Donald Trump and maga Republicans created a new meme named "Aunt Tifa"- a mokery about another Trumpzism invented conspiracy

HELLO❓Another idiotic Trumpian "Who's on first❓" directive.

Echo opinion letter published in the Akron Beacon Journal Ohio news:  Donald Trump aims to use terrorist label to intimidate, silence opposition | Echo opinion letter from Tracy Reiss

Donald Trump recently announced National Security Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7). This document establishes a new strategy for federal agencies to counter what it calls "domestic terrorism and organized political violence." 

Donald Trump directs federal agencies to investigate and disrupt domestic terrorism and organized political violence, particularly targeting “antifa”❓ (there is no such organization) as a “domestic terrorist organization (it does not exist❗.”

Think about what Trump is saying. The term "antifa" is short for anti-fascist- (IOW "Trumpziism"). Anti-fascist means against fascism. It therefore follows that: If anti-fascists are domestic terrorists, what is the current state of America if not a fascist regime❓

NSPM-7 represents a deliberate effort to intimidate and silence opposition to presidential abuses through fear tactics. No president can rewrite the Constitution and the safeguards we have under it. These safeguards include our First Amendment-protected freedoms of belief, speech and association; our Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable searches and seizures; our Fifth Amendment right to due process; and our right to equal protection under the laws of this country.

Donald Trump’s stupid action via NSPM-7 tells me that he’s feeling constrained in his fascist ideations by the framework of our Constitution and is looking for a way around it. NSPM-7 is unacceptable and must be resisted by those who still hold our core and basic "truths to be self-evident.”

From Tracy Reiss, in Akron Ohio

No Kings peaceful protests supported by American who value our hard earned democracy and want to keep on loving it

LIVE UPDATES: Hundreds of No Kings protesters march to downtown Houston City Hall.  Echo Houston Chronicle editorial board opinion:

“We love America,” said Jennifer Backo, 82, without hesitation. 

So why then was she standing in the heat at the edge of a Houston highway❓ “We are afraid for our democracy,” she said. “I believe in the First Amendment. People are getting fired in the government for speaking their mind.”


Mike Faulkenberry, 48, attended the protest in an inflatable bald eagle outfit with a red-white-and-blue top hat. 

So, we asked him, as well, do you hate America❓

“We love America❗” said Jennifer Backo, 82, without hesitation. So why then was she standing in the heat at the edge of a Houston highway❓ 

“We are afraid for our democracy,” she said. “I believe in the First Amendment. People are getting fired in the government for speaking their mind.”

Mike Faulkenberry, 48, attended the protest in an inflatable bald eagle outfit with a red-white-and-blue top hat. We asked him, as well, do you hate America?

“No, I love America❗” he said. “I’m prior service. I take the oath I took to protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, especially domestic, very seriously.”

The threat to the country he loves, he believes, is a descent into fascist authoritarianism. That would explain the eagle getup, only Faulkenberry said he’d tried to order a frog outfit first but none were available.

“No, I love America,” he said. “I’m prior service. I take the oath I took to protect my country from all enemies, foreign and domestic, especially domestic, very seriously.”

The threat to the country he loves, he believes, is a descent into fascist authoritarianism. That would explain the eagle getup, only Faulkenberry said he’d tried to order a frog outfit first but none were available.

Perhaps the last one had been nabbed by the woman across the feeder road who insisted on being interviewed in frog character. We asked the bouncy green, giant amphibian whether it hates America?

“No, in fact, the reason everyone is out here is because we love America, and the idea of America, so much that we’re not willing to lose our democratic republic to a wannabe king,” the frog said.

But why the frog outfit?

“The frog has sort of become the symbol of the boogeyman antifa that Mike Johnson is afraid of, almost as much he is afraid of naked bike riders,” the frog said, adding that “antifa is normal, antifascism is normal and anti-fascists are everywhere.”

Is antifascism normal❓ In the northwest suburbs of Houston❓ The area is widely considered a ruby-red stronghold. The local Cy-Fair ISD school board has a six-to-one majority of trustees who were endorsed by the Republican party.

Three of those seats, however, are on the ballot with early voting starting on Monday. The slate of candidates backed by Democrats are all former educators focused on students and support for teachers rather than culture wars. They earned the endorsement of the editorial board.

Meanwhile, Republicans have splintered. The CFISD vice president, Natalie Blasingame, is challenging the board president, Scott Henry, after he did not support pay for chaplains in schools. He also changed his mind on cuts to bus routes after several children were hit by cars.

Another protest is planned Tuesday near an event where Governor Greg Abbott is expected to speak in the area.

“It seems he’s coming into our neck of the woods because he is worried,” said Jennifer Lorenz. She co-organized the Saturday rally for Cypress/Tomball Democrats, along with Indivisible Cypress. By her count, more than 1,500 people attended.

Among the protesters was 77-year-old retired Cy-Fair teacher Sam Loomis. Does he hate America, as House Speaker Johnson suggests?

“No,” he said, and suggested that Speaker Mike Johnson is “covering up the Epstein files.”

He, too, said he was focused on the Constitution: “I’ve taught history for 40 years. I’ve been teaching the First Amendment for a long time. This is what the First Amendment says: You are allowed to gather and peacefully protest.”

He said book banning by the Cy-Fair board was a “bad look” and that the “gay community is being picked on, brown people are being picked on. It’s got to stop.”

By noon, all the inflatable creatures — three frogs, the eagle, a purple dinosaur, a pink Axolotl and multiple unicorns — had gone home. So had the free speech defenders in wheelchairs.

The Starbucks in the adjacent strip mall filled up with worn-out retirees cooling off. One of the last folks to leave was Backo. She’ll be 83 on Monday, she said.

Across the country, in the downtowns of major cities, including Houston, far larger crowds gathered. No doubt, many of those protesters hold radical views out of step with many Americans.

But on FM 1960, deep in the heart of purple suburbia, we didn’t see or hear a hint of hatred for this great country.

We saw patriots waving American flags. We saw our elders out in the heat. And their message was clear: Now is the time to speak up for the Constitution of the United States.

Donald Trump and maga Republicans must put an end to political prosecutions based on retribution. Pam Bondi must resign.

Echo report published in Washington Monthly electronic news by James Zirin.

James Comey. the former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and former District Attorney for the New York Southern District, was (barely) indicted for making false statements and obstructing Congress. 

The gossamer-thin charges, issued by a federal grand jury, came after Donald Trump pressured the attorney general to indict Comey for perjury before the statute of limitations expires next week. At issue: whether Comey lied during a Senate hearing in September 2020, about the FBI’s investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016, election, and whether his deputy, Andrew McCabe, authorized a leak to a reporter. An inspector general’s report, probably not shown to the grand jury, casts doubt that anything was untoward on Comey’s part. The president’s norm-shattering crusade against Comey included pressuring Attorney General Pam Bondi, bouncing his own respected pick for U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, and replacing him with an insurance attorney who worked on Trump’s personal defense team and has no prosecutorial experience. The former is reported to have balked at making the indictments Trump wanted. The latter seemed to have no such hesitation. That Comey may well have elected Trump in 2016, by violating Department of Justice policy and giving long, rambling remarks about Hillary Clinton’s emails—a case he closed that summer and then, with great fanfare and little evidence, reopened days before the presidential election—is one of the ironies of our era when justice can best be seen through a fun house mirror. It’s a shocking development and proof that Trump’s presidency is a revenge-driven one and is in full throttle. I suspect, with great sadness, this will not be the last of the Trumpian revenge indictments.

I came of age in the law when presidents and prosecutors were made of sterner stuff. In 1967, when I joined the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, I became steeped in the Justice Department’s tradition of non-partisan independence.

Mr. Comey would head the office after 9/11, but when I was there, the head was the legendary prosecutor Bob Morgenthau, who would later become the longtime Manhattan District Attorney. Public service was in his DNA. His grandfather was the U.S. ambassador to Turkey, nominated by Woodrow Wilson. His father was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Treasury Secretary. He was a friend and appointee of President John F. Kennedy.

No one asked me about my politics when I interviewed for the job. In fact, I was a registered Republican. The “Boss,” as we affectionately called Morgenthau, expected that we, as federal prosecutors, be guided only by the facts and the law in each case. Politics was foreign to our culture. We were lawmen, not political apparatchiks. We investigated Republicans and Democrats with equal fervor, sharing and sharing alike.

Today, under Donald Trump, tradition is seriously compromised. The Communist Manifesto predicted the “withering away of the state,” and under Trump, we are witnessing it shrivel or loom all-powerful, depending on how you look at it.

Forget that Trump has diminished if not extinguished the government’s commitment to foreign aid, medical research, Medicaid, sensible economic regulation, the environment, and the arts.

Forget the First Amendment infraction that two late-night television political satirists have been forced off the air, with two others said to be “next” as part of the crackdown on media using libel actions and threats to block legitimate mergers and acquisitions. Trivial is the footnote that in the face of public outcry, The Walt Disney Company, ABC’s parent, has announced Jimmy Kimmel’s show is back on the air. The abridgement of free speech continues. Under pressure from the government, right-wing media company Sinclair, which operates nearly 40 ABC stations across the country, says it will not restore Kimmel’s show to the airwaves it licenses. It announced it will preempt Jimmy Kimmel Live! with news programming. Nexstar, which owns roughly 30 ABC affiliates and is seeking regulatory approval from the Federal Communications Commission for its merger with Tegna, says it will follow suit.

Forget that the executive claims it has the authority to impose harsh tariffs when that power is explicitly granted to Congress by the Constitution.

Forget that Trump threatens to send the military or ICE agents to blue cities across the country to carry out law enforcement activities, even though it is illegal under the Posse Comitatus statute.

Forget that Trump has attempted to undermine the Federal Reserve’s independence by trying to fire Lisa Cook, a Biden-appointed member of the Fed’s board of governors, over a minor issue related to a mortgage application filed before she took office or that virtually all living Fed chairs and former Treasury secretaries have filed an amicus brief spelling out the grave threat posed by this president to Fed independence.

Forget that releasing all the Justice Department files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein would be a simple matter and could erase lingering suspicion about lurid details of his 15-year relationship with Trump, but most of the documents remain secret.

Forget that three Trump supporters—Trevor Milton, Carlos Watson, and Devon Archer—each convicted of securities fraud, were pardoned, potentially undoing civil penalties that could total hundreds of millions of dollars. Also, forget that the Justice Department is ignoring the investigation of Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar. Homan allegedly took a paper bag of cash, worth $50,000, to help FBI agents posing as businessmen secure government contracts related to the border.

From all this, we might swallow hard and move on.

But the final straw is that Erik Siebert, U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia, was forced out of office for refusing to indict Trump’s personal enemies after reviewing the facts and the law. Siebert resigned, though Trump claims he had fired him. Siebert, a seasoned lawman appointed by Trump himself, believed there was no crime to prosecute. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office: “I want him out.” The issue? Siebert refused to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James, who successfully went after the Trump Organization for fraud and is a key figure in much of the litigation state attorneys general are bringing against Trump. Siebert’s office was looking into Jim Comey and declined to pursue charges against him.

Siebert was a seasoned and respected career prosecutor. He began his career in 2010 as an Assistant U.S. Attorney. He spent nearly 15 years prosecuting a wide range of cases, including violent crime, international and domestic drug trafficking, illegal firearms, fraud, child sexual exploitation, illegal immigration, and public corruption. Trump appointed him interim U.S. Attorney the day after his inauguration on January 21, 2025. He received awards and accolades for his prosecutions. He was a Metropolitan Police Department officer in Washington, D.C., from 2002 to 2006. His father-in-law is a former Virginia Attorney General and a counselor to Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin.

Siebert had support from Virginia Republicans and the commonwealth’s Democratic U.S. Senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. They knew he was a dedicated career prosecutor. He had the respect of the judges in his district. When his 120-day interim term ended in May, the court unanimously reappointed him to continue in office.

Trump, the self-styled chief law enforcement officer of the country, has flagrantly abused his power. His conduct in seeking direct control over the hot-button cases in Pam Bondi’s Justice Department makes any parade of other horrors pale in comparison. We are living through a period of maximum danger for the nation.

Even before Siebert resigned, ABC News predicted that the administration would appoint a U.S. attorney to investigate James more aggressively. “It looks to me like [James] is very guilty of something,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office last week, “but I really don’t know.”

So, who would that person be, ready to do the master’s bidding? The Washington Post reported it would be Mary “Maggie” Cleary. Cleary, who has limited federal experience and has spent much of her career in the Virginia state system, joined the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in September 2025. Her LinkedIn bio states she “served in the Culpeper County Republican Committee.” She undoubtedly recognizes the immense power of the prosecutor, claiming in an essay published this year that she had been “framed” as participating in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol—an incident she says ended with her being cleared by investigators and inspiring her to pursue a U.S. attorney position.

After the Post reports on Siebert’s successor, Trump abruptly shifted his stance on Truth Social, claiming that he judged that his enemies were “all guilty as hell.” Guilty of what? If he had read the United States Code, it would probably have been the sections related to conspiracy to defraud the United States or mishandling classified documents, for which he was indicted.

Then, he proposed a different nominee, Lindsay Halligan, a “Special Assistant to the President” who has worked on the information purge at the Smithsonian. Before this, she practiced insurance law in Florida, joined his legal team, and handled her first federal case in 2022 when Mar-a-Lago was searched. She has never been involved in any prosecution. Unlike Cleary, who was somewhat qualified for an Assistant U.S. Attorney’s position, Halligan lacks the remotest experience to qualify her for this important role.

Halligan brought an indictment against Comey, and a grand jury has agreed. What now? A federal district judge might dismiss the case for lack of evidence or because this is a selective and vindictive prosecution; Trump himself has given Comey’s attorneys ammunition with his public statements. If and when the Comey case ever reaches trial, prosecutors will have the Herculean task of proving guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to twelve jurors when there’s a mountain of evidence that the prosecution was selective. And then there is always an appeal. What a waste of judicial resources!

And beyond the prosecutions of Comey and perhaps James, Trump’s push for indictments of his two enemies could undermine public confidence that other cases are being pursued for valid reasons.

Here’s the full text of what our president said:

And the follow-on to the purge of Siebert is the pressure on Maryland U.S. Attorney Kelly O. Hayes, another veteran career prosecutor. Hayes has the purported mortgage fraud case against Senator Adam Schiff, another of Trump’s enemies, and the one against his former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, for mishandling classified documents. Hayes reportedly told associates that she well understood the grave consequences if she declined to bring a case against a Trump enemy because the evidence of criminality was insufficient.

If history doesn’t repeat itself, it’s said to rhyme. In 2006, President George W. Bush fired nine U.S. attorneys for what seemed like political reasons. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, appropriately resigned over the scandal. 

As Watergate sadly proved, politics has no place in public prosecutions.

If left unchecked, Trump will transform us into a nation where criminal law enforcement becomes a political tool for the president. We tend to mock Latin American countries as “banana republics,” implying they are places where the government suppresses opposition. However, there is much to learn from Latinos about respecting the rule of law. Argentina prosecuted its former president, Jorge Rafael Videla, for crimes committed during his regime, and Brazil did the same with its leader, Jair Messias Bolsonaro. Yet, we seem unable to do even that.

Opinion by James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He also hosts the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin

Donald Trump and the Republican administration are illegally oppressing Americans' First Amendment rights without regard for free speech

Echo editorial published in The New York Times by the Editorial Board

 In 1791, the nation’s founders ratified the First Amendment to the Constitution. It would come to offer protections in the new nation essentially never seen before: the right to ask things of and to criticize the government; to express opinions, popular or not; to assemble peacefully; to practice diverse religious beliefs; and to have a free press that publishes information without fear of censorship or retribution.

This constitutional provision reflects the framers’ intent to establish a society where individuals have the ability to voice their views and participate actively in shaping the nation’s governance while holding their leaders accountable. Together, these five guaranteed liberties continue today to make the people of the United States the freest in the world.

Donald Trump and many of his (cult❗) supporters — from tech leaders like Elon Musk to populist politicians like JD Vance — 

have spent the past several years portraying themselves as free-speech crusaders. Capitalizing on the censorial strains of the left, they regularly lecture about the necessity of letting people say whatever they want, even if it’s hateful, asinine or corrosive.

That form of free-speech absolutism, which aims to defend not just favored speech but also disfavored speech, has a long and welcome role in American society. But, problem is that for all their bluster, these supposed "free-speech crusaders" have proved themselves consistently intolerant when it comes to words, ideas and perspectives they disagree with.

Over the past month Donald Trump and his allies have embarked on an expansive crackdown on free expression and disfavored speakers that should be decried, not just as hypocritical, but also as un-American and unconstitutional.

In the distorted view of the Trump Republican administration, protecting free speech requires controlling free speech — banning words, phrases and ideas that challenge or complicate government-favored speech. Officials in Washington have spent the past month stripping federal websites of any hint of undesirable words and thoughts, disciplining news organizations that refuse to parrot the president’s language and threatening to punish those who have voiced criticism of investigations and prosecutions.

Obviously, the Orwellian nature of this approach is deliberate and dangerous. This posture is not about protecting free speech. Rather, it is about prioritizing far-right ideology — and at times celebrating lies and hate speech under the guise of preventing the criminalization of language — while trying to silence independent thought, inconvenient truths and voices of dissent.

When Donald Trump announced that he was changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, for example, it seemed to be an essentially harmless bit of nationalistic chest-puffery, paling in comparison with the real damage he intended to do to national security, public health, the Civil Service and the rule of law. But then he made it clear that compliance was mandatory.

This month, a reporter for The Associated Press showed up at an Oval Office event and was barred from entering because the news organization continued referring to the gulf by the internationally recognized name it has had since at least the 16th century. That was an editorial decision that The A.P., just like The Times and many other outlets, has every right to make on its own without government interference.

Yet, the White House press office then upped the ante; it is now keeping both Associated Press (A.P.) reporters and photographers away from many press events and off Air Force One on presidential trips, making it far more difficult for the nation’s largest wire service to provide essential coverage. The A.P., to its great credit, has sued officials in the administration, saying it was doing so “to vindicate its rights to the editorial independence guaranteed by the United States Constitution and to prevent the executive branch from coercing journalists to report the news using only government-approved language.”

Federal District Judge Trevor McFadden has yet to rule on The A.P.’s request but made it clear that the White House appeared to be improperly punishing the wire service for its editorial decision. “It seems pretty clearly viewpoint discrimination,” the judge said at a preliminary hearing.

This struggle is obviously about more than the name of a body of water; the White House wants to use coercion to control how it is covered and even who gets to cover the president. On Tuesday the press office said it would begin handpicking the news organizations that cover Donald Trump as part of the press pool — a decision that up to now was made by a group representing the news outlets themselves. The White House immediately cut Reuters and HuffPost from the pool and added two sycophantic outlets, Newsmax and The Blaze.

The Trump administration’s intention can be seen clearly by looking at the way it communicates with the public. All federal contracts, job descriptions and social media posts are being scrutinized for any hint of “gender ideology,” according to a memo from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; federal employees “whose position description involves inculcating or promoting gender ideology” must be placed on leave.

The National Park Service erased the letters T and Q: from L.G.B.T.Q. references on its website describing the Stonewall National Monument in New York City. More than 8,000 federal websites, in fact, have been taken down or altered to remove concepts derided by the MAGA movement. These include thousands of pages about vaccine research and S.T.D. prevention guidelines, efforts to prevent hate crimes, prevention of racial discrimination in drug trials and disbursement of federal grants and details of environmental policies to slow climate change.

Unbelievable, The Republican Trump government won’t even describe its own museum collections as diverse. The word was eliminated from an Interior Department website describing federally owned works of art and natural history, though it has one of the broadest and most significant collections in the world.

The open hypocrisy on matters of speech is perhaps best exemplified by the actions of Mr. Musk, even before he became the Trump administration’s designated wrecking ball to crucial institutions of government. Mr. Musk has every right to say what he wants on X, a forum owned by a private company. Describing himself as a “free speech absolutist,” he said he acquired Twitter in 2022 to create “a common digital town square, where a wide range of beliefs can be debated in a healthy manner.” He seemed particularly agitated that the platform had dared to distinguish between lies — like those about Covid vaccines and the 2020 election — and verifiable truth.

But nearly immediately he began to demonstrate that the only free speech he championed was his own. Within a couple of months, he had suspended the accounts of journalists who had written critically about his business practices or the flights of his private plane. (So much for the hope he previously expressed that “even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that is what free speech means.”)

“The White House press pool exists to serve the public, not the presidency,” said Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press.

Politicians are allowed to criticize the press — that is free speech, too, and there is nothing new about it — but there is a difference between using language and using muscle. Government officials are supposed to use their considerable regulatory powers for the benefit of the public, not for personal or partisan goals. This administration, however, is mustering the arms of government to suppress speech it doesn’t like and compel words and ideas it prefers. It sees the press not as an institution with an explicit constitutional privilege but as a barrier to overcome, like an inspector
general or a freethinking Republican senator.

Members of Congress can be targeted for primaries, and inspectors general can be fired; under the same mentality, reporters need to be excluded and their bosses subjected to litigation.

Then he began suppressing access to posts with words like “transgender” and “bisexual” or ideas like Ukraine’s battling against Russian aggression and made it more difficult for users of his platform to read articles from independent news organizations, including The Times and Reuters. Purveyors of hate speech were invited to return to Twitter, which he later renamed X, and when some critics advocated a boycott of the platform in response, he moved to block them. Elon Musk even boosted his own pronouncements on X, forcing his posts to appear loudly even on the timelines of those who chose not to follow him.

And when he couldn’t quiet his critics, he sued them. He filed suit against Media Matters for America, a liberal media watchdog group that wrote about advertisements on X appearing next to neo-Nazi content, and then sued a group of prominent businesses, including Unilever and CVS, for what he said was an illegal advertising boycott of his platform. (Last year a federal judge threw out a similar lawsuit Mr. Musk brought against the Center for Countering Digital Hate.)

When the magazine Wired published the names of six inexperienced young men working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Elon Musk falsely announced on X that publication of the names constituted a “crime.” And later, illustrating the connection between Elon Musk’s aims and those of the administration, one of the loyalists that Donald Trump installed as a federal prosecutor in Washington made an inflammatory announcement that he would use his position in the Justice Department to defend claims that Elon Musk had raised.

The administration’s desire to control speech and thinking has extended to Congress, the military and college campuses. Among other recent examples:

After the office of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, conducted a webinar instructing immigrants of their constitutional rights when challenged by federal officials, Tom Homan, the president’s so-called border czar, said he had asked the Justice Department to investigate whether she crossed a legal red line by suggesting noncompliance with federal immigration officers.

The Pentagon began pulling books off the shelves of school libraries used by the children of military families if they violated Donald Trump’s new rules on not speaking about gender or racial equity issues. Among the titles subject to military review are a picture book about Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and a book by the actress Julianne Moore about a young girl coping with her freckles.

In a fact sheet accompanying an executive order about antisemitism last month, Donald Trump said he would deport legal immigrants if they joined in “pro-jihadist protests” and would cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses. “We put you on notice,” he wrote. “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” Supporting terrorism is always wrong, and antisemitism is vile in any form. Even some congressional Democrats cheered the executive order. What the administration is establishing, however, is a much more expansive legal definition of hate speech to include even just strident criticism of Israeli government policy.

The current administration may argue that these steps are simply payback for an American political left that can be rightly criticized for policing speech in recent years, from trying to shut or shout down conservative speakers to trying to enforce adherence to its own list of acceptable words and phrases like “pregnant people,” the “unhoused,” “incarcerated individuals” and “Latinx.”

But, the Trump Republican administration’s early and furious reaction to criticism and pungent speech isn’t just guilty of the same sins; it expands on them, worryingly, with the powers of the state. If the MAGA (cult ❗) movement were really confident that the American public stood firmly behind the new intolerance, then why not welcome serious news reporting or even the jeers of critics and let the best ideas win? That seemed to be what JD Vance was advocating in recent remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“You do not have shared values if you’re so afraid of your own people that you silence them and shut them up,” he said.

The Republican administration and the broader MAGA (cult❗) movement are demonstrating how they lack the confidence to permit free thinking by the American people. But, those people still have the powers granted to them more than 230 years ago by the Bill of Rights to make themselves heard.

Americans have enormous ability and enviable creativity in finding ways to speak out against Donald Trump’s repressive and hypocritical speech regime, whether on social media or in the public square. The independence of The Associated Press and other organizations to make decisions contrary to government fiat should be defended and championed. Donald Trump wants to redefine free speech with bans, bullying and fear. It’s never been more necessary to speak up. 📣❗

Another horrific example about how damaging Donald Trump is to our national heritage! He is desecrating the Iwo Jima Memorial!

Donald rump will silence opposition to his crusade against diversity. It's sickening and outrageous❗ Echo opinion published in NewJersey.com by
Rob Miraldi

The evil Donald Trump administration supported by Republican cult removed Ira Hayes' Native American heritage from the Iwo Jima flag-raising photo website.

The Department of Defense cited "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs" as eroding camaraderie and threatening mission execution.

Books on sensitive topics like the Holocaust and racism were removed from the U.S. Naval Academy library.

Vice President J.D. Vance is tasked with removing exhibits from the Smithsonian that promote ideologies inconsistent with federal policy.
The author argues these actions are a violation of the First Amendment and exemplify authoritarianism.

Ira Hamilton Hayes, born in 1923, was a Pima Indian, raised on the Gala Reservation in Arizona. The 15,000 Pima who lived there were known to be peaceful and educated when many of the Native Americans out West were not. But the Pima were treated poorly, their land relentlessly used up by the settlers. Hayes was quiet — very quiet — but also very intense. His nickname was “Chief Falling Cloud,” his favorite game was solitaire and he was an avid reader. If he was a loner, it should not be surprising. Pimas were not allowed to vote or be citizens.

Hayes lived in a one-room adobe hut with his parents and five siblings. His mother, Nancy, was a devout Presbyterian; the Bible and the American flag prominent in their home. While attending the Phoenix Indian School, each day would begin with news about World War II. The students would then rise and sing the Marine, Navy and Army anthems.

Hamilton Hayes (born January 12, 1923 – died January 24, 1955) was an Akimel O'odham American and a United States Marine during World War II.

Nine days after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Hayes enlisted in the Marines. As a corporal in a parachute battalion, he fought with 60,000 marines in the great battle at Iwo Jima in the Pacific.

On Feb. 23, 1945, when the Americans took the island, Hayes was one of the six Marines who helped raise the American flag over Mount Suribachi as photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the image that has become one of the most iconic World War II photos.

After the war, Hayes suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. He died in 1955, aged 32, of alcoholism and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. If Hayes, a hero, had any peace in the afterlife, it was disrupted last month.

On March 17, unceremoniously — as if Ira Hayes had not sacrificed for his country, fought for the freedom to believe what he wanted and be, proudly, who he was — the Trump administration ordered that any reference to his Native American heritage be stripped from the famous federal Iwo Jima photo website.

Declared the Department of Defense, “Efforts to put one group ahead of another through Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution.”

Ira Hayes is not alone in the era of Trumpism

Thus, the government reasoned, a “digital content refresh” demanded officials take “all practicable steps” to remove “improper ideology.”

Presumably the same henious ideology that led the Defense Department to take down baseball legend Jackie Robinson’s military record. Of course, on second thought the DOD said that was a mistake, not because of a change of heart but because the ensuing outrage forced its hand.

Meanwhile, at the U.S. Naval Academy in Maryland, a presidential directive ordered the removal from its library of 391 “improper” books — on the Holocaust, civil rights and racism, the Ku Klux Klan, feminism and a wide array on gender. Maya Angelou’s famous autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” was purged. Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” remains on the shelf.

Not clear is where the volumes were taken, but thus far we have no signs of a book burning. They may just be waiting because Vice President JD Vance has been put in charge of cleaning up the venerable Smithsonian Institution. Its 157 million items at 21 museums and 21 libraries will offer him lots of possibilities.

Will Lincoln’s top hat and Harriet Tubman’s shawl go? Will he take a wrecking ball to the Museum of African Art, the National American Indian Museum, the African American History Center and the American Women's History Museum?

Vance will have a ball at those since his mission is to slash funding for exhibits that promote “ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy,” including those that recognize trans people, “degrade shared American values,” or “divide Americans based on race.”

A consistent, stark disregard for the First Amendment

I wish I could assure you that purging of websites are isolated incidents, but we are only four months into this administration. And we are seeing a consistent and stark violation of both the spirit and the letter of the First Amendment guarantees of free speech.

I thought Orwell’s “1984” was fiction. Then I read the list of words that are no longer allowed to be used on federal websites. It could be comical, if not so ominous — typical of authoritarians who try to control everyone’s thoughts.

Banned words and phrases include “biased,” “Black,” “climate crisis,” “equal opportunity,” “female,” “Gulf of Mexico,” “immigrants,” “inequality,” “LGBTQ,” “marginalized,” “Native American,” “pollution,” “abortion,” “prejudice,” “racism,” “social justice,” “transgender,” “traumatic,” “unconscious bias” and “women,” among hundreds of others.

The mushrooming fear is not that the party in power today will wreck the education department or bulldoze its way to deporting immigrants or covet Greenland. We can like or dislike those policies.

The fear is the route to getting their way — silencing anyone who opposes. They will purge ideas they dislike and so chill the speech of opponents that hope for reasonable dialogue in the public space will disappear. That is what authoritarians do.

Using public relations tools to win a debate is one thing. Being better at making your arguments is the way the game has always been played. The battle for public opinion is a nasty and cunning battle built into democratic life that takes place in the open.

But, censoring the views of those you disagree with, that is exactly what the First Amendment was meant to prevent, from both sides of the aisle. It is when those who have power to silence, muffle or intimidate opponents that we cross over into fascism.

And it is arguably unconstitutional❗ The Supreme Court ruled numerous times that government is supposed to be “content neutral” when it comes to speech. In another words, it can disagree with someone’s speech but not silence them because it doesn’t like the content.

What if the speaker is the government itself

What if the speaker is the government itself❓ Can it purge ideologies and ideas it does not like? Only if the ban furthers an important or substantial government interest. Claiming to seek to silence “ideologies inconsistent with federal law and policy” is just bogus.

The Constitution guarantees equality. All I see in the government purge is racism, homophobia and intolerance, hardly bona fide government goals.

As for Ira Hayes, should a government website celebrate a man who left the seclusion of a reservation to risk his life and fight a war against the fascists? Does lauding his courage really threaten “mission execution”? Not if the mission is to enhance the equality the Constitution guarantees or to celebrate the freedom to embrace whatever ideology a citizen wants. Or to actually embrace America’s diversity.

The Constitution guarantees equality. All I see in the government purge is racism, homophobia and intolerance, hardly bona fide government goals.

As for Ira Hayes, should a government website celebrate a man who left the seclusion of a reservation to risk his life and fight a war against the fascists? Does lauding his courage really threaten “mission execution”? Not if the mission is to enhance the equality the Constitution guarantees or to celebrate the freedom to embrace whatever ideology a citizen wants. Or to actually embrace America’s diversity.

Oops, sorry Donald Trump, I am not supposed to use the word  “diversity.” I won’t say it, I will just applaud it. 

And thank Ira Hayes, Jackie Robinson and Maya Angelou. And remind them: This president does not speak for America.

Rob Miraldi’s First Amendment writing has won numerous awards. He taught journalism at the State University of New York for many years. Email: rob.miraldi@gmail.com  

Donald Trump tells Americans how he will destroy the U.S. Constitution

Echo opinion by Charles M. Blow published in The New York Times:  At a rally in Wildwood, N.J., former guy Donald Trump said that if he is re-elected, he will “immediately deport” any campus protesters who “come here from another country and try to bring jihadism or anti-Americanism or antisemitism.”

Trump Is Still at War With the Constitution

Of course, Trump dwells in linguistic imprecision (😉IOW "lies"). What does “try to bring” mean? Are we using his definitions of jihadism, anti-Americanism and antisemitism? How would those sentiments be monitored? Would the deportations be extrajudicial? Would the deportations be only of student visa holders, or would it include green card holders?

This campaign pledge — this threat — is not only unworkable; it’s ludicrous. But it’s a powerful bit of propaganda. It ties together Trump’s message of nativism and xenophobia with one of his fixations: an iron-fist approach to protests that challenge his beliefs or interests.

Trump understands, intuitively, the power of crowds, and views it as a pressing threat when aligned against him.

Former Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said Trump was furious about the protests in the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd. In his memoir, Esper wrote that in one meeting, Trump asked, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” According to Esper, Trump believed that the protests made the country — and him — look weak.

Trump has a thirst for authoritarianism because he conflates suppression with strength. In a 1990, interview with Playboy, Trump said this about the Chinese government’s response to the Tiananmen Square protests: “They were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”

It’s hard not to conclude that Trump relishes the idea of doing the same.

But what Trump seems to see as a weakness is actually one of America’s strengths, the First Amendment. It protects not only freedom of speech but also the freedom to peaceably assemble.

The First Amendment also protects the freedom of the press, which has been under constant assault from Trump. Not only have his incessant references to the news media as the “enemy of the people” helped to poison public sentiment about the trustworthiness of basic facts; he has long expressed a desire to erode press freedoms in the country in general.

During his 2016, campaign, he promised to “open up our libel laws” to allow news organizations to be more easily sued if they write what he deems “purposely negative and horrible and false articles.” There is already an avenue for litigation for false reporting, but it is the subjective “negative” and “horrible” designations that should set off alarms.

In many ways, Trump is at war with the Constitution itself.

In 2022, just weeks after announcing his current campaign, he took to social media, continuing his lie that the 2020, election had been stolen, writing: “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution. Our great ‘Founders’ did not want, and would not condone, False & Fraudulent Elections!”

In fact, one of the founders’ greatest fears was a populist demagogue.

As Alexander Hamilton wrote to George Washington in 1792, just a few years after the Constitution was ratified, “the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the country is by flattering the prejudices of the people and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion and bring on civil commotion.”

That is a rather prophetic description of the rise of Trump and the precarious point at which the nation now finds itself.

And if Trump is re-elected, some of his allies are already planning to indulge and institutionalize his authoritarian inklings. Much of what they have planned involves reshaping the executive branch and exploiting regulatory power.

But it would be unwise to think that Trump would limit himself in this way. With an obsequious Congress — which he would have if it is controlled by Republicans — he could also, potentially, enact laws that undermine the Constitution. We’ve seen this before.

In 1798, fearing a possible war with France, a Federalist Party-controlled Congress passed a series of laws known as the Alien and Sedition Acts, permitting the president to deport “aliens” and allowing the arrest, imprisonment and deportation of citizens of an enemy country during wartime. The Sedition Act made it illegal to “print, utter or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing” about the government.

As the National Archives explains: “The laws were directed against Democratic-Republicans, the party typically favored by new citizens. The only journalists prosecuted under the Sedition Act were editors of Democratic-Republican newspapers.”

The Sedition Act is no longer on the books, but it is now widely considered to have been unconstitutional. It’s alarming to see so many Americans shrug when a former president floats a similar idea.

As Benjamin Franklin printed in his newspaper, a half-century before our Constitution was written and adopted: “Freedom of speech is a principal pillar of a free government; when this support is taken away, the constitution of a free society is dissolved and tyranny is erected on its ruins.”

That appears to be Trump’s (stated❗) ambition.💥

Republican cowards must stop Trump from destroying American democracy

Trump's attempts to overturn an election are criminal.

Echo opinion letter published in The Oklahoman newspaper:

Republicans must "Dump the tRump!"

It seems Donald Trump, his legal team and supporters are constantly beating on the First Amendment as a defense against his many criminal charges. 

HELLO? 

Yelling, "Fire!" in a crowded auditorium when there is no fire is not a First Amendment right. It is a crime❗🔥 

Trump's constant harassment of those who want him tried for crimes against the United States and the citizens of our country, is not leadership, it is bullying of the worst sort. Trump's attempts to overturn an election are criminal. And as J. Michael Luttig recently discussed in an interview on the "PBS News Hour," Republican leaders and elected officials, who have continued to discount his actions or suggest our justice system has been weaponized against him in some way, have betrayed the American people and are cowards.

Those Republican cowards include all of our elected U.S. representatives and U.S. senators from Oklahoma, these individuals should have quickly and clearly called out Donald Trump for the lies he has told and continues to tell about the 2020 election. So, as Donald Trump yells, "Fire❗" our democracy is being trampled by him and those who continue to either support him or remain silent about his crimes. 

From Penny Barber, Edmond, Oklahoma

Echo warnings about right wing Christian Nationalism

Echo opinion letters warn about the dangers of Christian nationalism:

Religion News Service:  Christian nationalism is a trending topic in midterm election campaigns, with extremists and even members of Congress such as (right wing nut case!) Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene identifying with the term and others, such as Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado and Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, expressing open hostility to the separation of church and state. In the road show known as the ReAwaken America Tour, unapologetically Christian nationalist leaders crisscross the country spouting conspiracy theories and baptizing people.

Lancaster On Line:  Christian nationalism is quite simply a movement that uses Christianity as an excuse for prejudice and discrimination. It disavows many of God’s teachings and solidly opposes the concept of separation of church and state.

This country’s Founding Fathers specifically disavowed any connection between religion and government. These Christian nationalists offer nothing but division and discrimination, with no benefit to anyone. 

From Brad Tinkham in Elizabethtown, in Lancaster County Pennsylvania

Christian nationalism is the belief that the American nation is defined by Christianity, and that the government should take active steps to keep it that way.

CAP Times in Wisconsin: There has been a renewed resurgence to declare the United States a Christian nation, no longer keeping the church separate from the state.

Christian nationalists are promoting antidisestablishmentarianism.

That word has gained a renewed importance — no longer just one of the longest words in the dictionary. It refers to Christian nationalists advocating for Christian churches to receive government patronage rather than be disestablished, meaning separate from state support.

Proponents believe the church should have say and sway in our country's governance and have an official status there. There is even a movement in Congress for this.

Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado is spearheading an effort to have the United States declared Christian, preferably with her own version and vision as a foundation. She has up to 61% of Republicans in her camp. But this might in numbers does not make it right.

It's stated in the First Amendment to the Constitution that Congress can neither establish, nor prohibit the practice of religion. To declare the United States Christian would violate the establishment clause and put a de facto pariah label to non-Christian religions and the agnostics and atheists among us. These groups make up to 35% of the United States population. That is a lot of people who would be given outcast status.

Many Christian nationalists cry foul over gun control regulations. They scream that their Second Amendment rights are being violated, yet when they want to violate the First Amendment with no separation of church and state, that's OK. For them the Constitution is to be used as a convenient avenue to (selfishly) get what they want.

Bill Walters in Fitchburg Wisconsin