We begin today with Paul Krugman pointing out that the ways in which Pete Hegseth and the tacky shoe salesman envision an army of Rambos ignores the ways in which wars have been fought for decades.
War still requires extraordinary courage from the men and women engaged in combat — courage that, according to officers I’ve spoken with, is rooted in a sense of honor, not swaggering machismo. Combatants also have to be physically fit enough to endure incredible hardship.
But they don’t have to look like bodybuilders — and anyway, only a small fraction of a modern army engages directly in combat. These days, war is conducted largely with machines and ranged weapons, and most of an army’s personnel are employed, one way or another, keeping those machines and weapons in action and providing the intelligence that makes them effective. These noncombatants are every bit as essential to victory as front-line troops.
Actually, this has been true for a long time, at least since World War II. I very much doubt that Hegseth would consider the team led by Alan Turing, which broke Germany’s Enigma code, or the group led by Joseph Rochefort, which broke Japan’s naval code, warriors — even leaving aside the fact that Turing was gay. Yet they contributed as much to victory as any front-line soldier.
And the “warrior ethos” Hegseth touts is even less sufficient, on its own, to win wars today.
We don’t have to speculate about what a 21st century war would look like, because there’s ferocious, dare I say lethal, combat happening in Ukraine as you read this.
And that “ferocious” and “lethal” combat in Ukarine is taking place in the cybersphere as much as it is on the battlefield.
Robert B. Hubbell writing for his “Today’s Edition Newsletter” Substack notes the silence of the generals and admirals at the meeting with Hegseth and Trump at Quantico.
They sat in silence as Trump claimed that the military would use U.S. cities as “training grounds” for waging war against American civilians.
They sat in silence as Trump said he would ask the military to fight “the enemy from within.”
They sat in silence as Hegseth said the generals were free to ignore the law of war and international treaties that separate the US military from barbarians and war criminals. [...]
In his final insult, Trump told the generals they looked like they came out of “central casting.” In doing so, he trivialized and demeaned their accomplishments and professionalism, telling them they were nothing more than props for infantile speeches by men who hold the military in contempt.
And so, the generals sat in silence, depriving Trump of the thing he values most--obsequious adulation.
The silence of the generals spoke volumes.
Tony Romm of The New York Times reports that the Trump regime has already begun to use the government shutdown to achieve his promised retribution on his political enemies through fiscal means.
The moves by the White House appeared both unprecedented and punitive, underscoring the risks of a fiscal stalemate that had no end in sight. It also evinced how President Trump might try to leverage the governmentwide closure to achieve his agenda, slash the budget and exact revenge on his political enemies.
In a series of social media posts, Russell T. Vought, the White House budget director, said the administration had paused or moved to cancel the delivery of about $26 billion in previously approved funds across a range of programs, describing the money as wasteful or in need of further review. [...]
Taken together, the administration’s actions laid bare the risks and consequences of a protracted fiscal stalemate under Mr. Trump. With an expansive view of executive power, the president has spared no opportunity in his second term to shutter agencies, slim down the federal work force and reconfigure the budget, with aggressive tactics that have tested the courts and, at times, defied Congress.
Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ward of Just Security look at the personal price that citizens and civil society often pay for political assassinations.
Although assassinations have a long history in America — including during the 1960s, when the lives of presidents and civil rights icons were cut short — the threat of such targeted murders is on the rise again. Unfortunately, concrete data is hard to come by in the United States because domestic terrorism figures are not collected and reported by any government agency. However, the National Counterterrorism Innovation, Technology, and Education Center (NCITE) at the University of Nebraska-Omaha, which tracks threats to public officials, finds that “2025 is on track to see more federal charges for threats against officials than any year they’ve tracked, dating back to 2013. Both 2023 and 2024 set new highs.” Last year, former President Donald Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt in Butler, PA, that killed a supporter. Like Tyler Robinson, Vance Boelter, and Luigi Mangione, the would-be assassin did not neatly fit into any ideological bucket, instead having apparently been driven by profoundly personal grievances that he took to the grave.
Although assassinations may be less deadly than an indiscriminate bombing or mass shooting, they wreak profound psychological damage on civil society. Democratic lawmakers across the country were already reconsidering their home security systems, given the Minnesota assassin’s violation of his victim’s private home, as well as the firebombing last spring on Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro’s official residence. Their Republican and conservative counterparts are most likely making these same types of calculations now. Congress, as well as state and local lawmakers, would be well-served to determine what steps they can take to provide additional security for politicians in both the major parties given the current climate. [...]
Rather than rejecting this trend, Americans thus far appear to be growing increasingly accepting of violence. Sadly, support for political violence shifts depending on which party is in power and who is targeted. For instance, a survey taken by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats in May found that 40 percent of Democrats were willing to use force to remove Trump from office, a number that corresponds roughly with similar responses among Republicans during President Joe Biden’s administration. Violence today is often celebrated by fellow partisans as necessary and cleansing, with victims mocked and their security concerns dismissed as exaggerated. Utah Senator Mike Lee, for instance, baselessly claimed that the Minnesota shootings were the result of “what happens when Marxists don’t get their way.” And, just hours after Kirk’s murder, President Trump pinned the blame on the “radical left” and “the organizations that fund it and support it” without any evidence whatsoever about the gunman or his motive. More than two weeks later, authorities have still only charged one individual; they have not yet alleged that any “organizations,” much less a broader political movement, had a hand in the heinous murder. As political divisiveness and the devaluing of human life become more widespread, abetted by the darkest corners of social media, more violence seems inevitable.
I wonder if these tendencies (or something like these tendencies) were also present from 1865-1901; a period that saw three presidential assassinations, the rise of Ku Klux Klan, and the lynching of Black Americans and other minorities.
Tressie McMillian Cottom of The New York Times documents some ways in which political dissent is being stifled.
What we have seen in the wake of Kirk’s assassination is an old Red Scare playbook, when corporate antagonism to New Deal reforms dovetailed with political witch hunts. Once again, state forces are colluding with corporations to erase ideas they do not like by harassing people who represent ideas that they don’t want to exist. This time, the witch hunt for bad people with bad ideas is guided by an unhinged theory of unitary executive power, a rapaciously illegitimate Supreme Court and corporate interests that control both the medium and the message. If you have not experienced the kind of supercharged harassment this environment breeds, count yourself lucky. But don’t count yourself safe. Academics, professors, teachers, librarians and other civil servants have been living under the censorious threat of defamation, stalking and politically motivated violence since Red Scare techniques went digital. Trump is promising to do the same to anyone else he considers an enemy.
For at least the past 15 years, my colleagues in academia have grappled with angry letters to university officials for doing their jobs. They have weathered campaigns for their firing. They have contended with an internet army obsessed with doxxing them, their parents, their kids. I’ve been contacted by the F.B.I. more than once in my career. Not because I hold any important state secrets or know a biker gang but because one of my colleagues has lived with so much sustained harassment from right-wing “activists” that it has become a matter of federal concern. Watch lists (one of which was constructed by Kirk’s organization) do not distinguish between public intellectuals at wealthy enclaves and hoi polloi who teach popular classes at cash-strapped schools. In either case, an army of trained provocateurs stands ready to destroy their lives to prove their bona fides as conservative activists. That threat has been chilling speech on campuses for years. Now it’s coming for all of you. [...]
Debate is a luxury of norms and institutional safety, two things that Trump’s second administration has systematically destroyed. So many Americans love the idea that debate solves tough political problems because we love the idea of American exceptionalism. Forget the bloody wars of independence, secession and expansion and remember the epistolaries. We flatter ourselves. There was never a time when rank-and-file Americans perfected the ideas of the Republic without violence or oppression. Debates among founding fathers were games among similarly classed white male property owners. Women, enslaved people, Indigenous nations, disabled people, poor people, some immigrants — they were all excluded from the civic sphere we valorize now as the height of American civility.
Chris Geidner writes for his “Law Dork” Substack about U.S. District Judge William Young ruling that the free speech noncitizens is protected under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. District Judge William Young ruled on Tuesday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and their respective departments had violated the First Amendment and federal law by “deliberately and with purposeful aforethought” acting “to chill the rights to freedom of speech and peacefully to assemble” of noncitizens.
Summing up his reading of history and condemnation of the actions of the current leadership of the executive branch, Young made clear that — regardless of what is happening elsewhere — he would hold true to what he sees as his role in our system. [...]
An 85-year-old Reagan appointee, Young called the case “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court.” His decision setting forth his findings of fact and rulings of law — which was brought by the American Association of University Professors and Middle East Studies Association — more than bears that out.
Young does more in one decision than perhaps any public official has done this year to detail the specific methods President Donald Trump and the Trump administration use to act illegally and unconstitutionally, the many ways the other branches and outside institutions have capitulated to those acts, and the essential and powerful ways people — and the legal system — can push back.
It is, however, ultimately a challenge to America.
Adrian Polglase and Joseph Lee of BBC News report that widespread racism and sexism continue to plague the Metropolitan Police. (Warning: the language of the linked BBC report is rather salacious and offensive.)
Serving Metropolitan Police officers called for immigrants to be shot, revelled in the use of force and were dismissive of rape claims in footage captured by a Panorama undercover reporter.
The evidence of misogyny and racism challenges the Met's promise to have tackled what it calls "toxic behaviours" after the murder of Sarah Everard by a serving police officer.
Panorama's secret filming shows officers making sexualised comments to colleagues and sharing racist views about immigrants and Muslims. [...]
The station had been the focus of an investigation by the police watchdog, the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), into bullying and discrimination nearly four years ago. It found that some officers had discussed hitting their girlfriends, shared offensive and discriminatory comments and joked about rape in private group chats.
Whistleblowers told Panorama that officers with racist and misogynistic attitudes still worked at the station despite the Met's promise to root out "rogue officers" and "cultural failings".
Finally today, Luis Pablo Beauregard and Patricia San Juan Flores of El País in English say that Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum is the most popular president of Mexico this century.
The first woman to hold the executive office enjoys strong approval after her first year in office, surpassing her predecessor and mentor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, with a 78% rating. By comparison, López Obrador had a 72% approval rating in his first year and reached 77% when leaving office, according to an Enkoll survey for EL PAÍS and W Radio.
Not only that, Sheinbaum’s approval ratings exceed those of the last four presidents who have governed Mexico since 2000, when power alternated after more than 70 years of governments controlled by the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI): Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, Enrique Peña Nieto, and López Obrador. [...]
The president enjoys support across all education levels, although her backing is strongest among Mexicans who have only completed basic schooling. The survey shows that Sheinbaum also has support among those who identify as opposition voters.
Seventy-three percent of supporters of the National Action Party (PAN), 70% of Citizens’ Movement sympathizers, and 72% of PRI supporters — a party that has fallen to fourth place nationally — approve of her first year in office. Unaffiliated voters are the most critical, with 34% disapproving. However, 66% believe that Mexico’s situation “is improving.”
Everyone have the best possible day that you can!
