Utah’s Republican governor makes case for unity – in stark contrast with Trump; The Guardian, September 12, 2025

 David Smith , The Guardian; Utah’s Republican governor makes case for unity – in stark contrast with Trump

"In a nation seemingly on the brink, they were words that Americans needed to hear – coming not from the president but a politician with civility, compassion and rhetorical grace notes.

“We can return violence with violence, we can return hate with hate, and that’s the problem with political violence – it metastasises because we can always point the figure at the other side,” said Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah. “At some point we have to find an offramp or else it’s going to get much, much worse.”

In a tone of moral urgency, Cox added: “These are choices that we can make. History will dictate if this is a turning point for our country but every single one of us gets to choose right now if this is a turning point for us.”

The governor was speaking at a press conference after announcing that authorities had arrested a suspect in the fatal shooting of Charlie Kirk, a political activist who rallied young voters for Donald Trump, at a university campus in Utah on Wednesday.

It was an act of surging political violence in a country awash with guns, a moment that cries out for cool heads to lower the political temperature. Yet Trump wasted no time in blaming the “radical left”.

The two-term Republican governor has frequently worked with Democrats and issued pleas for bipartisan cooperation. He drew national attention with a deeply personal response to the 2016 shooting at Orlando’s Pulse nightclub and has long espoused a vision of politics rooted in unity and respect.

That was evident in the calm, measured yet impassioned remarks that he made on Friday as the Trump-appointed FBI director, Kash Patel, looked on. “Over the last 48 hours I have been as angry as I have ever been, as sad as I have ever been,” Cox said, a tremor in his voice.

The 50-year-old governor, who has four children who are teenagers and young adults, directed some of his remarks to young people. “You are inheriting a country where politics feels like rage,” he said. “It feels like rage is the only option.”But, Cox insisted, there was a different path. “Your generation has an opportunity to build a culture that is very different than what we are suffering through right now. Not by pretending differences don’t matter but by embracing our differences and having those hard conversations.”...

Trump, however, has a history of exploiting tragedies to berate opponents and sow further division. Cox, by contrast, has been a strong advocate for civility in politics across the country. In his 2020 campaign for governor, he and his Democratic opponent appeared together in television ads pledging to “disagree without hating each other”, a highly unorthodox move.

And as chairman of the National Governors Association, he promoted civility through an initiative he called Disagree Better. He made appearances across the country with Democratic governors and other public figures to emphasise unifying values.

Frank Luntz, a political consultant and pollster, says: “Spencer Cox has been the national leader in promoting a more civil, respectful dialogue and his voice is needed now more than ever. He has said: we’re better than this, we don’t have to choose anger and, even at our angriest, we can decide to search for what is better in mankind. The vast majority of the public agrees with him.”

Luntz adds: “This is a break point for the country and thank God we have people like Cox who realise this. We may look back at this and say either this was the end of our civility and decency or the beginning of getting control back in our country where calmer minds are in charge.”"

Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops; The New York Times, September 8, 2025

 Adam Liptak, The New York Times ; Supreme Court Lifts Restrictions on L.A. Immigration Stops

"The Supreme Court on Monday lifted a federal judge’s order prohibiting government agents from making indiscriminate immigration-related stops in the Los Angeles area that challengers called “blatant racial profiling.”

The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons. It is not the last word in the case, which is pending before a federal appeals court and may again reach the justices.

The court’s three liberal members dissented."

Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison Tens of thousands of Syrians were thrown into Sednaya during the Assad regime. The New York Times created a 3-D model of the prison.; The New York Times, August 29, 2025

 Christina Goldbaum, Charlie Smart, Helmuth Rosales, Anjali Singhvi and Reham Mourshed, The New York Times; Inside Syria’s Most Fearsome Prison: Tens of thousands of Syrians were thrown into Sednaya during the Assad regime. The New York Times created a 3-D model of the prison. 

[Kip Currier: This story about Syria's brutal Sednaya prison is a difficult one to read and view. It's shocking to see how monstrously the people -- activists, artists, politicians, writers, citizens of all kinds -- warehoused to languish and die in this savage place were mistreated, tortured, and murdered.

But it's also an important one to digest and contemplate and not look away from. To think about all of the human beings who were impacted by this horrific prison. And to reflect on the human beings -- the leaders with power and privilege -- who sanctioned the existence of such a barbaric place and system for so long.

The sermon of an Episcopal priest I was fortunate to hear yesterday encouraged the parishioners to pray for individuals who are in prisons, as well as for humane treatment of the imprisoned by those who are charged with looking after them during their incarceration. We were reminded by the priest that some people are also imprisoned unjustly. Just as the 1st century Apostle Paul was imprisoned by the Roman Empire, merely for speaking and evangelizing.

Specifically, too, we were asked to pray for detainees in an ICE facility in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania.

We mustn't become indifferent to the injustices and suffering that people in this world experience. Or to the dignity, respect, due process, and rule of law to which every person is entitled, no matter their economic circumstances or legal status.]

[Excerpt]

"NO PLACE IN SYRIA was more feared than Sednaya prison during the Assad family’s decades-long, iron-fisted rule.

Situated on a barren hilltop on the outskirts of Damascus, the capital, Sednaya was at the heart of the Assads’ extensive system of torture prisons and arbitrary arrests used to crush all dissent.

By the end of the nearly 14-year civil war that culminated in December with the fall of President Bashar al-Assad, it had become a haunting symbol of the dictator’s ruthlessness.

Over the years, the regime’s security apparatus swallowed up hundreds of thousands of activists, journalists, students and dissidents from all over Syria — many never to be heard from again.

Most prisoners did not expect to make it out of Sednaya alive. They watched as men detained with them withered away or simply lost the will to live. Tens of thousands of others were executed, according to rights groups."

Nashville church helps unhoused people after downtown library fire; NewsChannel5, September 6, 2025

 

Kim Rafferty, NewsChannel5; Nashville church helps unhoused people after downtown library fire

"When the Nashville Public Library's downtown branch closed after a fire, McKendree United Methodist Church stepped up to fill a critical gap for people experiencing homelessness who had lost their daily refuge.

"Alright we'll get ya all bagged up here," said Francie Markham, who volunteers at the church every Thursday morning helping people experiencing homelessness...

After losing their cool refuge with computers and resources, Smith said many people just wanted to avoid the long stretch of summer heat.

"So what we were able to do on our Tuesdays and Thursday meal is to allow them to come in much earlier rather than at the 11:30 times so they would be out of the element," Smith said.

"With the changing of the season we need it open as soon as we can," Smith said.

In the meantime, Smith and Markham keep doing what's written on the walls — serving kindness.

Despite initial reports the library would open soon after the fire, library officials say the library requires a third party inspection before it can open. The two nearest library branches, North Branch and Hadley Park, are both more than a 30-minute walk from the library downtown. 

Have you witnessed acts of community kindness during challenging times? Share your story with Kim Rafferty and help us highlight the helpers making a difference in Middle Tennessee. Email kim.rafferty@NewsChannel5.com to continue the conversation.

In this article, we used artificial intelligence to help us convert a video news report originally written by Kim Rafferty. When using this tool, both Kim and the NewsChannel 5 editorial team verified all the facts in the article to make sure it is fair and accurate before we published it. We care about your trust in us and where you get your news, and using this tool allows us to convert our news coverage into different formats so we can quickly reach you where you like to consume information. It also lets our journalists spend more time looking into your story ideas, listening to you and digging into the stories that matter."

DHS references Mexican IndyCar driver to promote ‘Speedway Slammer’ detention center; The Guardian, August 7, 2025

 Agencies , The Guardian; DHS references Mexican IndyCar driver to promote ‘Speedway Slammer’ detention center

[Kip Currier: Not only is this statement by a DHS spokesperson factually inaccurate, as there's a cogent argument these actions by DHS may negatively impact trademark rights (and rights of publicity) -- “An AI generated image of a car with ‘ICE’ on the side does not violate anyone’s intellectual property rights" -- it's also morally offensive to either recklessly or intentionally appropriate without permission the racing number of one of the top Mexican drivers for use in a DHS promotion that demeans human beings.]

[Excerpt]

"IndyCar driver Pato O’Ward and series officials were shocked by a social media post from the Department of Homeland Security that touts plans for an immigration detention center in Indiana dubbed “Speedway Slammer.” It includes a car with the same number as that of O’Ward, the only Mexican driver in the series.

“It caught a lot of people off guard. Definitely caught me off guard,” O’Ward said Wednesday. “I was just a little bit shocked at the coincidences of that and, you know, of what it means ... I don’t think it made a lot of people proud, to say the least.”

The post on Tuesday included an AI-generated image of a IndyCar-style vehicle with O’Ward’s No 5 that has “ICE” stamped on it. In the image, the car is in front of a jail...

“We were unaware of plans to incorporate our imagery as part of yesterday’s announcement,” IndyCar said in a statement Wednesday. “Consistent with our approach to public policy and political issues, we are communicating our preference that our IP not be utilized moving forward in relation to this matter.”

A DHS spokesperson said it would not change the social media post. “An AI generated image of a car with ‘ICE’ on the side does not violate anyone’s intellectual property rights. Any suggestion to the contrary is absurd,” the spokesperson said in statement. “DHS will continue promoting the ‘Speedway Slammer’ as a comprehensive and collaborative approach to combatting illegal immigration.”

Trump is targeting several Smithsonian artworks. Here they are.; The Washington Post, August 26, 2025

 

Kelsey Ables

, 

Samantha Chery

 and 

Sophia Nguyen, 

The Washington Post; Trump is targeting several Smithsonian artworks. Here they are.

[Kip Currier: Donald Trump and his administration's efforts to remove, revise, and erase artistic and historical content are the opposite of free speech and intellectual freedom. Art should challenge us to think and feel in new ways. We as individuals are certainly free to like a piece of art, hate it, or everything in between on the spectrum of how we feel about it. But the federal (or state) government should not be controlling access to art and suppressing or falsely presenting history in a free democracy. That's what authoritarians and dictators do in non-democratic nations like Russia, China, and North Korea.

If you don't like a particular painting, book, or movie, you can simply walk away from that painting, not read that book, or not watch that movie. But it isn't your right to stop everyone from seeing art, reading books, and watching films. To paraphrase the late Robert Croneberger, Director of the venerable Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and a prolific proponent of intellectual freedom, a library isn't doing its job if it doesn't have at least one item that offends each person.

Similarly, museums, like libraries in healthy democracies, are not meant to reflect a compulsory unitary state viewpoint. We're not the Star Trek Borg Collective where everyone must think alike and individuality is verboten. The mantra of the Borg is that Resistance is Futile. Fortunately, we know that resistance is not futile: we can continue to resist efforts to sanitize art, literature, culture, and history. Exercise your right to consume what you want and disregard what you don't want. But don't tell everyone what they can and can't choose to view and read. That's undemocratic and un-American.]

[Excerpt]

"When the White House posted an article condemning a long list of Smithsonian content last week, it pointed to several specific artworks, a sampling that underlined the kind of material that could be targeted by a president who is increasingly interested in influencing what Americans see in public museums.

The list also criticized Smithsonian exhibition texts, learning materials, past performances and the institution for previously flying the intersex-inclusive Pride flag. This month, President Donald Trump said White House officials were conducting a review of the Smithsonian Institution — months after he signed an executive order seeking to root out “anti-American ideology” in the museum and research complex, an effort that experts say would amount to censorship.

The pieces are an eclectic bunch, united mainly by the Trump administration’s public criticism of them. Not all the artworks are currently on view at the museums. Taken together, they tell a story of a White House that is sensitive to imagery that appears to contradict its messaging, whether it shows a transgender woman cast as the Statue of Liberty or a boy peering over the Southern border...

Here is a look at the artworks named by the White House as evidence that Trump is “right” about the Smithsonian — and how several of the artists have responded."

Watering down Australia’s AI copyright laws would sacrifice writers’ livelihoods to ‘brogrammers’; The Guardian, August 11, 2025

 Tracey Spicer, The Guardian; Watering down Australia’s AI copyright laws would sacrifice writers’ livelihoods to ‘brogrammers’

"My latest book, which is about artificial intelligence discriminating against people from marginalised communities, was composed on an Apple Mac.

Whatever the form of recording the first rough draft of history, one thing remains the same: they are very human stories – stories that change the way we think about the world.

A society is the sum of the stories it tells. When stories, poems or books are “scraped”, what does this really mean?

The definition of scraping is to “drag or pull a hard or sharp implement across (a surface or object) so as to remove dirt or other matter”.

A long way from Brisbane or Bangladesh, in the rarefied climes of Silicon Valley, scrapers are removing our stories as if they are dirt.

These stories are fed into the machines of the great god: generative AI. But the outputs – their creations – are flatter, less human, more homogenised. ChatGPT tells tales set in metropolitan areas in the global north; of young, cishet men and people living without disability.

We lose the stories of lesser-known characters in remote parts of the world, eroding our understanding of the messy experience of being human.

Where will we find the stories of 64-year-old John from Traralgon, who died from asbestosis? Or seven-year-old Raha from Jaipur, whose future is a “choice” between marriage at the age of 12 and sexual exploitation?

OpenAI’s creations are not the “machines of loving grace” envisioned in the 1967 poem by Richard Brautigan, where he dreams of a “cybernetic meadow”.

Scraping is a venal money grab by oligarchs who are – incidentally – scrambling to protect their own intellectual property during an AI arms race.

The code behind ChatGPT is protected by copyright, which is considered to be a literary work. (I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.)

Meta has already stolen the work of thousands of Australian writers.

Now, our own Productivity Commission is considering weakening our Copyright Act to include an exemption for text and data mining, which may well put us out of business.

In its response, The Australia Institute uses the analogy of a car: “Imagine grabbing the keys for a rental car and just driving around for a while without paying to hire it or filling in any paperwork. Then imagine that instead of being prosecuted for breaking the law, the government changed the law to make driving around in a rental car legal.”

It’s more like taking a piece out of someone’s soul, chucking it into a machine and making it into something entirely different. Ugly. Inhuman.

The commission’s report seems to be an absurdist text. The argument for watering down copyright is that it will lead to more innovation. But the explicit purpose of the Copyright Act is to protect innovation, in the form of creative endeavour.

Our work is being devalued, dismissed and destroyed; our livelihoods demolished.

In this age of techno-capitalism, it appears the only worthwhile innovation is being built by the “brogrammers”.

US companies are pinching Australian content, using it to train their models, then selling it back to us. It’s an extractive industry: neocolonialism, writ large."

The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism; The New York Times, August 21, 2025

 David Brooks , The New York Times; The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism

"A few months ago, I had lunch with a young lady who said, “The difference is that in your generation you had something to believe in, but in ours we have nothing.” She didn’t say it bitterly, just as a straightforward acknowledgment of her worldview.

Faith in God has been on the decline for decades; so has social trust, faith in one another; so has faith in a dependable career path. A recent Gallup poll showed that faith in major American institutions is now near its lowest point in the 46 years Gallup has been measuring these things. But the core of nihilism is even more acidic; it is the loss of faith in the values your culture tells you to believe in.

As Skyler and I exchanged emails, I was reminded of an essay the great University of Virginia sociologist James Davison Hunter wrote last year for The Hedgehog Review. He, too, identified nihilism as the central feature of contemporary culture: “A nihilistic culture is defined by the drive to destroy, by the will to power. And that definition now describes the American nation.”

He pointed to our culture’s pervasive demonization and fearmongering, with leaders feeling no need to negotiate with the other side, just decimate it. Nihilists, he continued, often suffer from wounded attachments — to people, community, the truth. They can’t give up their own sense of marginalization and woundedness because it would mean giving up their very identity. The only way to feel halfway decent is to smash things or at least talk about smashing them. They long for chaos.

Apparently, the F.B.I. now has a new category of terrorist — the “nihilistic violent extremist.” This is the person who doesn’t commit violence to advance any cause, just to destroy. Last year, Derek Thompson wrote an article for The Atlantic about online conspiracists who didn’t spread conspiracy theories only to hurt their political opponents. They spread them in all directions just to foment chaos. Thompson spoke with an expert who cited a famous line from “The Dark Knight”: “Some men just want to watch the world burn.”"

We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?; The Guardian, August 22, 2025

 Francine Prose , The Guardian; We shouldn’t focus on ‘how bad slavery was’ says Trump. What’s next?

"The attack on museums, like the assault on education, is meant to convince us that the truth doesn’t matter, that there is no truth, that the wisest course is to blindly accept and repeat whatever lies an authoritarian government chooses to tell.

There’s some disagreement about who first said: “Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it.” Some claim it was Winston Churchill, others attribute it to George Santayana. But does anyone doubt its veracity?

Perhaps the most nightmarish explanation is that our current administration actually wants us to repeat the most loathsome events of our common past – and to be assured that every act of brutality will disappear from our collective consciousness. There’s a terrifying kind of freedom in knowing that our most odious deeds will be erased from our historical memory, that what we do now will have no consequences – indeed, no reality – in the years to come.

According to the “historically accurate” museum exhibits and history books of the future, there will have been no slavery, there was no discrimination, there were no massacres of our Indigenous population. There was never a time when hard-working, law-abiding immigrant families were separated, when yet more children were stolen from their parents, when, according to the current estimate, 80,000 people – most of them entirely innocent – were imprisoned, when thousands more were kidnapped off the streets and deported from a country they had labored so hard to benefit. And none of this will be mentioned, none of this can be said or written on a wall text, lest we allow the unpatriotic ideologues to make America look bad."

Cornhusker copyright? Getting the facts on the name of Nebraska's new ICE detention facility; KETV, August 20, 2025

  

Waverle Monroe, KETV; Cornhusker copyright? Getting the facts on the name of Nebraska's new ICE detention facility

[Kip Currier: How crass and unnecessarily demeaning it is for ICE to use the name Cornhusker Clink to refer to a detention facility. This administration, unsurprisingly given its past actions, continues to be more focused on alliterative branding and merchandising opportunities (recall Alligator Alcatraz) than modeling professionalism in the ways it communicates a commitment to treating all detainees with dignity and respect.]

[Excerpt]

"The U.S. Department of Homeland Security dubbed the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility as the "Cornhusker Clink." 

You can't hear the word Cornhusker without thinking of the University of Nebraska.

Many on social media questioned the legality of using the name Cornhusker for the facility. Now KETV is helping you get the facts."

‘Deeply concerning’: reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%, new study says; The Guardian, August 20, 2025

 Benjamin Lee, The Guardian ; ‘Deeply concerning’: reading for fun in the US has fallen by 40%, new study says

"“Reading has historically been a low-barrier, high-impact way to engage creatively and improve quality of life,” Sonke said. “When we lose one of the simplest tools in our public health toolkit, it’s a serious loss.”

While all groups saw a decline, there were bigger drops among certain groups such as Black Americans, people with lower incomes or education levels, and those in rural areas. More women than men also continue to read for fun.

Daisy Fancourt, study co-author, said: “Potentially the people who could benefit the most for their health – so people from disadvantaged groups – are actually benefiting the least.”

The study also showed that those who read for pleasure have tended to spend even more time reading than before and that the number of those who read with their children hasn’t changed.

“Our digital culture is certainly part of the story,” Sonke said of explanations to the figures. “But there are also structural issues – limited access to reading materials, economic insecurity and a national decline in leisure time. If you’re working multiple jobs or dealing with transportation barriers in a rural area, a trip to the library may just not be feasible.”

Last year in the US, sales of physical books rose slightly after two years of declines. Adult fiction was the main driver, with Kristin Hannah’s The Women leading the pack.

The literacy level in the US is estimated to be about 79%, which ranks as 36th globally."

Trump Wants Universities to Show Him the Money, or No Deal; The New York Times, August 19, 2025

 Michael C. Bender, Alan Blinder and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times; Trump Wants Universities to Show Him the Money, or No Deal

 "Critics have likened Mr. Trump’s methods to extortion."

Trump, 79, Tells Smithsonian to Stop Saying ‘How Bad Slavery Was’; The Daily Beast, August 19, 2025

 Josh Fiallo  , The Daily Beast; Trump, 79, Tells Smithsonian to Stop Saying ‘How Bad Slavery Was’

"POTUS posted a bizarre screed on Tuesday about museums in Washington, claiming the Smithsonian Institution is “OUT OF CONTROL” and is fixated on the shortcomings of yesteryear, like documenting the horrors of slavery.

“The Museums throughout Washington, but all over the Country are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE,’” he wrote on Truth Social. “Everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been—Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future.”...

The president’s complaints did not go unnoticed by lawmakers. California congresswoman and Congressional Black Caucus Whip Sydney Kamlager-Dove retweeted Trump’s message with her own, which stated: “Slavery WAS bad, Donald. It’s absurd that this even needs to be said.”

“We don’t whitewash history,” she continued, “we learn from it.” Before adding: “You keep trying to rewrite the past—@TheBlackCaucus won’t let you get away with it.""

Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine; BBC, August 17, 2025

 Joel Gunter, BBC ; Resignation and betrayal: What handing Donbas to Putin would mean for Ukraine

"For Ukrainians, polling shows security guarantees are an absolutely vital part of any potential agreement on territory or anything else.

"People in Ukraine will accept various forms of security guarantees," said Anton Grushchetsky, the director of Kyiv's International Institute for Sociology, "but they require them."

For Yevhen Tkachov, the emergency worker in Kramatorsk, exchange of territory could only be considered with "real guarantees, not just written promises".

"Only then, more or less, I am in favour of giving Donbas to Russia," he said. "If the British Royal Navy is stationed in the port of Odesa, then I agree."

As various paths to peace are floated and discussed, sometimes in the deal-making style preferred by President Trump, there is a risk of losing sight of the real people involved – people who have already lived through a decade of war and who may stand to lose even more now in exchange for peace.

Donbas was a place full of Ukrainians from all different walks of life, said Vitalii Dribnytsia, a Ukrainian historian. "We are not just talking about culture, about politics, about demographics, we are talking about people," he said.

Donetsk might not have the cultural reputation of somewhere like Odesa, Mr Drinytsia said. But it was Ukraine. "And any corner of Ukraine, regardless of whether it has some great cultural significance or not, is Ukraine," he said."