Seeing Things – Trump’s Autocrat Check List – Liza Donnelly

 Trump’s Autocrat Check List

It’s long

By Liza Donnelly, Aug 06, 2025

I realise the above drawing only touches on what he is doing. Voting rights, immigration abuses and Esptein nonsense are the main stories in my reading today.

Texas Democrats who left the state to block a vote on redistricting voter maps say they received bomb threats at their hotel in Illinois where they are sequestering. “This is what happens when Republican state leaders publicly call for us to be ‘hunted down’. Texas Democrats won’t be intimidated,” John Bucy III, who represents Austin district, said. Govenor Abbott filed an emergency petition asking the state supreme court to remove Wu, the top Democrat in the state house of representatives, and declare his seat vacant. Legal experts say this tactic is a long shot. I am so proud of the Texas Dems.

Other states appear to be following Texas’s lead and considering mid-cycle redistricting . Ohio, Indiana and Missouri Republicans are exploring their options to try to gain more GOP seats by redrawing their voting maps. Democratic govenors are also exploring options, but it appears they don’t have the power to draw as many seats as the Republicans do. California, with 52 seats in congress, may be the best bet. Governor Gavin Newsom is “reportedly moving ahead with a referendum this fall to ask to adopt a new map that would add Democratic seats and override an independent redistricting commission.”

Senator John Osssof’s office reported hundreds of reported cases of human rights abuses in US immigration detention centers. Here is the report. The alleged reports include: deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse of detainees, mistreatment of pregnant women and children, inadequate medical care, overcrowding and unsanitary living conditions, inadequate food and water, exposure to extreme temperatures, denial of access to attorneys, and child separation. This is not who we are.

in news of the Epstein files, apparently, JD Vance is holding a meeting at his home with senior officials to strategize on how to handle the Epstein Scandal. At the top of their list is whether or not to release the transcripts of justice department representative (and former Trump personal attorney) Blanche’s recent interviews with Ghislaine Maxwell. After the interview, Maxwell, who is serving time for trafficing girls, was transferred to a lower security, a nicer prison. Outrageous. The justice department subpoenaed a number of high profile people to interview them for more information about Epstein, among them Bill and Hillary Clinton. While it is public knowledge that they knew Epstein, so did Trump. Yet Trump was not subpoenaed. This is a tactic to stall and to try to show Trump’s MAGA base that he is doing something about the scandal. Everything but releasing the files, which he can do, but won’t.

At least 60% of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the Epstein case.

That’s all today for me. Hope you have a good Wednesday, what’s left of it. See you tomorrow, thank you so much for being here!

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s Autocrat Check List – by Liza Donnelly

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Opinion | The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away – The New York Times

Opinion, By Thomas L. Friedman

The America We Knew Is Rapidly Slipping Away

Aug. 4, 2025

Credit…Will Matsuda for The New York Times

Listen to this article · 7:12 min Learn more

By Thomas L. Friedman, Opinion Columnist

Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened on Friday. Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is.

He fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for bringing him economic news he did not like, and in the hours immediately following, the second most dangerous thing happened: The senior Trump officials most responsible for running our economy — people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like — all went along for the ride.

What they should have said to Trump is this: “Mr. President, if you don’t reconsider this decision — if you fire the top labor bureau statistician because she brought you bad economic news — how will anyone in the future trust that office when it issues good news?” Instead, they immediately covered for him.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer had actually gone on Bloomberg TV early Friday and declared that even though the jobs report that had just been released was revised downward for May and June, “we’ve seen positive job growth.” But as soon as she got the news hours later that Trump had fired the very B.L.S. director who reports to her, she wrote on X: “I agree wholeheartedly with @POTUS that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes.”

As The Journal asked: “So were the jobs data that were ‘positive’ in the morning rigged by the afternoon?” Of course not.

The moment I heard what Trump had done, I had a flashback. It was January 2021, and it had just been reported that Trump, after losing the 2020 election, had tried to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes — exactly 11,780, Trump said — to overturn the presidential election and even threatened him with “a criminal offense” if he didn’t. The pressure came during an hourlong telephone call, according to an audio recording of the conversation.

The difference, though, is that back then there was something called a Republican official with integrity. And so Georgia’s secretary of state did not agree to fabricate votes that did not exist. But that species of Republican official seems to have gone completely extinct in Trump’s second term. So Trump’s rotten character is now a problem for our whole economy.

Going forward, how many government bureaucrats are going to dare to pass along bad news when they know that their bosses — people like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett; Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer; and the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer — will not only fail to defend them but will actually offer them up as a sacrifice to Trump to keep their jobs?

Shame on each and every one of them — particularly on Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, who knows better and did not step in. What a coward. As Bessent’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, the former Treasury secretary and also the former chair of the Federal Reserve — and a person with actual integrity — told my Times colleague Ben Casselman of the B.L.S. firing: “This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic.”

It is important to know how foreigners are looking at this. Bill Blain, a London-based bond trader who publishes a newsletter popular among market experts called Blain’s Morning Porridge, wrote on Monday: “Friday, Aug. 1 might go down in history as the day the U.S. Treasury market died. There was an art to reading U.S. data. It relied on trust. Now that is broken — if you can’t trust the data, what can you trust?”

He then went on to imagine how his Porridge newsletter will sound in May 2031. It will begin, he wrote, with “a link to a release from Trump’s Ministry of Economic Truth, formerly the U.S. Treasury: ‘Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. economy continues to grow at record speed. Payrolls data from the Ministry of Truth, a subsidiary of Truth Social, show full employment across America. Tensions in the inner cities have never been so low. All recent graduates have found highly paid jobs across America’s expanding manufacturing sector, causing many large companies in Trump Inc to report significant labor shortages.’”

If you think this is far-fetched, you clearly have not been following the foreign policy news, because this kind of tactic — the tailoring of information to fit Trump’s political needs — has already been deployed in the intelligence field.

In May the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, fired two top intelligence officials who oversaw an assessment that contradicted Trump’s assertions that the gang Tren de Aragua was operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime. Their assessment undermined the dubious legal rationale Trump invoked — the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act — to allow the suspected gang members to be thrown out of the country without due process.

And now this trend toward self-blinding is spreading to further corners of the government.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/04/opinion/columnists/friedman-trump-labor-firing.html

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down following funding cuts – The Washington Post

NPR headquarters in Washington. (Tom Brenner / For The Washington Post)

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting to shut down following funding cuts

Trump’s successful campaign to strip federal money to NPR and PBS effectively ended the public media middleman.

August 1, 2025 at 1:32 p.m. EDT, Yesterday at 1:32 p.m. EDT, 2 min

By Scott Nover

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting said it will close following Congress’s decision to strip its current funding and foreclose on future appropriations.

CPB, established by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, is a nonprofit set up to dole out congressionally appropriated funds to NPR, PBS, and public radio and TV stations around the United States. President Donald Trump launched a successful campaign to claw back the $1.1 billion allocated for the organization for the next two years, a measure he signed into law last month.

At the heart of the campaign was a critique that public media produce news that is biased and too liberal and should not be funded by taxpayer dollars. That argument, long held among many conservatives, finally prevailed thanks to unified Republican government during Trump’s second term.

“Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote, and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President and CEO Patricia Harrison said in a statement. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.”

CPB not only served as a funding middleman between Congress and public media stations but also negotiated music rights and procured technical infrastructure on behalf of the stations. That leaves an open question as to what entity, if any, will fill that gap.

The closure was announced one day after the Senate Appropriations Committee released a bill that would zero out funding for CPB.

In a press release, CPB said it told its employees that most positions would be cut on Sept. 30, the final day of the fiscal year, and a small team will stay on to shut down the agency through January, in part because the music licenses they have negotiated expire at the end of December.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/08/01/corporation-for-public-broadcasting-shutdown/

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The 225-Year-Old Library Of Congress Remains A ‘Library For All’ — So Far – Honolulu Civil Beat

Beyond Hawaiʻi

The 225-Year-Old Library Of Congress Remains A ‘Library For All’ — So Far

Trump fired the head of the library in May saying she put inappropriate books in the library for children.

By Alex H. Poole / About 20 hours ago

Carla Hayden, the 14th librarian of Congress, who has held the position since 2016, received an unexpected email on May 8, 2025.

“Carla, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” wrote Trent Morse, deputy director of presidential personnel at the White House.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later explained that Hayden, who was the first woman, Black person and professionally trained librarian to oversee the Library of Congress, had done “quite concerning things,” on the job, including “putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”

Democratic politicians sharply criticized Hayden’s termination, saying the firing was unjust. It was actually about Trump punishing civil servants “who don’t bend to his every will,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said.

An information science scholar, I have written extensively about the history of libraries and archives, including the Library of Congress. To fully understand the role Hayden played for the past nine years, I think it is important to understand what the Library of Congress does, and the overlooked and underappreciated role it has played in American life.

The main reading room is seen at the Library of Congress on June 13, 2025, in Washington. (Kevin Carter / Getty Images /via Thae Conversation)

The Library Of Congress’ Work

The Library of Congress is an agency that was first established, by an act of Congress, in 1800. The act provided for “the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress at the said city of Washington, and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them.” Its chief librarian is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The library has six buildings in Washington that hold a print and online collection of nearly 26 million books, as well as more than 136 million other items, including manuscripts, maps, sheet music and prints and photographs.

It also houses historic documents, like Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and James Madison’s notes on the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

The library is the property of the American people. Anyone over the age of 16 with a government-issued photo identification can enter its buildings and read or view its materials on-site. The Library of Congress was partially designed as a research institution to suit the needs of members of Congress, and only Congress members can borrow items from the library and take them home.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: The 225-Year-Old Library Of Congress Remains A ‘Library For All’ — So Far – Honolulu Civil Beat

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Trump’s Epstein nightmare worsens amid new revelations and a GOP revolt | CNN Politics

Politics• 10 min read

Trump’s Epstein nightmare worsens amid new revelations and a GOP revolt

Analysis by Stephen Collinson, Updated 4 hr ago

Sources: DOJ told Trump his name is among many in Epstein files. 1:59.

The Jeffrey Epstein morass surrounding President Donald Trump is deepening amid growing defiance by some Republicans and despite the administration’s most inflammatory attempt yet at distraction.

New reports Wednesday that Attorney General Pam Bondi told Trump in May that his name appeared in documents related to the case of Epstein, an accused sex trafficker, offered a plausible explanation for the president’s growing fury over the drama.

They will fuel accusations of a cover-up since the administration has refused to release the files.

And although there is no evidence that Trump was involved in any wrongdoing or that he knew of Epstein’s criminal activities when they ran in the same social circle decades ago, there is bound to be intense speculation about the nature of mentions about the president in the investigative files.

The storm is also intensifying in Congress.

A vote in the House Oversight Committee to subpoena the Department of Justice for files related to Epstein worsened Trump’s political headache, since it revealed the appetite for more disclosure among some MAGA Republicans. The GOP-majority committee also voted to subpoena testimony from Epstein’s accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison term.

Trump responded to the ballooning crisis with the oldest trick in his political book, pushing a conspiracy theory against Barack Obama — a decade and a half after his false claims about the 44th president’s birthplace electrified his coalition and political career. He enlisted the top US intelligence official, Tulsi Gabbard, who misleadingly claimed in a theatrical White House appearance that Obama’s handling of Russian election meddling in 2016 amounted to a coup to destroy Trump’s first presidency, a day after her boss accused his predecessor of treason.

There is no evidence that Trump did anything wrong or illegal in his interactions with Epstein. But days of stalling by the White House and new disclosures drove speculation to a fever pitch over their relationship in the 1990s and early 2000s, long before the wealthy financier was charged with sex trafficking and abuse and died in prison in 2019.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Trump’s Epstein nightmare worsens amid new revelations and a GOP revolt | CNN Politics

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Nearly everyone opposes Trump’s plan to kill space traffic control program – Ars Technica

Members of the 18th Space Defense Combat Squadron observe orbital data at Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, on October 4, 2024. Credit: US Space Force / David DozoretzAstrophotography showcasing the Ground-based Electrical Optical Deep Space Surveillance facility, or GEODSS, operated by the 15th Space Surveillance Squadron, Detachment 1, at the White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, captured August 25, 2022. Credit: Kaitlin Castillo / US Space Force

The Trump administration’s plan to gut the Office of Space Commerce and cancel the government’s first civilian-run space traffic control program is gaining plenty of detractors.

Earlier this week, seven space industry trade groups representing more than 450 companies sent letters to House and Senate leaders urging them to counter the White House’s proposal. A spokesperson for the military’s Space Operations Command, which currently has overall responsibility for space traffic management, said it will “continue to advocate” for a civilian organization to take over the Space Force’s role as orbital traffic cop.

Giveth and taketh away

The White House’s budget request submitted to Congress for fiscal year 2026 would slash the Office of Space Commerce’s budget from $65 million to $10 million and eliminate funding for the Traffic Coordination System for Space (TraCSS). The TraCSS program was established in the Department of Commerce after Trump signed a policy directive in his first term as president to reform how the government supervises the movements of satellites and space debris in orbit.

The Office of Space Commerce, part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has been around since the 1980s as a licensing agency for remote sensing and Earth observation satellites.

TraCSS is designed as a cloud-based system to serve as a nerve center for collecting satellite tracking data from spacecraft owners and a network of government and commercial telescopes and radars. The space traffic control network then uses the information to provide alerts of potential in-space collisions to satellite operators. This is becoming more important as thousands more satellites head to space each year.

Industry trade groups are lobbying Congress to reverse the Trump administration’s proposal and restore the Office of Space Commerce’s (OSC’s) budget to this year’s level of $65 million.

“One of OSC’s most important functions is to provide space traffic coordination support to US satellite operators, similar to the Federal Aviation Administration’s role in air traffic control for the US airline industry,” seven trade groups wrote in joint letters to Congress.

The trade organizations count the largest Western commercial satellite operators among their members: SpaceX, Amazon, Eutelsat OneWeb, Planet Labs, Iridium, SES, Intelsat, and Spire. These are the companies with the most at stake in the debate over the future of space traffic coordination. Industry sources told Ars that some companies are concerned a catastrophic collision in low-Earth orbit might trigger a wave of burdensome regulations, an outcome they would like to avoid.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Nearly everyone opposes Trump’s plan to kill space traffic control program – Ars Technica

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When silence speaks volumes – Michael S. Schmidt – The New York Times

When silence speaks volumes

By Michael S. Schmidt

This week, my colleague Eileen Sullivan and I reported that the Secret Service took the extraordinary step in May of surveilling the former F.B.I. director James Comey, a day after he posted a photo that President Trump’s allies claimed contained an assassination threat.

The story raised questions about whether Comey was tailed not because he was a legitimate threat but as part of a retribution campaign Trump has promised to wage against those he sees as his enemies.

To nail down the story, we had to do one of the most challenging tasks we face as reporters: pry loose details from the inside of a federal investigation.

But there was also something unexpectedly difficult about that story, compared with similar stories I’ve reported over 20 years at The New York Times. Some of the people we’ve previously called on to provide outside expertise refused to speak with us this time.

Tonight, I’m going to take you behind the scenes of our reporting, and explain why the speed bump we hit may be a sign of something more significant.

A chill in Washington

When we write a story like this, we reach out to experts who can put what we are writing about in context. Drawing on their work experience or academic expertise, they can help us — and our readers — understand whether and why an incident we are covering is unusual, or which laws might apply to it.

These individuals are often more than willing to share what they know. Being publicly identified as an expert can bolster someone’s professional standing.

But in this case, people we had quoted previously about important matters related to Trump, refused to speak with me about Comey.

This appeared to be the latest development in what my colleague Elisabeth Bumiller described in March as “a chill spreading over political debate in Washington and beyond.” It reflects a growing reluctance to speak publicly that my colleagues and I have noticed this year from voters, federal employees and many others.

It’s not the kind of thing that would usually make headlines because, after all, we’re talking about people not talking. But it’s worth remarking upon as we watch the culture in Washington change before our eyes.

An escalating campaign of retribution

I’ve spent much of the past eight and a half years covering Trump’s retribution campaigns. During his first term, he tried, both privately and publicly, to pressure the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and the I.R.S. to investigate his enemies. He sometimes succeeded.

In Trump’s second term, those efforts have been more sophisticated and more wide-ranging. He has pulled security details from or opened investigations into former officials he does not like, while turning the powers of the federal government against institutions that were once seen as above the fray, like universities and law firms.

The administration’s attacks on Harvard University and the law firm Paul, Weiss have sent a lasting message to professors and lawyers wanting to criticize the administration: Your school could be stripped of critical federal funding or your firm could be hit with a potentially crippling executive order that would make it really difficult to represent your clients. On top of that, Trump’s supporters have trolled and, at times, harassed or even swatted those who have opposed the president.

The reluctance that we’ve seen suggests that even people not yet within the administration’s direct sightlines are becoming worried about speaking freely.

New fears

One of my first calls was to a well-respected former federal prosecutor who works at a large law firm and has been quoted about matters related to Trump before. I hoped he would be able to tell me whether or not it was unusual for the Secret Service to deploy invasive surveillance tactics on someone like Comey. He told me that he was interested in commenting for our article. But shortly thereafter, he called to say that his firm did not want him to be quoted on the sensitive topic of Comey.

Speaking to me later on the condition of anonymity, he said that it was not worth the potential hassle to his law firm for him to opine on something related to Trump. The climate now, he said, is very different from what it was during Trump’s first term, or when Trump was out of office and facing four indictments.

The next legal expert I consulted ultimately refused to be quoted, too.

Finally, I reached Barbara McQuade, a former U.S. attorney and a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, who argued that the surveillance of Comey was deeply unusual.

Today, she told me that she thought it was worth saying so.

“As a former U.S. attorney, I feel a duty to speak out about violations of D.O.J. norms. As a professor, I have the freedom to speak candidly in a way that perhaps lawyers in law firms or private companies cannot,” McQuade said.

It can be hard to show the tangible effects of a vengeful government, particularly because concerns about retribution often spur people not to do something they normally would. But the quiet in Washington is noticeable, and meaningful. Silence, particularly around something fairly innocuous like explaining the law, reflects a level of fear that feels new.

This is not something that I saw during the first Trump administration, when much of the country seemed to be lining up to take on Trump or opine about what he was doing.

In a small way, the entire experience showed how things have changed.

Source Links: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/11/us/politics/trump-retribution.html

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