York issued a ruling restoring $100 million in grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities that were canceled by Elon Musk’s DOGE team. The judge said the cancellations violated the First Amendment and the Fifth Amendment, and furthermore that DOGE lacked the statutory authority to act. Judge McMahon ordered the reinstatement of every grant to writers, scholars, and researchers. The DOGE censors did not actually review the grants but used ChatGPT to identify words that the Trump administration had banned, especially those associated with DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of the decision was the judge’s ruling that DOGE had no authority to cancel these grants. In fact, DOGE had no authority to fire thousands of civil servants or to terminate entire agencies, like USAID.

She wrote:

On the central ultra vires question, Judge McMahon was unequivocal: “It is not that DOGE misconstrued a statutory provision conferring authority on it; it is that Congress conferred no authority on DOGE at all with respect to the awarding, continuation, or termination of NEH grants.”  

The Authors Guild, one of the plaintiffs, reported on the decision;

May 7, 2026—A New York federal court in a 143-page decision today held for the Authors Guild plaintiffs on every count in its case on behalf of individual writers and scholars against DOGE and the NEH for DOGE’s April 2025 mass cancellation at the National Endowment for the Humanities. It ordered the reinstatement of every grant terminated, delivering a complete victory to the Authors Guild and more than 1,400 writers, scholars, and researchers whose awards were abruptly eliminated.  

Judge Colleen McMahon of the Southern District of New York granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on all three of their claims, finding the terminations violated the First Amendment and the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment and were carried out by DOGE without any statutory authority to act.  

The court issued a permanent injunction enjoining the administration from giving effect to the mass terminations and requiring the government to rescind every termination notice and restore all affected grants and certified the Authors Guild’s lawsuit as a class action covering all approximately 1,400 affected grantees. 

“Today’s ruling makes clear that no administration—regardless of its priorities—is free to defy the statutory purposes of federal agencies and that or to cancel grants based on viewpoint discrimination,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild. “Not only did DOGE have no authority to cancel the grants, it used an AI chatbot to invent pretextual reasons to do it anyway. Writers and scholars had structured their lives around these awards—taking leaves of absence, giving up other income, making commitments—because the government had entered into a legally binding obligation. That obligation must be honored. We are gratified that justice was done, grateful to our amazing legal team at Fairmark Partners, and we will be watching closely to make sure every one of these grants is restored.”  

Background 

In early April 2025, DOGE officials terminated more than 1,400 NEH grants awarded to scholars, writers, research institutions, and other humanities organizations totaling over $100 million in congressionally appropriated funds—the largest mass cancellation of previously awarded grants in the agency’s nearly 60-year history—with no individualized review, no notice, and no opportunity to appeal.  

Discovery revealed that a DOGE official had used ChatGPT to generate “DEI rationales” for termination, submitting thousands of grant descriptions to the AI tool with a single standardized prompt, without defining the term or understanding how the tool interpreted it. They didn’t take any steps to ensure that the system wouldn’t discriminate on the basis of race, sex, or other protected categories. DOGE also searched for grants containing keywords like “gay,” “BIPOC” (Black, Indigenous, People of Color), “indigenous,” “tribal,” “melting pot,” “equality,” and similar terms. It did not search for analogous terms like “white,” “heterosexual,” or “Caucasian.” 

The results were, in the court’s account, irrational: Studies of ancient Jewish texts, the persecution of Uyghurs in China, the plastics industry, and American women in Paris in the early 1900s were all flagged as DEI. The NEH’s own acting chair told DOGE many of the rationales “mischaracterized” the grants but was overruled. His own email to DOGE acknowledged: “Either way, as you’ve made clear, it’s your decision on whether to discontinue funding any of the projects.”

Two Consolidated Cases

The result of this landmark ruling was actually two separate lawsuits that were quickly consolidated into one. On May 1, 2025, the Modern Language Association, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the American Historical Association filed the initial suit, ACLS v. McDonald, challenging DOGE’s mass terminations. Eleven days later, the Authors Guild filed its own suit, The Authors Guild v. NEH, in the Southern District of New York — structured as a class action on behalf of all approximately 1,400 affected grantees. On May 14, Judge Colleen McMahon consolidated the two cases, noting they were “substantially identical,” and the litigation proceeded jointly from there.

Because the Authors Guild’s suit was structured as a class action, Judge McMahon’s order applies not just to named plaintiffs but to all 1,400-plus writers, scholars, and researchers whose awards were canceled, making yesterday’s ruling a victory for everyone DOGE targeted. 

Ruling 

On the central ultra vires question, Judge McMahon was unequivocal: “It is not that DOGE misconstrued a statutory provision conferring authority on it; it is that Congress conferred no authority on DOGE at all with respect to the awarding, continuation, or termination of NEH grants.”  

On the ChatGPT-driven process, she wrote that it “would hardly be surprising if ChatGPT inferred, from DOGE’s repeated requests, that Fox and Cavanaugh were looking for reasons why grants could be characterized as DEI—and therefore terminable—and supplied ‘rationales’ simply in order to satisfy the user’s perceived demand. The utter lack of reasoning behind so many of its ‘rationales’ certainly suggests as much.” 

“We are extremely pleased with Judge McMahon’s ruling reinstating the more than $100 million in NEH grants that were cancelled by DOGE last April.,” said Jamie Crooks, Managing Partner of Fairmark Partners, LLP  “While we are still evaluating her detailed, 143-page opinion, the bottom line is clear: Judge McMahon agreed with the Authors Guild and the other plaintiffs that these ‘DEI’-based cancellations violated the First Amendment and Equal Protection, and that DOGE did not have the authority to order these grants terminated.  The Court’s order that the grants be reinstated will allow our clients and the hundreds of other scholars and institutions in the class to continue performing their important scholarly work, and it’s also a vindication for the rule of law and basic principles of constitutional law.”  

NEH award recipient Bill Goldstein said, “I am—and all of the plaintiffs will be— forever grateful for your brilliant, tireless, and effective work on our behalf. And on behalf of the First Amendment and what remains and must endure of the rule of law. The stakes are that high, and you made our rights and that right clear. Congratulations on your victory, and thank you for ours.” 

Given that the administration has ignored other judicial orders, including the preliminary injunction in this case, we cannot say whether NEH will in fact reinstate the grants and pay out the money owed under those grants. The court emphasized that its decision addresses only “the legality of the Government’s decision to terminate” the grants and that it is requiring the government to “rescind the termination notices,” but clarified that it does not “require[] the immediate payment of grant funds” or “adjudicate[] any contractual entitlement to money.” The reason for that it that claims seeking payment of money owed by the federal government must be brought in a separate court—the Court of Federal Claims. Here, Judge McMahon noted that securing payment of the grant funds “might well require a separate suit in the Court of Federal Claims”—though she did not outline a specific process. For now, we are reviewing the decision with our attorneys to determine next steps, including any possible action in the Court of Federal Claims. As always, our goal is to ensure that grantees receive the payments they are owed as promptly as possible.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Justice

Ann Telnaes on Presidential Vanity

By dianeravitch
May 20, 2026 //
1

Ann Telnaes is a Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist. She worked for The Washington Post for years but left when one of her cartoons was spiked (censored). The cartoon showed several billionaires bowing down to Trump; one of them was Jeff Bezos, owner of The Post. That cartoon won the Pulitzer Prize for 2026.

This one appears on her blog “Open Windows”:

Categories Trump, Censorship, Extremism

Lone Democratic Member of FCC Warns ABC About Plans to “Censor and Control” Media

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2026 //
1

Anna Gomez, the sole Democratic member of the board of the Federal Comminications Commission (FCC) took the unusual step of writing a letter to the CEO of ABC to warn him about the federal government’s goal of censoring the media. Early on in the second Trump administration, Trump sued ABC because one of its hosts, George Stephanopolous, asked Trump about “rape” charges in the E. Jean Carroll case, when Trump denied the charge and even denied the charge of defaming her, of which he was convicted. ABC paid Trump $16 million to persuade him to drop the lawsuit.

But the payoff did not buy peace. The FCC has now opened an investigation of ABC because of its talk show “The View,” which it accuses of bias.

The Wall Street Journal has the story:

ABC has been a victim of a “sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control” by the Trump administration, Federal Communications Commissioner Anna Gomez told Josh D’Amaro, chief executive of Disney , the network’s parent company.

The FCC under Republican Chairman Brendan Carr has been weaponized to pressure “a free and independent press and all media into submission,” Gomez wrote in a letter sent to D’Amaro on Monday and viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

The lone Democratic commissioner, Gomez has been an outspoken critic of many of Carr’s actions, which she has alleged are aimed at pressuring broadcasters for political purposes. 

The letter to D’Amaro comes in the wake of several investigations into Disney and ABC initiated by Carr’s FCC, including whether the talk show “The View” should continue to be granted certain exemptions as a news program…

Gomez told D’Amaro that these investigations and incidents, along with an FCC decision to reinstate a complaint into ABC’s moderating of a 2024 debate between then-candidate Donald Trump and opponent Kamala Harris, are “not a series of coincidental regulatory actions….”

The FCC is also investigating whether Disney has engaged in diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that run afoul of the agency’s equal-employment-opportunity rules….

Gomez said the administration’s attacks on the network began in earnest with a defamation lawsuit against the network and “Good Morning America” anchor George Stephanopoulos that ABC settled for $16 million, including legal fees.

“That settlement did not buy you peace,” Gomez wrote, adding “you cannot buy this Administration’s favor. For the right price, you can only borrow it. And the price always goes up.”

In her letter, Gomez pledged to use “every tool available to me as a Commissioner to shine a light on what this FCC is doing to curtail press freedom and to hold this process to account at every step.”

While Gomez is a frequent critic of Carr, it is highly unusual for a government regulator to tell a company under investigation that the probe is without merit.

The investigations, Gomez said, are unlikely to succeed but that is not the point.

“The threat is the point. As sitting Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently reminded us by invoking Justice Thurgood Marshall: ‘The value of a sword of Damocles is that it hangs, not that it drops,’” she wrote.

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Media

Hegseth Is Taking Control of Independent “Stars and Stripes,” a Military Publication

By dianeravitch
April 30, 2026 //
3

William Becker is a prominent environmental activist. He is also a veteran and at one point during his service, he wrote for “Stars and Stripes.”

It’s hard to keep track of the latest Trump administration outraged, but one of the latest is that Secretary of DEFENSE Pete Hegseth is taking control of “Stars and Stripes” so it will be an outlet for Pentagon propaganda and Hegseth’s brand of Christian nationalism and straight white male supremacy.

Becker wrote about this travesty at The Hill, a widely read D.C. publication:

One of the classic sounds of the Vietnam War was the voice that famously boomed,  “GOOOOD MORNING, VIET-NAM”  over Armed Forces Radio each day. 

The Army’s daily newspaper was an equally important fixture. Stars and Stripes was founded by Union soldiers during the Civil War. It was unique: a military publication independent from the brass, delivered to the troops along “the world’s most dangerous paper routes.”

During World War II, the paper shifted from a weekly to a daily publication, serving up national and international news along with stories from the theaters in Europe, Asia and, most recently, the Middle East. The paper had always been independent of military control. In the late 1980s, Congress required it.

Now, the Pentagon appears ready to make it a mouthpiece for Pete Hegseth, President Trump’s carefully coiffed secretary of Defense with battle-hungry biceps. We can expect the storied newspaper to acquire all the dignity of a British tabloid, becoming the manosphere’s daily drumbeat against “stupid rules of engagement” and “tepid legalities” like international law and the Geneva Conventions.

I have a dog in this fight. I was an Army sergeant who served as a combat correspondent for Stars and Stripes in Vietnam during 1966 and 1967. There were just a few of us. We didn’t wear rank or military uniforms. We traveled throughout South Vietnam, embedding ourselves in combat operations to give the soldiers’ perspectives on the war. At age 19, I competed hour by hour with veteran broadcast and newspaper reporters, the best in the business.

It wasn’t always about battle and bloodshed. We also wrote and photographed the military’s efforts to “win the hearts and minds” of the Vietnamese people. Based on Hegseth’s podium performances, “woke” coverage like that won’t appear in the paper. We can’t expect stories about the U.S. military as peacekeepers and rescuers during global disasters. We won’t read about the quiet ethos of professional soldiers. We’ll be bombarded with saturation coverage of how young men “intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill our enemies.”

Until last week, the newspaper’s independence was defended by an ombudsman, most recently Jacqueline Smith. She has been fired by the Pentagon. A spokesman explained that the department is taking over control of the paper to “modernize its operations, refocus its content away from woke distractions that siphon morale, and adapt it to serve a new generation of service members.”

In other words, Stars and Stripes is being swept up in the conservative tide taking over the news and entertainment media in the U.S. But as former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich notes, “Acquisition of a media company should be treated differently than the acquisition of, say, a company developing self-driving cars or one developing small nuclear reactors, because of the media’s central role in our democracy.” 

In 1966, Stars and Stripes featured my photos of the Philippine army, one of America’s allies in the war, handing out rice to villagers from the back of a truck. Now, we can anticipate that it won’t waste ink on such wokeness; it will report how God wants maximum lethality with minimum morality to “kill people and break things,” and deliver divine retribution with “overwhelming and punishing violence against the enemy.“

One of the problems with the Pentagon’s effort to “intimidate, demoralize, hunt, and kill our enemies” is that President Trump and Hegseth are working overtime to make enemies out of friends. Hegseth’s chief policy adviser suggests punishing NATO for not joining the U.S. in Trump’s war against Iran. Trump accuses NATO of being a “paper tiger” for not helping to open the Strait of Hormuz. 

Yet neither man apparently consulted with or advised NATO before launching the Iran war. NATO nations are understandably reluctant to join Trump in the international crimes he threatens. 

Trump has hardly been a good ally. He has soured relations with Europe with his threats to take Greenland by force and his punitive trade tariffs. In 2018, he called the hard-fought nuclear weapons agreement with Iran “decaying and rotten” and pulled out of it, leaving co-signers France, Germany and the United Kingdom in the lurch. 

He has insulted allies by failing to acknowledge their support after 9/11. He accused NATO of avoiding the front lines in the Afghanistan war, even though 1,000 servicemembers from European countries died in the conflict. He even suggested that he would encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to any NATO country that doesn’t pay enough for its own defense.

Hegseth and Trump have poisoned our relationship with allies. Will they now try to poison the views of the rank-and-file military? Stars and Stripes currently reaches 1.4 million people and gets 26 million page views on its digital edition. It may take a boycott by the rank-and-file or a crackdown by Congress to save it. 

William S. Becker is co-editor of and a contributor to “Democracy Unchained: How to Rebuild Government for the People,” and a contributor to Democracy in a Hotter Time, named by the journal Nature as one of 2023’s five best science books. He previously served as a senior official in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. He is currently executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project.

Categories Censorship, Freedom of the Press, Propaganda, Trump
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