Jeet Heer The public overwhelmingly opposes the genocide, but the political elites help keep it going. Something has to give. The post The Gaza Genocide Is a Test for American Democracy appeared first on The Nation.
Jeet Heer On The Time of Monsters: Greg Sargent on the New York mayoral candidate’s peerless digital efforts. The post Zohran Mamdani’s Social Media Triumph appeared first on The Nation.
The world can rest a little easier, because President Donald Trump has finally weighed in on actress Sydney Sweeney’s American Eagle ad that has the internet up in arms. And, naturally, the deciding factor for the president went as deep as most matters concerning the administration these days—her party affiliation. “She’s a registered Republican?!” Trump, seemingly shocked, asked reporters from the tarmac Sunday. “Oh. Now I love her ad!” Continuing, he said, “You’d be surprised how many people are Republicans. If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican, I think her ad is fantastic.” For those not familiar with the debate, Sweeney—who rose to fame on HBO’s “Euphoria”—drew ire for a blue jean ad in which she showcases her use of great puns by lambasting over her fantastic blue jeans, or, as some hear it, “genes.” “Genes are passed down from parents to offspring,” the blonde, blue-eyed 27-year-old says in one scene before the camera cuts to show off her cleavage. “My body’s composition is determined by my genes.” Overall, however, American Eagle’s entire messaging plastered over a busty Canadian tuxedoed Sweeney is that “Sydney Sweeney has great jeans.” YouTube Video Sweeney has not publicly commented on the ad or Trump’s response, but it has been revealed through publicly available records that the actress registered to vote as a Republican in Florida in June 2024. On one side of the aisle, people have been quick to question the company for what seems to be glorifying white genetics and, in some extreme cases, others have claimed online that the ad has the remnants of a white supremacist dog whistle all over it. Then again, others have chalked it up to American Eagle just calling out Sweeney’s large breasts and tiny waist as it is—lazy writing in advertising at best. Even Vice President JD Vance jumped into the discourse last week, blasting the left for allegedly picking on a young woman just because she’s “hot.” While Trump and his right-hand man can chalk up blue jean ads referencing great genes to just being about a pretty girl, however, the president took to his social media on Monday to remind everyone that the same standard does not hold when the genetics change. “On the other side of the ledger, Jaguar did a stupid, and seriously WOKE advertisement, THAT IS A TOTAL DISASTER!” he wrote via Truth Social. “Who wants to buy a Jaguar after looking at that disgraceful ad. Shouldn’t they have learned a lesson from Bud Lite, which went Woke and essentially destroyed, in a short campaign, the Company.” Trump is referring to the car company’s ad that, without words, includes what appears to be a group of androgynous people in colorful dresses and suits: YouTube Video Bud Lite garnered massive backlash in 2023 with the inclusion of transgender TikTok star Dylan Mulvaney. While the White House has slammed the controversy over the Sweeney ad as “cancel culture run amok,” it seems as if the same is true when the tables are turned toward anything remotely resembling diversity as well. “The tide has seriously turned,” Trump said in his Monday social media post. “Being WOKE is for losers, being Republican is what you want to be. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
The District of Columbia Board on Professional Responsibility recently dropped a 111-page tome recommending that Jeffrey Clark be disbarred for his actions while at the Department of Justice during President Donald Trump’s first term. In a development that should hopefully cause consternation for current DOJ attorneys, Clark is being disciplined for his actions undertaken in his official role at the DOJ. With all the chaos of Trump’s current occupation of the White House, Clark may have slipped your mind. However, Clark was no slouch in the Big Lie era. For most of Trump’s first term, Clark was the assistant attorney general for the Environment and Natural Resources Division. He became the acting head of the Civil Division in the fall of 2020 and gave Trump a helping hand in trying to overturn the 2020 election. He’s the one who tried to get the DOJ to issue a letter he wrote, saying the department was aware of election fraud in multiple states, including Georgia. This resulted in Clark having to appear before the Jan. 6 committee, where he pleaded the Fifth Amendment, and being criminally charged in Georgia state court along with Trump and a dozen-plus others. It also resulted in the Washington, D.C., bar opening disciplinary proceedings against Clark, leading to Thursday’s recommendation that he be disbarred. Emil Bove, who has a lifetime seat on the federal bench. It might be because Clark was already facing a bar investigation that he wasn’t rewarded with a high-level DOJ job like Trump’s former personal criminal defense attorneys. Too bad, since that appears to be one pathway to a lifetime seat on the federal bench, at least for Emil Bove. He does get to be the acting administrator for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within the Office of Management and Budget, where it presumably doesn’t matter if he is allowed to practice law. No matter how loyal Clark is to Trump, no matter how much power Trump amasses, Trump can’t force the D.C. bar to let Clark keep his license. It’s the same thing for John Eastman, one of the inventors of the fake elector scheme, who is facing disbarment in California. Admission to the bar is regulated at the state level, and the federal government has no role in licensing attorneys. However, DOJ attorneys have to maintain an active bar membership in a state, territory, or the District of Columbia. Attorney John Eastman, the architect of a legal strategy aimed at keeping former President Donald Trump in power. These days, what Clark is getting sanctioned for seems almost quaint. While the D.C. bar acknowledged that Clark may have had “sincere personal concerns” about the 2020 election, he still attempted to make intentionally false statements by urging the Justice Department to issue his Big Lie letter, as he knew that the Department had not identified any election fraud issues in Georgia or other states. For the D.C. bar, this is both a slam dunk and a necessity: Clark “was prepared to cause the Justice Department to tell a lie about the status of its investigation of an important national issue (the integrity of the 2020 presidential election). Lawyers cannot advocate for any outcome based on false statements, and they certainly cannot urge others to do so. Respondent persistently and energetically sought to do just that on an important national issue. He should be disbarred as a consequence and to send a message to the rest of the Bar and to the public that this behavior will not be tolerated.” The possibility that DOJ attorneys could face attorney discipline for false statements about an important national issue made in the course of their employment should strike the current denizens of that department as an existential threat, one that Trump can’t make go away. That didn’t stop Clark from trying, however, alleging that D.C.’s attorney discipline scheme is unconstitutional and that Trump’s immunity from prosecution somehow also covered him. Needless to say, the D.C. Bar did not seem inclined to apply Trump’s presidential immunity to Clark. Clark also tried a Trumpy little separation of powers gambit, saying that the D.C. government had no right to be “second-guessing confidential internal deliberations at the highest level of the Executive Branch, including directly with the President himself in the Oval Office, regarding how to carry out the President’s core authorities under Article II.” As the D.C. Board’s recommendation explains, though, nothing about disciplining Clark is about second-guessing any executive branch decisions. It’s about whether Clark violated the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct, which apply to every lawyer admitted to the D.C. bar. “Presidential immunity” by Clay Bennett What has to be so maddening for Clark is that this sort of distraction and obfuscation works perfectly well for Trump, who continues to skirt any consequences whatsoever and who seems to be able to just yell “ARTICLE II” at the Supreme Court to get his way. But since the D.C. courts aren’t part of the federal judiciary, Clark is out of luck there. Clark also tried to get the D.C. bar to let him turn everything into a Trumpian sideshow about election fraud versus Clark’s behavior. He asked that the disciplinary board reopen the record to permit discovery about whether “the lawfare-style weaponization of government against Mr. Clark by the Biden FBI, the January 6 Select Committee, the Jack Smith investigation, and ODC [the D.C. Office of Disciplinary Counsel] was coordinated.” He also wanted to subpoena an FBI investigative database. You can almost hear the exasperation of the D.C. panel leaping off the page: “Whether the FBI should have investigated President Trump regarding the alternate slates of electors has nothing whatever to do with any of the facts relevant to Disciplinary Counsel’s charges.” No matter how Clark dresses it up, lawyers get in trouble for violating their jurisdiction’s rules of professional conduct. Clark was dinged with violations of Rule 8.4 of the D.C. Rules of Professional Conduct. Lawyers are prohibited from engaging in “conduct involving dishonesty, fraud,
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul held a press conference Monday to respond to ongoing GOP efforts to disproportionately increase Republican representation in Congress. She discussed potential Democratic strategies to combat Texas’ gerrymandering scam, including redrawing New York state’s congressional maps to offset the loss of Democratic seats. “If that’s what’s called for, I will put saving democracy as my top priority at any cost, because it is under siege,” Hochul told reporters. “Just like those who put on a uniform to fight in battles across the ages. For centuries we’ve stood up and fought. Blood has been shed. This is our moment in 2025 to stand up for all that we hold dear and not let it be destroyed by a bunch of renegades in a place called Texas.” YouTube Video Hochul joins Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has also pledged to counter Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s machinations to sabotage democracy by redrawing California’s congressional maps. Related | California Democrats have a new plan to combat GOP in the next election Texas Democrats have been preparing for this fight. On Sunday, most Democratic state legislators left the state, denying Republicans the quorum needed to pass any legislation. Texas Democratic state Rep. James Talarico accused the GOP of “trying to rig the midterm elections right before our eyes.” Abbott has since threatened to replace Democratic representatives and charge them with “bribery.”
Harvard University’s president reportedly told faculty that no deal with President Donald Trump’s administration is imminent, despite intense pressure and reports of a potential $500 million settlement. While other top universities have quietly capitulated to Trump—agreeing to broad federal demands, cutting checks, and issuing public apologies—Harvard appears to be resisting, even as it faces the most aggressive campaign yet from the Trump White House. According to The Harvard Crimson, the university’s president, Alan Garber, told faculty this week that Harvard plans to resolve its standoff with Trump through the courts, not a backroom settlement. The student paper cited three unnamed faculty members familiar with the conversation. Boston public radio station WGBH reported something similar, with sources saying the talks have been “on-again, off-again.” The campus of Harvard University, shown in 2008. The standoff dates back to April, when Harvard refused to change its admissions, disciplinary, and governance policies in accordance with the Trump administration’s demands. In response, the White House froze $2.3 billion in research funding. Then came further threats: Trump vowed to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and said he’d redirect research money to trade schools. By June, talks had resumed—though without progress. In July, Harvard began providing employment records to the federal government but refused to share information about student workers. The New York Times reported last week that Harvard was open to settling for as much as $500 million, more than double what Columbia University agreed to pay in its own deal. According to the Times, Trump was privately pressing Harvard to pay even more. The paper also said school officials believed a settlement might shield the university from further legal fights over the remainder of Trump’s term. Trump, for his part, said in June that a deal might come “over the next week or so.” That window has long passed, and he’s since told aides he won’t approve any agreement unless Harvard offers many millions. Harvard’s student paper pushed back on the Times’ story, however. One faculty member told The Crimson that Garber denied Harvard was willing to spend that much, and claimed the leak came from the White House. Still, the Times says it stands by its reporting. “A Harvard spokesperson declined to comment but disputed the characterization of Garber’s remarks after publication,” The Crimson wrote. People walk between buildings on the campus of Harvard University in December. The paper added that Garber and other officials have insisted they won’t accept any deal that threatens Harvard’s academic freedom. What remains unclear is what Garber believes that entails. Meanwhile, the university has taken steps to appease the Trump administration: eliminating diversity offices, cutting ties with a Palestinian university, promising partnerships with Israeli schools, and granting Garber greater centralized disciplinary authority. Harvard is currently in court battling Trump on multiple fronts. It’s challenging the freeze on research funds and fighting the administration’s attempt to shut down international student enrollment. So far, judges have sided with the university, but Trump has vowed to appeal. One by one, other elite universities—Columbia, Brown University, and the University of Pennsylvania—have made deals with Trump to recover their funding and end investigations. But Harvard, which has faced the harshest attacks, hasn’t gone that route. As other schools settle and surrender ground, pressure on Harvard to do the same increases. However, alumni, faculty, and free speech advocates are urging Garber to stand firm, warning that cutting a deal now could set a dangerous precedent—one that rewards capitulation and punishes academic independence. They’re not wrong. As other universities bend, pressure mounts—and the message is clear: resistance might cost everything. On Monday, the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University published a sharp critique of recent settlement agreements and warned other schools—including Harvard—not to cave. The institute called the deals “an astonishing transfer of autonomy and authority to the government—and not just to the government, but to an administration whose disdain for the values of the academy is demonstrated anew every day.”
Charlamagne Tha God, co-host of the popular radio show “The Breakfast Club,” awarded President Donald Trump the show’s honor of “Donkey of the Day” on Monday. The decision followed Trump’s weekend of social media attacks after Charlamagne criticized the administration during an appearance on Lara Trump’s Fox News talk show Saturday night. “My fellow Americans, we are in a strange time right now, a time we have never seen, because the authoritarian strategy is being used against anyone who speaks out against this administration,” Charlamagne said during a lengthy breakdown explaining why Trump earned the dishonor. He pointed to Trump’s attacks on him as well as Trump’s firing of Bureau Labor Statistics commissioner after a disappointing jobs report on Friday, calling them together an “attempt to bully people into pushing false narratives.” “President Trump, do you realize the best way to get the headlines you want is to simply do a good job, is to simply do right by all Americans?” he added. Charlamagne also noted that he hadn’t even touched on the Trump administration’s racist efforts to rewrite history or the wasteful, destructive work Elon Musk did with his so-called Department of Government Efficiency. YouTube Video During Charlamagne’s appearance on “My View with Lara Trump” on Saturday, Charlamagne criticized Trump’s handling of the case against accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He also condemned the GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill” as harmful, acknowledging the massive tax breaks would benefit only people with incomes like his and higher. In response, Trump called Charlamagne a “racist sleazebag” with a “Low IQ individual” in a social media post. Trump also doubled down on his bizarre claim that he stopped five wars, which Charlamagne mocked on Monday. “He said I don’t know anything about him ending five wars. Mr. President, nobody knew that because it’s not true,” Charlamagne said. Later on in the segment, Charlamagne stated that Trump needed to be focused on two things: fixing the economy he’s broken and releasing the Epstein files—calling anything else a distraction.
A man walks past an area flooded by the effects of Hurricane Helene near the Swannanoa river, Sept. 27, 2024, in Asheville, N.C.If there’s one thing the Trump administration loves, it is using any means available to force compliance with President Donald Trump’s uniquely hateful vision for the United States—and federal Emergency Management Agency funds are ideal for this. Disasters are unpredictable, so states and cities can never know when they might need aid from the federal government. But now, if they want a chunk of $1.9 billion in grants for things like search and rescue equipment and backup power systems, affected states and cities have to refrain from “limiting commercial relations specifically with Israeli companies.” So, about that: There’s a little thing called the First Amendment, and it protects both freedom of speech and freedom of association. The government can’t compel you to associate with people with whom you disagree on ideological or religious grounds, nor can it force you to engage in speech that you object to. Indeed, that’s the entire foundation of evangelical Christian court cases demanding that they be allowed to refuse service to same-sex couples or literally anyone else that offends them. Related | Trump team keeps finding exciting new ways to weaponize FEMA Texas tried this gambit at the state level back in 2017, requiring any applicants for Hurricane Harvey rebuilding funds to say they wouldn’t boycott Israel. The ACLU had to step in to remind Texas of that pesky right to free speech. Additionally, as the ACLU of Texas legal director explained, such a requirement is “reminiscent of McCarthy-era loyalty oaths requiring Americans to disavow membership in the Communist party and other forms of ‘subversive’ activity.” The administration keeps using fealty to Israel as a cudgel, equating any opposition to Israel’s actions as antisemitism. But it’s a hollow assertion belied by the administration’s own actions. Presumably, a genuine commitment to combating antisemitism would require not tapping openly antisemitic people for high-level jobs in the administration. Instead, we’ve got Paul Ingrassia as head of the Office of Special Counsel—despite Ingrassia’s connections to extremist troll Andrew Tate, who routinely engages in antisemitic rhetoric and has performed Nazi salutes. Ingrassia is also a big fan of Nick Fuentes, who is just a professional racist and Holocaust denier. We’ve got the communications director for the Office of Management and Budget, Rachel Cauley, who gave a long interview to Counter-Currents, an openly white nationalist website whose editor-in-chief wrote a book about Adolph Hitler’s significance to the white nationalist struggle. How about FBI Director Kash Patel, who went on Holocaust denier Stew Peters’ podcast eight times? Joe Kent, who just got confirmed by the Senate as the head of the National Counterterrorism Center, also enjoys giving interviews to Nazi sympathizers. However, the fiction that the administration is laser-focused on combating antisemitism has given it cover to do whatever it wants, so we just have to pretend Trump isn’t stocking his administration with Nazi-adjacent types. A man walks past an area flooded by the effects of Hurricane Helene near the Swannanoa river on Sept. 27, 2024, in Asheville, North Carolina. This isn’t the only way that Trump has weaponized FEMA funding. In July, FEMA told states that they are required to spend part of their allocated federal terrorism funds to arrest migrants instead. There’s also the fact that the administration took FEMA money Congress had allocated to shelter migrants and is using it to build migrant prisons instead. And of course, there’s the selective distribution of aid, which somehow always goes to red states while being withheld from blue ones. Well, states with Democratic governors have gotten some relief, but only in states that voted for Trump in 2024. This is not remotely how government is supposed to work. States aren’t obliged to agree with the president in order to get money when a disaster strikes. But given that Congress seems to have abdicated its role in overseeing the power of the purse, who is going to stop Trump from making that a precondition for anything and everything?
A daily roundup of the best stories and cartoons by Daily Kos staff and contributors to keep you in the know. Trump comforts himself with new bonkers theory to explain his economy Everything is RIGGED and FAKE, according to the president. Texas governor threatens the unthinkable to force through rigged map To hell with democracy, says Greg Abbott. Elizabeth Warren takes a jab at Trump—and he’s super pissed The Massachusetts senator is living rent-free in his head. Cartoon: Irritating screechy blowhole The windbag in chief is bloviating again. Senate GOP says yes to another former Fox News wack job Just the person you want appointed as a top federal prosecutor. So much for Trump saving manufacturing jobs Let’s marvel at his “uncanny ability to surgically hurt the very people who put him in office.” Bigoted congresswoman wants to spread hate across her home state Yikes—the worst House member you know wants to be a governor now. Click here to see more cartoons.
A cartoon by Tim Campbell. Related | New poll finds Trump in hot water over Epstein scandal
