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  

Former Guy inciting insurrection and sedition

Trump and the Capitol Insurrection: What could a trial look like? |By Rob Miraldi, echo opinion published in the New Jersey Herald.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve seen a riot at the U.S. Capitol and the failed impeachment of the 45th former president of the United States. But today we begin the trial of Donald John Trump for inciting a mob of thousands of insurrectionists to overrun, ransack the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. 

Former Guy incited a mob of thousands of insurrectionists!

This hypothetical trial begins in federal court in Washington, D.C.

Federal trials are not televised but our broadcast team is able to give you a virtual account of what is taking place as the former president goes on trial. With a jury now in place, the government’s lead prosecutor will present his opening statement. Wait, he is about to begin. Let’s go listen.

* * *
Good morning members of the jury. The people of Washington, D.C., indeed the citizens of America, thank you for serving here on this momentous but sad day. The people of the United States have been forced to confront and charge our 45th president with inciting thousands of citizens to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6.

It was the first time since 1814, that the revered U.S. Capitol was invaded. And it was certainly the first time such invaders were inspired, nay, asked (!) by the President to resort to violence to get their political way which, in short, was to stop the U.S. Congress from certifying that the defendant, Donald Trump, had lost the election of 2020, a fact he simply could not concede.

I’m sorry to say: the result of his exhortation caused the death of four people that day. I am sorry to say that two capitol police officers, who faced the brunt of the violence, committed suicide and that 140 people were injured, some seriously. And I’m sorry to say that $30 million in damage was done to the historic Capitol.

As much as anything, I’m sorry to say that because of Donald Trump’s inciting language — on January 6 and for many weeks before — democracy was left in tatters, the American people shocked and angered, and the world repulsed. Today we begin to lay out the case against the former president — and seek justice, as the law not only permits, but urges.

18 U.S. Code 373: Solicitation to commit a crime of violence. We will show Trump violated that law. You cannot “solicit, command, induce, or persuade” other persons to “use or threaten use of physical force against property or other persons.” It is the law.

We will show that the former president had one goal: to stop Congress from doing its solemn duty of certifying the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the 46th president. Remember, Jan. 6 was the day the certification was to take place. In fact, the president moved up the date of his “rally” to coincide with the certification.

His first hope was that Vice President Mike Pence, even though it wasn’t in his power, would deny certification. When Pence refused, he called out his supporters, imploring them to storm the building and “fight like hell.” “Trial by combat,” his attorney Rudolph Giuliani called it. Once in the hallowed halls, the rioters could halt the certification. It was a coup attempt, fueled by a call to violence by the former president. A clear violation of federal law.

And we might as well get to the ex-president’s defense. He will invoke the 45 words of the Constitution’s First Amendment. He will say he’s free to attack the election as a fraud and a massive steal. And he is correct. That is his right.

But what he doesn’t have the right to do is cross over from protected speech to illegal conduct. To move from speech to action that led directly to the attack on the capitol. Free speech does not mean you can incite people to commit violence, a principle long established in law.

The defense will repeatedly cite the name Brandenburg because that’s the 1969 Supreme Court case when the court tersely ruled on incitement to violence. Incitement is not criminal, the court said, unless the government can prove the speaker intended to cause violence; that there was a likelihood that such violence would occur; and that the violence was imminent.

We will offer witnesses, documents and videos that prove all three of those elements.  The President’s track record is nothing to be proud of. When he speaks in a city, violence often follows. Leading up the Jan. 6 conflagration, he said it would be a “wild” day and told aides the night before that 10,000 troops might not be enough to stop a melee. He knew what was coming. He was giddy the day of the riot, shocking even his closest aides as he sat by for hours doing nothing to help the capitol police.

We understand an incitement to violence prosecution will fail if the violence advocated is for some distant date. But the President spoke at noon, and the violence began an hour later. Oh yes, violence was imminent. And when he finally did address the rioters at 4:17 p.m., he ended saying, “We love you.” 

As for likelihood that it would occur: we must look at the relationship between a speaker and those he exhorts to violence.  These people — many of whom have been arrested— consistently say the president called them to Washington from all over the U.S.  To say they were “chummed up,” like fish being fed bait, is an understatement. They will testify.

Remember, this is a charismatic person who has a special relationship with the followers he calls “the base.” His claimed Mexicans crossing the border were “rapists” and that white nationalists at Charlottesville, Virginia, were “good people.” Those claims endeared him to that base. They were ready to follow him anywhere. This is the president who had said for months, despite legal loss after legal loss, that the election was stolen. The former president lit the fuse to use the base to block a legal election.

The First Amendment in the U.S. Constitution is a beautiful thing, my fellow citizens; most of all it’s meant to protect important as well as trivial political speech. 

But it was never meant to allow any person to stand at the gates of the Capitol and urge people to injure police officers and hunt down elected officials as we sadly saw on January 6.

Remember, this is a man who said publicly he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York city and get away with it. We need to make sure he does not get away with inciting and causing the death of four people on January 6.

* * *
We are back in the broadcast booth now. That was a powerful opening statement; the prosecutor held back little. 

We are here with Clay Calvert, an esteemed First Amendment scholar at the University of Florida. Professor, your thoughts?

“In my mind, there’s little doubt from a lay person’s point of view that Donald Trump stirred the pot and is the cause of the Jan. 6 insurrection and riot. But that is more impeachable than it is criminal. I am trying to assess here if his words meet the test of Brandenburg.

“Trump knew his audience and their state of mind. He knew trouble could ensue. But he dances around by never explicitly using words such as assault, harm or injure. But he doesn’t need the explicit terminology. The more the audience is riled, the less need to use explicit terms of violence.

It is a worthy case to make. Let’s hope that fear of prosecution will guard against future unlawful conduct.”

Rob Miraldi’s writings on the First Amendment have won numerous state and national awards. He teaches journalism at SUNY Paltz. 

https://www.njherald.com/story/opinion/columnists/2021/03/12/trump-and-capitol-riot-what-could-trial-look-like-opinion/6944952002/