Category: 2025

Bulwark: Trump Might Finally Make Voters Care About Climate Change

The White House’s actions are making the issue relevant in ways they aren’t considering.

CLIMATE CHANGE DID NOT RANK HIGH among policy concerns heading into the 2024 election, according to a far-reaching Gallup survey. Just 21 percent of registered voters called it “extremely important,” while 29 percent said it was “very important.” The rest characterized the existential threat to humanity as either “somewhat important” (24 percent) or “not important” (26 percent).

But there are new factors that could make climate change—or at least climate-related issues—more pressing for the average voter. Take, for example, President Donald Trump’s clampdown on job-providing green-energy initiatives.
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AP: International students stripped of legal status in the US are piling up wins in court

Anjan Roy was studying with friends at Missouri State University when he got an email that turned his world upside down. His legal status as an international student had been terminated, and he was suddenly at risk for deportation.

“I was in literal shock, like, what the hell is this?” said Roy, a graduate student in computer science from Bangladesh.

At first, he avoided going out in public, skipping classes and mostly keeping his phone turned off. A court ruling in his favor led to his status being restored this week, and he has returned to his apartment, but he is still asking his roommates to screen visitors.
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Ken Klippenstein: Is a Military Coup Unfolding at the Pentagon?

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“As much as Hegseth’s detractors might be right that he is chaotic and ‘unqualified,’” a senior serving officer said in an email exchange with me this week, “he is Senate confirmed. It’s up to Donald Trump to remove him, not the uniformed military because they want someone else to lead them.”

Hegseth is, of course, a dumbass. He vows to bring back a “warrior culture” but all I see is a culture warrior. His focus on fighting “wokeness” in the military is a tedious detour into AM radio slop, especially while the U.S. is engaged in real wars in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and here at home.

Uniformed military officers and Pentagon officials I’ve talked to agree with this assessment, and they agree that those trying to defeat Hegseth are operating dangerously outside their lane. As one said to me over the weekend, “you can’t say you’re defending your oath and the Constitution while working to undermine it.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday that “the entire Pentagon is working against” Hegseth. Whatever you think of Hegseth or the hyperbole, this is not good for America.
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Heather Cox Richardson: Letters from an American – April 21, 2025

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The stock market plunged again today after President Donald J. Trump continued to harass Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. The threat of instability if Trump tries to fire Powell, added to the instability already created by Trump’s tariff policies, saw the Dow Jones Industrial Average fall 971.82 points, or 2.48%; the S&P 500 dropped 2.36%, and the Nasdaq Composite fell 2.55%. The dollar hit a three-year low, while the value of gold soared. Journalist Brian Tyler Cohen noted that since Trump took office, the Dow has fallen 13.8%, the S&P 500 is down 15.5%, and the Nasdaq is down 20.5%.

Hannah Erin Lang of the Wall Street Journal reported that “[t]he Trump rout is taking on historic dimensions.” She noted that the Dow Jones Industrial Average “is headed for its worst April performance since 1932,” when the country was in the midst of the Great Depression. Scott Ladner, chief investment officer at Horizon Investments, told Lang: “It’s impossible to commit capital to an economy that is unstable and unknowable because of policy structure.”
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Beat of Hawaii: Why These Hawaii Travelers Were Jailed And Deported

Two young German travelers expected their Hawaii trip to be the highlight of a months-long world adventure. Instead, their visit ended in handcuffs, jail time, and deportation — a stark reminder of the risks some international visitors face at U.S. borders.

This story was first reported in Germany’s Ostsee-Zeitung newspaper, a major regional daily that has been published for over seventy years. The German Foreign Office confirmed its involvement in the case, providing consular support after the travelers were detained in Honolulu.
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Fox News: Protesters target Trump administration policies with march to White House, demonstrations throughout country

As families gathered for Easter egg hunts Saturday, thousands of protesters took to the streets in what organizers called “A National Day of Action.”

From Anchorage to Atlanta, demonstrators rallied in all 50 states and U.S. territories, targeting President Donald Trump’s policies.
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Charlotte Clymer: Authorities Detain and Execute Non-Citizen

JUDEA — Today, local authorities executed a non-citizen just outside the walls of Jerusalem on the vague charge of treason against Caesar.
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Tristan Snell: The ICE Man Cometh

Trump’s Gestapo is here. It operates throughout the country. It can suddenly arrest anyone, with no crime alleged, and deport them for permanent imprisonment overseas. Will anyone stop this?

Last year, I did a series called Decoding Project 2025 — and one of the most jarring Trumpian proposals was, from my point of view, the planned degradation of the existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) into an immigration Gestapo to detain undocumented immigrants and deport them without any legal due process.

I was wrong.

It turns out ICE is not a Gestapo for undocumented immigrants.

It is a general Gestapo — a secret national police force not just for undocumented immigrants but for any immigrants, even legal ones with documents, even permanent residents (green card holders), and if Trump has his way, soon, even U.S. citizens.
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EFF: Congress Takes Another Step Toward Enabling Broad Internet Censorship

The House Energy and Commerce Committee on Tuesday advanced the TAKE IT DOWN Act (S. 146) , a bill that seeks to speed up the removal of certain kinds of troubling online content. While the bill is meant to address a serious problem—the distribution of non-consensual intimate imagery (NCII)—the notice-and-takedown system it creates is an open invitation for powerful people to pressure websites into removing content they dislike.

As we’ve written before, while protecting victims of these heinous privacy invasions is a legitimate goal, good intentions alone are not enough to make good policy.

…Lawful content—including satire, journalism, and political speech—could be wrongly censored.

…Trump has shown just how the bill can be abused, saying earlier this year that he would personally use the takedown provisions to censor speech critical of the president.
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Ken Klippenstein: What are “Nihilist Violent Extremists”?

The arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro’s home has unified the national security state around a broader threat it sees in the American people.

Inside the government, sources tell us, officials are scrambling to define the moment. They’re exploring if there’s any connection between the attempts on Donald Trump’s life; Luigi Mangione and his sympathizers; Tesla vandalism; and even earlier attacks, like the one on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

The Trump Justice Department and the domestic terrorism fighters think they have an answer: Nihilist Violent Extremists.

They’ve already got an acronym — NVEs.

The brand new term was invented to replace the Biden administration’s focus on anti-government and “anti-authority” extremism adopted after January 6. It also has the side benefit of appearing to be non-partisan, shifting the attention away from MAGA and white supremacism while pretending not to be focusing on anti-Trump activism.
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