That is the final measure. In moments when the country looks up for orientation, Trump does not steady the room. He destabilizes it. He does not merely break norms; he erodes the conditions that make shared meaning possible. Where Reiner built a national cultural space—worlds we could all inhabit together—Trump dissolves it. He takes the scaffolding we’ve constructed and sets it on fire.
John Dickerson
Trump Widens the Breach (The Atlantic)
Miller is justifying collective punishment and guilt by blood. I’ve witnessed those barbarisms elsewhere, in war-ravaged countries and in dictatorships, but never before during my lifetime as a matter of national policy here at home. Trump and his top aides are re-creating in America the conditions and terrors of failed states.
George Packer
Condemning Millions for One Man’s Crime (The Atlantic)
A few articles about Charlie Kirk’s assassination and the response to it that I think are worth reading.
That Kirk, who became famous for participating in viral political debates, was gunned down on a university campus is a tragedy, period. And seeing such brutal violence up close can take a psychological toll on observers, the long-term effects of which are harder to gauge. It’s one thing to hear about a murder, or to read about it; it’s another to see it as it happened, over and over.
Will Gottsegen
The Awful Ubiquity of Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Video (The Atlantic)
Most predictable is MAGA’s exploiting Kirk’s murder to incite even more violence. MAGA influencers are calling for all-out war and encouraging Donald Trump to use the power of the state to wage it. Not that Trump needed encouragement, as his own statement blamed the “radical left” for the shooting and promised retribution.
Melissa Ryan
Half-Mast (Alt-Right-Delete)
Kirk is being posthumously celebrated by much of the mainstream press as a noble sparring partner for center-left politicians and pundits. Meanwhile, the very real, very negative, and sometimes violent impacts of his rhetoric and his political projects are being glossed over or ignored entirely.
Jason Koebler, Samantha Cole
Charlie Kirk Was Not Practicing Politics the Right Way (404 Media)
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Fourth Amendment of the Constitution
The Fourth Amendment protects every individual’s constitutional right to be “free from arbitrary interference by law officers.” Brignoni-Ponce, 422 U. S., at 878. After today, that may no longer be true for those who happen to look a certain way, speak a certain way, and appear to work a certain type of legitimate job that pays very little. Because this is unconscionably irreconcilable with our Nation’s constitutional guarantees, I dissent.
Justice Sotomayor
25A169 Noem v. Vasquez Perdomo (Supreme Court)
Florida plans to become the first state to end all vaccine mandates, including for schoolchildren, rejecting a practice that public health experts have credited for decades with limiting the spread of infectious diseases.
Dr. Joseph A. Ladapo, the Florida surgeon general, made the announcement on Wednesday alongside Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican. Mr. DeSantis rose to national prominence during the coronavirus pandemic, and over time he has espoused increasingly anti-vaccine views.
“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in their body?” Dr. Ladapo, a vocal denigrator of vaccines, said to applause during an event on Wednesday in Valrico, Fla., near Tampa. “Your body is a gift from God.”
He added that the administration would be “working to end” all vaccine mandates. “Every last one of them is wrong and drips with disdain and slavery,” Dr. Ladapo said, without elaborating.
Patricia Mazzei
Florida Moves to End Vaccine Mandates for Schoolchildren (The New York Times)
Because, yes: this “America by Design” page is shoddily made, and poorly written. But the authoritarian impulse — to erase histories, to control a narrative, to single-mindedly focus on image and aesthetics — shapes not just the site’s text, but its design as well. Its text erases the history and work of the people who quietly labored to create better digital services for the public; in their place, it proposes that one man alone can define “design” for the country. And we find that new definition in the way the site’s constructed: it is digital design intended for the privileged few, one that actively excludes people who don’t conform to a specific, discriminatory definition of “eligible.”
All of this should and must be rebuked by the design community; it must also be actively, urgently dismantled.
Ethan Marcotte
A notional design studio. (Ethan Marcotte)
This video from Lindsay Ellis discusses empathy, antisemitism, genocide, and Ms Rachel. It is long, but well worth watching.
The Unforgivable Sin of Ms Rachel (YouTube – Lindsay Ellis)
This clip is from the beginning of the month, but I didn’t see it until this week. In it Rachel Maddow explains how we’ve crossed the line into the United States being an authoritarian country with secret police, concentration camps, intimidation of companies and universities, and the military being turned against residents. The time since the video was made just makes the argument stronger with the National Guard deployed in D.C. and threats to move them into Chicago and New York next.
Maddow: U.S. profoundly changed by authoritarian leader; ‘We’re beyond waiting and seeing now’ (YouTube – MSNBC)
It is important to pause a moment and state this directly: Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, believes that the Smithsonian is failing to do its job, because it spends too much time portraying slavery as “bad.”
Clint Smith
Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad (The Atlantic)
What’s happening doesn’t look like a carefully regimented and organized attempt at standing up a military dictatorship. Trump seldom acts with that sort of discipline. Instead, it looks like an improvisational and opportunistic grab of power—Trump seeing what he can get away with and what he can normalize. With no stated goal, and with an acquiescent Congress and Supreme Court, the country could end up with the U.S. military occupying its major cities before most Americans realize what’s happening.
David A. Graham
How Does Trump’s Federal Takeover End? (The Atlantic)
Scott Boehmer 