Scouts ‘surprised and deeply saddened’ by Hegseth’s proposal to cut ties; The Hill, November 25, 2025

 ELLEN MITCHELL , The Hill; Scouts ‘surprised and deeply saddened’ by Hegseth’s proposal to cut ties

"Scouting America responded on Tuesday to a reported memo from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seeking to cut ties with the organization, saying it was “surprised and disappointed” by the potential policy change, as the military has given its support to the Scouts since 1937. 

“The Scouting movement has had a strong relationship with our nation’s military going back more than a century,” according to the group. “From the tremendous support of the West Virginia National Guard at our National Jamborees to Scout troops that provide stability for the children of military families deployed around the globe, our nation’s military has walked side-by-side with Scouts for generations.”

It also noted that “an enormous percentage of those in our military academies are Scouts and Eagle Scouts.”

Hegseth is reportedly upset with the group for promoting diversity, equity and inclusion. His memo, first reported by NPR, accuses Scouting America — formerly known as the Boy Scouts of America — of attacking boy-friendly spaces and for being “genderless.” The memo has yet to be sent to Congress.

“The organization once endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt no longer supports the future of American boys,” Hegseth wrote in the memo."

Indiana Republican with disabled child rejects redistricting bid after Trump-Walz spat; The Hill, November 29, 2025

RYAN MANCINI , The Hill ; Indiana Republican with disabled child rejects redistricting bid after Trump-Walz spat

"A Republican state Senator from Indiana on Friday said he will vote against President Trump’s redistricting effort in his state after the president used a slur demeaning people with disabilities in his online spat with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D).

“Many of you have asked my position on redistricting,” state Sen. Michael Bohacek (R) wrote in a Facebook post. “I have been an unapologetic advocate for people with intellectual disabilities since the birth of my second daughter. Those of you that don’t know me or my family might not know that my daughter has Down Syndrome.

“This is not the first time our president has used these insulting and derogatory references and his choices of words have consequences,” Bohacek continued. “I will be voting NO on redistricting, perhaps he can use the next 10 months to convince voters that his policies and behavior deserve a congressional majority.”

Trump attacked Walz in a Truth Social post on Thursday and called him the slur. He slammed the governor for doing “nothing” about the number of Somali refugees in Minnesota, either “through fear, incompetence, or both.”"

Chicago’s faith leaders on front lines of resistance against ICE crackdown; The Guardian, November 28, 2025

 Siri Chilukuri, The Guardian ; Chicago’s faith leaders on front lines of resistance against ICE crackdown

"For weeks, Chicago has been at the center of the Trump administration’s brutal immigration crackdown. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Department of Homeland Security officials have arrested 800 people as of 1 October, while also using violent tactics such as body-slamming and deploying teargas in residential areas.

Amid the raids and arrests, which have created a pervasive sense of fear, faith leaders have stepped up, putting themselves on the front lines of resistance.

“Faith leaders bring a very powerful prophetic and moral compass into the space,” said the Rev Ciera Bates-Chamberlain, executive director of Live Free Illinois, a group that mobilizes Black churches around social justice issues in Chicago. “While many others may be able to argue the economic impact, or argue the law, faith leaders are typically the ones who are arguing and standing on the side of humanity and for people.”

In reversal, Coast Guard again classifies swastikas, nooses as hate symbols; The Washington Post, November 21, 2025

 

Tara Copp

, 

Michelle Boorstein

, 

Hari Raj

 and 

Victoria Bisset

, The Washington Post; In reversal, Coast Guard again classifies swastikas, nooses as hate symbols

"In a stunning and hasty reversal, the U.S. Coast Guard announced late Thursday that swastikas and nooses are prohibited hate symbols — erasing an attempt to soften their definition after the plan elicited furious backlash.

The abrupt policy change occurred hours after The Washington Post first reported that the service was about to enact new harassment guidelines that downgraded the meaning of such symbols of fascism and racism, labeling them instead “potentially divisive.” That shift had been set to take effect Dec. 15.

In a memo to Coast Guard personnel, the service’s acting commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday, said the policy document issued late Thursday night supersedes all previous guidance on the issue."

MacKenzie Scott Expands Giving Spree to Tribal Colleges; The New York Times, November 20, 2025

 Alan Blinder, The New York Times ; MacKenzie Scott Expands Giving Spree to Tribal Colleges

[Kip Currier: Imagine if more billionaires shared their good fortune with more people in need throughout the U.S. and the world, like MacKenzie Scott is.]

[Excerpt]

"The philanthropist MacKenzie Scott is funneling tens of millions of dollars into tribal higher education, months after the Trump administration sought to cut one of the system’s most essential funding sources.

The donations could help shield some tribal schools — which measure their reserve funds and endowments at best in the low millions, not billions — and their students from budget bickering in Washington. Ms. Scott has not made public comments about her recent gifts, but according to the recipients, the funds will support at least one tribal school and a nonprofit group that focuses on scholarships for Native American students.

Little Priest Tribal College, in Winnebago, Neb., announced on Thursday that Ms. Scott had given it $5 million. The school learned of the gift as it was planning a capital campaign that, officials hoped, might raise $10 million over a decade.

“There’s a sense of happiness, a sense of hope,” Manoj Patil, the college’s president, said in an interview. He said of Ms. Scott, “She’s given us hope, hope for success, hope to dream big.”"

Trump Moves to Weaken the Endangered Species Act; The New York Times, November 19, 2025

 Maxine Joselow and Catrin Einhorn, The New York Times; Trump Moves to Weaken the Endangered Species Act

"The Trump administration proposed on Wednesday to significantly limit protections under the Endangered Species Act, the bedrock environmental law intended to prevent animal and plant extinctions.

Taken together, four proposed new rules could clear the way for more oil drilling, logging and mining in critical habitats for endangered species across the country.

One of the most contentious proposals would allow the government to assess economic factors, such as lost revenue from a ban on oil drilling near critical habitat, before deciding whether to list a species as endangered. The Endangered Species Act requires the government to consider only the best available science when making these decisions.

Another change would make it harder to protect species from threats that could occur in the future, like effects of climate change that could materialize in the decades to come."

‘Unforgivable’: Trump’s ‘piggy’ insult is stoking more outrage than usual; The Guardian, November 19, 2025

 Rachel Leingang , The Guardian; ‘Unforgivable’: Trump’s ‘piggy’ insult is stoking more outrage than usual

"It’s one outrage in days full of outrageous material.

“Quiet, piggy,” Donald Trump told a female reporter in a press gaggle, pointing his finger at her angrily.

It wasn’t the first time – not even the hundredth time – the US president has attacked the media. And it’s hard for any storyline to break through the administration’s “flood the zone” strategy, much less one like this. Nothing seems to stick. But the “quiet, piggy” clip has taken off, several days after the admonishment occurred on Air Force One last Friday, and without much help from the media itself.

“I don’t know why the ‘Piggy’ thing is bothering me so much,” wrote Hank Green, a YouTuber and author. “It’s one more unforgivable thing in a list of 20,000 unforgivable things, but I’ve been mad about it for like 12 straight hours.”...

Part of the collective ire could be that no one in the press gaggle jumped to Lucey’s defense in the video, underlining that those attacked by Trump often stand alone while others fear becoming next on his list; the media backbone that stiffened in his first term has wilted, under exhaustion and at the hands of Trump-friendly owners, in his second. The condemnations of Trump and accolades for both journalists came after the fact...

In Trump 2.0, you never know which affronts to decency will stick in people’s minds. This one, though, has a symbolism that seems to be resonating.

“Portland has reclaimed the frog as a symbol of its resistance to Trump’s efforts to militarize the city,” former US attorney and commentator Joyce Alene wrote on X. “Perhaps women should claim the glamorous, sassy Muppet Miss Piggy, a known diva with a fierce karate chop, as their own symbol.”"

An F.B.I. Trainee Hung a Pride Flag Near His Desk. He Says He Was Fired for It.; The New York Times, November 19, 2025

 Alan Feuer, The New York Times ; An F.B.I. Trainee Hung a Pride Flag Near His Desk. He Says He Was Fired for It.

"David Maltinsky, an F.B.I. agent-in-training, had only a dim suspicion of what was going on when he was suddenly pulled from his classmates one evening last month and called to a meeting with top officials at the academy, where he was only three weeks away from graduation.

A gay man who had previously worked as a civilian cybertech assistant in the Los Angeles field office, Mr. Maltinsky knew that the meeting might have something to do with his sexual identity — or with his wide-ranging efforts at the bureau to promote L.G.B.T.Q. issues.

What he did not expect was the letter he was handed when he arrived at the F.B.I. Academy’s front office.

It was signed by the bureau’s director, Kash Patel, he said, and announced that he was being “summarily dismissed” from the academy because of “political signage” he had once displayed at his work space in Los Angeles. The only thing that could be, he quickly realized, was a rainbow pride flag that had hung near his desk for years and had been given to him as a gift by his former bosses."

Pope Leo calls out 'extremely disrespectful' treatment of migrants in the U.S.; NPR, November 18, 2025

 Jason DeRose, NPR; Pope Leo calls out 'extremely disrespectful' treatment of migrants in the U.S.

"Pope Leo XIV said he is troubled by the violent and at times "extremely disrespectful" ways migrants have been treated in the United States. 

The Pope made his remarks while answering questions from journalists at Castel Gandolfo, the papal vacation residence outside Rome. 

"We have to look for ways of treating people humanely, treating people with the dignity that they have. If people are in the United States illegally, there are ways to treat that. There are courts. There's a system of justice," the Pope said. 

"No one has said that the United States should have open borders," the Pope continued. "I think every country has the right to determine who enters, how, and when.""

Trump Told a Woman, ‘Quiet, Piggy,’ When She Asked Him About Epstein; The Atlantic, November 18, 2025

 Isabel Fattal, The Atlantic ; Trump Told a Woman, ‘Quiet, Piggy,’ When She Asked Him About Epstein

"“Keep your voice down.”

“That’s enough of you.”

“Be nice; don’t be threatening.”

“There was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.”

“Quiet, piggy.”

This is a sampling of what the president of the United States has said to and about female journalists during his time in office—and most recently to Catherine Lucey, a White House correspondent for Bloomberg. On Friday on Air Force One, Lucey asked Donald Trump about the Epstein files. He answered her first question, but when she followed up, the president bent his head down and pointed his finger, the way you might chastise a screaming child or shoo a stray cat. “Quiet. Quiet, piggy,” he said.

Lucey had clearly touched a nerve. Two days later, Trump announced that he would endorse the House’s vote on the release of the Epstein files, likely because he knew that the House had the numbers to do so and would go forth with or without his support. But this category of remark is part of a long-running pattern for the president: Trump’s time in American politics has been marked by repeated attempts to insult and demean female journalists."

A Native American leader who enlisted in the Union Army has been posthumously admitted to the New York bar after 176 years; CNN, November 15, 2025

 Ray Sanchez , CNN; A Native American leader who enlisted in the Union Army has been posthumously admitted to the New York bar after 176 years

"Ely S. Parker, a Tonawanda Seneca from western New York, never took no for an answer.

At the start of the Civil War, Parker’s offer to enlist was rejected outright by another New Yorker, Secretary of State William H. Seward, who – according to historians – told the Seneca leader the war dividing America “was an affair between white men and one in which the Indian was not called on to act.”

“Go home, cultivate your farm, and we will settle our own troubles among ourselves without any Indian aid,” Seward told Parker, who also unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to grant him US citizenship so he could enlist. Native Americans would not be made citizens until 1924.

But Parker had connections: He was a close friend of future Union Army Commander Ulysses S. Grant, who eventually intervened and endorsed his commission as captain. He would become a top aide to the Union Army’s most revered general.

On Friday, in a ceremonial courtroom in downtown Buffalo, supporters and direct descendants of Parker gathered for a celebration of his resiliency, with the New York Supreme Court Appellate Division, Fourth Department posthumously admitting him to the bar – 176 years after he had been denied because Native Americans were not considered US citizens.

“The posthumous admission to the bar is fitting and deserving of a man who lived his life with integrity,” said C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa, an associate professor of history at George Mason University who has written extensively about Parker. “He didn’t give up. He continued to fight for what he believed in.”

Parker is the first Native American posthumously admitted to the bar in US history, according to legal experts. The petition for admission was made on behalf of his great-great-great-grandniece, Melissa Parker Leonard, whose father, Alvin, often played the chief in historical reenactments. The effort dates to 2020, when former Texas appellate Justice John Browning, a law professor at Faulkner University, first approached Alvin Parker, who died in 2022.

“Despite all the odds, all the adversity, the Seneca people still reside in western New York,” Parker Leonard, a 42-year-old educator and vice president of The Buffalo History Museum, told CNN."

In Pulpits and Pews, Catholic Churches Urge Compassion for Immigrants; The New York Times, November 16, 2025

 Mark Bonamo, Dave Philipps and Pooja Salhotra, The New York Times ; In Pulpits and Pews, Catholic Churches Urge Compassion for Immigrants

"In humble rural churches and tall urban cathedrals across the country this weekend, Catholic priests and parishioners reflected on the Trump administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. Some said that the roundup of hundreds of thousands of people, which has disproportionately affected Catholic congregations full of immigrants, goes against Christian teachings.

Just a few miles from Our Lady of Grace, said Father Santora, about 1,000 immigrants were being held in a detention center. “This is not what Jesus Christ would want,” he told his flock. “It’s immoral.”...

As the administration has stepped up its deportation efforts, though, the Catholic Church has gotten louder in its criticism. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on Wednesday issued a special message — the first since 2013 — opposing what it called the “indiscriminate mass deportation of people.”

“We are saddened by the state of contemporary debate and the vilification of immigrants,” the bishops wrote. “We are concerned about the conditions in detention centers and the lack of access to pastoral care.”

At the end of their message, they said, “We pray for an end to dehumanizing rhetoric and violence, whether directed at immigrants or at law enforcement."...

“Any institution which does something against the value of human life is worthy of the church making a statement,” Father Flores said."

Pope Leo Doesn’t Want to Be the Anti-Trump. But He Is.; The New York Times, November 16, 2025

 DAVID FRENCH, The New York Times; Pope Leo Doesn’t Want to Be the Anti-Trump. But He Is.

"Serving the most marginalized is fundamental to the Christian faith. By one count, more than 2,000 scriptural passages mandate or endorse service to the poor and the work of justice.

In May, just after the pope’s election, I wrote that the most important American in the world was no longer named Donald Trump. The president has less than four years left at the center of the international stage. The pope will present a global moral witness for years to come, and it’s a moral witness that is fundamentally incompatible with the cruelty and corruption of Trumpism.

If you examine the new pope’s pronouncements, there is a consistent through line. He defends human dignity and condemns government brutality. In addition to his defense of the human rights of migrants, he’s decried Russian abuses in Ukraine, and he’s called for a cease-fire, hostage release and compliance with international humanitarian law in Gaza.

His concern for human dignity extends to the world of technology and commerce as well. On Nov. 7, for example, he posted on social media: “Technological innovation can be a form of participation in the divine act of creation. It carries an ethical and spiritual weight, for every design choice expresses a vision of humanity. The Church therefore calls all builders of #AI to cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work—to develop systems that reflect justice, solidarity, and a genuine reverence for life.”

The pope’s comment drew an immediate rebuke from Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist and Trump supporter, who posted (and then deleted) a meme mocking the pope’s statement.

Each of the pope’s statements is part of a consistent ethic of life. I love the Catholic writer Mark Shea’s description of what this ethic means — that “all human beings, without any exception whatsoever, are made in the image and likeness of God and that Jesus Christ died for all human beings, without any exception whatsoever. Therefore each human person — without any exception whatsoever — is sacred and is the only creature that God wills for its own sake.”"

This May Be the Cruelest, Most Senseless Thing Trump Has Done A conversation with Atul Gawande about the human toll of the dismantling of foreign aid.; The Bulwark, Jonathan Cohn, November 16, 2025

 JONATHAN COHN , The Bulwark; This May Be the Cruelest, Most Senseless Thing Trump Has Done

A conversation with Atul Gawande about the human toll of the dismantling of foreign aid.

"SECRETARY OF STATE MARCO RUBIO was indignant in May when, at a hearing before Congress, lawmakers asserted that the Trump administration’s cuts to international aid were killing people.

“No one has died,” Rubio insisted.

It was not an especially believable claim, even then. But death from disease and starvation can be difficult to detect quickly. And it had been less than five months since Trump had signed an executive order halting global assistance—or since then-adviser Elon Musk had tweeted gleefully about “feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”

That was a reference to the United States Agency for International Development, which John F. Kennedy established in 1961 to help the world’s neediest people and make America safer by promoting stability and generating goodwill abroad. Trump and his team decided to dismantle the agency because it was supposedly too “woke” or too wasteful—or, maybe, because it was an easy first step in their radical downsizing of the federal government.1

Among those most alarmed was Atul Gawande, the surgeon and award-winning writer who had overseen USAID’s global health programs during the Biden administration. He spent much of the winter and spring imploring Trump allies in Congress to save the agency, citing its long history of bipartisan support, including from then-Senator Rubio. As hopes for a reprieve faded, Gawande turned to spotlighting the consequences—partly to build a case for rescuing what could be rescued and rebuilding what couldn’t, and partly just to bear witness.

“They’re trying to make the loss of life invisible,” Gawande told me this week, “they’re trying to deny the reality, and the first task is making the invisible visible.”

The impetus for our conversation was a new documentary called Rovina’s Choice that Gawande has produced together with the New Yorker. The documentary is about a Sudanese refugee in Kenya and her attempts to get help for her daughter, Jane, who is suffering from severe malnutrition.

The film depicts the physical toll on Jane and others, including how a loss of ability to regenerate skin cells leads to painful, burning fissures that won’t heal—and to a literal thinning of skin that makes it increasingly difficult to maintain body temperature or prevent infection. But another wrenching part of the story may be the emotional toll on Rovina and her entire family, and the excruciating decisions she must make to protect them all.

None of this has to happen, as Gawande explained in our conversation. Starvation can seem like one of those intractable, hopeless realities governments can’t change. But the development of “Plumpy’Nut”-style paste and deployment of aggressive community outreach efforts have transformed food assistance over the past two decades, possibly saving more than 1 million lives in 2023 alone, according to UNICEF.2

The tragedy—and human toll—of abandoning those advances are an important theme of Rovina’s Choice. It’s also what he and I discussed during our interview. You can watch the whole thing on YouTube and read some excerpts below.3"

Netherlands WWII cemetery removes displays honoring Black soldiers; Military Times, November 14, 2025

 Claire Barrett, Military Times; Netherlands WWII cemetery removes displays honoring Black soldiers

[Kip Currier: Reading this story, I was struck by how important it is to raise our awareness of people and events whose stories and contributions often are either unknown or not as well-recognized by more people as they should be.

That anyone would learn about the service and contributions of Black American soldiers in the Netherlands during WWII and be troubled that their stories are included in the Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten is an outrage. 

How dare the Heritage Foundation -- and even more, the Trump 2.0 administration that has codified these kinds of historical purges -- strive to erase this history and these Black American military members and their service from this Dutch museum.

Thank you to all those who are sounding the alarm about another example of this kind of historical censorship.]

[Excerpt]

 "The Netherlands American Cemetery and Memorial in Margraten, the only American military cemetery in the Netherlands, has quietly removed panels displaying the contributions of Black American soldiers during WWII, sparking outrage from Dutch and American citizens.

One of the two displays featured an overall history of Black American military personnel fighting a double V campaign — victory at home and abroad — while the other told the story of George H. Pruitt, a Black soldier in the 43rd Signal Construction Battalion who drowned a month after the war’s end while attempting to save a comrade’s life in a German river.

The two panels were added to the visitor center in September 2024 after the American Battle Monuments Commission, a U.S. government agency that oversees the cemetery, received criticism from families and historians for not including the contributions of Black service members and their experiences fighting in the Netherlands.

At the time of publishing, ABMC did not respond to requests for comment from Military Times. The commission, however, told Dutch news outlets that one panel is“off display, though not out of rotation,” although a second panel was “retired.” 

The panels were reportedly rotated out in early March, one month after President Donald Trump’s executive order terminated diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives across the federal government.

The same month the panels were removed, The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, contacted the ABMC for its supposed failure to comply with Trump’s anti-DEI initiatives...

Among such men was 1st Sgt. Jefferson Wiggins of the 960th Quartermaster Service Company, one of more than 900,000 Black men and women who served in the U.S. military during WWII.

Wiggins and the men of the 960th QSC were tasked with the grim job of burying American dead in Margraten.

What was once a fruit orchard would become the final resting place for some 8,300 U.S. soldiers, including 172 Black servicemen. In 2009, Wiggins recounted to historian Mieke Kirkels how the work was done under horrific conditions, often with only rudimentary tools like pickaxes and shovels to dig the graves. 

“There was a permanent arrival of bodies, the whole day long. Sundays included, seven days a week,” Wiggins recalled. “I find it difficult, even now, to read in the paper that soldiers ‘gave their lives.’ … All those boys in Margraten, their lives were taken away.”"

U.S. visas can be denied for obesity, cancer and diabetes, Rubio says; The Washington Post, November 13, 2025

 

Lauren Kaori Gurley

 and 

Hannah Natanson

, The Washington Post; U.S. visas can be denied for obesity, cancer and diabetes, Rubio says

"The Trump administration directed visa officers to consider obesity — and other chronic health conditions such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes — as reasons to deny foreigners visas to the United States."

A Light in Very Dark Days: Nancy Pelosi and AIDS; The New York Times, November 7, 2025

 Adam Nagourney, Heather Knight, Kellen Browning and Laurel Rosenhall, The New York Times ; A Light in Very Dark Days: Nancy Pelosi and AIDS

"Ms. Pelosi, the new member of Congress representing San Francisco at the time, asked the nurses if they had what they needed and if any patients were up for a bedside visit. Then she would slip into their rooms alone.

“Early on, it was not seen as a wise or popular thing to do, to champion people with AIDS, of all things,” Mr. Wolf, 74, recalled. “You didn’t want to align yourself too closely, but she didn’t care. We were her constituents, and she went to bat for us over and over and over again.”...

Ms. Pelosi, who announced on Thursday her plans to retire from Congress, is known nationally as a Washington leader praised by Democrats for standing up to President Trump and derided by Republicans as a symbol of the radical excesses of the left. But back home, her reputation was shaped by how she stepped forward at the earliest and most terrifying moment of a local crisis and how she fought to help her constituents deal with the AIDS epidemic and fight for L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

The public side of this is by now well-known: How over decades spent in Congress she fought for money for AIDS research and treatment or invited prominent AIDS and gay rights activists to be at her side at the State of the Union address and other events. But much of it took place away from the public eye. It’s those moments many of her gay constituents in San Francisco talk about as she approaches the end of her congressional career."

What happened to mercy?; The Washington Post, November 13, 2025

 Thomas Banchoff , The Washington Post; What happened to mercy?

"Decades ago, Pope John Paul II made a plea for mercy. His 1980 encyclical “Dives in Misericordia” (“Rich in Mercy”) emphasized God’s forgiving love toward humanity and decried a widespread tendency to “remove from the human heart the very idea of mercy.” Instead of mercy, John Paul saw a rise in “spite, hatred and even cruelty.”

Mercy is painfully scarce in our politics today. When the Right Rev. Mariann Budde, the Episcopal bishop of Washington, appealed to President Donald Trump from the pulpit in January to show mercy toward the vulnerable, the president bristled and demanded an apology. In the months since, his administration’s policies have been rife with cruelty, from eliminating life-giving aid programs abroad to threatening to withhold food assistance for more than 40 million Americans."

AMERICA NEEDS A MASS MOVEMENT—NOW: Without one, America may sink into autocracy for decades.; The Atlantic, October 14, 2025

 David Brooks , The Atlantic; AMERICA NEEDS A MASS MOVEMENT—NOW

"For their 2011 book, Why Civil Resistance Works, the political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan looked at 323 resistance movements from 1900 to 2006, including more than 100 nonviolent resistance campaigns. What Chenoweth and Stephan showed is that citizens are not powerless; they have many ways to defend democracy.

For the United States, the question of the decade is: Why hasn’t a resistance movement materialized here? The second Trump administration has flouted court decisions in a third of all rulings against it, according to The Washington Post. It operates as a national extortion racket, using federal power to control the inner workings of universities, law firms, and corporations. It has thoroughly politicized the Justice Department, launching a series of partisan investigations against its political foes. It has turned ICE into a massive paramilitary organization with apparently unconstrained powers. It has treated the Constitution with disdain, assaulted democratic norms and diminished democratic freedoms, and put military vehicles and soldiers on the streets of the capital. It embraces the optics of fascism, and flaunts its autocratic aspirations.

I am not one of those who believe that Donald Trump has already turned America into a dictatorship. Yet the crossing-over from freedom into authoritarianism may be marked not by a single dramatic event but by the slow corrosion of our ruling institutions—and that corrosion is well under way. For 250 years, the essence of America’s democratic system, drawing on thinkers going back to Cicero and Cato, has been that no one is above the law. Public officials’ first duty is to put the law before the satisfaction of their own selfish impulses. That concept is alien to Trump."

Pentagon calls Netflix's hit gay Marines show Boots 'woke garbage'; Out, October 16, 2025

 Mey Rude, Out ; Pentagon calls Netflix's hit gay Marines show Boots 'woke garbage'

[Kip Currier: As the head of the Department of Defense-cum-War, Pete Hegseth's statements, reported in this article and other news stories, are disrespectful to the thousands of LGBT service members who have selflessly served and sacrificed for their country.

All people are entitled to dignity and respect. The divisiveness of Hegseth and others who denounce people and groups must not be normalized.

Thank you to all military service members, living and deceased, who have given so much for democracy, our nation, and the world.]

[Excerpt]

"Netflix's new show Boots is topping the streamers' viewing charts, but the U.S. military isn't as enthusiastic about the show as fans are.

The Pentagon now says in a statement that it does not endorse the new show, which stars Miles Heizeras a closeted young man who joins the Marines in a time when it was forbidden for gay recruits to serve.

"Under President Trump and Secretary Hegseth, the U.S. military is getting back to restoring the warrior ethos. Our standards across the board are elite, uniform, and sex neutral because the weight of a rucksack or a human being doesn't care if you're a man, a woman, gay, or straight," a statement from Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson to Entertainment Weekly says.

In the statement, Wilson says that officials "will not compromise our standards to satisfy an ideological agenda, unlike Netflix whose leadership consistently produces and feeds woke garbage to their audience and children."

Netflix has yet to respond.

Since becoming Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth has made several moves to erase LGBTQ+ people from the military. In June, he announced that a Navy ship named for gay rights leader Harvey Milk would be renamed. Hegseth also supports Trump's Executive Order 14183, which mandates the discharge of all trans service members and prevents new trans troops from enlisting."