SAT. JUNE 28: ALL OUT TO DC |
 |
Join people from across the country for an emergency national march on Washington this Saturday, June 28 to protest and demand "Stop the War on Iran!” Trump and Netanyahu have launched an unprovoked and illegal war of aggression against Iran, threatening to engulf the entire Middle East or even the world in devastating conflict. But the people of the United States reject this war!
This demonstration is being organized by the ANSWER Coalition, National Iranian-American Council, Palestinian Youth Movement, The People’s Forum, CODEPINK, Democratic Socialists of America and many other organizations.
Trump lied when he was running for office, pretending to be a pro-peace candidate. Now, just five months into his term, he has started a new forever war in the Middle East! Trump is also lying when he says Iran was about to get a nuclear weapon — even the US government’s intelligence agencies publicly say that is not true.
Trump is partnering with wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu to carry out this assault. This is an extension of the genocide the Palestinian people have been subjected to for the past 20+ months. And Israel is an extension of U.S. interests in the region, carrying out terrible atrocities with its arsenal paid for by our tax dollars.
As he announced that he had attacked Iran, Trump outrageously said that “now is the time for peace” and wants Iran to negotiate at gunpoint. But this could spiral at any moment into an open-ended US bombing campaign, a “boots on the ground” invasion, or an all-out regional war. Now is the critical moment to protest in huge numbers and stop this war!
Join us in Washington, D.C. to demand that Trump cease all aggression against Iran, and end all aid to Israel. All out to DC on June 28! |
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
|
|
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
| |||
| |||
|
Following FBI Raid in San Jose, We Say Anti-War Activism Is Not a Crime! Sign Onto the Call Now
>>> Sign onto the statement here: tinyurl.com/handsoffantiwar
In April 2025, San Jose anti-war activist Alex Dillard was subjected to the execution of a federal search warrant. FBI agents raided his home and seized his personal electronic devices, seeking evidence of alleged ties to Russia and implying that he may have been acting as a foreign agent.
We, as the broad progressive people's movements in the U.S. and around the world, as well as members of the San Jose community, stand in solidarity with Alex against these attacks. We assert that these accusations are entirely baseless. They constitute a clear act of political retaliation against Alex's First Amendment-protected beliefs, activities, and associations.
This incident is not isolated. It reflects a broader pattern of repression by federal agencies against activists, journalists, and organizers who speak out against U.S. imperialism, war, and systemic injustice. From the surveillance and harassment of the Black liberation movement to the targeting of Palestinian solidarity organizers, the U.S. government has repeatedly sought to silence dissent through intimidation and legal persecution.
We condemn this latest act of FBI repression in the strongest terms. Such tactics are designed to instill fear, disrupt organizing efforts, and criminalize activism. But we refuse to be intimidated. Our community stands united in defense of the right to dissent and to challenge U.S. militarism, corporate greed, and state violence—no matter how aggressively the government attempts to suppress these voices.
We call on all allies, activists, and organizations committed to justice to sign onto this solidarity statement and to remain vigilant and to push back against these escalating attacks. The government’s efforts to conflate activism with "foreign influence" are a transparent attempt to justify repression—but we will not allow these tactics to silence us. We will continue to speak out, organize, and resist. Solidarity, not silence, is our answer to repression.
Activism is not a crime. Opposing war and genocide is not a crime. Hands off our movements!
Sign onto the statement here: tinyurl.com/handsoffantiwar
Copyright © 2025 Committee to Stop FBI Repression, All rights reserved.
Thanks for your ongoing interest in the fight against FBI repression of anti-war and international solidarity activists!
Our mailing address is:
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
We need a united, independent, democratically organized mass movement for peace, justice and equality in solidarity with similar movements worldwide if we are to survive the death agony of capitalism and its inevitable descent into fascism and barbarism before it destroys the world altogether!
—Bonnie Weinstein
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Russia Confirms Jailing of Antiwar Leader Boris Kagarlitsky
In a secret trial on June 5, 2024, the Russian Supreme Court’s Military Chamber confirmed a sentence of five years in a penal colony for left-wing sociologist and online journalist Boris Kagarlitsky. His crime? “Justifying terrorism” — a sham charge used to silence opponents of Putin’s war on Ukraine. The court disregarded a plea for freedom sent by thirty-seven international luminaries.
Kagarlitsky, a leading Marxist thinker in Russia’s post-Soviet period, recently addressed socialists who won’t criticize Putin:
“To my Western colleagues, who…call for an understanding of Putin and his regime, I would like to ask a very simple question. [Would] you want to live in a country where there is no free press or independent courts? In a country where the police have the right to break into your house without a warrant? …In a country which…broadcasts appeals on TV to destroy Paris, London, Warsaw, with a nuclear strike?”
Thousands of antiwar critics have been forced to flee Russia or are behind bars, swept up in Putin’s vicious crackdown on dissidents. Opposition to the war is consistently highest among the poorest workers. Recently, RusNews journalists Roman Ivanov and Maria Ponomarenko were sentenced to seven, and six years respectively, for reporting the military’s brutal assault on Ukraine.
A massive global solidarity campaign that garnered support from thousands was launched at Kagarlitsky’s arrest. Now, it has been revived. This internationalism will bolster the repressed Russian left and Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s imperialism.
To sign the online petition at freeboris.info
—Freedom Socialist Party, August 2024
https://socialism.com/fs-article/russia-jails-prominent-antiwar-leader-boris-kagarlitsky/#:~:text=In%20a%20secret%20trial%20on,of%20Putin's%20war%20on%20Ukraine.
Petition in Support of Boris Kagarlitsky
We, the undersigned, were deeply shocked to learn that on February 13 the leading Russian socialist intellectual and antiwar activist Dr. Boris Kagarlitsky (65) was sentenced to five years in prison.
Dr. Kagarlitsky was arrested on the absurd charge of 'justifying terrorism' in July last year. After a global campaign reflecting his worldwide reputation as a writer and critic of capitalism and imperialism, his trial ended on December 12 with a guilty verdict and a fine of 609,000 roubles.
The prosecution then appealed against the fine as 'unjust due to its excessive leniency' and claimed falsely that Dr. Kagarlitsky was unable to pay the fine and had failed to cooperate with the court. In fact, he had paid the fine in full and provided the court with everything it requested.
On February 13 a military court of appeal sent him to prison for five years and banned him from running a website for two years after his release.
The reversal of the original court decision is a deliberate insult to the many thousands of activists, academics, and artists around the world who respect Dr. Kagarlitsky and took part in the global campaign for his release. The section of Russian law used against Dr. Kagarlitsky effectively prohibits free expression. The decision to replace the fine with imprisonment was made under a completely trumped-up pretext. Undoubtedly, the court's action represents an attempt to silence criticism in the Russian Federation of the government's war in Ukraine, which is turning the country into a prison.
The sham trial of Dr. Kagarlitsky is the latest in a wave of brutal repression against the left-wing movements in Russia. Organizations that have consistently criticized imperialism, Western and otherwise, are now under direct attack, many of them banned. Dozens of activists are already serving long terms simply because they disagree with the policies of the Russian government and have the courage to speak up. Many of them are tortured and subjected to life-threatening conditions in Russian penal colonies, deprived of basic medical care. Left-wing politicians are forced to flee Russia, facing criminal charges. International trade unions such as IndustriALL and the International Transport Federation are banned and any contact with them will result in long prison sentences.
There is a clear reason for this crackdown on the Russian left. The heavy toll of the war gives rise to growing discontent among the mass of working people. The poor pay for this massacre with their lives and wellbeing, and opposition to war is consistently highest among the poorest. The left has the message and resolve to expose the connection between imperialist war and human suffering.
Dr. Kagarlitsky has responded to the court's outrageous decision with calm and dignity: “We just need to live a little longer and survive this dark period for our country,” he said. Russia is nearing a period of radical change and upheaval, and freedom for Dr. Kagarlitsky and other activists is a condition for these changes to take a progressive course.
We demand that Boris Kagarlitsky and all other antiwar prisoners be released immediately and unconditionally.
We also call on the authorities of the Russian Federation to reverse their growing repression of dissent and respect their citizens' freedom of speech and right to protest.
Sign to Demand the Release of Boris Kagarlitsky
https://freeboris.info
The petition is also available on Change.org
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Mumia Abu-Jamal is Innocent!
FREE HIM NOW!
Write to Mumia at:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal #AM-8335
SCI Mahanoy
P.O. Box 33028
St. Petersburg, FL 33733
Join the Fight for Mumia's Life
Since September, Mumia Abu-Jamal's health has been declining at a concerning rate. He has lost weight, is anemic, has high blood pressure and an extreme flair up of his psoriasis, and his hair has fallen out. In April 2021 Mumia underwent open heart surgery. Since then, he has been denied cardiac rehabilitation care including a healthy diet and exercise.
Donate to Mumia Abu-Jamal's Emergency Legal and Medical Defense Fund, Official 2024
Mumia has instructed PrisonRadio to set up this fund. Gifts donated here are designated for the Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical and Legal Defense Fund. If you are writing a check or making a donation in another way, note this in the memo line.
Send to:
Mumia Medical and Legal Fund c/o Prison Radio
P.O. Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94103
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Updates From Kevin Cooper
A Never-ending Constitutional Violation
A summary of the current status of Kevin Cooper’s case by the Kevin Cooper Defense Committee
On October 26, 2023, the law firm of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, LLP wrote a rebuttal in response to the Special Counsel's January 13, 2023 report upholding the conviction of their client Kevin Cooper. A focus of the rebuttal was that all law enforcement files were not turned over to the Special Counsel during their investigation, despite a request for them to the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office.
On October 29, 2023, Law Professors Lara Bazelon and Charlie Nelson Keever, who run the six member panel that reviews wrongful convictions for the San Francisco County District Attorney's office, published an OpEd in the San Francisco Chronicle calling the "Innocence Investigation” done by the Special Counsel in the Cooper case a “Sham Investigation” largely because Cooper has unsuccessfully fought for years to obtain the police and prosecutor files in his case. This is a Brady claim, named for the U.S. Supreme court’s 1963 case establishing the Constitutional rule that defendants are entitled to any information in police and prosecutor's possession that could weaken the state's case or point to innocence. Brady violations are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. The Special Counsel's report faults Cooper for not offering up evidence of his own despite the fact that the best evidence to prove or disprove Brady violations or other misconduct claims are in those files that the San Bernardino County District Attorney's office will not turn over to the Special Counsel or to Cooper's attorneys.
On December 14, 2023, the president of the American Bar Association (ABA), Mary Smith, sent Governor Gavin Newsom a three page letter on behalf of the ABA stating in part that Mr.Cooper's counsel objected to the state's failure to provide Special Counsel all documents in their possession relating to Mr.Cooper's conviction, and that concerns about missing information are not new. For nearly 40 years Mr.Cooper's attorneys have sought this same information from the state.
On December 19, 2023, Bob Egelko, a journalist for the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article about the ABA letter to the Governor that the prosecutors apparently withheld evidence from the Governor's legal team in the Cooper case.
These are just a few recent examples concerning the ongoing failure of the San Bernardino County District Attorney to turn over to Cooper's attorney's the files that have been requested, even though under the law and especially the U.S. Constitution, the District Attorney of San Bernardino county is required to turn over to the defendant any and all material and or exculpatory evidence that they have in their files. Apparently, they must have something in their files because they refuse to turn them over to anyone.
The last time Cooper's attorney's received files from the state, in 2004, it wasn't from the D.A. but a Deputy Attorney General named Holly Wilkens in Judge Huff's courtroom. Cooper's attorneys discovered a never before revealed police report showing that a shirt was discovered that had blood on it and was connected to the murders for which Cooper was convicted, and that the shirt had disappeared. It had never been tested for blood. It was never turned over to Cooper's trial attorney, and no one knows where it is or what happened to it. Cooper's attorneys located the woman who found that shirt on the side of the road and reported it to the Sheriff's Department. She was called to Judge Huff's court to testify about finding and reporting that shirt to law enforcement. That shirt was the second shirt found that had blood on it that was not the victims’ blood. This was in 2004, 19 years after Cooper's conviction.
It appears that this ongoing constitutional violation that everyone—from the Special Counsel to the Governor's legal team to the Governor himself—seems to know about, but won't do anything about, is acceptable in order to uphold Cooper's conviction.
But this type of thing is supposed to be unacceptable in the United States of America where the Constitution is supposed to stand for something other than a piece of paper with writing on it. How can a Governor, his legal team, people who support and believe in him ignore a United States citizen’s Constitutional Rights being violated for 40 years in order to uphold a conviction?
This silence is betrayal of the Constitution. This permission and complicity by the Governor and his team is against everything that he and they claim to stand for as progressive politicians. They have accepted the Special Counsel's report even though the Special Counsel did not receive the files from the district attorney that may not only prove that Cooper is innocent, but that he was indeed framed by the Sheriff’s Department; and that evidence was purposely destroyed and tampered with, that certain witnesses were tampered with, or ignored if they had information that would have helped Cooper at trial, that evidence that the missing shirt was withheld from Cooper's trial attorney, and so much more.
Is the Governor going to get away with turning a blind eye to this injustice under his watch?
Are progressive people going to stay silent and turn their eyes blind in order to hopefully get him to end the death penalty for some while using Cooper as a sacrificial lamb?
An immediate act of solidarity we can all do right now is to write to Kevin and assure him of our continuing support in his fight for justice. Here’s his address:
Kevin Cooper #C65304
Cell 107, Unit E1C
California Health Care Facility, Stockton (CHCF)
P.O. Box 213040
Stockton, CA 95213
www.freekevincooper.org
Call California Governor Newsom:
1-(916) 445-2841
Press 1 for English or 2 for Spanish,
press 6 to speak with a representative and
wait for someone to answer
(Monday-Friday, 9:00 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. PST—12:00 P.M. to 8:00 P.M. EST)
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
Resources for Resisting Federal Repression
https://www.nlg.org/federalrepressionresources/
Since June of 2020, activists have been subjected to an increasingly aggressive crackdown on protests by federal law enforcement. The federal response to the movement for Black Lives has included federal criminal charges for activists, door knocks by federal law enforcement agents, and increased use of federal troops to violently police protests.
The NLG National Office is releasing this resource page for activists who are resisting federal repression. It includes a link to our emergency hotline numbers, as well as our library of Know-Your-Rights materials, our recent federal repression webinar, and a list of some of our recommended resources for activists. We will continue to update this page.
Please visit the NLG Mass Defense Program page for general protest-related legal support hotlines run by NLG chapters.
Emergency Hotlines
If you are contacted by federal law enforcement, you should exercise all of your rights. It is always advisable to speak to an attorney before responding to federal authorities.
State and Local Hotlines
If you have been contacted by the FBI or other federal law enforcement, in one of the following areas, you may be able to get help or information from one of these local NLG hotlines for:
Portland, Oregon: (833) 680-1312
San Francisco, California: (415) 285-1041 or fbi_hotline@nlgsf.org
Seattle, Washington: (206) 658-7963
National Hotline
If you are located in an area with no hotline, you can call the following number:
National NLG Federal Defense Hotline: (212) 679-2811
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
1) ‘An Existential Threat’: Food Banks Brace for Fallout From Trump Cuts
New York City food banks aren’t sure how they will survive the administration’s funding cuts, which could also affect the programs they turn to for help.
By Sarah Maslin Nir, June 22, 2025
Delcina Williams, right, and her sister Doreena Davidson. Ms. Williams, 75, looks for beans at food banks to make soup after she runs out of money each month. Anna Watts for The New York Times
Dressed in heels to run errands, or surrounded by tasteful art in her chicly decorated apartment, Delcina Williams maintains a public facade that defies her reality. She is by many measures destitute, reliant on food stamps and an $1,100 monthly Social Security check that she said leaves her with only a handful of dollars a day for food after rent, utilities and caring for her twin sister, who has Alzheimer’s.
Ms. Williams, 75, said she was once an editor for a fashion magazine and a doo-wop singer. She and her twin, Doreena Davidson, are breast cancer survivors. But now Ms. Williams spends her days going from food bank to food bank, seeking navy beans and split peas for soup — a meal that can stretch after she inevitably runs out of money each month.
It is, she said, a demoralizing experience. And recent moves in Washington to cut federal funding for food benefits have filled many New Yorkers like Ms. Williams with mounting panic.
“It’s tearing me up already,” Ms. Williams said as she carted home 16 ounces of frozen ground beef, four cans of tuna fish, scallions and oranges from the Food Bank for NYC Community Kitchen and Pantry on West 116th Street in Harlem. “Every month I’m praying to my bank account.”
A new bill championed by President Trump calls for cutting $295 billion in federal spending over the next decade from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP or food stamps, according to the Congressional Budget Office. “What are we supposed to do?” Ms. Williams said. “I know he doesn’t need it, but the rest of us do.”
More than 65 percent of food pantry users are employed, according to the Poverty Tracker by Robin Hood, an anti-poverty group, and Columbia University. Experts say that is a reflection of the city’s affordability crisis. Average monthly visits to pantries and soup kitchens have shot up 85 percent since 2019, according to an analysis of FeedNYC data by City Harvest, a food rescue nonprofit. Almost three million New Yorkers struggle to put food on the table, according to data from Feeding America, a philanthropic organization.
On top of surging demand, food banks also anticipate increased prices because of tariffs on steel that have raised the cost of canned food.
But even as the need has skyrocketed, the banks’ ability to meet it has abruptly fallen. In March, the Department of Government Efficiency took aim at Biden-era initiatives that had provided over $1 billion in grants to states to buy local food. Trump administration-backed cuts of the Emergency Food Assistance Program hacked away millions of pounds of deliveries to food banks.
“I have honestly never been as concerned as I am now,” said Randi Dresner, the president and chief executive of Island Harvest Food Bank, which serves Long Island.
The $2 million grant program Island Harvest used to buy products from Long Island farmers, the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, will end this summer instead of next as originally planned. No new grants will be issued after current funding expires. And the Trump administration’s 2026 budget proposal would eliminate the Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and the more than $1 million the food bank uses to supply monthly food boxes to about 6,000 older people. Another $1.7 million that the organization was supposed to receive from the program this year was also frozen.
“There is a broad-brush cutting across all social services,” Ms. Dresner said. “That concerns me for our neighbors that are most vulnerable.”
The results of Trump administration policies have already been dramatic for food banks like the Regional Food Bank of Northeastern New York, which serves about 48 million meals a year — 20 million more than before the pandemic — according to Thomas A. Nardacci, the chief executive officer.
Every year, the Regional Food Bank receives 400 tractor-trailers of food from the U.S.D.A.’s emergency assistance program — strawberries from California, citrus from Florida and meat from the Midwest. But cuts to the program will slice the number of trucks in half, costing about 5.8 million meals. This year, 27 trailers, equal to about 750,000 meals, have already been canceled.
“The whole charitable food system, we are all living in fear right now,” Mr. Nardacci said. “Because the need is as high as ever.”
The potential cuts to food stamps are also a major concern. New rules would further restrict who is eligible and expand the group of recipients who are required to have jobs to qualify. The version of the bill approved by the House of Representatives also proposes to divert some of the costs of the program to the states.
Under the scheme, New York would have to bear about a quarter of the cost. “The idea that we would be punished by the federal government with a 25 percent cost share, which would cost us $1.8 billion, is really an existential threat to the idea of SNAP being a safety net,” said Nicole Hunt, the director of public policy and advocacy for Food Bank for NYC.
Food banks say they are scrambling.
“Which issue do you fight first?” said David G. Greenfield, the chief executive officer and executive director of Met Council, which provides kosher and halal food to over 600 distribution sites. “You are going to fight SNAP cuts that is going to reduce millions of meals around the country? Or do you fight the actual food cuts? Or do you fight the tariff challenges?
“It is like dealing with water from a fire hose.”
Many food bank leaders have been frantically lobbying Washington, they say, with little to show for their efforts. Recently, at a summit in Albany that was supposed to be about food procurement, anxiety about the proposed cuts dominated the conversation, Ms. Hunt said.
Zac Hall, the senior vice president of Food Bank for NYC’s programs, said, “The amount of void that will be created by these SNAP cuts is insurmountable.”
For people already on the edge, there is little room to absorb further cuts. Ms. Williams, who lives in public housing in Harlem with her twin sister, is trying to figure out how to survive.
As she stirred the black bean soup that she hoped would last them the week, Ms. Williams said she felt helpless. But there was something she could do: From her food pantry haul she removed a few loaves of French bread and some greens and hung the bag of produce on her neighbor’s door.
They need the help too.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
2) Vera Rubin’s Legacy Lives On in a Troubled Scientific Landscape
A powerful new telescope will usher in a new era of cosmic discovery, but in a political climate vastly different from when it was named for a once overlooked female astronomer.
By Katrina Miller, June 22, 2025
Katrina Miller visited the Vera C. Rubin Observatory atop Cerro Pachón in Chile in May.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachón, Chile. Credit...Marcos Zegers for The New York Times
In January, the American Astronomical Society hosted a panel to discuss how the Vera C. Rubin Observatory would transform scientific studies of dark matter, dark energy and the faintest corners of the cosmos.
All six panelists, each holding a leadership role related to the observatory, were women.
The message, intentional or not, was clear: The legacy of the astronomer Vera C. Rubin, for whom the observatory was named, was not just the way her work revolutionized scientists’ understanding of the universe. It was also the way Dr. Rubin charted a path for women and other historically underrepresented groups in science to do the same.
“The universe is universal,” Sandrine Thomas, the deputy director of construction at the observatory, said at the panel.
The telescope is now poised to begin the widest, deepest scan of the southern sky in an altered political climate, one in which American science is facing sharp cuts to funding, research project cancellations and rollbacks of programs related to diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I.
Astronomers worry about what that means for the future of the observatory, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation and was renamed in 2019 near the end of the first Trump administration for Dr. Rubin.
“She was the ultimate role model for women in astronomy in the generation after her,” said Jacqueline Mitton, an astronomer based in England and an author of a biography of Dr. Rubin.
That the observatory bears her name seems to have “inspired its leadership to embrace what she stood for,” Dr. Mitton added, which gives “ongoing reality to her legacy.”
In the 1970s, Vera Rubin, with her colleague Kent Ford, deduced from the swirling motion of distant galaxies that there was more to the universe than what met the telescopic eye, an invisible substance known as dark matter.
“It is one of the major achievements of modern cosmology,” said Sandra Faber, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who spent a summer as Dr. Rubin’s assistant. “Gravitationally, it’s the dog that wags the tail of everything else in the universe.”
But Dr. Rubin faced barriers as one of the few women in her field. She was discouraged from pursuing a career in astronomy and was denied access to state-of-the-art telescopes. Astronomers initially dismissed her evidence of dark matter. And though her work pioneered a new understanding of the universe, she never won a Nobel Prize, to the chagrin of many.
Many astronomers described Dr. Rubin as a staunch supporter of other women in the field.
“She will be director of the observatory one day,” Dr. Rubin wrote in a recommendation letter for Dr. Faber, who would go on to become the first female astronomer at the Lick Observatory in California. Decades later, Dr. Faber would fulfill that prophecy, in a sense, when she served as interim director of the University of California Observatories.
Astronomy and astrophysics aim to be more gender inclusive today. Part of that effort has been recognizing those whose contributions were overlooked. At federal science agencies, it has included the choice to name the observatory after Dr. Rubin, and a NASA space telescope after Nancy Grace Roman, the agency’s first chief of astronomy.
“Everyone’s heard of Einstein and Feynman and all these other male physicists,” said Leanne Guy, the data management scientist at the Rubin Observatory, who did not learn about Dr. Rubin until well into her scientific career. That’s telling, she said, “on how the contributions of women scientists just haven’t really been at the forefront of anything.”
The new observatory was formerly named the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. But in 2019, two members of Congress, Eddie Bernice Johnson of Texas and Jenniffer González-Colón of Puerto Rico, led the charge to change the observatory’s name in honor of Dr. Rubin. Their bill became law in December 2019, and the National Science Foundation announced the renaming the following January.
Astronomers celebrated the decision as a fitting commemoration of Dr. Rubin, who died in 2016.
“I thought, it’s about time,” said Hiranya Peiris, an astrophysicist at the University of Cambridge.
Dr. Peiris noted that though the number of women in science had increased during her career, the statistics are still not where she would like to see them. Astronomy’s demographics are better than in physics, she said, but “you still see a lack of senior women in very high-profile roles.”
Some viewers of the Rubin panel in January interpreted six women representing the observatory as a sea change.
Dr. Guy, one of the panelists, emphasized that she and her colleagues hadn’t been chosen to speak because they were women but because they had earned their positions.
“When I started as a university student, you never would have found a panel like this,” she said. “This is a really visible and concrete reflection of the times.”
The team running the Rubin has a history of prioritizing the values encapsulated in D.E.I. It has provided resources for child care at scientific meetings, recruited researchers from minority-serving institutions and worked to develop tools for visually impaired astronomers. Rubin’s education and public outreach program, designed to engage a diverse audience in cosmic discovery, is among the first to be fully funded in the construction phase of an observatory.
But as the Rubin Observatory ushers in a new era of science, so too has the Trump administration.
Four days after the panel in January, President Trump issued an executive order that called for an end to D.E.I. across the federal government, citing “illegal and immoral discrimination programs.”
Sweeping changes ensued across scientific agencies as they worked to comply with the order. Institutions took down webpages that had once expressed a commitment to D.E.I. Many research grants including D.E.I. activities were canceled by federal agencies, including the National Science Foundation.
Rubin was not exempt from the changes. Private messaging channels set up for L.G.B.T.Q. members involved in the observatory were temporarily retired. Language disappeared from the observatory’s website that described science as male-dominated and noted the observatory’s work to increase participation from historically excluded groups.
In May, the Trump administration proposed a budget that, if passed by Congress, would cut funding to the National Science Foundation by 56 percent. A significant reason for that reduction, per the budget request, was the elimination of D.E.I. efforts.
Later that month, staff members at the Rubin Observatory expressed concern about the future of scientific funding but were hesitant to speculate about what that might mean for the telescope.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty,” said Alan Strauss, the head of Rubin’s education and public outreach team. But so far, he said, his team has not received any pushback about their work, even as other federally funded STEM education programs have been cut.
“I’m not picking it up,” Dr. Strauss said. “What I’m getting is a lot of enthusiasm for this stuff.”
Dr. Guy said she did not plan to change her approach as a member of the observatory. “Our uniting principle is science,” she said.
Astronomers remain cautiously optimistic about Rubin’s future — both in continuing to promote the values of the woman it is named for and that the observatory will be able to reach its goals, even in the fraught funding landscape.
Dr. Rubin’s legacy, they said, will live on.
Katrina Miller is a science reporter for The Times based in Chicago. She earned a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
3) Israel widens its targets in another series of strikes on the Iranian capital.
Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, June 23, 2025
A plume of smoke billowed over Iran’s capital Tehran in a screen grab taken from a video posted on social media on Monday. Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
The Israeli military pounded Tehran on Monday with a series of strikes targeting structures that belong to the Iranian government, according to the office of Israel’s defense minister, Israel Katz.
The strikes illustrated that Israel was continuing to widen its targets. They came shortly after Iran fired missiles at Israel on Monday morning, sending Israelis running to safe rooms and public shelters for the second time in hours.
Since launching its campaign against Iran earlier this month, the Israeli military has hit Iranian nuclear facilities, scientists and senior military commanders, but it has also struck targets lacking a clear link to Iran’s nuclear program or ballistic missiles, including the state broadcaster.
According to the defense minister’s office, Israel’s strikes in Tehran on Monday targeted the headquarters of the Basij, a volunteer force under the umbrella of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps that has used brutal tactics to crack down on protests in Iran, and Evin prison, the notorious facility holding political prisoners.
Israel also struck access routes to Fordo, the heavily fortified nuclear-enrichment site that the United States bombed on Sunday, the Israeli military said.
President Trump claimed on Sunday that Iran’s nuclear program had been “totally and completely obliterated.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said that the American military caused “very big damage” to Fordo, but he clarified that Israel still did not know the full extent.
Morteza Heidari, the spokesman for crisis management in the province where Fordo is, on Monday reported an “attack on the Fordo nuclear site,” according to the government-affiliated Mehr and Tasnim news agencies. He said there was no danger to the public from the strikes, the news agencies said.
Later on Monday, the Israeli military said it had targeted other forces under the Revolutionary Guards, including ones that it described as being responsible for dealing with domestic threats. It also said it had hit missile and radar production sites and missile storage infrastructure.
The impact and extent of the strikes were not immediately clear. But videos verified by The New York Times showed the moment of the blast at an entrance into the Evin prison, and clouds of smoke emanating from a metal gate below a sign that reads ‘Evin Detention Facility’ in Farsi.
The reports of the strikes on the Evin prison caused particular concern in France because two French citizens, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, are detained there.
“We are worried that Cécile and Jacques are going to die under bombs,” Noémie Kohler, Ms. Kohler’s sister, told Franceinfo radio on Monday. “We still have no way of contacting them,” she added. “We are absolutely panicked.”
France has accused Iran of detaining Ms. Kohler and Mr. Paris for over three years on baseless spying charges and has repeatedly demanded their release.
The strikes on Evin — which is close to apartment blocks and a popular hiking route — also hit a main power line that caused outages in two large districts of Tehran, according to the national electricity company Tavanir. It said in a statement distributed broadly to government-affiliated news agencies that it was able to repair the outages within an hour.
Iranian news outlets also reported that the Israeli military hit a building near the Iranian Red Crescent Society, an emergency response service. A video posted by the government-affiliated Mehr news agency, and verified by The Times, showed smoke rising in the area. It was not clear what was in the building that had been struck.
Erika Solomon and Sanjana Varghese contributed reporting to this article.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
4) Claims of potential rights violations further strain E.U.-Israeli relations.
By Jeanna Smialek and Aaron Boxerman, Jeanna Smialek reported from Brussels, and Aaron Boxerman reported from Jerusalem, June 23, 2025
Relations between Israel and the European Union have become even more fraught after the bloc found that Israel’s actions in Gaza, including the blockade of aid to the enclave, may have violated human rights obligations.
A review by the European Union’s diplomatic service investigated whether Israel had violated a provision in a treaty that came into force in 2000 and underpins relations between the two sides. Critics of Israel have called for the bloc to suspend the treaty, accusing the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of violating the rights of Palestinians en masse. Israel has rejected the accusations.
The review referred to a number of issues that could have constituted a breach of Israel’s obligations. Those included Israeli restrictions of essential goods and food into Gaza, attacks that the report said had caused a “significant number of casualties,” and military strikes on hospitals and medical facilities.
Under the terms of the treaty, the European Union and Israel agreed that their relationship “would be based on respect for human rights and democratic principles.”
European Union member states are sharply divided on Israel, meaning that a major shift in policy may be hard to pass. But the report’s conclusions underscored growing frustrations, including among some of Israel’s closest allies, over the handling of the war in Gaza.
Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, was expected to present the findings of the review to a meeting of the bloc’s foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. The conclusions from the review were circulated among member states on Friday.
Israel strongly rejected the findings. The Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a response to the European Union, shared with The Times, that the review was “a complete moral and methodological failure,” and pointed out that it “opens with an admission that it lacks the ability to verify its own statements.”
Israeli officials defended the restrictions on aid as security measures intended to prevent Hamas from smuggling weapons or diverting aid supplies. The United Nations and other international aid agencies have criticized some of the measures as a form of collective punishment, and they say that Israel has not provided evidence that Hamas systematically diverted international aid.
The back-and-forth underscored how tense relations between the European Union and Israel have become. The situation has become more complicated after Israel launched a major assault on Iran last week, one that now involves the United States. Israel and the United States say the military attack was intended to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb. Iran says that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only, and has denied building a weapon.
E.U. officials have spoken about the conflict with Iran cautiously. Some have spoken more positively about the Israeli and American attacks, while others have held off. Many have urged a return to diplomacy to resolve the crisis.
“Everybody agrees that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon,” Ms. Kallas said on Monday as she headed into the foreign ministers’ meeting, before explaining that officials would talk both about Iran and about the report on Israel.
“And then, of course, the discussion is, what more can we do?” Ms. Kallas said of the Israel review.
Finding Israel in violation of its human rights obligations under its agreement with the European Union would be symbolically important, but it is not clear what it would mean in practical terms. Imposing sanctions, for instance, would require unanimity among member states — which is unlikely to be reached. The prime minister of Hungary, Viktor Orban, for example, is an ally of Mr. Netanyahu and would almost certainly not agree to impose restrictions on Israel.
The review has also been overshadowed by events in Iran. Some European officials and diplomats have said that the conflict with Tehran should not distract from what is happening in Gaza, but the combination of events has left Brussels struggling to agree a unified stance toward Israel.
Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, announced on Sunday that officials would hold a special meeting on Wednesday to discuss the “escalating situation in the Middle East and its effects on Europe.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
5) The Global A.I. Divide
WHERE A.I. DATA CENTERS ARE LOCATED
Only 32 nations, mostly in the Northern Hemisphere, have A.I.-specialized data centers.
As countries race to power artificial intelligence, a yawning gap is opening around the world.
By Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur Graphics by Karl Russell and June Kim, June 21, 2025
Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Cordoba in Argentina. “We are losing,” he said. Sarah Pabst for The New York Times
Last month, Sam Altman, the chief executive of the artificial intelligence company OpenAI, donned a helmet, work boots and a luminescent high-visibility vest to visit the construction site of the company’s new data center project in Texas.
Bigger than New York’s Central Park, the estimated $60 billion project, which has its own natural gas plant, will be one of the most powerful computing hubs ever created when completed as soon as next year.
Around the same time as Mr. Altman’s visit to Texas, Nicolás Wolovick, a computer science professor at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina, was running what counts as one of his country’s most advanced A.I. computing hubs. It was in a converted room at the university, where wires snaked between aging A.I. chips and server computers.
“Everything is becoming more split,” Dr. Wolovick said. “We are losing.”
Artificial intelligence has created a new digital divide, fracturing the world between nations with the computing power for building cutting-edge A.I. systems and those without. The split is influencing geopolitics and global economics, creating new dependencies and prompting a desperate rush to not be excluded from a technology race that could reorder economies, drive scientific discovery and change the way that people live and work.
The biggest beneficiaries by far are the United States, China and the European Union. Those regions host more than half of the world’s most powerful data centers, which are used for developing the most complex A.I. systems, according to data compiled by Oxford University researchers. Only 32 countries, or about 16 percent of nations, have these large facilities filled with microchips and computers, giving them what is known in industry parlance as “compute power.”
The United States and China, which dominate the tech world, have particular influence. American and Chinese companies operate more than 90 percent of the data centers that other companies and institutions use for A.I. work, according to the Oxford data and other research.
In contrast, Africa and South America have almost no A.I. computing hubs, while India has at least five and Japan at least four, according to the Oxford data. More than 150 countries have nothing.
Today’s A.I. data centers dwarf their predecessors, which powered simpler tasks like email and video streaming. Vast, power-hungry and packed with powerful chips, these hubs cost billions to build and require infrastructure that not every country can provide. With ownership concentrated among a few tech giants, the effects of the gap between those with such computing power and those without it are already playing out.
The world’s most used A.I. systems, which power chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are more proficient and accurate in English and Chinese, languages spoken in the countries where the compute power is concentrated. Tech giants with access to the top equipment are using A.I. to process data, automate tasks and develop new services. Scientific breakthroughs, including drug discovery and gene editing, rely on powerful computers. A.I.-powered weapons are making their way onto battlefields.
Nations with little or no A.I. compute power are running into limits in scientific work, in the growth of young companies and in talent retention. Some officials have become alarmed by how the need for computing resources has made them beholden to foreign corporations and governments.
“Oil-producing countries have had an oversized influence on international affairs; in an A.I.-powered near future, compute producers could have something similar since they control access to a critical resource,” said Vili Lehdonvirta, an Oxford professor who conducted the research on A.I. data centers with his colleagues Zoe Jay Hawkins and Boxi Wu.
A.I. computing power is so precious that the components in data centers, such as microchips, have become a crucial part of foreign and trade policies for China and the United States, which are jockeying for influence in the Persian Gulf, in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. At the same time, some countries are beginning to pour public funds into A.I. infrastructure, aiming for more control over their technological futures.
The Oxford researchers mapped the world’s A.I. data centers, information that companies and governments often keep secret. To create a representative sample, they went through the customer websites of nine of the world’s biggest cloud-service providers to see what compute power was available and where their hubs were at the end of last year. The companies were the U.S. firms Amazon, Google and Microsoft; China’s Tencent, Alibaba and Huawei; and Europe’s Exoscale, Hetzner and OVHcloud.
The research does not include every data center worldwide, but the trends were unmistakable. U.S. companies operated 87 A.I. computing hubs, which can sometimes include multiple data centers, or almost two-thirds of the global total, compared with 39 operated by Chinese firms and six by Europeans, according to the research. Inside the data centers, most of the chips — the foundational components for making calculations — were from the U.S. chipmaker Nvidia.
“We have a computing divide at the heart of the A.I. revolution,” said Lacina Koné, the director general of Smart Africa, which coordinates digital policy across the continent. He added: “It’s not merely a hardware problem. It’s the sovereignty of our digital future.”
‘Sometimes I Want to Cry’
There has long been a tech gap between rich and developing countries. Over the past decade, cheap smartphones, expanding internet coverage and flourishing app-based businesses led some experts to conclude that the divide was diminishing. Last year, 68 percent of the world’s population used the internet, up from 33 percent in 2012, according to the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency.
With a computer and knowledge of coding, getting a company off the ground became cheaper and easier. That lifted tech industries across the world, be they mobile payments in Africa or ride hailing in Southeast Asia.
But in April, the U.N. warned that the digital gap would widen without action on A.I. Just 100 companies, mostly in the United States and China, were behind 40 percent of global investment in the technology, the U.N. said. The biggest tech companies, it added, were “gaining control over the technology’s future.”
The gap stems partly from a component everyone wants: a microchip known as a graphics processing unit, or GPU. The chips require multibillion-dollar factories to produce. Packed into data centers by the thousands and mostly made by Nvidia, GPUs provide the computing power for creating and delivering cutting-edge A.I. models.
Obtaining these pieces of silicon is difficult. As demand has increased, prices for the chips have soared, and everyone wants to be at the front of the line for orders. Adding to the challenges, these chips then need to be corralled into giant data centers that guzzle up dizzying amounts of power and water.
Many wealthy nations have access to the chips in data centers, but other countries are being left behind, according to interviews with more than two dozen tech executives and experts across 20 countries. Renting computing power from faraway data centers is common but can lead to challenges, including high costs, slower connection speeds, compliance with different laws, and vulnerability to the whims of American and Chinese companies.
Qhala, a start-up in Kenya, illustrates the issues. The company, founded by a former Google engineer, is building an A.I. system known as a large language model that is based on African languages. But Qhala has no nearby computing power and rents from data centers outside Africa. Employees cram their work into the morning, when most American programmers are sleeping, so there is less traffic and faster speeds to transfer data across the world.
“Proximity is essential,” said Shikoh Gitau, 44, Qhala’s founder.
“If you don’t have the resources for compute to process the data and to build your A.I. models, then you can’t go anywhere,” said Kate Kallot, a former Nvidia executive and the founder of Amini, another A.I. start-up in Kenya.
In the United States, by contrast, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Meta and OpenAI have pledged to spend more than $300 billion this year, much of it on A.I. infrastructure. The expenditure approaches Canada’s national budget. Harvard’s Kempner Institute, which focuses on A.I., has more computing power than all African-owned facilities on that continent combined, according to one survey of the world’s largest supercomputers.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, said many countries wanted more computing infrastructure as a form of sovereignty. But closing the gap will be difficult, particularly in Africa, where many places do not have reliable electricity, he said. Microsoft, which is building a data center in Kenya with a company in the United Arab Emirates, G42, chooses data center locations based largely on market need, electricity and skilled labor.
“The A.I. era runs the risk of leaving Africa even further behind,” Mr. Smith said.
Jay Puri, Nvidia’s executive vice president for global business, said the company was also working with various countries to build out their A.I. offerings.
“It is absolutely a challenge,” he said.
Chris Lehane, OpenAI’s vice president of global affairs, said the company had started a program to adapt its products for local needs and languages. A risk of the A.I. divide, he said, is that “the benefits don’t get broadly distributed, they don’t get democratized.”
Tencent, Alibaba, Huawei, Google, Amazon, Hetzner and OVHcloud declined to comment.
The gap has led to brain drains. In Argentina, Dr. Wolovick, 51, the computer science professor, cannot offer much compute power. His top students regularly leave for the United States or Europe, where they can get access to GPUs, he said.
“Sometimes I want to cry, but I don’t give up,” he said. “I keep talking to people and saying: ‘I need more GPUs. I need more GPUs.’”
Few Choices
The uneven distribution of A.I. computing power has split the world into two camps: nations that rely on China and those that depend on the United States.
The two countries not only control the most data centers but are set to build more than others by far. And they have wielded their tech advantage to exert influence. The Biden and Trump administrations have used trade restrictions to control which countries can buy powerful A.I. chips, allowing the United States to pick winners. China has used state-backed loans to encourage sales of its companies’ networking equipment and data centers.
The effects are evident in Southeast Asia and the Middle East.
In the 2010s, Chinese companies made inroads into the tech infrastructure of Saudi Arabia and the Emirates, which are key American partners, with official visits and generous financing. The United States sought to use its A.I. lead to push back. In one deal with the Biden administration, an Emirati company promised to keep out Chinese technology in exchange for access to A.I. technology from Nvidia and Microsoft.
In May, President Trump signed additional deals to give Saudi Arabia and the Emirates even more access to American chips.
A similar jostling is taking place in Southeast Asia. Chinese and U.S. companies like Amazon, Alibaba, Nvidia, Google and ByteDance, the owner of TikTok, are building data centers in Singapore and Malaysia to deliver services across Asia.
Globally, the United States has the lead, with American companies building 63 A.I computing hubs outside the country’s borders, compared with 19 by China, according to the Oxford data. All but three of the data centers operated by Chinese firms outside their home country use chips from Nvidia, despite efforts by China to produce competing chips. Chinese firms were able to buy Nvidia chips before U.S. government restrictions.
Even U.S.-friendly countries have been left out of the A.I. race by trade limits. Last year, William Ruto, Kenya’s president, visited Washington for a state dinner hosted by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Several months later, Kenya was omitted from a list of countries that had open access to needed semiconductors.
That has given China an opening, even though experts consider the country’s A.I. chips to be less advanced. In Africa, policymakers are talking with Huawei, which is developing its own A.I. chips, about converting existing data centers to include Chinese-made chips, said Mr. Koné of Smart Africa.
“Africa will strike a deal with whoever can give access to GPUs,” he said.
If You Build It
Alarmed by the concentration of A.I. power, many countries and regions are trying to close the gap. They are providing access to land and cheaper energy, fast-tracking development permits and using public funds and other resources to acquire chips and construct data centers. The goal is to create “sovereign A.I.” available to local businesses and institutions.
In India, the government is subsidizing compute power and the creation of an A.I. model proficient in the country’s languages. In Africa, governments are discussing collaborating on regional compute hubs. Brazil has pledged $4 billion on A.I. projects.
“Instead of waiting for A.I. to come from China, the U.S., South Korea, Japan, why not have our own?” Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said last year when he proposed the investment plan.
Even in Europe, there is growing concern that American companies control most of the data centers. In February, the European Union outlined plans to invest 200 billion euros for A.I. projects, including new data centers across the 27-nation bloc.
Mathias Nobauer, the chief executive of Exoscale, a cloud computing provider in Switzerland, said many European businesses want to reduce their reliance on U.S. tech companies. Such a change will take time and “doesn’t happen overnight,” he said.
Still, closing the divide is likely to require help from the United States or China.
Cassava, a tech company founded by a Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, is scheduled to open one of Africa’s most advanced data centers this summer. The plans, three years in the making, culminated in an October meeting in California between Cassava executives and Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, to buy hundreds of his company’s chips. Google is also one of Cassava’s investors.
The data center is part of a $500 million effort to build five such facilities across Africa. Even so, Cassava expects it to address only 10 percent to 20 percent of the region’s demand for A.I. At least 3,000 start-ups have expressed interest in using the computing systems.
“I don’t think Africa can afford to outsource this A.I. sovereignty to others,” said Hardy Pemhiwa, Cassava’s chief executive. “We absolutely have to focus on and ensure that we don’t get left behind.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
6) Autism Rates Have Increased 60-Fold. I Played a Role in That.
By Allen Frances, June 23, 2025
Dr. Frances is a psychiatrist. He chaired the American Psychiatric Association’s task force charged with creating the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
Maria Medem
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, is correct that reported autism rates have exploded in the last 30 years — they’ve increased roughly 60-fold — but he is dead wrong about the causes. I should know, because I am partly responsible for the explosion in rates.
The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins, but rather is the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, I chaired the task force charged with creating the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or the D.S.M.-IV. Sometimes called the “bible of psychiatry,” the D.S.M. influences medical practice, insurance coverage, education and treatment selection.
In the third edition of the D.S.M., published in 1980, autism was tightly defined and considered extremely rare. Criteria for the diagnosis required a very early onset (before age 3) of severe cognitive, interpersonal, emotional and behavioral problems.
But my task force approved the inclusion of the new diagnosis, Asperger’s disorder, which is much milder in severity than classic autism and much more common. In doing so, we were responding to child psychiatrists’ and pediatricians’ concerns for children who did not meet the extremely stringent criteria for classic autism, but had similar symptoms in milder form and might benefit from services.
Based on careful studies, our task force predicted that the addition of Asperger’s disorder would modestly increase the rate of children given an autism-related diagnosis. Instead, the rate increased more than 16-fold, to one in 150 from an estimated one in 2,500 in the span of a decade. It has been climbing more gradually ever since and is one in 31 today. Our intentions were good, but we underestimated the enormous unintended consequences of adding the new diagnosis.
The resulting explosion in cases included many instances of overdiagnosis — children were labeled with a serious condition for challenges that would better be viewed as a variation of normal. It also sowed the seeds of conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine beliefs as people wondered how to explain the rising cases.
Many large studies have come to the same conclusion: Vaccines don’t cause autism. The role, if any, of environmental toxins is still to be determined, but there is no known environmental factor that can explain the sudden jump in diagnoses. The changes we made to the diagnosis in the D.S.M.-IV can.
Why did autism-related diagnoses explode so far beyond what our task force had predicted? Two reasons. First, many school systems provide much more intensive services to children with the diagnosis of autism. While these services are extremely important for many children, whenever having a diagnosis carries a benefit, it will be overused. Second, overdiagnosis can happen whenever there’s a blurry line between normal behavior and disorder, or when symptoms overlap with other conditions. Classic severe autism had so tight a definition it was hard to confuse it with anything else; Asperger’s was easily confused with other mental disorders or with normal social avoidance and eccentricity. (We also, regrettably, named the condition after Hans Asperger, one of the first people to describe it, not realizing until later that he had collaborated with the Nazis.)
In 2013, the next edition of the diagnostic and statistical manual, the D.S.M.-V, eliminated Asperger’s disorder as a stand-alone diagnosis and folded it into the newly introduced concept of autism spectrum disorder. This change further increased the rate of autism by obscuring the already fuzzy boundary between autism and social awkwardness.
It is difficult to accurately diagnose autism spectrum disorder. There is no biological test; symptoms vary greatly in nature and severity; clinicians don’t always agree; different diagnostic tests may come up with different conclusions; and the diagnosis is not always stable over time, meaning that many people diagnosed as children no longer meet criteria for diagnosis if evaluated later as adolescents or adults. Diagnostic inaccuracy contributes to falsely elevated rates, which can lead to misconceptions that an “epidemic” is occurring.
Social networking has also been a powerful force in increasing autism diagnoses. While online communities can provide valuable information, support, social interactions, validation, resources and even dating opportunities, they can also promote inaccurate self-diagnosis. This is especially true as more and more people with mild symptoms get labeled autistic. As it has lost its dire connotations, some people turn to the diagnosis as a way to feel less shame and guilt around social awkwardness or difficulties in juggling tasks.
Of course, there are many people for whom expanded diagnostic criteria for autism and greater awareness have been helpful in providing much-needed treatment and school services. A positive result has been identifying people who would have been missed before or misdiagnosed as having another mental disorder.
Still, we should be concerned about the increasing tendency to mislabel socially awkward behavior as autistic. A diagnosis of autism can shape both external perception (how others respond to you) and internal (how it affects your self-esteem, behavior and expectations). Diagnoses, especially in children, should be written in pencil, not engraved in stone or rendered eternal in medical records. A false diagnosis of autism can haunt someone for life and be very difficult to remove from medical records. Overdiagnosing autism also often misallocates very scarce resources away from the more severely impaired people who most need them.
The history of psychiatry is full of diagnoses, like multiple personality disorder or adult attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, that seem to be used to explain all sorts of mental distress and disability and quickly take off in popularity. I worry that clinicians and parents are sometimes too quick to embrace an autism spectrum diagnosis.
The explosion in autism rates has become fodder for Mr. Kennedy’s conspiracy theories. He has redirected federal research efforts away from the real science that could elucidate the causes of autism. He has instead hired David Geier, a longtime vaccine skeptic, who is reportedly seeking access to public health databases to hunt for a link between vaccines and autism. Mr. Kennedy also recently fired all 17 members of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention committee that advises on vaccine safety and efficacy. Among their replacements is a doctor who has called the term anti-vaxxer “high praise” and a nurse who serves on the board of an organization that has linked childhood vaccines to autism.
Mr. Kennedy’s statements that people suffering from autism don’t pay taxes, implying they are useless, has created outrage among patients and families. His proposed autism registry is a scary invasion of privacy.
Figuring out how to accurately diagnose and appropriately treat autism is incredibly hard and the source of many fraught conversations among researchers, clinicians, people who have autism and their families. We need a health secretary with the good judgment to judiciously help us navigate these thorny questions and properly allocate scarce research resources. Instead, we have Mr. Kennedy, who has only served to sow confusion with false promises, to trigger anger with disparaging comments and to replace funding for real science with wasteful false science.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
7) Trump’s cease-fire announcement caught his own top officials by surprise.
By Maggie Haberman, White House reporter, June 23, 2025
President Trump abruptly announced a cease-fire agreement between Israel and Iran after speaking to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and Iranian officials, with Qatar helping to mediate, a senior White House official said Monday.
The official, who was granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the negotiations publicly, said Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar, played a role in the cease-fire discussions.
The announcement, made minutes after 6 p.m. Eastern time, caught even some of Mr. Trump’s own top administration officials by surprise. But within three hours of Mr. Trump’s announcement, there were fresh attacks from Israel against Iran.
Mr. Trump had help in pressing for a cease-fire from Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy, who had been leading the efforts over the last two months for a deal to curtail Iran’s nuclear program, the official said.
The three men worked through “direct and indirect” channels to reach the Iranians, the official said. Israel agreed to the cease-fire provided they aren’t subject to further attacks from Iran, the official said.
The official credited the U.S. military strikes on three Iranian nuclear enrichment sites on Saturday with setting the conditions for a cease-fire discussion.
The official did not say what conditions Iran may have agreed to, including whether it answered questions about the whereabouts of its stockpile of enriched uranium.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
8) Can Iran, Israel and the U.S. Now All Claim to Have Won?
Iran’s response to the attacks on its nuclear facilities killed no Americans and each nation has a victory narrative. But an hours-old cease-fire appeared fragile and President Trump lashed out at Israel and Iran over the state of the truce.
By Farnaz Fassihi, Published June 23, 2025, Updated June 24, 2025
Celebrating the attack on a U.S. base in Qatar, in Tehran on Monday. No Americans were killed in the attack, but it was trumpeted by Iranian media. Credit...Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times
Even before it fired missiles at an American base and President Trump attempted to broker a cease-fire with Israel, Iran was looking for a way out.
On Monday morning, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council held an emergency meeting to discuss striking back against the United States. The Americans had bombed three of Iran’s main nuclear facilities over the weekend, yet another serious blow after a week of attacks by Israel that had inflicted severe damage to Iran’s military leadership and infrastructure.
Iran needed to save face. From inside a bunker, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, sent an order to strike back, according to four Iranian officials familiar with the war planning.
But the ayatollah also sent instructions that the strikes be contained — to avoid an all-out war with the United States, according to the officials, who were not authorized to speak publicly about the country’s war plans.
Iran wanted to hit an American target in the region, they said, but it was also keen to prevent more attacks from the United States.
So, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps chose the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar for two reasons, according to two members of the Guards: Since it is the largest American military base in the region, they believed that the base had been involved in coordinating the American B-2 strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities over the weekend.
But because it is in Qatar, a close ally of Iran, Iranian officials also believed that the damage could be kept fairly minimal.
Several hours before striking, Iran started sending advance notice that a strike was imminent, passing the message through intermediaries. Qatar closed its airspace, and the Americans were warned.
To the public, Iran trumpeted its strike on the Americans as the cost of attacking Iran. In a televised speech, a spokesman for Iran’s Armed Forces said the attacks on the American base in Qatar had been carried out by the Revolutionary Guards Corps.
“We warn our enemies that the era of hit and run is over,” said the spokesman.
Iranian state television played patriotic songs against the footage of ballistic missiles lighting up Qatar’s skies. The anchors theatrically spoke of Iran’s glory and victory in a war with imperial powers.
But behind the scenes, the four Iranian officials said, Iran’s leaders were hoping their limited attack and advance warning would convince President Trump to stand down, allowing Iran to do the same.
They also hoped Washington would pressure Israel to end its withering airstrikes on Iran, which began well before the American attack on Iran’s nuclear sites and were continuing as of Monday night, according to residents of Tehran, the Iranian capital.
Before firing on American forces in Qatar, one of the Iranian officials said that the plan was for no Americans to be killed, given that any deaths might spur the United States to retaliate, potentially leading to a cycle of attacks.
The plan seemed to work. Afterward, Mr. Trump said that 13 of the 14 Iranian missiles fired at Al Udeid had been downed, that no Americans there had been killed or wounded, and that the damage had been minimal.
In a remarkable statement, Mr. Trump even thanked Iran “for giving us early notice, which made it possible for no lives to be lost, and nobody to be injured.”
“They’ve gotten it all out of their ‘system,’ and there will, hopefully, be no further HATE,” he said.
Soon after, Mr. Trump announced that a cease-fire was imminent between Iran and Israel, though that was thrown into uncertainty on Tuesday morning. Mr. Trump lashed out at Israel and Iran over concerns about compliance with the truce.
Earlier, Ali Vaez, Iran director for the International Crisis Group, said that every side now had a narrative for victory, while avoiding the risk of stumbling into a larger conflict with severe consequences for the region and beyond.
“The United States can say it has set back Iran’s nuclear program,” he said. “Israel can say it has weakened Iran, a regional adversary, and Iran can say it has survived and pushed back against much stronger military powers.”
In a little more than a week, the war blew through many previous red lines in dizzying speed. But Iran’s appetite for a protracted war was waning.
Most Iranians had rallied behind the flag and denounced the war as an attack on their country, even as tens of thousands of people were displaced from their homes in Tehran and other cities. Shops, businesses and government offices were shuttered or operating with minimal hours. The economic impact was starting to show, with taxi drivers, laborers, service workers and others saying they could not survive much longer.
“Our country doesn’t have the capacity to continue this war,” said Sadegh Norouzi, head of the National Development Party in Tehran, in a virtual town hall. “We have problems with the economy, we have problems sustaining public support and we don’t have the same military and technology capacity of Israel and America.”
Some of the calls for an end to the war were even coming from affiliates of the Guards. Karim Jaffari, a political analyst affiliated with it, wrote on his social media page that Iran should focus on its war with Israel and not enter into one with the United States. “The only thing Iran does not want right now is a wider multi-front war without taking into consideration its consequences,” he wrote.
What Iran does next is still an open question. Though its limited attack on American forces in the region appeared calculated to avoid a deeper conflict, it does not necessarily mean hostilities are over.
Western officials concede that, despite the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, they are not certain what has happened to Iran’s stockpile of uranium. Does Iran have the capacity to enrich uranium further? Will it try more covert forms of aggression? Or will it now try to negotiate a lifting of the tough sanctions against it?
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, has been on a diplomatic blitz, traveling to Turkey, Russia and Turkmenistan. After Iran’s strikes on American forces in Qatar, Mr. Araghchi said in an interview with Iranian state television reporters that the war against his country had failed to achieve its goals.
“I’m not saying they haven’t inflicted harm, yes, there was harm,” Mr. Araghchi said on Monday. “But they did not achieve their main goal to strip us completely of all our capabilities or any other goals they may have had.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
9) How the United States Helped Create Iran’s Nuclear Program
A reactor in Tehran is a monument to the U.S. relationship with Iran when the country was led by a secular, pro-Western monarch.
By Michael Crowley, Reporting from Washington, June 24, 2025
“Atoms for Peace” was born of a speech President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivered in 1953, in which he warned of the dangers of a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Corbis, via Getty Images
When President Trump ordered a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, he was confronting a crisis that the United States unwittingly set in motion decades ago by providing Tehran with the seeds of nuclear technology.
Tucked into Tehran’s northern suburbs is a small nuclear reactor used for peaceful scientific purposes, which has so far not been a target of Israel’s campaign to eliminate Iran’s nuclear weapons capability.
The Tehran Research Reactor’s real significance is symbolic: It was shipped to Iran by the United States in the 1960s, part of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” program that shared nuclear technology with U.S. allies eager to modernize their economies and move closer to Washington in a world divided by the Cold War.
Today, the reactor does not contribute to Iran’s enrichment of uranium, the arduous process that purifies the raw ingredient of nuclear bombs into a state that can sustain a massive chain reaction. It runs on nuclear fuel far too weak to power a bomb. Several other nations, including Pakistan, bear at least as much responsibility for Iran’s march to the threshold of nuclear weapons capability, experts say.
But the Tehran reactor is also a monument to the way America introduced Iran — then governed by a secular, pro-Western monarch — to nuclear technology.
Iran’s nuclear program quickly became an object of national pride, first as an engine of economic growth and later, to the West’s dismay, as a potential source of ultimate military power.
It is a legacy of a dramatically different world, one in which America had yet to grasp how fast the nuclear secrets it unlocked at the end of World War II would pose a threat to the United States.
“We gave Iran its starter kit,” said Robert Einhorn, a former arms control official who worked on U.S. negotiations with Iran to limit its nuclear program.
“We weren’t terribly concerned about nuclear proliferation in those days, so we were pretty promiscuous about transferring nuclear technology,” said Mr. Einhorn, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “We got other countries started in the nuclear business.”
“Atoms for Peace” was born of a speech Mr. Eisenhower delivered at the United Nations in December 1953, in which he warned of the dangers of a nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union and vowed to lead the world “out of this dark chamber of horrors into the light.”
Mr. Eisenhower explained that the world should better understand such a destructive technology, and that its secrets should be shared and put to constructive use. “It is not enough just to take this weapon out of the hands of the soldiers,” he said. “It must be put into the hands of those who will know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.”
The gesture was more than altruistic. Many historians argue that Mr. Eisenhower was providing cover for an American nuclear arms buildup already underway. He was also influenced by scientists, including J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had helped to develop the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki less than a decade earlier. “It was their contrition for participating in the development of the bomb,” Mr. Einhorn said.
The Eisenhower administration also saw the program as a way to gain influence over important pieces on the global Cold War chessboard. They included Israel, Pakistan and Iran, which were given nuclear information, training and equipment to be used for peaceful purposes, such as science, medicine and energy.
The Iran that received an American research reactor in 1967 was very different from the country ruled today by clerics and generals. It was led then by a monarch, or shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, a Swiss-educated aristocrat installed in a 1953 coup backed by the C.I.A., to the lasting anger of many Iranians.
Mr. Pahlavi was determined to modernize his nation and make it a world power, with American backing. He liberalized Iranian society, promoting secularism and Western education even as he harshly repressed political opposition. He banned the woman’s veil and promoted modern art — Andy Warhol once painted his portrait — while investing in literacy and infrastructure.
Kick-started by “Atoms for Peace,” Mr. Pahlavi budgeted billions of dollars for an Iranian nuclear program that he saw as a guarantee of his country’s energy independence, despite its existing vast oil production, and a source of national pride. The United States welcomed young Iranian scientists to special nuclear training courses at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Expanding its program in the 1970s, Iran struck deals with its European allies. During a visit to Paris in 1974, Mr. Pahlavi was celebrated at Versailles before signing a billion-dollar agreement to purchase five 1,000-megawatt nuclear reactors from France.
At first, the shah was a poster boy for the peaceful use of nuclear power. A group of New England utility companies put out full-page ads featuring an image of the shah, who was then widely admired in the United States. Mr. Pahlavi “wouldn’t build the plants now if he doubted their safety,” the ad said. “He’d wait. As many Americans want to do.”
But although the United States had persuaded Iran to sign the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, in which the country accepted international safeguards and officials forswore nuclear weapons, suspicions about Mr. Pahlavi’s intentions were growing in Washington. A New York Times article in 1974 noted that Iran’s reactor deal with France made “no public mention of safeguards against using the reactors as a base for making nuclear weapons.”
Soon the shah was talking about Iran’s “right” to produce nuclear fuel at home, a capability that can also be applied to nuclear weapons development. He denounced discussions about outside limits on Iran’s nuclear activity as a violation of national sovereignty — talking points still used by Iran’s leadership. As Washington expressed greater concern, Mr. Pahlavi turned to a wider range of nations for nuclear assistance: Germany would build more reactors, and South Africa would supply raw uranium, or “yellowcake.”
By 1978, the Carter administration was alarmed enough to insist that an Iranian contract to purchase eight American reactors be amended. The new version would prohibit Iran from reprocessing without permission any U.S.-supplied fuel for its nuclear reactors into a form that could be used for nuclear weapons.
The American reactors were never delivered. In 1979, the Islamic Revolution, fueled in part by hatred of America and its support for the shah, swept across Iran and deposed Mr. Pahlavi.
For a time, the problem of Iran’s nuclear ambitions seemed to have solved itself. Iran’s new clerical rulers, led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, initially showed little interest in continuing an expensive project associated with the shah and Western powers.
But after a brutal eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s, Ayatollah Khomeini reconsidered the value of nuclear technology. This time, Iran turned east — to Pakistan, another “Atoms for Peace” beneficiary that was by then within a decade of testing a nuclear bomb. The Pakistani scientist and nuclear black marketeer Abdul Qadeer Khan sold Iran centrifuges to enrich uranium to bomb-grade levels of purity.
Iran’s acquisition of centrifuges was the real reason its nuclear program escalated into a global crisis, said Gary Samore, the top White House nuclear official in the Clinton and Obama administrations.
“Iran’s enrichment program is not the result of U.S. assistance,” Mr. Samore said. “The Iranians got their centrifuge technology from Pakistan, and they have developed their centrifuges based on that Pakistani technology — which itself was based on European designs.”
But those centrifuges were put to use by an Iranian nuclear establishment created by America decades earlier.
For years, Iran secretly advanced its nuclear program, building more centrifuges and enriching uranium that could one day be fashioned into a bomb. After Iran’s secret nuclear facilities were exposed in 2002, the U.S. and its European allies demanded that the country stop its enrichment and come clean about its nuclear activities.
After more than 20 years of diplomacy — and now airstrikes by Israel and the United States — the confrontation remains unresolved. Despite Mr. Trump’s initial claims that Saturday’s bombing raid “totally obliterated” three Iranian nuclear sites, portions remain intact.
The United States can still learn from its painful experience, Mr. Samore said. The Trump administration has continued negotiations, begun under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., for the potential transfer of U.S. nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia — another Middle East ally ruled by a strongman with grand ambitions for modernizing his nation.
It has been U.S. policy for decades not to share the know-how to produce nuclear fuel — which can also be used to make bombs — with countries that do not already have it, Mr. Samore noted. “And we’ve gone out of our way to block allies, including South Korea, from acquiring fuel enrichment and reprocessing capabilities,” he said.
The Saudis are ostensibly seeking the ability to enrich uranium for nuclear power.
“But this kind of technology can also be used for nuclear weapons,” Mr. Samore added. “And from my standpoint, it would be a terrible precedent to help a country like Saudi Arabia, or any country that doesn’t have that capability.”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
10) The Attacks on Zohran Mamdani Show That We Need a New Understanding of Antisemitism
By M. Gessen, Opinion Columnist, June 24, 2025
Shuran Huang for The New York Times
Last Wednesday, the New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani held a press conference in Harlem to announce that the civil rights activist Maya Wiley had endorsed him. As the event was wrapping up, the thing that always happens to Mamdani happened: Someone in the crowd wanted the candidate to prove that he was sufficiently opposed to antisemitism. “It pains me to be called an antisemite,” Mamdani said, and then, as he went on to describe what it’s been like, he choked up.
He has plenty of reasons to be upset. He has been subjected to a relentless barrage of anti-Muslim slurs and threats. Someone messaged, “The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.” He has had to hire security. Meanwhile, New Yorkers have been receiving mailers illustrated with photographs of Mamdani doctored to make his beard fuller, darker and longer. An anti-Mamdani TV ad includes a montage of him wearing a kurta — a long shirt in a style often worn in South and Central Asia (though on the campaign trail Mamdani usually wears a jacket and slacks). Billionaires who support the candidacy of the former governor Andrew Cuomo bankrolled glossy fliers that warn that “Mamdani’s radical plans would make New York less safe.” The message: He is a Muslim fundamentalist who poses an existential threat to this city and its Jewish residents.
When I spoke to Mamdani on the phone a couple of days after that press conference, it became clear to me that there is another reason he chokes up: It’s hard to keep defending yourself against a false accusation. It’s logically impossible to prove an absence. And as anyone who has ever been falsely accused knows, it hurts.
The mayoral campaign isn’t the first time that Mamdani, who has spoken out in support of Palestinian rights, has faced accusations of antisemitism, but this time critics have focused on two events. In the June 4 Democratic debate, candidates were asked which foreign country they would visit first after becoming mayor. Cuomo named Israel. Mamdani said he would stay in the city and added, “As mayor, I will be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and will be meeting them wherever they are across the five boroughs, whether it’s at their synagogues and temples or in their homes or at the subway platform.”
A moderator then insisted that Mamdani declare whether he believes in Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. He answered that he believes “that Israel has a right to exist as a state with equal rights.” Cuomo cut in to score a point: “He said he won’t visit Israel!”
If there is such a thing as correct answers in politics, Mamdani had them. It ought to be uncontroversial for a mayor to focus on his city and for a politician to assert the value of equal rights. But the exchange fueled accusations of antisemitism.
Last week, Mamdani was interviewed on “FYPod,” a podcast aimed at a young political audience. One of the hosts asked Mamdani to comment on the slogan “Globalize the intifada,” which, the host acknowledged, means different things to different people. “Antisemitism is a real issue in our city,” Mamdani responded. “It’s one that can be captured in statistics,” he continued. “It’s also one that you will feel in conversations you will have with Jewish New Yorkers across the city.”
He talked about a Jewish man who told him about being at services at his synagogue, hearing a door creak open behind him, and feeling terrified. Mamdani talked about a Jewish man in Williamsburg who had started locking a door he’d always kept open. Then Mamdani said he would fight antisemitism not by banning words but by increasing funding for anti-hate-crime programming by 800 percent.
His response showed deference to the American tradition of free speech, evidenced commitment to tackling the issue at hand and showcased his remarkable talent for articulating the feelings behind the politics. More accusations of antisemitism followed.
As I watched a grainy Instagram video of Mamdani choking up during his press conference in Harlem, my mind flashed back to an interview I did many years ago with a Russian historian of Stalinism. During the period known as the Great Terror, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens were accused of plotting to kill Stalin or overthrow the Soviet government. Surviving transcripts paint a surreal picture of their interrogations. Detainees would be protesting their innocence. Most were true believers in the cult of Stalin, and the accusation itself was unthinkable to them. But to an interrogator who might see dozens of defendants a day, the historian pointed out to me, the idea that so many people wanted to kill Stalin could come to seem perfectly normal.
Don’t get me wrong; obviously none of the players in the New York events are comparable to Stalin or his henchmen. But this contrast — between the person who is falsely accused and his accuser, who acts as though the crime is so common it’s practically the norm — is useful in understanding both the smear campaign against Mamdani and the state of our conversation about antisemitism more generally.
In recent years, the United States has had an alarming number of antisemitic episodes, from swastika graffiti to marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us” to attacks at synagogues. But in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel, it has become increasingly difficult to separate instances of antisemitism from times when people and institutions are accused of antisemitism with little or no basis.
In short order, Representative Elise Stefanik and several of her Republican colleagues used antisemitism as a pretext to humiliate the presidents of elite universities. Later, the Trump administration took up the mantle, using the charge of antisemitism as a cudgel against higher education.
The Israeli government has leveled accusations of antisemitism at several European leaders, whole countries, the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice, the United Nations and, it sometimes seems, the entire world — whoever criticizes Israel.
In this country and elsewhere — most notably in Germany — a vast network of anti-antisemitism activists, many of them self-appointed and many of them not Jewish, have leveled this accusation against hundreds of thinkers, writers and artists who have criticized Israeli policies. Many — probably most — of the accused are Jewish. I am one of them.
Israeli politicians, as well as many American ones, and mainstream American Jewish organizations have long promoted this conflation of Jews with Israel and criticism of Israel with antisemitism. Functionally, the definition of antisemitism drafted about a decade ago by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, an intergovernmental body, does, too. That definition has been adopted by the U.S. federal government, many cities and towns, and a growing number of universities.
Recently more than 900 academics signed on to an open letter from the newly formed Genocide and Holocaust Studies Crisis Network, calling on universities to drop this definition. In 2020, a group of such scholars drafted an alternative definition of antisemitism, known as the Jerusalem Declaration. It explicitly states that holding all Jews accountable for the actions of the State of Israel is antisemitic. I would add a logical corollary: Defining any criticism of Israel as a threat to all Jews is just as wrong.
What makes these conflations powerful and long lasting is fear. I heard an extraordinary description of how this fear operates in a podcast interview with the Columbia University professor Shai Davidai. If you are familiar with his name, it’s probably because he has been a lightning rod, a hero to those who believe that American universities have become hotbeds of antisemitism. Columbia, for its part, suspended his campus access, saying he had harassed and intimidated other university employees.
Before any of this happened, Davidai identified as left wing, an opponent of the Israeli occupation and a critic of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A couple of days after Oct. 7, someone showed him an open letter issued by the Columbia chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. It was the kind of strident, tone-deaf letter that student organizations were putting out at the time. It talked about the inevitability of armed resistance as a response to systemic oppression. It did not talk about Jews.
And then Davidai found himself on campus, looking at several hundred students wearing kaffiyeh and, at least as he understood it, celebrating the Hamas attack. A colleague leaned over to him, he said, “and says, ‘This is the antisemitism that our parents and grandparents warned us about, and we didn’t listen.’ And the moment he said that, everything changed for me.” Davidai started speaking out on social media and attracted a great deal of attention.
Davidai described his experience as an epiphany. For many people living in Israel — a nation founded by Jews for Jews — and many American Jews as well, antisemitism is an abstraction, the stuff of stories. (I have to give credit for this observation to my daughter, who moved from a very antisemitic society to New York City at the age of 12.) These stories come from great tragedy, especially for Jews of European origin, many of whom represent the lucky-survivor branches of their families. Seeing something you have only read about suddenly, at least seemingly, come to life is a kind of awakening — the kind that a person in grief and trauma is perhaps particularly open to.
Two recent brutal attacks in the United States have sent more fear through Jewish communities here and elsewhere: the shooting of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside of the Capital Jewish Museum, in Washington, D.C., on May 21 and the firebombing of a rally in support of Israeli hostages 11 days later, in Boulder, Colo. Both attacks have been widely denounced as antisemitic.
That’s no surprise — both were visible and deliberate attacks on public events with a high concentration of Jews. But that isn’t necessarily the end of the story. Daniel May, the publisher of the magazine Jewish Currents (I serve on its board), has argued in a powerful article that neither attacker made any obviously antisemitic statements — unless one considers “Free Palestine” an antisemitic slogan. The D.C. shooter’s 900-word purported manifesto didn’t contain the word “Jew” or even “Zionist.” Of course, someone could still act out of hatred even if he doesn’t shout it in a manifesto, but the absence in that document of any explicit mention does open the possibility that he had a different motive.
Neither of these events was exclusive to Jews, as a synagogue service might be. Both events were inextricable from the war in Gaza. And though the violence in Boulder was wide ranging, the shooting in Washington seems to have been very specifically targeted — at two representatives of the Israeli government.
None of this makes the attacks any less horrific. And none of it should offer any comfort to the victims or their families. The terrible human toll is the same no matter what the attackers’ motivation. But if we are looking to draw larger lessons from this brutality, it’s worth considering that violence that looks antisemitic may — even when it very effectively serves to scare a great many Jews — be something else.
What these attacks can be understood as is, undoubtedly, acts of terrorism. There is no universally accepted definition of terrorism, but scholars agree on some basics: It’s violence committed for political reasons, against noncombatants, with the goal of sowing fear. It’s notable that “terrorism,” a term that in this country has been used and misused to crack down on civil liberties, especially those of brown and Muslim immigrants, has been joined and even supplanted by the term “antisemitism,” wielded in similar ways, for the same purposes.
Terrorists aim to provoke a reaction. A violent and disproportionate response, because it amplifies their message that whatever they have targeted is absolute evil. They got that response in Israel’s devastation of Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Terrified people tend to support disproportionate violence. Terrified people make perfect constituencies for politicians like Netanyahu because they can be convinced that the unrelenting massacre and starvation of Gazans is necessary to keep Israel safe, and for President Trump, because they may not question the justification for pre-emptively bombing a sovereign country.
My thoughts keep returning to that conversation with the historian of Stalinism. She studied an era of political terrorism carried out on the premise — crazy yet widely accepted — that the U.S.S.R. was full of people who wanted to kill their leader. Today, we may live in an even more cynical era, when political leaders, instead of acting on their own fears of violence, instrumentalize other people’s fear.
The conflations that underlie most political conversations about antisemitism make it seem as if everyone wants to kill Jews — that antisemitism is not just common but omnipresent. If you believe that the whole world wants you dead, then you are much less likely to stand up for human rights or civil liberties, other people’s or your own.
A casualty of this cynical era is our understanding of the actual scale of antisemitism, defined as animus against Jews as Jews. There are many reasons to think that antisemitic attitudes and attacks are on the rise, but the keepers of statistics often thwart the effort to get hard information, because they insist on conflating criticism of Israel with anti-Zionism and anti-Zionism with antisemitism.
New York City is home to the largest number of Jews outside of Israel. But for all the noise mayoral candidates and their supporters have made about antisemitism, Mamdani is the only one I have heard so movingly acknowledge the emotional toll that the real and imagined threats of antisemitism have been taking on Jewish New Yorkers. I wonder how many people can hear him through all the din.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
11) Trump accuses a judge of lawless defiance in case of migrants he wants to send to South Sudan.
By Adam Liptak and Mattathias Schwartz, Adam Liptak reports on the Supreme Court, and Mattathias Schwartz reports on federal courts. June 24, 2025
The Trump administration returned to the Supreme Court on Tuesday in the case of eight men it seeks to deport to South Sudan, asking the justices to make clear that an order they issued on Monday was intended to apply to the group.
The clarity was apparently needed because the Supreme Court on Monday had issued only a brief order letting the government send migrants to countries with which they have no connection without giving them a chance to argue they would face torture. The court provided no explanation of its reasoning.
The Supreme Court’s order paused an injunction issued by Judge Brian E. Murphy, of the U.S. District Court in Boston, who had forbidden the deportations of all migrants to third countries unless they were afforded due process.
Soon after the Supreme Court ruled, lawyers for the men filed an emergency motion with Judge Murphy asking him to continue blocking the deportations of eight men currently held in Djibouti.
In a brief order Monday night, the judge denied the motion as unnecessary. He said that he had issued a separate ruling last month, different from the one the Supreme Court had paused, protecting the men in Djibouti from immediate removal.
That left the fate of the men unclear, as President Trump and a top aide cried foul.
Judge Murphy “knew absolutely nothing about the situation” and was “absolutely out of control,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media.
Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and Mr. Trump’s top immigration adviser, said, “Expect fireworks tomorrow when we hold this judge accountable for refusing to obey the Supreme Court.”
D. John Sauer, the solicitor general, told the justices on Tuesday that the judge’s latest order was “a lawless act of defiance that, once again, disrupts sensitive diplomatic relations and slams the brakes on the executive’s lawful efforts to effectuate third-country removals.”
He asked the court for an immediate stay “to make clear beyond any doubt that the government can immediately proceed with the third-country removals of the criminal aliens from Djibouti.”
Though the judge’s initial ruling applied to many migrants, it captured public attention in May when the government loaded eight men onto a plane said to be headed to South Sudan, a violence-plagued African country that most of them had never set foot in.
Their flight landed instead in the East African nation of Djibouti, where there is an American military base, and they have been held there ever since. Judge Murphy ruled that the men must be given access to lawyers and a chance to challenge the government’s plan to send them to South Sudan.
The men, who have all been convicted of serious crimes in the United States, have been detained at Camp Lemonnier, the military base, for the past 34 days. According to court filings, they spend almost all of their time inside a modular, air-conditioned container that the military usually uses as a conference room. Under constant guard, they wear shackles around their ankles, except when showering, using the bathroom or meeting remotely with their attorneys, a member of their legal team said.
Before coming to the United States, they hailed from countries around the world — Vietnam, South Korea, Mexico, Laos, Cuba, Myanmar. Just one is from South Sudan. Three of the eight men have been interviewed as part of the due process required by Judge Murphy’s second order, according to a court filing by their attorneys. Another two interviews, an attorney representing the detainees said, were scheduled for Tuesday.
Mr. Sauer told the justices that the Judge Murphy’s order had resulted in “an unstable and dangerous situation” at the base, worsened by recent military action in the Middle East.
Mr. Sauer also suggested that the Supreme Court might want to rein in Judge Murphy. “This court may wish to direct the district court not to issue further injunctions in this case without first obtaining preclearance from this court,” he wrote. “In the alternative, given the lower court’s conduct, this court may consider ordering that the case be reassigned to a different district judge.”
The administration’s motion on Tuesday seeking clarification of Monday’s order was at least partly a consequence of that order’s lack of reasoning. In a lengthy dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, on the other hand, seemed to endorse Judge Murphy’s understanding of his two rulings.
“The district court’s remedial orders are not properly before this court because the government has not appealed them,” she wrote.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
12) Judge’s Ruling Casts Doubt on Trump Administration’s Claims Against Migrant
Attorney General Pam Bondi has disregarded departmental norms to level lurid public accusations at Mr. Abrego Garcia without first detailing evidence.
By Glenn Thrush and Alan Feuer, June 24, 2025
Glenn Thrush reported from Washington, and Alan Feuer from New York.
Barbara D. Holmes, a federal judge in Nashville, cast doubt on accusations against Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia made by the Justice Department in a 51-page judicial rebuke. Credit...Mark Zaleski/The Tennessean, via Imagn
In early June, Attorney General Pam Bondi unveiled the indictment of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant mistakenly deported to El Salvador, with a pronouncement: “This is what American justice looks like.”
She predicted he would be easily convicted.
On Sunday night, 16 days later, a federal magistrate judge gave a far different assessment of the evidence presented so far: The department’s case had serious problems, relied heavily on deals with multiple informants, included dubious claims about his actions that bordered on “physical impossibility” and was rife with hearsay testimony.
The judge, Barbara D. Holmes, ordered Mr. Abrego Garcia to be released, but conceded he was likely to be detained for immigration violations as his case moves through the courts.
The decision to deny the department’s request to keep Mr. Abrego Garcia behind bars was hardly the final word about the criminal prosecution, nor was it a comprehensive or final reckoning about guilt or innocence. It was, nonetheless, the first time the charges have been subjected to judicial scrutiny and a blow to the government’s core contention that Mr. Abrego Garcia poses a danger to the community.
Although Judge Holmes did not mention Ms. Bondi by name, her 51-page ruling represented a rejection of efforts by top administration officials to publicly discredit Mr. Abrego Garcia by suggesting that he was a prominent member of the violent street gang MS-13, and that he trafficked women and minors.
Judicial rebukes have become commonplace in a conflict-courting administration run by a president intent on turning legal proceedings, including four recent criminal cases, into political mud fights.
Ms. Bondi, a longtime political ally of Mr. Trump’s who has shown a willingness to execute his directives without fuss or pushback, has adopted that approach. She has disregarded departmental norms to level lurid public accusations at Mr. Abrego Garcia without first detailing evidence in court filings, or through the sworn testimony of federal law enforcement officials.
The attorney general’s actions are in line with what her boss wants. Mr. Trump made his preferences clear earlier this month when Mr. Abrego Garcia was brought back to U.S. soil, describing the process of indicting and repatriating him not as an act of law but almost as a way to publicly shame him.
“The man has a horrible past,” Mr. Trump told reporters, “and I could see a decision being made, ‘Bring him back, show everybody how horrible this guy is.’”
The attorney general has sought to justify the deportation of Mr. Abrego Garcia by portraying him as a public menace, even as government officials acknowledged that he wound up in a notorious El Salvador prison in March because of an “administrative error.” Ms. Bondi, speaking during a brief appearance at the department on June 6 to announce the unsealing of the indictment, accused Mr. Abrego Garcia of trading “the innocence of minor children for profit” and of abusing “undocumented alien females.”
But Judge Holmes cast doubt on those accusations in her decision, writing that the allegations came from “at least three, if not four or more, levels of hearsay” and carried “no weight” legally.
“That the level of hearsay cannot even be determined renders the evidence patently unreliable,” she added.
Ms. Bondi’s assertions were based on information presented in a memo from the U.S. attorney’s office for the Middle District of Tennessee arguing for Mr. Abrego Garcia’s detention. Such documents require a lower standard of evidentiary proof than a criminal indictment, according to Justice Department officials.
Chad Gilmartin, a spokesman for the department, said Ms. Bondi believed the hearsay evidence, while not conclusive, suggested Mr. Abrego Garcia posed a serious threat to public safety.
“It would be very concerning,” he said, if having “allegations involving harm to minor children no longer makes a defendant a danger to the community.”
Judge Holmes also took issue with the government’s core argument in depicting Mr. Abrego Garcia as a dangerous criminal. She criticized testimony from Peter Joseph, a homeland security agent, who took the stand during a daylong detention hearing a week later, to accuse Mr. Abrego Garcia of trafficking immigrants, including minors.
The evidence presented by prosecutors, she wrote, supported more routine allegations that he was participating in the more common, if still illegal, practice of smuggling undocumented immigrants seeking to relocate to different parts of the country.
“To be clear, the offenses of which Abrego is charged are human smuggling, not human trafficking,” she wrote. “Although ‘smuggling’ and ‘trafficking’ were sometimes used interchangeably during the detention hearing, there is a distinct difference between the two under the law. They are not transposable.”
The ruling, issued late Sunday, did little to divert the administration from its unyielding position on the case.
Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, called the Salvadoran man “a dangerous criminal illegal alien” in a social media post after Judge Holmes released her opinion.
“We have said it for months, and it remains true to this day,” Ms. McLaughlin added. “He will never go free on American soil.”
Mr. Abrego Garcia’s new legal team, which includes a former prosecutor from the same U.S. attorney’s office that filed the indictment against him, seems to be highly aware of these extrajudicial attacks against their client.
And on Monday, they shot back at Ms. McLaughlin, castigating her in a new court filing that asked Judge Holmes not to put her order releasing the defendant on hold as the government appeals it.
The filing pointed out that prosecutors had gone to great lengths to do favors for some of the cooperating witnesses who had helped them secure the charges against Mr. Abrego Garcia. It even turned the knife an extra twist, noting that the favors were connected to helping the witnesses avoid the consequences of their own illegal immigration.
“It is notable that, in its attempt to keep Mr. Abrego behind bars, the government has already promised leniency to three people in their immigration proceedings, including the leader and a member of a domestic smuggling operation,” the lawyers wrote. “The former has been deported five times and has two prior felony convictions, and yet the government has granted him deferred action on deportation in exchange for his testimony, early release from prison to a halfway house, and is likely to grant him work authorization.”
“All to ensure,” the lawyers added, “that Mr. Abrego ‘will never go free on American soil.’”
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
13) Democrats Are Getting Richer. It’s Not Helping.
By Thomas B. Edsall, June 24, 2025
Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.
Samuel Corum/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
There have been endless laments for the white working-class voters the Democratic Party lost over the past few decades, particularly during the 10 years of the Trump era. But detailed 2024 election analyses also make it clear that upper-income white voters have become a much more powerful force in the party than they ever were before. These upscale white voters are driving the transformation of the Democratic Party away from its role as the representative of working-class America and closer to its nascent incarnation as the party of the well-to-do.
A detailed analysis of data compiled by the Cooperative Election Study shows that in 2024, 46.8 percent of white Kamala Harris voters had annual household incomes over $80,000, while 53.2 percent earned less than that. In fact, according to data analysis by Caroline Soler, a research analyst for the Cooperative Election Study, the single largest bloc of white Democratic voters in 2024 — 27.5 percent — had incomes of $120,000 or more.
Along similar lines, Tom Wood, a political scientist at Ohio State University, provided The Times with figures from the American National Election Studies for 2020, the most recent year for which data is available. The numbers show that white voters in the 68th to 100th income percentiles — the top third — cast 49.05 percent of their ballots for Joe Biden and 50.95 for Donald Trump. White voters in the top 5 percent of the income distribution voted 52.9 percent for Biden and 47.1 percent for Trump.
These figures stand in sharp contrast to election results as recent as those of 2008. Among white voters in the top third of the income distribution that year, John McCain, the Republican nominee, beat Barack Obama 67.1 percent to 32.9 percent.
Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, responded by email to my inquiries about this phenomenon: “An objective look at both party’s coalitions in the mass electorate would have to acknowledge that neither Republicans nor Democrats are the ‘party of the working class.’”
Instead, Lee argued:
Both parties are vulnerable to charges of elitism. Republicans really do push for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. Democrats, meanwhile, take stances on social issues that appeal to socioeconomic elites.
The underlying truth, Lee continued, “is that the major parties in the U.S. today are not primarily organized around a social-class cleavage.”
This evolution of the two parties has been slow but steady over the past three decades, first emerging in the early 1990s as education polarization drove those with college degrees to the left while working-class voters without degrees moved right.
Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, responded by email to my inquiries about this phenomenon: “An objective look at both party’s coalitions in the mass electorate would have to acknowledge that neither Republicans nor Democrats are the ‘party of the working class.’”
Instead, Lee argued:
Both parties are vulnerable to charges of elitism. Republicans really do push for tax cuts that benefit the wealthy. Democrats, meanwhile, take stances on social issues that appeal to socioeconomic elites.
The underlying truth, Lee continued, “is that the major parties in the U.S. today are not primarily organized around a social-class cleavage.”
This evolution of the two parties has been slow but steady over the past three decades, first emerging in the early 1990s as education polarization drove those with college degrees to the left while working-class voters without degrees moved right.
Sam Zacher, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern California, has detailed both the shift and its policy consequences in a series of papers, including his 2023 article “Polarization of the Rich: The Increasingly Democratic Allegiance of Affluent Americans and the Politics of Redistribution.”
“Beginning in the 1990s,” Zacher writes,
the Democratic Party started winning increasing shares of rich, upper-middle-income, high-income occupation and stock-owning voters. This appears true across voters of all races and ethnicities, is concentrated among (but not exclusive to) college-educated voters and is only true among voters living in larger metropolitan areas. In the 2010s, Democratic candidates’ electoral appeal among affluent voters reached above-majority levels.
Zacher has developed his own system to measure affluence. It includes income but, he added, “I also rely on occupation and stock ownership.” As sources of information, he wrote, “I analyze data from the American National Election Studies, the Cooperative Election Study and the General Social Survey.”
What Zacher calls “this original, holistic assessment” reveals “that in today’s politics, Democrats and Republicans roughly split support among rich, upper-middle-income, high-income-occupation and stock-owning voters.”
Equally significant, Zacher writes, “While the voters in more advantaged economic classes who have increased their support for the Democratic Party are, on average, more educated and reside in larger metropolitan areas, this polarization of the affluent is spread across all races and ethnicities and is not only relegated to college-educated voters.”
The changing demographics of the Democratic Party, Zacher notes, “may make it more difficult to execute an economically redistributive agenda — in an era of rising inequality — since it would have to redistribute away from voters in its own coalition.”
“How affluent, exactly, are these new Democratic voters?” Zacher asks and writes:
C.E.S. uniquely began collecting data on family income categories up to $500,000 and above in 2011, which appear to be the highest income subcategories to exist in any over-time political survey data. $500,000 and higher (by family income) is roughly the top 1 percent of society; $200,000 and higher is roughly the top 10 percent (in 2020).
The $200,000+ category clearly preferred the Democrat in 2012, 2016, and 2020 — and even the $500,000+ category reported voting for the Democratic candidate more often than the Republican in 2012 and 2016.
Analysis of election data, Zacher writes, “yields evidence that the Democratic voting coalition of the 2010s has taken the form of a ‘U-shape’ by income, a departure from the past,” adding that “it is increasingly the case that the income groups that most prefer Democratic candidates are the lowest- and highest-income categories.”
Part of the shift Zacher describes results from the rapidly changing education levels of the very affluent:
In 2008, just 27.8 percent of the most-affluent voter group (at least $150,000 family income) had postgraduate degrees, while 41.4 percent of the group had less than a college degree — but by 2020, 35.8 percent of this affluent group had postgraduate degrees (an eight percentage point increase), and just 31.1 percent had less than a college degree (a 10.3 percentage point decrease).
Many political analysts and Democratic strategists find the changing demographics of the party worrisome.
I asked Mike Lux, one of the founders of Democratic Partners, a consulting firm serving progressive clients, if the rising affluence and education levels of white Democrats weaken the party’s claim to be the representative of the working class.
Lux replied by email:
Of course it does. The foundational idea that Democrats are the party of working people (and its corollary that Republicans are the party of business and the wealthy) has grown much more tenuous than it once was. Democrats are lost without that core idea.
Lux argued that conversations with working-class voters show they “want a candidate and a political party that will fight hard for you. Right now, they don’t think that is the Democrats.”
Does that make the party legitimately vulnerable to the charge of elitism?
Lux:
Both parties have some elements of elitism. The Republicans have a hard case to make when Trump’s cabinet is full of billionaires and they let big business write their own rules, and when they are cutting taxes for billionaires and paying for it by cutting Medicaid and V.A. benefits and food for hungry children.
But, yes, the Democratic Party has some elements of elitism. To survive, we need to re-emphasize our working-class identity and that we are fighting for regular folks. We need to not talk down to folks and not spend so much time hanging out with celebrities.
Is the demographic shift among white Democrats a factor in the loss of Black and Hispanic voters?
Lux:
Yes, there is a class element to the erosion in support among Black and Hispanic voters. That erosion is mostly coming from working-class folks in those communities. Just like with white folks, working- class voters want candidates to focus on economic issues, and they want people who will fight for them and their communities, to be their proxy.
Working-class voters’ perception, fed brilliantly by the Republican and right-wing media infrastructure, was that Democrats cared more about other issues and other people than they did about the essential economic needs of regular working families.
Ariel Malka, a professor of psychology and political science at Yeshiva University, tackled the same issues as Lux from a different vantage point, writing by email that Democrats need to “counter forces promoting an image as the party of left-wing cultural elites.”
That strategic approach, Malka cautioned, “comes with challenges”:
First, Republicans relentlessly define the Democratic Party in terms of woke excesses despite the fact that many Democratic officeholders reject these excesses, so it is not clear how much messaging and policy shifts would be rewarded with a more culturally moderate partisan reputation.
Second, cultivating a socially moderate reputation is challenging when influential progressives insist on aggressively left-wing social messaging, often without giving serious consideration to the notion that this might be electorally disadvantageous.
Perhaps the biggest hurdle, Malka wrote, is that developments in this country reflect “larger trends in the Western world” that
have consolidated highly educated and culturally liberal citizens within left-leaning parties over the last several decades, making it hard for them to maintain their reputations as working-class parties.
This — along with rising inequality and job displacement from global trade and technological advance — has yielded feelings of cultural and economic resentment that have redirected many working-class voters from left-leaning parties to right-wing populism.
In short, the Republicans are in a solid position to use hot-button cultural issues as a wedge, and the nature of the Democratic Party as a somewhat disjointed coalition of diverse interests and viewpoints makes it vulnerable to this.
For Yphtach Lelkes, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, the Democrats’ working-class image has been gone for decades. Lelkes wrote by email:
It is true that Democrats are increasingly perceived to be the party of the elite. That is certainly true to the extent that the only counties that swung left were the most educated counties in America.
The Democratic Party is clearly not a working-class party, particularly as its policy shifted from predistribution (which is most preferred by the less educated) to redistribution.
Despite these changes in the image of the party, Lelkes continued,
Democratic policy is more closely geared toward the working class than Republican policy. The majority of Black and Hispanic voters still vote for the Democratic Party. The Big Beautiful Bill will be the most regressive law passed in decades, and tariffs are a tax on the working class.
In contemporary elections, Lelkes argued, “perceptions are king, and the Republican Party has done a fantastic job in painting Democrats as out of touch, elite and extreme.”
Michael Podhorzer, a former political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. and a founder of the Analyst Institute Board, made the case in an email that “Neither party is genuinely ‘of’ the working class in terms of consistently addressing their core daily concerns or consistently siding with them over corporate interests — despite isolated gestures like Biden’s presence on the U.A.W. picket line.”
This fact may contribute to the sustained rejection of incumbents in recent years, Podhorzer argued:
The Democratic Party is as dependent on the failures of Trump and the Republican Party as Trump and the Republican Party are dependent on the failures of the Democratic Party.
In nine of the last 10, and 11 of the last 13 elections, the party in power has lost, a pattern with no historical precedent. At the presidential level, three consecutive party switches have happened only once, more than a century ago. That neither party offers what voters want is further evidenced by the fact that the 1.3 point average margin is the lowest for three consecutive elections in well over a century.
If, as Podhorzer argued, working-class interests are secondary in both parties, it may be because the divide over values has become central to partisan differences.
Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, described this phenomenon in an email responding to my queries, citing
the stark divides in moral values and psychological orientations between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats tend to focus more on the moral values of care and fairness, while Republicans tend to hold stronger needs for order, security and certainty.
These innate needs for order, certainty and security are linked to a view that the world is a hostile place, where acceptance of outsiders is a risky decision that could harm a group’s cohesion and identity (where a group can be based on national identity, racial identity, or gender identity).
Yet, on average, Democrats don’t necessarily see the world in these terms, and as you mention, they tend to place higher values on other groups like racial minorities who have been traditionally marginalized and harmed. They don’t see these levels of acceptance as a threat to national, racial or gender identity — they are more fluid in how they view the world and the boundaries of the groups they belong to.
Stanley Feldman, a political scientist at Stony Brook University, reinforced Wronski’s argument, writing in an email that the gap between perception and image on one hand and substance and reality on the other is driven by the salience of cultural issues at the expense of economic policies:
The changes in the Democratic and Republican electorates over the past 25 years are a direct result of the move from political conflict structured around social welfare and the size of government after the New Deal to conflict being dominated more by cultural issues and concerns.
To the extent that partisan conflict is structured by issues like gay/transgender rights, abortion, immigration, race, and gender equality, the social liberalism of educated Democratic voters and activists makes it difficult for the party to develop appeals to more socially conservative and religious voters.
Feldman posed a rhetorical question: “Can you look at Democratic and Republican economic policies this century and believe that the Republican Party is winning less-educated voters because it is enacting policies that benefit them?”
The problem for Democrats, Feldman argued, is that “many less-well-educated voters are willing to set aside their economic self-interest for the socially conservative positions that dominate the Republican Party.”
The entire debate over partisanship and the working class is, according to Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, fundamentally off-kilter.
“The gist of my reasoning,” Kitschelt wrote in an email, “is to challenge the entire ‘working class’ nostalgia that has beset parts of the Democratic Party and public intellectuals.”
Kitschelt acknowledged that
blue-collar workers are now, in their majority, voting Republican; old mining regions and old industrial towns, once upon a time strongholds of the Democrats, are now often hegemonically Republican; and the alienation of blue-collar workers from the Democratic Party is not only one of economic abandonment, but also cultural abandonment of traditional religious piety, gender relations and sense of social conformism in the local community.
But, Kitschelt contended, “The well-meaning strategy-inducing conclusion that is directly or indirectly suggested by these empirical findings — namely that Democrats have to ‘win back’ the blue-collar working class — is false for many reasons and will in fact drive Democrats into the political wilderness.”
Why?
Because “the American industrial manufacturing working class has dramatically shrunk as a share of employment (and population) from about 25 percent to 30 percent of the labor force in the 1960s to barely 10 percent now.”
Kitschelt added:
Many of the “working-class” voters who now support Trumpist populism never voted in the past. Trump could mobilize an electorate that in the past never felt represented by any party, particularly many of those whites with strong xenophobic and racist opinions who never felt represented either by the Democrats or the older upper-middle-class moderate Republicans.
Last, the broad label “working class” masks key differences among non-college voters, preventing Democrats from adopting strategies designed to target those voters who might be most receptive to their message.
Kitschelt:
Many citizens who do not have four-year college degrees are not blue-collar “working class” in the sense that Democratic pollsters or ethnographers like to imagine, and the profile of defection from the Democratic Party has to be differentiated a great deal between those particularly receptive to Trumpism and those who are not.
Kitschelt places groups of voters into an “unreachable” category, as far as the Democratic Party is concerned: “higher-income, non-four-year-college-degree voters — often small businesspeople, in crafts, especially construction and real estate — who particularly experience the sense of downward mobility” and “white evangelical Christians who are substantially underrepresented among college-educated voters and who are particularly prone to subscribe to xenophobia, nationalism, racism and support of traditional paternalist and heterosexual gender roles.”
There are, however, Kitschelt continued,
many elements of the electorate without four-year college degrees that do not fit any of the templates of Trumpist populism:
They are wage earners in clerical-administrative jobs in banks, insurance companies, municipal administrations, logistics firms, tourism/travel and in sociocultural (semi-) professions in health care, education and a wide spectrum of cultural and social services.
These voters are more favorably disposed to and winnable by moderate Democratic Party strategies, although they have been put off by the more radical cultural-identitarian elements of Democratic progressivism.
The “radical cultural-identitarian” wing of the Democratic Party, Kitschelt argued, is concentrated among “four-year-college-educated voters who are not high-income earners by any stretch of the imagination.” Instead, they “typically have humanities or social science degrees and work in the sociocultural professions.”
This constituency of
lower-to-middle-income highly educated white progressive urban Democrats tends to press the cultural identitarian ethnic and gender agenda of the Democrats the most assertively, alienating formerly Democratic voters from that party, including many minority voters, above all Hispanics and Asians, but increasingly also African Americans, who are concerned about bread-and-butter issues of health, housing, education and public safety.
For the past decade, Kitschelt argued,
the Democratic Party has advanced an assembly of particularistic group demands that have alienated many voters. The party has been captured by specialized “rent-seeking” groups that have tried to carve out specific benefits for their respective unique constituencies.
What, then, is to be done?
Kitschelt had a thought:
The party has to embrace a universalism of political demands that rejects any kind of bias against citizens based on ethnic, religious, gender and other cultural grounds. The party should teach a conception of citizenship that acknowledges, recognizes and tolerates differences, albeit without ranking and prioritizing any particular way of life. This implies abstention from a divisive agenda of defining privileges and special tiers of consideration for specific groups that would precipitate the fragmentation of the party’s electoral coalition.
Kitschelt may well be right in theory, but to achieve his objective would require cunning and indeed genius we have not seen among party leaders in a long time.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
14) A New Political Star Emerges Out of a Fractured Democratic Party
The emergence of Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is likely to divide national Democrats, who are already torn about what the party should stand for.
By Liam Stack, June 25, 2025
Zohran Mamdani delivered a closing argument at sunrise on Primary Day in Queens. Credit...Shuran Huang for The New York Times
The national Democratic establishment on Tuesday night struggled to absorb the startling ascent of a democratic socialist in New York City who embraced a progressive economic agenda and diverged from the party’s dominant position on the Middle East.
As elections go, Tuesday’s party primary for mayor was a thunderbolt: New York voters turned away from a well-funded familiar face and famous name, former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, and in doing so made a generational and ideological break with the party’s mainstream. They turned to a 33-year-old, three-term state assemblyman, Zohran Mamdani, who ran on an optimistic message about affordability and the rising cost of living that has eluded many national Democrats.
What became vividly clear on Tuesday, as votes were counted across the racially and economically diverse neighborhoods of New York, was that Mr. Mamdani had generated excitement among some — though not all — of the traditional pillars of winning Democratic voter coalitions.
Democratic leaders badly want to win over young voters and minority groups in the coming 2026 and 2028 elections — two groups they have struggled to mobilize since the Obama era — but they also need moderate Democrats and independents who often recoil from far-left positions.
“It really represents the excitement that I saw on the streets all throughout the City of New York,” said Letitia James, the New York attorney general. “I haven’t seen this since Barack Obama ran for president of these United States.”
That Mr. Mamdani had such success while running on a far-left agenda, including positions that once were politically risky in New York — like describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and calling for new taxes on business — may challenge the boundaries of party orthodoxy and unnerve national Democratic leaders.
His views on Israel are likely to force some national Democrats into an uncomfortable position, said David Axelrod, a native New Yorker and Mr. Obama’s chief strategist. But he said that Mr. Mamdani’s relentless focus on economic affordability resonated widely and could be a playbook for the party’s success as well.
“There is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what the Democratic Party stands for,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The thing is, he seems both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those sort of conventional plays.”
The primary results raised questions about how Democrats on the national level would react. Would they embrace Mr. Mamdani as a next-generation leader of the party who can articulate a resonant economic message in a way that former Vice President Kamala Harris failed to do in November? Or would they distance themselves from his democratic socialist ideas and move more directly toward the center to court independent voters?
The enthusiasm that Mr. Mamdani generated among a swath of New Yorkers looking for fresh leadership called to mind the insurgent campaigns of Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential race and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in her upset victory in a 2018 House primary.
All three are democratic socialists, a once fringe movement popularized by Mr. Sanders that calls for reining in the excesses of capitalism and curbing the power of the wealthy.
Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, both of whom endorsed Mr. Mamdani, remain popular progressive figures but have had only limited impact on changing the Democratic Party’s agenda and messaging.
A key question is how the Democratic donor class and business community, which was already unsettled by Mr. Mamdani’s rise, will react to his apparent victory. Business leaders may flock to his rivals in the general election in November, or try to use super PACs to stop him.
In the meantime, other Democratic elected officials are likely to be questioned on whether they agree with his positions.
“It’s a national election, not just a New York City election. People are going to be watching,” said James Carville, a longtime Democratic strategist. “Everybody will have to weigh in one way or another. Everybody is going to be asked, do they support him.”
Even before Mr. Mamdani addressed his supporters early Wednesday morning, Republicans were gearing up to caricature him.
The National Republican Congressional Committee gleefully declared Mr. Mamdani the “new face of the Democrat Party.” Senator Rick Scott of Florida predicted on social media that more New Yorkers would be fleeing to his state. And Representative Elise Stefanik of New York sent a fund-raising appeal on Tuesday saying her “stomach was in knots,” calling Mr. Mamdani a “Hamas Terrorist sympathizer.” (Mr. Mamdani has defended pro-Palestinian slogans like “globalize the intifada.” He has said that he supports an Israel with equal rights for all its citizens, but has not said if it has a right to exist as a Jewish state. He has emphatically denied accusations that he is antisemitic.)
As recently as last month, few people expected Mr. Mamdani to beat Mr. Cuomo, 67, who benefited from near universal name recognition, a deep war chest, and the endorsement of party heavyweights like former President Bill Clinton.
But the embrace of the party establishment may have done Mr. Cuomo no favors in a race that appeared to be marked by a deep hunger for change.
“Voters are not happy with the national party establishment and want to focus on building a movement,” said Basil Smikle, a professor at Columbia’s School of Professional Studies. “I think that’s key here. Mamdani created a movement around his candidacy.”
Mr. Mamdani ran a relentless and cheerful campaign focused on affordability in a city that has grown too expensive for an expanding circle of residents, with zippy videos and catchy tag lines like “freeze the rent” and “free buses” that told voters he cared first about their wallets.
That kitchen-table focus actually mirrored economic messaging that some in the center of the party have also urged Democratic candidates to embrace. Many Democrats were frustrated that did not occur with former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Ms. Harris during the 2024 election.
David Shor, a Democratic researcher and strategist who worked with the leading pro-Harris super PAC, Future Forward, wrote on X that Mr. Mamdani was “a great example of how far you can go if you genuinely center your campaign in an engaging way around the issue that voters overwhelmingly say in surveys they care the most about.”
Benjamin Oreskes, Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
15) The Israeli atomic energy commission says the war set back Iran’s nuclear program by ‘many years.’
By Adam Rasgon, Reporting from Jerusalem, June 25, 2025
The Israeli atomic energy commission said on Wednesday that U.S. strikes had made a key nuclear enrichment site in Iran inoperable, appearing to contradict initial private assessments by Israel that raised questions about the effectiveness of the attacks.
The assertion, by the Israel Atomic Energy Commission, came amid questions about the status of Iran’s nuclear program after Israeli and U.S. strikes over 12 days of war. The office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, which issued a statement on behalf of the commission, did not clarify how the commission had reached its conclusion about the enrichment site, the heavily fortified Fordo nuclear facility.
The statement, however, provided official Israeli backing to President Trump in the wake of uncertainty about the result of the U.S. strikes on Fordo. The White House shared the same statement with reporters about an hour before the Israeli prime minister’s office, and Mr. Trump read most of the statement aloud at a news conference at a NATO summit in the Netherlands.
According to the commission’s statement, “the American strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, combined with Israeli strikes on other elements of Iran’s military nuclear program, has set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.”
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that preliminary Israeli damage assessments had raised questions about the effectiveness of the U.S. strikes on the Fordo site, which is south of Tehran. Israeli defense officials said that they had collected evidence that the underground facilities at Fordo had not been destroyed.
The Times also reported that a classified preliminary assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency said that the bombings set back Iran’s nuclear program by less than six months. Officials cautioned that the report was only an initial assessment and that others would follow as more information was collected and as Iran examined the three sites. Iranian state news outlets, which tend to amplify any foreign news developments that appear to support Iranian positions, widely reported on that assessment.
On Wednesday morning, however, Israel’s military said that Iran’s nuclear program had been significantly delayed.
“The assessment is that we caused significant damage to the nuclear program,” Brig. Gen. Effie Defrin, chief spokesman for the Israeli military, said in a video statement, adding, “I can also say that we pushed it back years.”
The Israeli military, General Defrin noted, was still investigating the results of its strikes on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Mr. Netanyahu has insisted that the war sent Iran’s nuclear program “into oblivion.” And President Trump, who on Wednesday pushed back on the classified preliminary U.S. intelligence, has claimed that the American strikes “obliterated” three Iranian nuclear sites: Fordo, and the Natanz and Isfahan facilities.
On June 13, Israel launched a wide-scale attack on Iran, targeting the country’s nuclear facilities, nuclear scientists and senior military commanders. Iran retaliated by firing barrages of missiles at Israel.
After more than a week of war, the U.S. military joined in and attacked the three Iranian nuclear sites. On Tuesday, Israel and Iran agreed to a cease-fire.
Vivian Yee and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting to this article.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
16) U.K. Says It’s Buying 12 F-35A Stealth Jets That Can Carry Nuclear Weapons
The decision means that Britain’s air force will have a nuclear role for the first time since the end of the Cold War.
By Steven Erlanger and Stephen Castle, June 25, 2025
Steven Erlanger reported from The Hague, and Stephen Castle from London.
A United States Air Force F-35A stealth aircraft landing at a British Air Force station in Lakenheath, England, in April. Credit...Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Britain said it would buy 12 F-35A stealth fighter-bombers, enabling the country’s military to once again have the capacity to deliver nuclear weapons from the air, in an announcement timed to this week’s NATO summit in The Hague.
The new planes, once delivered, can carry both conventional and nuclear bombs. For now, Britain has only one leg of the triad of nuclear weapons delivery systems: Trident submarines that can fire cruise missiles. Adding air capability, as the French also have, will make it easier for Britain to act in the case of a crisis. Neither country has any land-based nuclear weapons.
Britain also said on Tuesday that it would join NATO’s airborne nuclear mission, with allied aircraft being equipped with American B61 bombs stockpiled in Europe. The new planes reintroduce “a nuclear role” for Britain’s air force “for the first time since the U.K. retired its sovereign air-launched nuclear weapons following the end of the Cold War,” the government said.
Downing Street called it “the biggest strengthening of the U.K.’s nuclear posture in a generation.” It also strengthens the European pillar of NATO at a time of persistent doubts over the American commitment to use nuclear weapons to defend Europe in the case of a Russian attack.
Seven NATO members, including Germany and Italy, have dual-capable aircraft stored on European soil that can carry American B61 nuclear warheads.
Britain already operates F-35B jets that can operate from aircraft carriers, but they are not equipped to drop nuclear warheads.
Justin Bronk, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, which specializes in security issues, said that the F-35A was cheaper, had greater range and could carry a broader array of weapons. “These include weapons designed to destroy Russian air defense systems,” he said, “which cannot fit into the smaller weapon bays of the F-35B.”
The announcement follows a stark warning from a government-commissioned security review, issued on Tuesday, that the country needs to prepare for the possibility of armed conflict on British soil.
“For the first time in many years, we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the U.K. homeland coming under direct threat, potentially in a wartime scenario,” the document said.
It added that the international order was being “reshaped by an intensification of great power competition, authoritarian aggression and extremist ideologies” and said that Britain’s armed forces would invest in “greater lethality, warfighting readiness, deeper stockpiles of munitions” and new technology.
The decision to add an airborne nuclear capability to Britain’s permanent at-sea deterrent was foreshadowed in a strategic defense review, published this month, that was led by George Robertson, a former NATO secretary general. That report identified Russia as posing an acute threat and called for Britain to build up to a dozen new attack submarines and invest billions of pounds in weapons.
The F35-A aircraft will be deployed as part of NATO’s nuclear mission, the government said, using weapons over which the United States retains ultimate control.
That prompted questions in the British Parliament where Mike Martin, a lawmaker for the Liberal Democrats and an army veteran, said: “In an age of uncertainty over the reliability of our U.S. allies, it does seem an odd choice to be leaning into them.”
Mr. Martin asked whether the decision on the F-35A jets was a “steppingstone to a fully sovereign U.K. capability.” Maria Eagle, a defense minister, said it wasn’t, adding that she hoped that the new aircraft would be delivered by the end of the decade.
David Blagden, of the strategy and security institute at the University of Exeter, said the main rationale for F-35A jets would be to deter Russia by having the option of limited nuclear strikes if the United States was unwilling or unable to protect Britain. But he noted: “Buying another U.S.-made aircraft, with U.S.-controlled source code, to carry U.S.-owned nuclear weapons actually deepens U.K. dependence on U.S. good will.”
After decades of relative peace in Europe, the size of the British army is currently lower than at any time since the Napoleonic era. The government is investing in a recruitment and retention drive and earlier this year said it would divert resources from its international development aid budget to military spending.
On Monday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer signed up to a new NATO target of devoting 5 percent of the country’s economic output to security by 2035. That would be made up of 3.5 percent on military spending with the remaining 1.5 percent coming from other security and infrastructure-related spending.
“We can no longer take peace for granted, which is why my government is investing in our national security, ensuring our Armed Forces have the equipment they need,” Mr. Starmer said in a statement.
With the government under acute financial pressure domestically and the British public facing continued cost-of-living pressures, some critics have questioned how the additional military spending commitments will be paid for and whether they will come at the expense of other priorities.
Lizzie Dearden contributed reporting.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
17) Kennedy Withdraws Funding Pledge to International Vaccine Agency
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that Gavi had “ignored the science” in immunizing children around the world.
By Stephanie Nolen, June 25, 2025
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. during a House subcommittee hearing on Tuesday. Credit...Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
The United States will withdraw its financial support of Gavi, a global organization that helps purchase vaccines for children in poor countries, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the United States secretary of Health and Human Services, told the group’s leaders on Wednesday, accusing them of having “ignored the science” in immunizing children around the world.
Mr. Kennedy made the incendiary remarks in a brief, prerecorded video message sent overnight to a gathering of health ministers and other leaders in Brussels focused on raising funds to support the work of Gavi. It was to be played for the group later on Wednesday.
“When vaccine safety issues have come before Gavi, Gavi has treated them not as a patient health problem, but as a public relations problem,” Mr. Kennedy said in the address.
Mr. Kennedy said that Gavi’s leaders had been selective in their use of science to support vaccine choices, and that the United States would not deliver on a $1.2 billion pledge made by the Biden administration until the organization changed its processes.
“In its zeal to promote universal vaccination, it has neglected the key issue of vaccine safety,” he said.
In a statement, Gavi’s leaders rejected the suggestion that its vaccine purchases were driven by anything other than the best available evidence.
“Any decision made by Gavi with regards to its vaccine portfolio is made in alignment with recommendations by the World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization (SAGE), a group of independent experts that reviews all available data through a rigorous, transparent and independent process,” Gavi’s statement said. “This ensures Gavi investments are grounded in the best available science and public health priorities.”
Mr. Kennedy is a longtime vaccine skeptic who has upended policies on vaccination in the United States since taking over the top health job for the Trump administration. His comments to the meeting in Brussels came on the same day that a key vaccine advisory panel for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was to meet in the United States. Mr. Kennedy fired all 17 of the previous members of the panel and replaced them with members he chose, several of whom have voiced vaccine skepticism mirroring his own.
Nevertheless, his address to Gavi came as a surprise; the organizers of the summit learned of it just two days in advance and scrambled to figure out where to put it on their program, which was otherwise full of technical panels on how to increase vaccination rates and a pep-rally-style pledging event at which countries would announce their commitment to support Gavi’s mission.
The United States was the largest donor to Gavi, whose work is estimated to have saved the lives of 17 million children around the world over the past two decades.
Mr. Kennedy’s remarks were the first indication that the Trump administration’s decision to end funding for Gavi was motivated by mistrust of vaccines, rather than as part of an overall reduction in foreign aid and support for multilateral institutions.
The summit is held by Gavi every four years to replenish its finances. Gavi had hoped to raise $9 billion for the 2026-2030 period, funds the organization said would allow it to purchase 500 million childhood vaccinations and save at least eight million lives by 2030. In addition to essential vaccines such as those against measles and polio, Gavi has in recent years helped countries introduce new vaccines into their immunization programs, including one to protect small children against malaria.
The philanthropist Bill Gates and Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the W.H.O., are both scheduled to speak at the Brussels gathering Wednesday.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
18) ICE Will See You Now
By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist, June 25, 2025
“Successful authoritarian governments cultivate authoritarian cultures. Key to that project is the rejection of accountability, the embrace of impunity and the demand that ordinary people stand ready to be scrutinized by the state for any reason it deems necessary.”
Olga Fedorova/Associated Press
For President Trump, the United States is little more than his personal playground, Mar-a-Lago gone national.
In his mind, the nation has become his private property and he is entitled to do with it what he pleases. Accordingly, Trump seems to lack any sense of obligation or responsibility to the public. His chaotic and haphazard policymaking — if you can even call it that — is as disrespectful to the American people as any imaginable insult.
Just consider the disregard one must have for the lives of those in your care — for the lives of those who have cloaked you in the power of the world’s highest office — to carelessly destroy their livelihoods with ruinous tariffs and send their children to attack another country because you thought it would look good on cable television.
Ask not what you can do for your country, Trump might say. Ask what you can do for me.
In practice, as we have seen, the president’s disdain for responsibility (as well as any semblance of republican virtue) cashes out to a total rejection of democratic accountability and a sweeping assertion of absolute impunity (backed, in some cases, by the Supreme Court).
The president’s sense of his total impunity extends beyond him to his allies and agents. Nowhere is this more apparent than with the roving bands of immigration agents tasked with seizing anyone deemed “illegal.” In cities across the country, masked men and women are snatching people off the streets, forcing them into unmarked cars to be detained, without offering them the chance to contact family members or a lawyer. Just last week, bystanders captured footage of Narciso Barranco, a landscaper, being pinned down and battered by a group of masked agents. His son reported that Barranco was working when several masked men approached him. When he quite understandably ran away, his son said, he was pepper sprayed and beaten.
Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Los Angeles Times that “the agents took appropriate action and followed their training to use the minimum amount of force necessary to resolve the situation in a manner that prioritizes the safety of the public and our officers. He is now in ICE custody.”
As for the masks? According to Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, “officers wear masks for personal protection and to prevent doxxing.” Lyons also wrote, in a letter to The Washington Post, that ICE officers “have seen a staggering 413 percent increase in assaults against them,” but no one has been able to substantiate that number with actual evidence.
In any case, the point is that according to this line of thinking, ICE officers must wear masks so that the public can’t identify them. That is what it means to “dox” someone — to reveal his identity and address on the internet. But ICE officers aren’t anonymous commentators on a social network; they are representatives of the state, acting on its behalf and empowered to use force if necessary. As a federal agent, an ICE officer is a public servant whose ultimate responsibility lies with the people. And the people have the right to know who is operating in their government. If an ICE officer does not want to risk identification — if he does not want the public he serves to hold him accountable for his actions — then he can choose another line of work.
That ICE has claimed this right to anonymity — which is to say, the right to evade responsibility for its actions in the field — is a testament to the ways that Trump has, in his pursuit of impunity, warped and undermined the idea of a public trust.
“A public office is a public trust,” the 19th-century jurist Thomas M. Cooley wrote. “The incumbent has a property right in it, but the office is conferred, not for his benefit, but for the benefit of political society.” And as Dorman Bridgman Eaton, a pivotal figure in the effort to end the spoils system and reform the American civil service, observed in an 1878 essay for The Atlantic Monthly, the holder of such a trust is obligated to “bestow upon his public duties his paramount attention and to sacrifice whatever is not consistent with discharging them in a just, efficient and economical manner.”
Everyone engaged in public service, from the president to an officer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is bound by the nature of a public office to act with some fidelity to the public interest. At a minimum, they must be accountable to the people they serve, ready to accept responsibility when they abuse their power or violate the trust of the public.
What Trump has done, building on decades of near impunity for wrongdoing among American officeholders, is completely invert this dynamic in the most egregious way imaginable. Accountability separates those who govern from those who rule, and Trump, of course, intends to rule.
It is fitting that on the other side of the president’s authoritarian contempt for responsibility, accountability and the public trust is his demand for total compliance from ordinary people, under threat of state scrutiny and harassment.
Last month, my newsroom colleagues Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik reported on the president’s effort to potentially build a “master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.” Working with Palantir — a data analysis and technology firm, named for one of the “seeing stones” in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” series that enabled the fallen wizard Saruman to observe the world around him — the administration hopes to collapse the barriers separating the data collected by various federal agencies on virtually every American. (Interestingly, in “Lord of the Rings,” the palantír misleads and deceives as much as it shows and reveals.)
Under existing structures, this information is siloed. Only the Social Security Administration is allowed access to Social Security data; only the Department of Veterans Affairs is allowed access to veterans’ data; only the I.R.S. is allowed access to taxpayers’ data — you get the idea. The White House ostensibly wants to merge all this into a single repository for the purpose of developing individualized profiles of every American. As my colleagues note, “Mr. Trump could potentially use such information to advance his political agenda by policing immigrants and punishing critics.”
You, ordinary citizen, may not know the identity of the ICE officers who took your co-worker or your neighbor or your spouse or your child. But Trump will potentially know everything about you, so that he can pursue his goals, which may have nothing to do with your welfare or the welfare of the nation at large. The administration has already arrested legal residents for their political views and has already turned to social media to scrutinize those it wants to remove from the country. Who is to say that citizens aren’t next?
The sometimes narrow focus on whether Trump is really an authoritarian — or whether the United States is truly going down the path of authoritarianism — often misses the extent to which there is more to authoritarianism than the character of the leadership of the regime. Successful authoritarian governments cultivate authoritarian cultures. Key to that project is the rejection of accountability, the embrace of impunity and the demand that ordinary people stand ready to be scrutinized by the state for any reason it deems necessary.
The attempt to foster an openly authoritarian culture in the United States isn’t as flashy as some of the most overt expressions of despotism we’ve seen from the Trump administration, but it is very much part of the package. And if there is anything that might endure past Trump, it is whatever might come out of that effort.
The sad fact is that it is difficult to extricate a nation from authoritarian habits of mind and reorient a people toward liberty and equality. It takes time and effort to dismantle a democracy, but if you can bend citizens into subjects, then you’ve already won the most important battle, if not the war.
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*..........*
