On Politics: Pay up – The New York Times

Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.

Good evening. Tonight, I’m looking at how President Trump, ever a transactional businessman, has demanded foes and allies alike show him the money. We’re also covering a worrying trend for Democrats. We’ll start with the headlines.

President Trump stepped up his attack on the Federal Reserve as he demanded that one of its governors resign. We’ve got more on that below. A federal judge denied the government’s request to unseal grand jury testimony from the prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein, a motion made as President Trump tried to dispel criticism from his supporters. Senators from both parties, alarmed by Trump’s moves to withhold funding approved by Congress, have teamed up to safeguard next year’s spending bills. The deportation of a 6-year-old has put a spotlight on ICE’s detention of families.President Trump insisted on securing a $200 million payment in negotiations with Columbia University on top of the policy changes it had already committed to make. Hiroko Masuike / The New York Times

Pay up

By Jess Bidgood

Seven months into the second Trump administration, the president has picked fights with colleges, law firms, trading partners and private businesses, threatening them with investigations, tariffs or other consequences as he seeks to enact his agenda.

And he has also offered them a simple way out of their Trump-instigated troubles, one that would hardly seem out of place in the clubby, mob-connected Manhattan he came up in: Pay up.

And so they are. One by one, the president’s foes — and even some of his purported allies — are agreeing to spend big on his terms, either so they can go about their business or avoid something worse. Some of the president’s critics see it as nothing less than extortion.

New reporting from my colleagues shows that Trump personally interceded as his aides negotiated with Columbia University, insisting they secure a $200 million payment on top of the policy changes it had already committed to make.

And it’s not just Columbia.

Editor’s Note: Read more.. but, I wonder where these stolen, illegal “payments” from universities end up — in Trump’s pocket, a super mega slush fund for Trump?????

Continue/Read Original Article Here: On Politics: Pay up

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Masked police raids in Trump’s America could target you next – Las Vegas Sun News

EDITORIAL:

Masked police raids in Trump’s America could target you next

Immigration agents detain two men at a car wash on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Montebello, Calif. Photo by: Gregory Bull / AP

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025 | 2 a.m.

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Two fathers are dead. Their families shattered. And the blame rests squarely with Donald Trump. In the span of barely a month, immigration enforcement raids under his administration have claimed the lives of a farmworker in Ventura County, Calif., and another man struck by a vehicle on the freeway while fleeing a chaotic Home Depot roundup in Monrovia, Calif. These deaths were not unavoidable tragedies, they were foreseeable consequences of reckless policy and deliberate intimidation.

The Monrovia death unfolded with sickening familiarity. Witnesses say federal agents descended on the Home Depot parking lot — a known gathering place for day laborers — without warning, sowing panic among workers. Shouts of “la migra, corre.” (“Immigration, run!”) sent men scattering. One fled over a concrete wall and straight into freeway traffic. Minutes later, he lay mortally injured. His daughter arrived at the scene, desperate for news. She left in tears.

This would be horrific enough on its own. But the raid itself may well have been unlawful. More than a month ago, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding immigration sweeps that target people based on race, language, occupation or location. Yet ICE pressed ahead, violating not just the spirit but potentially the letter of the court’s directive.

Mere hour after the death in Monrovia, heavily armed agents staged arrests and shows of intimidation outside the Japanese American National Museum, where California Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference. This was no coincidence. It was a calculated display meant to send a message: federal power will be used to humiliate, menace and silence political opponents.

These troubling tactics are part of clear and certain effort to establish a police state in the U.S. The signs are everywhere in Trump’s administration: masked troops, significant domestic surveillance, using the military in city streets, defining opponents as less than human, treating protest as insurrection and, importantly, the defiance of the judiciary.

Most Americans under 40 — especially white Americans — have little direct experience with secret police or police states after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. But now there are signs such times may be returning. China, El Salvador, Russia, Hungary, Argentina and of course, the Trump administration, are all on a path leading to private police organizations that ignore the rule of law and commit acts of terrorism designed to traumatize the nation.

If you think that describing some of the actions of federal agents right now as “terrorism” is an overstatement, we’d ask you to consider that the FBI describes terrorism as a violent, criminal and ideologically motivated act. Under the USA PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Act, terrorism involves attempts to coerce civilian populations or influence government conduct through armed acts of violence or intimidation. ICE’s recent raids check every box. Wearing a badge doesn’t change that reality.

In fact, history has shown that authoritarian states are often introduced by a wave of domestic terrorism administered by agents of the state. It’s about more than shock and awe, it’s about traumatizing the population such that it will be pliable to the demands of the state just to get some relief from the pressure. Importantly, citizens of authoritarian states can fall victim to such tactics just as quickly as immigrants and others who are perceived as outsiders.

We are already seeing U.S. citizens swept up in ICE raids, thrown to the ground, brutalized and forcibly taken into custody despite committing no crime. In one particularly notable incident, an 18-year-old high school student repeatedly told federal officers that he was a citizen and that he could prove it. He recorded a federal officer responding by telling him “You got no rights here, you’re an illegal brother.” His crime: being a brown American in the age of Donald Trump.

Trump and our cosplaying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have imagined an ICE whose sole purpose is to rid the United States of brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people, whom they perceive as less than human, even if they are citizens, long-time productive residents or young people who have never known any other home. Such tactics violate the Constitution and the core concept of law enforcement that has served this country in good stead for decades. It also violates a spirit of Americanism that welcomes law-abiding immigrants, who historically have fueled economic growth.

While thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to protest these brutal tactics, every instance of Trump, Noem and ICE leadership ignoring court orders, denying civil rights and otherwise seeking to neuter the power of the judiciary is another step toward a repressive police state. And too many Americans are sitting on the sidelines and refusing to get involved as our nation transforms into a cheap junta in real time.

The consequences are not abstract. Two people are dead. These were husbands, fathers and human beings who wanted nothing more than the opportunity to work hard and earn a fair wage to provide for their family. Their blood is on Trump’s hands. Innocent people have been jailed, including some innocent people sent to hellhole prisons in other countries. People who are arrested are denied the opportunity to prove their case before a judge.

There is a moral rot at the core of these operations. Law enforcement exists to protect the public, not to terrify it or act as a secret police force doing Trump’s extrajudicial bidding. Proper law enforcement should not hide behind masks. Masks are for thugs and criminals. Masks are for people ashamed of their actions.

The lawlessness and recklessness with which ICE is carrying out its immigration goals threatens not only immigrant communities, but U.S. citizens and the rule of law itself. America cannot allow armed intimidation, racial profiling and disregard for the courts to become normalized tools of governance. The lives already lost are a damning testament to where that path leads. The masked police could be coming for you next, if you have an unpopular idea or the wrong skin color.

DWD Editor’s Note: Thank you Las Vegas Sun. These masked zero-police are not normal. This President is not normal. Hang in there!

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Masked police raids in Trump’s America could target you next – Las Vegas Sun News

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North Carolinians just got Medicaid expansion. Now it’s jeopardized. – The Washington Post

Aaron Baptist checks out at the Rural Health Group clinic in Stovall, North Carolina. The clinic relies on Medicaid to serve residents in an area with few health care options. (Matt Ramey / For The Washington Post)

As Medicaid cuts loom, North Carolina shows the stakes

North Carolina was the most recent state to expand Medicaid. Now enrollees face changes demanded by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Yesterday at 6:00 a.m. EDT, 9 min     By Paige Winfield Cunningham

STOVALL, N.C. — Roughly 650,000 people here have signed up for Medicaid since the legislature expanded it 18 months ago — the culmination of a years-long effort in this politically split state. But now they are in danger of losing it under provisions in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

In signing that law, Trump approved more than $900 billion in cuts to Medicaid over the next decade.

Those cuts are colliding with state budget challenges, imperiling the future of Medicaid in states such as North Carolina.

A Rural Health Group clinic serves many patients on Medicaid in Stovall.

Devdutta Sangvai, the state’s top health official, told legislators in a letter last week that North Carolina will slash Medicaid payments to doctors, hospitals and other providers starting Oct. 1. He attributed the cuts to the GOP-led legislature declining to fully fund the program. New administrative costs to restrict eligibility under the federal law are among the long-term factors that risk “a fundamental erosion of the NC Medicaid program,” he wrote.

“Despite careful efforts to minimize harm, the reductions now required carry serious and far-reaching consequences,” Sangvai wrote. He said that reduced rates “could drive providers out of the Medicaid program, threatening access to care for those who need it most.”

Republican leaders have pushed back, suggesting that health officials could have found less disruptive ways to trim Medicaid spending.

Cuts to Medicaid affect more North Carolinians than ever before. The state’s Medicaid rolls swelled nearly 30 percent, to 3 million people, after state Republicans dropped their decade-long opposition to expanding the program under the increasingly popular Affordable Care Act and worked with Democrats to broaden eligibility.

Before that expansion, Medicaid mainly covered people with low incomes who were disabled, had dependent children or were pregnant. But now, in most states, just about anyone earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty threshold ($22,000 for a single person and $44,000 for a family of four) is eligible.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: North Carolinians just got Medicaid expansion. Now it’s jeopardized. – The Washington Post

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Celebrating 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show – Ars Technica

A video musical introduction…

https://youtu.be/GKhPVHoodrU?si=3HL5c-VqXjknl3dT

And some memorable images…

“He had a pickup truck and the devil’s eyes”: Columbia (Little Nell) is mad about Eddie.“It’s just a jump to the left”: castle denizens love doing the Time Warp 20th Century Studios“There’s a light over at the Frankenstein place”: Brad (Barry Bostwick) and Janet (Susan Sarandon) seek shelter from the storm. 20th Century StudiosCredit: 20th Century Studios

Celebrating 50 years of The Rocky Horror Picture Show – Ars Technica

When The Rocky Horror Picture Show premiered in 1975, no one could have dreamed that it would become the longest-running theatrical release film in history. But that’s what happened. Thanks to a killer soundtrack, campy humor, and a devoted cult following, Rocky Horror is still a mainstay of midnight movie culture. In honor of its 50th anniversary, Disney/20th Century Studios is releasing a newly restored 4K HDR version in October, along with deluxe special editions on DVD and Blu-ray. And the film has inspired not one, but two documentaries marking its five decades of existence: Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror and Sane Inside Insanity: The Phenomenon of Rocky Horror.

(Spoilers below, because it’s been 50 years.)

The film is an adaption of Richard O’Brien‘s 1973 musical for the stage, The Rocky Horror Show. At the time, he was a struggling actor and wrote the musical as an homage to the science fiction and B horror movies he’d loved since a child. In fact, the opening song (“Science Fiction/Double Feature“) makes explicit reference to many of those, including 1951’s The Day the Earth Stood Still, Flash Gordon (1936), King Kong (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), Forbidden Planet (1956), and The Day of the Triffids (1962), among others.

The musical ran for six years in London and was well-received when it was staged in Los Angeles. But the New York City production bombed. By then the film was already in development with O’Brien—who plays the hunchbacked butler Riff Raff in the film—co-writing the script. Director Jim Sharman retained most of the London stage cast, but brought in American actors Barry Bostwick and Susan Sarandon to play Brad and Janet, respectively. And he shot much of the film at the Victorian Gothic manor Oakley Court in Berkshire, England, where several Hammer horror movies had been filmed.  In fact, Sharman made use of several old props and set pieces from old Hammer productions, most notably the tank and dummy from 1958’s The Revenge of Frankenstein.

The film opens with nice wholesome couple Brad and Janet attending a wedding and awkwardly getting engaged themselves. They decide to visit their high school science teacher, Dr. Scott (Jonathan Adams), because they met in his class, but they get a flat tire en route and end up stranded in the rain. They seek refuge and a phone at a nearby castle, hoping to call for roadside assistance. Instead, they are pressured into becoming guests of the castle’s owner, a transvestite mad scientist called Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry), and his merry bad of misfits.

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Military Powers & the Senate Parliamentarian – GovTrack.us

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2. Analysis and Commentary

Military Powers & the Senate Parliamentarian

Aug. 15, 2025 · by Amy West

Hi all,

So we still have your questions and have not forgotten about them!

In fact, a post that we’d originally intended to post last week or possibly the week before is still in limbo because of a disagreement in-house about how to approach the question. So if you ever feel like you should already understand everything about Congress, be assured that even folks who think about Congress all the time don’t necessarily agree on what they understand or how to say it.

In the meantime, we’re going to take two other questions that are a little bit simpler.

When can the military be used domestically?

If you thought this had a cut and dried answer, you would not be alone. One thing that this administration is making clear is that, if it can be litigated, then the answer is not cut and dried. We addressed this in The law President Trump used to deploy the National Guard, and what might happen next. For what it’s worth, the trial in Los Angeles over whether the administration’s deployment of military in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act is ongoing. Both sides rested this week, but the judge hasn’t issued a ruling yet.

What’s the deal with the Senate Parlimentarian?

Conveniently, the Bipartisan Policy Center has already answered this question.

In their post What is the Role of the Senate Parliamentarian? they note that

• the position is relatively new, having only been formalized in the early 20th century
• the position is advisory only, meaning that Senators can ignore the recommendations from the Parliamentarian and
• that because the Senate is an ongoing body, in which rules carry over from Congress to Congress, most of the change to rules comes in changes to precedents, of which the Parliamentarian keeps track.

With respect to item two above, Senators mostly follow the Parliamentarian’s advice. This has generally been most likely when reconciliation bills are in process. However, this year, the Senate Republican majority chose to ignore the Parliamentarian’s advice or bypass her role in two different ways that may mean new precedents in the Senate if Democrats act similarly when they next have control of the chamber.

Regulatory Waivers

The first case was about regulatory waivers issued to the state of California during the Biden administration. The Government Accountability Office and the Parliamentarian both agreed that the waivers did not fall under the Congressional Review Act rules for overturning regulations.

If the Senate had followed the Parliamentarian’s advice, then they could not have voted to overturn the waivers because such a vote would need a 60 vote passage for one or more procedural votes. The only way to overturn those waivers was to rely on a simple majority, which the Senate Republicans have.

So, Senate Republicans voted instead on a slightly different question about whether the waivers fall under the Congressional Review Act. That vote passed and the waivers were overturned. Technically they didn’t ignore the Parliamentarian, but functionally they definitely did.

How to count deficit effects

The bulk of the reconciliation bill passed this year focused on making the tax cuts in a 2017 bill permanent. But reconciliation bills are not supposed to add to the federal deficit. So, to make the tax cuts permanent and meet reconciliation requirements, the bill would have to raise lots of revenue in some other way or the Senate majority could change how they count.

The Senate majority decided to change how they count. There is the “current law baseline” which estimates about a $4 trillion dollar increase to the federal deficit versus the “current policy baseline” which estimates little or no increase to the deficit. The difference between the two approaches is that under current law, the tax cuts expire and estimates are created accordingly while under current policy the tax cuts are assumed to be extended in which case they make no difference to future deficits.

If the Senate Budget Committee had stuck to the current law baseline, then the tax cuts would be subject to review under the Byrd rule by the Parliamentarian and probably most would have been ruled as ineligible because of how much they’d add to the deficit. By deciding in committee that the analysis would based on current policy though, Senate Republicans bypassed an otherwise thorny situation in which they might have to jettison provisions because of cost or ignore the Parliamentarian repeatedly.

Like with the regulatory waivers, the Senate majority didn’t directly challenge the Parliamentarian. Instead, they used other procedural maneuvers to bypass having to go to the Parliamentarian at all.

That said, for the remaining provisions in the reconciliation bill, the Parliamentarian did do a review and items she advised violated the rules were ultimately pulled. So the Senate majority didn’t completely ignore the Parliamentarian; just on the things they cared about the most: overturning regulatory waivers promoting electric vehicles and retaining tax cuts.

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Trump-Putin summit starts on red carpet, ends in confusion

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Axios 12 hours ago – World

Trump-Putin summit starts on red carpet, ends in confusion

By Dave Lawler

Caption: Trump and Putin kick off the summit. Photo: Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Friday’s summit in Alaska began as a superpower spectacle, then abruptly ended without any indication of what was achieved or where things go from here.

Why it matters: President Trump didn’t get the ceasefire he came for, or the public commitment he wanted from Vladimir Putin to meet next with Volodymyr Zelensky. The leaders scrapped a planned lunch and departed early — but not before both declared the meeting a success.

Between the lines: It’s not hard to see why Putin likely left Anchorage satisfied. Images of Trump applauding as he walked down the red carpet were beamed back to Russia, and around the world.

• “They spent three years telling everyone Russia was isolated, and today they saw the beautiful red carpet laid out for the Russian president in the U.S.,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova noted.
• For now at least, Putin seems to have reset a relationship with Trump that had been splintering. Their brief joint press conference was short on substance but long on mutual praise.
• And Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity that new oil sanctions for Russia — which were imminent until Putin proposed the meeting — were now probably off the table for a few weeks.

The other side: Trump insisted that progress was made on a number of issues, though not on the “biggest” one, without offering any specifics.

• En route to Alaska, Trump told Fox “I won’t be happy” if Putin doesn’t agree to a ceasefire.
• But afterwards, Trump said he was happy. “I think the meeting was a ten,” he told Hannity.
• Still, Trump was somewhat downbeat during the joint appearance. While Putin claimed an unspecified “agreement” had been reached, Trump brushed that off and said “we didn’t get there.”

Friction point: The inconclusive outcome might be most vexing to the party that was not in the room.

• While Trump warned of “very severe consequences” for Putin ahead of the summit if clear progress was not made, he pivoted to pressuring Ukraine once it was over.

• Trump told Hannity it was now “up to President Zelensky to get it done,” and later said “Russia is a very big power, and they’re not.”

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Opinion | Trump Is Squandering the Greatest Gift of the Manhattan Project – The New York Times

Opinion,

Guest Essay

How Trump Is Undoing 80 Years of American Greatness

Aug. 12, 2025 A Manhattan Project development site in Oak Ridge, Tenn., in 1944. Credit…Chicago History Museum/Getty Images Listen to this article · 7:42 min Learn more

By Garrett M. Graff

Mr. Graff is a journalist, a historian and the author, most recently, of “The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb.”

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The 80th anniversary last week of the atomic bombings that helped end World War II came at a most peculiar time. That is in part because we can’t mark that anniversary without also noting the astonishing Manhattan Project that built atomic weapons.

The Manhattan Project was a towering achievement, one of the great stories of human effort and accomplishment. Yet the Trump administration has been systematically dismantling the culture of research that the Manhattan Project and World War II bequeathed us, a culture that propelled American prosperity.

At no other time in modern history has a country so thoroughly turned its back on its core national strengths. The very elements that made the Manhattan Project such a success are today under assault. With devastating cuts to science and health research, the administration is turning its back on a history of being powered and renewed by the innovation and vision of immigrants. What America may find is that we have squandered the greatest gift of the Manhattan Project — which, in the end, wasn’t the bomb but a new way of looking at how science and government can work together.

That the Manhattan Project happened is itself a minor miracle. For nearly two years, the U.S. military seemed to want nothing to do with the effort of inventing an atomic bomb.

From 1939 to 1941, a ragtag group of mostly Jewish refugee scientists from Hitler’s Europe, including Albert Einstein, approached the government and met with military officials. The scientists educated them on the discovery of nuclear fission, its implications for war and their fears that Hitler would develop an atomic bomb first.

The military brushed them off. “The colonels kept rather aloof,” the physicist Eugene Wigner recalled after one such meeting in October 1939, as Hitler took Poland. “They were friendly, they smiled, but they never expected to see a working atomic bomb in this world.”

One of those colonels told Wigner and Edward Teller, dismissively, that he would award $10,000 to whoever could develop a death ray and prove it by killing a goat — the implication being he imagined that project more likely than a bomb that unlocked the power of the fundamental building block of the universe.

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Trump-Putin documents left on hotel printer : NPR

Exclusive , Investigations

Government papers found in an Alaskan hotel reveal new details of Trump-Putin summit

Updated August 16, 20251:56 PM ET

By Chiara Eisner

President Donald Trump, right, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin arrive for a joint press conference at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, Friday, Aug. 15, 2025. (AP Photo / Jae C. Hong)

Papers with U.S. State Department markings, found Friday morning in the business center of an Alaskan hotel, revealed previously undisclosed and potentially sensitive details about the Aug. 15 meetings between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir V. Putin in Anchorage.

Eight pages, that appear to have been produced by U.S. staff and left behind accidentally, shared precise locations and meeting times of the summit and phone numbers of U.S. government employees.

At around 9 a.m. on Friday, three guests at Hotel Captain Cook, a four-star hotel located 20 minutes from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage where leaders from the U.S. and Russia convened, found the documents left behind in one of the hotel’s public printers. NPR reviewed photos of the documents taken by one of the guests, who NPR agreed not to identify because the guest said they feared retaliation.

Pictures of two documents about the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska that were found in a public hotel printer in Anchorage. NPR

The first page in the printed packet disclosed the sequence of meetings for August 15, including the specific names of the rooms inside the base in Anchorage where they would take place. It also revealed that Trump intended to give Putin a ceremonial present.

“POTUS to President Putin,” the document states, “American Bald Eagle Desk Statue.”

On Saturday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Anna Kelly dismissed the papers as a “multi-page lunch menu” and suggested leaving the information on a public printer was not a security breach. The U.S. Department of State did not respond to requests for comment.

Pages 2 through 5 of the documents listed the names and phone numbers of three U.S. staff members as well as the names of 13 U.S. and Russian state leaders. The list provided phonetic pronouncers for all the Russian men expected at the summit, including “Mr. President POO-tihn.”

Pages 6 and 7 in the packet described how lunch at the summit would be served, and for whom. A menu included in the documents indicated that the luncheon was to be held “in honor of his excellency Vladimir Putin.”

A seating chart shows that Putin and Trump were supposed to sit across from each other during the luncheon. Trump would be flanked by six officials: Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles to his right, and Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff to his left. Putin would be seated immediately next to his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, and his Aide to the President for Foreign Policy, Yuri Ushakov.

During the summit Friday, lunch was apparently cancelled. But it was intended to be a simple, three-course meal, the documents showed. After a green salad, the world leaders would dine on filet mignon and halibut olympia. Crème brûlée would be served for dessert.

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Opinion | Trump’s Attempt to Make Museums Submit Feels Familiar – The New York Times

Opinion, Michelle Goldberg

Trump’s Attempt to Make Museums Submit Feels Familiar

Aug. 15, 2025

The National Museum of African American History and Culture, with the Washington Monument in the background.Credit…Jared Soares for The New York Times

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By Michelle Goldberg, Opinion Columnist

Before Poland’s illiberal Law and Justice party came to power in 2015, the country had been deep in a reckoning over its role in the Holocaust. In 2000, the historian Jan Gross published an explosive book, “Neighbors,” about a 1941 massacre in the Nazi-occupied Polish town of Jedwabne, where Poles enthusiastically tortured and murdered up to 1,600 Jews. The book punctured a national myth in which Poles were only either heroes or victims in World War II.

After “Neighbors” came out, Poland’s president, Aleksander Kwasniewski, went to Jedwabne for a ceremony broadcast on Polish television. “For this crime, we should beg the souls of the dead and their families for forgiveness,” he said.

The notion of Polish historical guilt made many conservative Poles furious. Law and Justice capitalized on their anger, running against what its leader called the “pedagogy of shame.” After the party’s 2015 victory, one of its first targets was the Museum of the Second World War, then being built in Gdansk.

The museum was supposed to explore the war’s global context and to emphasize the toll it took on civilians. Among its collection were keys to the homes of Jews murdered in Jedwabne. Before it ever opened, Law and Justice wanted to shut it down for being insufficiently patriotic.

Today in America, this history has an eerie familiarity. Five years ago, many institutions in the United States tried, with varying degrees of seriousness and skill, to come to terms with our country’s legacy of racism. A backlash to this reckoning helped propel Donald Trump back into the White House, where he has taken a whole-of-government approach to wiping out the idea that America has anything to apologize for. As part of this campaign, the administration seeks to force our national museums to conform to its triumphalist version of history.

In March, Trump signed an executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” criticizing versions of history that foster “a sense of national shame.” Museums and monuments, it said, should celebrate America’s “extraordinary heritage” and inculcate national pride. This week, the administration announced that it was reviewing displays at eight national museums — including the Museum of American History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Smithsonian American Art Museum — and giving them 120 days to bring their content in line with Trump’s vision.

We’re already seeing glimpses of what that looks like. Last month, the National Museum of American History removed references to Trump’s impeachments from an exhibit on the American presidency. Those references were restored last week, but with changes: The exhibit no longer says that Trump made “false statements” about the 2020 election or that he encouraged the mob on Jan. 6.

Amy Sherald, the artist who painted Michelle Obama’s official portrait, canceled an upcoming solo show at the National Portrait Gallery after being told the museum was considering removing her painting of a transgender Statue of Liberty to avoid angering Trump.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Opinion | Trump’s Attempt to Make Museums Submit Feels Familiar – The New York Times

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Civil Discourse – Congress may have the spending power, but Trump can usurp it if they won’t protect it. And they haven’t. – Joyce Vance

By Joyce Vance, Aug 13, 2025

This afternoon, a three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit signed off on the Trump administration’s efforts to block funds for foreign assistance that have been appropriated by Congress. Despite arguments made by the plaintiffs that this violates Congress’ Article II Spending powers, the court ruled that only the head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has the ability to bring Impoundment Control Act (ICA) claims. Impoundment refers to a decision by a president to delay spending or withhold funds that Congress has allocated in the budget. The GAO was not a party to this lawsuit, although it has made multiple findings that this administration has violated the ICA in other regards.

The court’s decision was 2-1, with Judges Karen Henderson and Gregory Katsas in the majority and Judge Florence Pan dissenting. As Judge Pan notes in dissent, they reframed the issues argued by the government in order to rule in its favor, so that they could “excuse the government’s forfeiture of what they perceive to be a key argument, and then rule in the President’s favor on that ground, thus departing from procedural norms that are designed to safeguard the court’s impartiality and independence.” There will likely be a motion to ask the full court to rehear the case en banc, with all active judges sitting, before the losing party takes it to the Supreme Court.

The case arose after Trump impounded funds appropriated by Congress for foreign aid in 2024. On January 20, 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development to freeze foreign aid spending. Multiple plaintiffs sued to force the administration to release the funds. After the district court issued a preliminary injunction that prevented the government from refusing to fund the programs Congress had voted for, the administration appealed, and the court of appeals heard the case on an expedited basis.

The Constitution gives Congress the authority to raise revenue and decide how money is spent—the power of the purse—in Article I, Section 8, which permits Congress to tax and spend for the general welfare, and in Article I, Section 9, which provides that “No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” The executive branch can’t legally spend public money without Congressional authorization. This means Congress can prevent a president from doing things it doesn’t approve of by refusing to fund them. But this case involves a different situation—what happens when Congress funds a program, but the president refuses to release the funds? The Impoundment Control Act was passed in 1974 to reinforce Congress’s spending authority after President Nixon tried to withhold appropriated funds.

Nixon wasn’t the first to try and thwart Congressional spending decisions. Thomas Jefferson delayed spending on naval ships out of concern over costs. But Nixon used impoundment aggressively over policy disagreements with the Congress. In the early 1970s, he withheld billions of dollars from environmental programs and housing and education initiatives. Congress viewed Nixon’s broad use of impoundment as an end run around its constitutional powers, arguing that if he could simply refuse to spend, a president could appropriate a line item veto over the budget for himself, in contravention of Congress’ power of the purse. Lawsuits were filed.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Congress may have the spending power, but Trump can usurp it if they won’t protect it.

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On Politics: Why Trump wants to meet Putin

August 13, 2025

Trump’s Washington

How President Trump is changing government, the country and its politics.

Good evening. Tonight, our veteran national security correspondent, David Sanger, guides us through the stakes of President Trump’s upcoming summit with Vladimir Putin. We’re also looking at how the administration’s science funding cuts will affect research into health care disparities, and how Trump is exerting his influence over culture. We’ll start with the headlines.

• A federal appeals court ruled that the Trump administration can withhold billions in funding intended for foreign aid groups.
• Europe’s leaders say they’ve agreed with Trump on a strategy for his talks with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, on Friday.
• The Trump administration urged a federal court to uphold its sweeping global tariffs or risk an economic depression. Experts dispute the severity of that claim.
• Trump’s deployment of federal troops in Washington has begun. Here’s what it looks like.

The meeting on Friday will be the first for an American president since the Western world isolated Russia following its invasion of Ukraine. New York Times photographs by Doug Mills and Nanna Heitmann

At stake in Alaska: two egos, and a continent’s future

by Jess Bidgood and David E. Sanger

There is nobody with more confidence in President Trump’s deal-making abilities than Trump himself.

Yet, as his Friday meeting in Alaska with President Vladimir Putin of Russia draws near, he and his top aides are lowering expectations, suggesting it’s not Trump’s job to make peace between Moscow and Ukraine and calling the summit little more than a “listening exercise.”

Statements like that belie the enormous stakes of the first meeting between Trump and Putin since the Russian invasion, particularly for the parties who aren’t expected to be present, which includes the leadership of Ukraine and of the European nations that have been living with the war on their doorstep. For Trump, though, the motivation is personal — it’s a chance to reset a relationship he has long boasted about but has lately become rocky, while bringing his personal brand of deal-making to the world’s biggest stage.

There’s a lot going on here. So I called David Sanger, who has covered the White House and national security for decades and who has written books about superpower conflict, before he boarded a series of flights to Anchorage earlier today.

He walked me through the calculus of risk and reward around this meeting — and why Putin can claim a modest win before it even starts.

As you’ve written, it used to be normal for an American president to meet with the Russian leader. George W. Bush met with Putin roughly two dozen times. Joe Biden met him only once, in 2021. But Trump’s meeting will be the first for an American president since the Western world isolated Russia following the invasion of Ukraine. What does he stand to gain from it?

Trump sees himself as a peacemaker, and this is tied up very much in his oft-expressed desire to win the Nobel Peace Prize, which he usually combines with some kind of comment to suggest that the Nobel Committee would never give it to him.

He has taken credit for a cease-fire between India and Pakistan, although the Indians have a different version of that story. He took a direct role in a peace pledge signed between Armenia and Azerbaijan, at the White House, and there have been other regional conflicts in which he’s played an important role. The big ones, though, have evaded him.

Those, of course, are the Israel-Hamas war and the Russian war with Ukraine, which he famously declared that he would solve in 24 hours, on the basis of his long and, in his view, respectful relationship with Putin. He has now come to question whether that relationship is what he thought it was, or at least what he portrayed it as, because Putin has held a series of perfectly friendly, constructive phone calls with him and then continued on the same battle plan that he was on before, with considerable recent success.

If the president comes out of Alaska without an immediate or imminent cease-fire plan, I think it’s going to be difficult for him to portray this as a win. But a cease-fire alone won’t be enough.

Who has the most at stake here?

The country with the most at stake, of course, is Ukraine and its president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who wasn’t invited. The second-most at stake is President Trump and the countries that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO. Let me explain.

For Ukraine, the risk is that Trump will push for something he’s been referring to as a “land swap.” He doesn’t say that Russia would simply get the land that it has already taken militarily, which would be problematic enough, because it would reward Moscow and Putin for invading a sovereign state.

Trump’s use of the phrase “swaps” leaves you with the impression that he might be willing to award the Russians territory that they have not gained militarily, in return for something else.

Tell us about the risks for Trump.

The big risk for Trump is that whatever comes out of Alaska is just a delaying action. Putin may calculate that what he needs most is a relaxation of sanctions, a reopening of trade and time to rebuild his force so that a few years from now, he can attempt a re-invasion of the rest of Ukraine and use the territory he’s gained as a launchpad to drive toward Kyiv. That’s a huge risk, and the Ukrainians are rightly worried about it.

To forestall that, the Europeans and Zelensky are insisting on security guarantees and continued arms shipments to Ukraine, as well as making sure that Trump doesn’t make any concessions about where NATO forces can be deployed in Eastern Europe. All of those issues are as important — and over the long term, perhaps more important — than where you draw the boundaries between Russia and Ukraine.

And there’s one more risk for NATO. Will Putin use this meeting to drive a wedge between Trump and the NATO allies? That is Putin’s greatest dream.

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Trump’s DC police takeover echoes history of racist narratives about crime | AP News

President Trump said he was declaring a public safety emergency, taking over the DC police and calling in National Guard troops to fight crime and tackle homelessness in the nation’s capital. Some DC residents are reacting. (AP Video: River Zhang)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House, Aug. 11, 2025, in Washington, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, left, and Attorney General Pam Bondi look on. (AP Photo / Alex Brandon, File)

By  MATT BROWN Updated 8:30 AM PDT, August 12, 2025

Follow live updates on President Donald Trump and his administration

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has taken control of D.C.’s law enforcement and ordered National Guard troops to deploy onto the streets of the nation’s capital, arguing the extraordinary moves are necessary to curb an urgent public safety crisis.

Even as district officials questioned the claims underlying his emergency declaration, the Republican president promised a “historic action to rescue our nation’s capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse.” His rhetoric echoed that used by conservatives going back decades who have denounced cities, especially those with majority non-white populations or led by progressives, as lawless or crime-ridden and in need of outside intervention.

“This is liberation day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back,” Trump promised Monday.

Trump’s action echoes uncomfortable historical chapters

As D.C. the National Guard arrived at their headquarters Tuesday, for many residents, the prospect of federal troops surging into neighborhoods represented an alarming violation of local agency. To some, it echoes uncomfortable historical chapters when politicians used language to paint historically or predominantly Black cities and neighborhoods with racist narratives to shape public opinion and justify aggressive police action.

April Goggans, a longtime D.C. resident and grassroots organizer, said she was not surprised by Trump’s actions. Communities had been preparing for a potential federal crackdown in D.C. since the summer of 2020, when Trump deployed troops during racial justice protests after the murder of George Floyd.

“We have to be vigilant,” said Goggans, who has coordinated local protests for nearly a decade. She worries about what a surge in law enforcement could mean for residents’ freedoms.

“Regardless of where you fall on the political scale, understand that this could be you, your children, your grandmother, your co-worker who are brutalized or have certain rights violated,” she said.

Other residents reacted with mixed feelings to Trump’s executive order. Crime and homelessness has been a top concern for residents in recent years, but opinions on how to solve the issue vary. And very few residents take Trump’s catastrophic view of life in D.C.

“I think Trump’s trying to help people, some people,” said Melvin Brown, a D.C. resident. “But as far as (him) trying to get (the) homeless out of this city, that ain’t going to work.”

“It’s like a band-aid to a gunshot wound,” said Melissa Velasquez, a commuter into D.C. “I feel like there’s been an increase of racial profiling and stuff, and so it’s concerning for individuals who are worried about how they might be perceived as they go about their day-to-day lives.”

Uncertainty raises alarms

According to White House officials, troops will be deployed to protect federal assets and facilitate a safe environment for law enforcement to make arrests. The Trump administration believes the highly visible presence of law enforcement will deter violent crime. It is unclear how the administration defines providing a safe environment for law enforcement to conduct arrests, raising alarm bells for some advocates.

“The president foreshadowed that if these heavy-handed tactics take root here, they will be rolled out to other majority-Black and Brown cities, like Chicago, Oakland and Baltimore, across the country,” said Monica Hopkins, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s D.C. chapter.

“We’ve seen before how federal control of the D.C. National Guard and police can lead to abuse, intimidation and civil rights violations — from military helicopters swooping over peaceful racial justice protesters in 2020 to the unchecked conduct of federal officers who remain shielded from full accountability,” Hopkins said.

Read more: Trump’s DC police takeover echoes history of racist narratives about crime | AP News

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Don’t federalize and militarize DC’s local police – GovTrack.us

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Don’t federalize and militarize DC’s local police

Aug. 11, 2025 · by Joshua Tauberer

When I walk my toddler home from daycare every evening, it is safe. That’s here in Washington, D.C., where I have lived since I moved to work on government accountability 15 years ago.

For perhaps the next 30 days, or longer, District of Columbia residents will be policed by federalized civilian and military officers, per an executive order and presidential memorandum this morning. The executive order directs the police to be federalized to protect “national monuments” (which are in the safest parts of D.C. thanks to the existing park police) and other federal properties, but the memorandum directs the DC National Guard to address crime throughout the capital.

There is no crime emergency here. I live here. I have seen things get better, not worse, with my own eyes. Violent crime is the lowest it has been in 30 years. Overall crime is down this year already. According to 2019 data, crime is worse in Houston and Indianapolis than here in D.C. Like all places, we have crime. I have seen that too. But not more than most.

D.C. is not just the capital district. It is one of the largest cities in the country. It’s a great city. I love living here. 700,000 people live in D.C. — that’s more than two whole states, Vermont and Wyoming. District residents paid $45 billion in federal taxes in 2024 — that’s more than North Dakota, West Virginia, Wyoming, Alaska, and Vermont combined (and more than 21 other states individually).

How many votes do we have in Congress? None. We don’t have any say in the federal laws that bind us. But that’s not all. Arrests are already prosecuted by federal lawyers, not lawyers that work for the elected DC Attorney General. They enforce local laws that the District’s Council has been blocked by Congress from updating.

There is a lot of taxation here and not a lot of representation.

Instead, politicians from far away cities with crime worse than ours use us for their own gain.

It’s not enough that federal police officers already police many of the parks here (many of which are national parks), the area around the Capitol (which has its own federal police force), and White House grounds (which has the Secret Service). Now it might be our neighborhoods too. It will not make our communities safer, and it defies the American spirit of a government accountable to its people.

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