In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”
The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.
The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is famous in U.S. history as the site of a surprise attack by 353 Japanese aircraft that destroyed or damaged more than 300 aircraft, three destroyers, and all eight of the U.S. battleships in the harbor. Four of those battleships sank, including the U.S.S. Arizona, which remains at the bottom of the harbor as a memorial to the more than 2,400 people who died in the attack, including the 1,177 who died on the Arizona itself.
The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II.
Pearl Harbor Day is a landmark in U.S. history. It is observed annually and known by the name President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it: “a date which will live in infamy.”
But that date was not June 7, eighty-four years ago today.
It was December 7, 1941.
The Trump administration claims to be deeply concerned about American history. In March, Trump issued an executive order calling for “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” It complained, as Trump did in his first term, that there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”
The document ordered the secretary of the interior to reinstate any “monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” It spelled out that the administration wanted only “solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”
To that end, Trump has called for building 250 statues in a $34 million “National Garden of American Heroes” sculpture garden in order to create an “abiding love of country and lasting patriotism” in time for the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. On May 31, Michael Schaffer of Politico reported that artists and curators say the plan is “completely unworkable.” U.S. sculptors tend to work in abstraction or modernism, which the call for proposals forbids in favor of realism; moreover, there aren’t enough U.S. foundries to do the work that quickly.
Trump is using false history to make his followers believe they are fighting a war for the soul of America. “[W]e will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance,” he told a crowd in 2020. “They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” he said. Like authoritarians before him, Trump promised to return the country to divinely inspired rules that would create disaster if ignored but if followed would “make America great again.” At a 2020 rally, Trump said: “The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control. This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country.”
Trump’s enthusiasm for using history to cement his power has little to do with actual history. History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future.
Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat its worst moments.
The hard lessons of history seem to be repeating themselves in the U.S. these days, and with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, some friends and I got to talking about how we could make our real history more accessible.
After a lot of brainstorming and a lot of help—and an incredibly well timed message from a former student who has become a videographer—we have come up with Journey to American Democracy: a series of short videos about American history that we will release on my YouTube channel, Facebook, and Instagram. They will be either short explainers about something in the news or what we are releasing tonight: a set of videos that can be viewed individually or can be watched together to simulate a survey course about an important event or issue in American history.
Journey to American Democracy explores how democracy has always required blood and sweat and inspiration to overcome the efforts of those who would deny equality to their neighbors. It examines how, for more than two centuries, ordinary people have worked to make the principles the founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence the law of the land.
Those principles establish that we have a right to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in our government, and to have equal access to resources.
In late April, in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, Trump showed Moran that he had had a copy of the Declaration of Independence hung in the Oval Office. The interview had been thorny, and Moran used Trump’s calling attention to the Declaration to ask a softball question. He asked Trump what the document that he had gone out of his way to hang in the Oval Office meant to him.
Trump answered: “Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.”
The Declaration of Independence is indeed very special to our country. But it is not a declaration of love and unity. It is the radical declaration of Americans that human beings have the right to throw off a king in order to govern themselves. That story is here, in the first video series of Journey to American Democracy called “Ten Steps to Revolution.”
I hope you enjoy it.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2dS6uX1RkUyIQKUhI72xmstYGNpN_k1B
History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future.
Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat its worst moments.
Flatbed train cars carrying thousands of tanks rolled into Washington, D.C., yesterday in preparation for the military parade planned for June 14. On the other side of the country, protesters near Los Angeles filmed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throwing flash-bang grenades into a crowd of protesters. The two images make a disturbing portrait of the United States of America under the Donald J. Trump regime as Trump tries to use the issue of immigration to establish a police state.
In January 2024, Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to kill a bipartisan immigration measure that would have beefed up border security and funding immigration courts because he wanted to campaign on the issue of immigration. During that campaign, Trump made much of the high immigration numbers in the United States after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, when the booming U.S. economy attracted migrants. He went so far as to claim that migrants were eating people’s pets.
Many Trump supporters apparently believed officials in a Trump administration would only deport violent criminals, although Trump’s team had made it clear in his first term that they considered anyone who had broken immigration laws a criminal. Crackdowns began as soon as Trump took office, sweeping in individuals who had no criminal records in the U.S. and who were in the U.S. legally. The administration worked to define those individuals as criminals and insisted they had no right to the due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner reported that at a meeting in late May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who appears to be leading the administration’s immigration efforts, “eviscerated” federal immigration officials for numbers of deportations and renditions that, at around 600 people per day, he considered far too low. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested,” one of the officials at the meeting told Giaritelli. “‘‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?'” Miller said.
After the meeting, Miller told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity that the administration wanted “a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.” Thomas Homan, Trump’s border czar, took the message to heart. “You’re going to see more work site enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” he told reporters. “We’re going to flood the zone.”
According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, undocumented immigrants made up more than 4% of the nation’s workforce in 2023 and are concentrated in landscaping, farm work, and construction work. Sweeps of workplaces where immigrants are concentrated are an easy way to meet quotas.
The Trump regime apparently decided to demonstrate its power in Los Angeles, where over the course of the past week, hundreds of undocumented immigrants who went to scheduled check-in appointments with ICE were taken into custody—sometimes with their families—and held in the basement of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A.
This was the backdrop when on Friday, June 7, federal officials launched a new phase of the regime’s crackdown on immigration, focusing on L.A. workplaces. Agents in tactical gear sweeping through the city’s garment district met protesters who chanted and threw eggs; agents pepper sprayed the protesters and shot at them with what are known as “less-lethal projectiles” or “non-lethal bullets” because they are made of rubber or plastic. Protesters also gathered around the federal detention center, demanding the release of their relatives; officers in riot gear dispersed the crowd with tear gas.
Officers arrested more than 40 people, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU), for impeding a federal officer while protesting. Huerta’s arrest turned union members out to stand against ICE.
At 10:33 a.m. yesterday morning eastern time—so, before anything was going on in Los Angeles—Miller reposted a clip of protesters surrounding the federal detention center in Los Angeles and wrote that these protesters constituted “[a]n insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.” Miller has appeared eager to invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military against Americans.
On Saturday, in the predominantly Latino city of Paramount about 20 miles south of L.A., Rachel Uranga and Ruben Vives of the Los Angeles Times reported that people spotted a caravan of border patrol agents across the street from the Home Depot. Word spread on social media, and protesters arrived to show that ICE’s arrest of families was not welcome. As about a hundred protesters arrived, the Home Depot closed.
Over the course of the afternoon, protesters shouted at the federal agents, who formed a line and shot tear gas or rounds of flash-bang grenades if anyone threw anything at them or approached them. L.A. County sheriff’s deputies arrived to block off a perimeter, and the border agents departed shortly after, leaving the protesters and the sheriff’s deputies, who shot flash-bang grenades at the crowd. The struggle between the deputies and about 100 protesters continued until midnight.
Almost four million people live in Los Angeles, with more than 12 million in the greater L.A. area, making the protests relatively small. Nonetheless, on Saturday evening, Trump signed an order saying that “[t]o the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Based on that weak finding, he called out at least 2,000 members of the California National Guard to protect ICE and other government personnel, activating a state’s National Guard without a request from its governor for the first time in 50 years.
At 8:25 p.m., his social media account posted: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”
California’s governor Gavin Newsom said Trump’s plan was “purposefully inflammatory.” “LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice,” Newsom said. “We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.” Newsom said the administration is trying “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis.”
Trump apparently was not too terribly concerned about the “rebellion”; he was at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey, by 10:00 p.m.
At 10:06 p.m., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is under investigation over his involvement with a Signal chat that inappropriately included classified information, posted: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil; a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.” He added that the Defense Department was mobilizing the National Guard and that “if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.”
At 2:41 a.m., Trump’s social media account posted: “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest. We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual…unable to to handle the task. These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED…. Again, thank you to the National Guard for a job well done!”
Just an hour later, at 3:22 a.m., Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass posted: “I want to thank LAPD and local law enforcement for their work tonight. I also want to thank [Governor Gavin Newsom] for his support. Just to be clear, the National Guard has not been deployed in the City of Los Angeles.”
National Guard troops arrived in L.A. today, but James Queally, Nathan Solis, Salvador Hernandez, and Hannah Fry of the Los Angeles Times reported that the city’s garment district and Paramount were calm and that incidents of rock throwing were isolated. Law enforcement officers met those incidents with tear gas and less-lethal rounds.
Today, when reporters asked if he planned to send troops to L.A., Trump answered: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.” Trump appeared to be referring to the divisions during the Biden administration caused by Trump and his loyalists, who falsely claimed that Biden had stolen the 2020 presidential election. (In the defamation trial happening right now in Colorado over those allegations, MyPillow chief executive officer Mike Lindell, who was a fierce advocate of Trump’s lie, will not present evidence that the election was rigged, his lawyers say. They added: “it’s just words. All Mike Lindell did was talk. Mike believed that he was telling the truth.”)
At 5:06 p.m. this evening, Trump’s social media account posted: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations—But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.” He followed this statement with that odd closing he has been using lately: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal answered: “Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.”
At 6:27, Governor Newsom posted that he has “formally requested the Trump Administration rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles county and return them to my command. We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty—inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed. Rescind the order. Return control to California.” The Democratic governors issued a statement standing with Newsom and calling Trump’s order “ineffective and dangerous.”
At 10:03, Trump posted: Governor Gavin Newscum and “Mayor” Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots. These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists. Remember, NO MASKS!” Four minutes later, he posted: “Paid Insurrectionists!”
There is real weakness behind the regime’s power grab. Trump’s very public blowup with billionaire Elon Musk last week has opened up criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk controlled. In his fury, Musk suggested to Trump’s loyal followers that the reason the Epstein files detailing sexual assault of children haven’t been released is that Trump is implicated in them. Trump’s promised trade deals have not materialized, and indicators show his policies are hurting the economy.
And the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is raising significant opposition. Today Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) complained about the excessive spending in the bill for ICE, prompting Stephen Miller to complain on social media and to claim that “each deportation saves taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.” But David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute on Friday estimated that the deportation plans in the measure would add almost $1 trillion in costs.
There is no doubt that as their other initiatives have stalled and popular opinion is turning against the administration on every issue, the Trump regime is trying to establish a police state. But in making Los Angeles their flashpoint, they chose a poor place to demonstrate dominance. Unlike a smaller, Republican-dominated city whose people might side with the administration, Los Angeles is a huge, multicultural city that the federal government does not have the personnel to subdue.
Trump stumbled as he climbed the stairs to Air Force One tonight.
At 10:19 last night, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller posted on social media: “Stand with ICE. Pass the B[ig] B[eautiful] B[ill].”
And there it is. The Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is the MAGA regime’s attempt to replace the American government we’ve had since the 1930s with one that reflects the antidemocratic values of Project 2025. The measure is unpopular. According to a new CBS News/YouGov poll, 60% of Americans think the bill will help wealthy people, while 54% think it will hurt poor people. Forty-seven percent think it will hurt the middle class, while only 31% think it will help the middle class. As Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted, it’s “[s]tunning how badly Trump and the Rs have lost the debate on what their reconciliation bill will do.”
The measure changes the nature of the American government by extending tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations and adding significantly more money to immigration enforcement and defense spending. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the measure will add as much as $2.4 trillion to the deficit over ten years; with interest costs of that new debt, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget concluded the measure would increase the debt by nearly $3 trillion.
At the same time that it moves money upward and into the white nationalist project of expelling immigrants, the measure guts federal policies and agencies that serve the American people, apparently with the goal of pushing such policies and agencies to the states. The CBO estimates that as many as 13.7 million Americans will lose healthcare coverage if the measure passes, and cuts of nearly $300 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program will mean cuts of about 30% to the programs on which millions of Americans depend.
Miller’s post underscores the administration’s need to change the conversation around the measure, whose 1,000-plus pages lay out the MAGA vision for the United States. “Don’t kid yourself,” Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) posted. “[T]hey know they are absolutely getting cooked politically w[ith] their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”
Maanvi Singh of The Guardian put the right lens on events in Los Angeles today, noting “Trump’s dramatic escalation” and his vow “to crush opposition to his immigration raids.” Singh identified the administration’s escalation as the trigger for “a roaring backlash.”
Singh noted federal agents carried out arrests in L.A. without judicial warrants and that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been holding families in the basements of federal buildings, refusing them access to lawyers and family members. Agents in riot gear attacked protesters with tear gas and flash-bang grenades, turning peaceful protests into clashes.
Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance, and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller called the protests an “insurrection,” and last night Trump activated at least 2,000 members of California’s National Guard over the protests of California governor Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass. Just after midnight this morning, Trump posted: “Looking really bad in L.A. BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
Administration officials are continuing their emphasis on spectacle and performance to try to bring popular opinion back their way. CNN’s Brian Stelter reported today that television personality Dr. Phil McGraw and his camera crew were embedded with ICE during the raids.
According to Dr. Phil’s right-wing TV channel, he was there “to get a first-hand look at the targeted operations.” He also had “exclusive” access to Tom Homan, the man known as Trump’s “border czar,” and recorded interviews with him before and after the L.A. sweeps.
But that, too, is spectacle. As Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, Homan and Miller are the public face of border enforcement and anti-immigrant policies. But Homan is not part of ICE. He is a White House advisor, working in a civilian capacity. And yet, as Marshall records, he has taken to showing up before the cameras “in either faux military uniforms or, in most cases, civilian garb clearly meant to appear like military-style fatigues along with a ever-changing run of camo or olive drab baseball caps.”
Trump seems happy to let these White House officials take the lead in the immigration performance. On Saturday, Homan threatened to arrest anyone who obstructed immigration enforcement, refusing to exempt L.A. mayor Bass or California governor Gavin Newsom. Newsom responded: “What the hell is this guy? Come after me, arrest me. Let’s just get it over with. Tough guy. You know? I don’t give a damn, but I care about my community. I care about this community. The hell are they doing? These guys need to grow up, they need to stop, and we need to push back, and I’m sorry to be so clear, but—that kind of bloviating is exhausting. So, Tom, arrest me. Let’s go.”
As he arrived back at the White House this morning after spending the weekend at Camp David, Trump told reporters: “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great…. I think it would be a great thing. He’s done a terrible job.” Homan does not have the authority to arrest anyone. Using him to threaten to arrest a governor enables Trump to make the threat while also being able to deny that he made it.
Although members of Congress have legal authority to enter ICE detention facilities to conduct oversight, Jesus Jiménez, Chelsia Rose Marcius, and Nate Schweber of the New York Times reported that over the weekend, five members said officials barred them from doing so. New York Democratic representatives Adriano Espaillat and Nydia Velázquez say they were prevented from checking on the well-being of those detained in New York. In California, Democratic representatives Maxine Waters, Jimmy Gomez, and Norma Torres were turned away from the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown Los Angeles.
Waters said she was trying to see David Huerta, the popular president of the Service Employees International Union California, who was injured when officers threw him to the ground and arrested him on Friday. Huerta’s arrest has mobilized union workers to protest the immigration sweeps, and today the Department of Justice announced it was charging him with felony conspiracy to impede an officer, which carries a maximum penalty of six years in federal prison. Crowds gathered in Washington, D.C., as well as in L.A. to call for Huerta’s release, and this evening he was released from custody on a $50,000 bond.
In a statement following his arrest, Huerta said: "What happened to me is not about me. This is about something much bigger. This is about how we as a community stand together and resist the injustice that’s happening. Hard-working people, and members of our family and our community, are being treated like criminals. We all collectively have to object to this madness because this is not justice. This is injustice. And we all have to stand on the right side of justice.”
Today Mayor Bass reminded protesters that “LA has a proud history of peaceful protests for immigrants rights.” She called for them to “continue that legacy—don’t fall into the Trump Administration’s trap. Protest peacefully. Looting and vandalism will not be tolerated.” She added: “Trump didn’t inherit a crisis—he created one. To those stoking the fire of lawlessness and chaos alongside him—LA will hold you accountable.” Observers today said the L.A. protests, most of which take place within a five-block radius, are overwhelmingly peaceful, characterized by Tejano music and celebrations of local culture.
This afternoon, a government official told Reuters that it is deploying about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until Wednesday. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) said: “Here’s what you need to know about what’s going on in Los Angeles. The state and city have the means to control the protests. Donald Trump is getting involved to intentionally make the situation more violent. And potentially to create a pretext for some sort of martial law.”
David Dayen of The American Prospect posted: “The correct way to connect the authoritarian presence in LA and the Big Beautiful Bill is that the bill gives the government the resources to do this in dozens of cities at once. So if you don't like what's happening in LA, it's coming to your town if the bill passes.”
Today, California attorney general Rob Bonta and Governor Newsom sued Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for their order to federalize the California National Guard without authorization from the governor and against the wishes of local law enforcement, calling it “an inflammatory escalation unsupported by conditions on the ground.” They have asked the court to set aside the order, calling it unlawful.
In addition to being unlawful, it appears the deployment was not terribly well thought through. Matthias Gafni of the San Francisco Chronicle reported tonight that the National Guard troops sent by Trump to Los Angeles received no federal funding for food, water, fuel, equipment, or lodging. Gafni shows a photo of “wildly underprepared” troops sleeping in their clothes on a cement floor. Nonetheless, Trump called another 2,000 California National Guard troops into federal service today “to support ICE.”
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times looked around at events and wrote: “what i see is a white house whose ambitions outstrip its resources, who did not count on facing mass resistance, and which is scrambling to escalate the situation in hopes that a display of force will make people shut up.”
This evening, Trump posted on social media a photograph of what appeared to be border patrol and ICE agents with the caption: “THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL Boosts Border Patrol and ICE Agents on the Frontlines with the Largest Border Security Investment in History.”
Governor Newsom said: “U.S. Marines serve a valuable purpose for this country—defending democracy. They are not political pawns. The Secretary of Defense is illegally deploying them onto American streets so Trump can have a talking point at his parade this weekend. It’s a blatant abuse of power. We will sue to stop this. The courts and Congress must act. Checks and balances are crumbling. This is a red line—and they’re crossing it. WAKE UP!”
Also tonight, about 400 people turned out in Dallas, Texas, against ICE in solidarity with Los Angeles. At about 9:40 p.m. Dallas police said the protest was an unlawful assembly. At 10:15, officers moved in with pepper spray and smoke to disperse the crowd.
A final note: While the oxygen in the country was taken up by the administration's escalations, Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. today got rid of all 17 of the members of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices that advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Kennedy, who has taken a public stand against vaccines, told the Senate in his confirmation hearings that he would not change existing vaccine approval systems. But in an op-ed published today in the Wall Street Journal, he said “a clean sweep is needed to re-establish public confidence in vaccine science.”
Laura Unger and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press report that Kennedy intends to replace the fired committee members with his own picks.
Trump has unleashed something terrifying in the US – that even he may be powerless to control
Gaby Hinsliff
The protests in LA are what everyone feared, and a warning to countries that flirt with populism
She was live on air to viewers back home, her TV microphone clearly in hand, when the rubber bullet hit her. The Australian reporter Lauren Tomasi was the second journalist after the British photographer Nick Stern to be shot with non-lethal rounds while covering protests in Los Angeles sparked by immigration raids. But she was the first to be caught on camera and beamed around the world. There’s no excuse for not knowing what the US is becoming, now that anyone can watch that clip online. Not when you can hear her scream and see the cameraman quickly swing away to film a panicking crowd.
It was the scenario everyone feared when Donald Trump took office. Deportation hit squads descending on the kind of Democrat-voting communities who would feel morally bound to resist them, triggering the kind of violent confrontation that creates an excuse to send in national guard troops – and ultimately a showdown between federal and state power that could take US democracy to the brink. Now something like this may be unfolding in California, where the state governor, Gavin Newsom, has accused the president of trying to “manufacture a crisis” for his own ends and warned that any protester responding with violence is only playing into his hands. Suddenly, the idea that this presidency could ultimately end in civil conflict no longer seems quite so wildly overblown as it once did.
Or to put it another way, Trump has got what he wanted, which is for everyone to switch channels: to stop gawping at his embarrassing fallout with Elon Musk over unfunded tax cuts, and flick over to the rival spectacle he has hastily created. After a brief interruption to scheduled programming, the great showman is back in control. But in the meantime, the world has learned something useful about who wins in a standoff between two giant egos, one of whom has all the money and the other of whom has all the executive power. In US oligarchies just as in Russian ones, it turns out, it’s presidents who still get to set the agenda.
You can’t ride the tiger. That’s the lesson here: once populism has grasped the levers of power, even the richest man in the world cannot be sure of exploiting it for his own ends, or imposing his own agenda on the chaos. Not when a vengeful White House still has the power to destroy even the most powerful business empire, anyway. At the weekend, Musk meekly deleted explosive tweets about the president’s alleged relationship with the convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, and by Monday he was loyally sharing Trumpian messages about the LA protests. His father, meanwhile, tactfully blamed the outburst on Musk Junior being “tired” after five months working round the clock for the White House.
That ought to ring some bells on this side of the Atlantic. For oddly enough, it’s the same excuse offered up by Zia Yusuf, the millionaire businessman brought in to professionalise Reform UK’s perennially chaotic operation, who last week quit as chair in exasperation. Trying to get the party into power was no longer a “good use of his time”, he tweeted, after publicly clashing with its newest MP, Sarah Pochin, over her decision to ask a question in parliament about banning burqas (which isn’t officially Reform policy, or at least not yet). Yusuf, a British Muslim, has long been seen as Farage’s trusted bulwark against those inside Reform desperate to pick up where the jailed thug Stephen Yaxley-Lennon left off, and to become a full-blown, far-right anti-Islam movement.
But this time, it seems, Yusuf may have bitten off more than the boss was ready to chew. A whole two days after storming out, Yusuf ended up storming awkwardly back in, telling the BBC that actually, having thought about it, he probably would ban burqas and other face coverings. He had just been exhausted, he suggested, after barely having a day off in 11 months. (If nothing else, it seems Reform really means what it says about fighting back against modern HR practices.)
To be fair to him, even Farage seems to find the process of trying to control his parties exhausting at times, judging by the regularity with which he has taken breaks from them over the years. While Yusuf won’t return as chair, he will now join Reform’s so-called British Doge, supposedly taking a Musk-style chainsaw to council spending – which sounds like a breeze compared with managing Reform MPs. Until, that is, you reflect on how exactly Doge has turned out across the Atlantic.
The reason parts of Silicon Valley were quietly enthusiastic about their fellow tech tycoon’s slash and burn approach to US bureaucracy was that they saw profitable method in the madness: a plan to hack the state back to the bare minimum, opening up new markets for digital services and unleashing (or so they hoped) a new wave of economic growth by slashing national debt.
Five months on, however, it’s clear that any Doge savings will be utterly dwarfed by Trump’s forecast to send national debt soaring to uncharted and potentially unsustainable highs. Any tech titan hoping for the US equivalent of Margaret Thatcher on steroids, in other words, has ended up with Liz Truss after one too many espressos instead – plus troops on the streets of California and the slowly dawning realisation that, as the billionaire venture capitalist Michael Moritz put it, they have “no sway” over what they unleashed.
There will be plenty of people back in Britain who couldn’t care less about obscure comings and goings in the Reform party, even as its poll lead means it’s starting to make the political weather. Others simply don’t expect it to affect their lives much either way if Reform permanently supplants a Conservative party from which it already seems hard to distinguish, and a few may already be calculating that they can turn its rise to their own advantage.
Yet what the last few frightening days in the US have demonstrated is that once populism has its feet firmly enough under the table, chaos wins. There’s no ability to belatedly impose order, no house-training it either. All you can do is deny it a room in the house in the first place. In Britain, at least, it’s not too late for that.
Foreign Office staff told to consider resigning if they disagree over Gaza
More than 300 Foreign Office staff who raised concerns about potential UK "complicity" in Israel's conduct in Gaza were told if they profoundly disagreed with government policy they could consider resigning.
The staff letter, seen by the BBC, was sent to Foreign Secretary David Lammy last month.
In it, officials questioned the UK's continued arms sales and what they called a "stark… disregard for international law" by Israel.
The Foreign Office said it had systems for staff to raise concerns and added the government had "rigorously applied international law" in relation to the war in Gaza.
The reply to the staff letter was sent from Sir Oliver Robbins and Nick Dyer, the two most senior civil servants in the Foreign Office.
They told the signatories: "f your disagreement with any aspect of government policy or action is profound your ultimate recourse is to resign from the Civil Service. This is an honourable course."
The response was met with "outrage" according to one official who signed the letter.
"[There is] frustration and a deep sense of disappointment that the space for challenge is being further shut down," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The officials' letter signed on 16 May was at least the fourth such document sent by concerned civil servants to ministers and Foreign Office managers since late 2023.
The BBC understands the signatories represent a wide range of expertise across Foreign Office departments, embassies and missions including in London and overseas.
The letters have reflected the scale of the civilian death toll in Gaza, Israel's restrictions on aid supply and Israeli settlement expansion and settler violence in the occupied West Bank, among other issues.
Staff are also said to feel disquiet that many of their warnings have not been acted on, and those whose jobs it is to implement decisions could be liable in any future legal proceedings against the UK government.
The 16 May letter said: "In July 2024, staff expressed concern about Israel's violations of international humanitarian law and potential UK government complicity. In the intervening period, the reality of Israel's disregard for international law has become more stark."
It went on to list the killing by Israeli forces of 15 humanitarian workers in March and Israel's suspension of all aid to Gaza in the same month "leading many experts and humanitarian organisations to accuse Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war".
It said the UK government's position had contributed to "the erosion of global norms", citing continued weapons exports and the visit to London in April by Israel's foreign minister Gideon Sa'ar "despite concerns about violations of international law".
It added that, "supported by the Trump administration, the Israeli government has made explicit plans for the forcible transfer of Gaza's population".
In their response on 29 May, Sir Oliver and Mr Dyer told the staff the department wanted to see "healthy challenge" as part of the policy-making process and had already set up a "bespoke Challenge Board" and regular listening sessions with employees to hear concerns in this policy area.
They wrote that officials were entitled to their personal views, but added it "might be helpful" to "remind" them of mechanisms available to those uncomfortable with policy.
It went on to list a series of ways staff could raise issues, before adding that resignation was an "ultimate recourse" and "honourable course" for those with profound disagreements over government policy.
"[T]he bargain at the heart of the British Civil Service is that we sign up to deliver the policies of the Government of the day wholeheartedly, within the limits imposed by the law and the Civil Service Code," it said.
A former official who saw the correspondence described the response as "obfuscation".
"This… simply provides the government with supposed 'plausible deniability' for enabling breaches of international law," said the former official who also spoke on condition of anonymity.
They said that the FCDO and broader civil service seemed unable to learn the lessons of the past, referring to the 2016 Chilcot Report recommendations following the inquiry into the Iraq war.
Chilcot criticised the emergence of an "ingrained belief" within senior levels of the UK policy community over the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. His recommendations led to civil service reforms designed to challenge "groupthink" and empowering officials to speak out about policy concerns.
The UK government's position is that Israel is "at risk" of breaching humanitarian law. Israel has previously said it operates according to international law. Palestinian rights groups have rejected this, taking evidence to several legal cases brought internationally.
In September, Foreign Secretary David Lammy announced the suspension of around 30 arms export licenses to Israel, out of a total of about 350, citing a "clear risk" they might be used to commit or facilitate a serious violation of international humanitarian law.
It came weeks before the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Israel's prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence minister Yoav Gallant as well as the military commander of Hamas.
Israel's government has consistently rejected allegations it has committed war crimes in Gaza, calling the ICC's decision "antisemitic", while the US Department of State last week announced sanctions against four ICC judges for "transgressions against the United States and Israel".
In a statement, the FCDO said the job of civil servants was to deliver on government policies and provide professional, impartial advice as set out in the Civil Service Code.
"There are systems in place which allow them to raise concerns if they have them," said the spokesperson. They added: "Since day one, this government has rigorously applied international law in relation to the war in Gaza. One of our first acts in government was to suspend export licences that could be used by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza…
"We have suspended direct exports of F-35 parts for use by Israel, and we categorically do not export any bombs or ammunition which could be used in Gaza," added the spokesperson.
On 19 May the UK issued a joint statement with France and Canada threatening "concrete actions" against Israel if it did not stop its renewed military offensive and lift aid restrictions.
Today President Donald J. Trump made it clear that the provocations he and his administration are escalating in Los Angeles and now elsewhere are using the issue of immigration to suppress dissent entirely.
In the Oval Office today, Trump said of the military parade scheduled for this Saturday: “If there’s any protester wants to come out, they will be met with very big force…. For those people that want to protest, they’re going to be met with very big force.”
His statement comes after the administration instituted aggressive immigration sweeps in Los Angeles during which Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) met the few hundred protesters with violence.
Then, over the protests of both Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and California governor Gavin Newsom, Trump federalized 4,000 members of California’s National Guard and ordered 700 Marines to Los Angeles. He and his advisors have repeatedly threatened to arrest anyone who does not cooperate with ICE, including Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom.
Trump has said he based his decision to federalize the National Guard on his insistence that Los Angeles is staggering under violent riots, but in fact the protests are largely peaceful and local officials maintain they can handle the situation.
Still, Trump described Los Angeles as “invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” and said “violent insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations.” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called Los Angeles a “city of criminals,” and other MAGA lawmakers have gotten into the act. Will Sommer of The Bulwark pointed out today that MAGA influencers are also pushing for more crackdowns and more cruelty in a feedback loop as they and White House officials push each other toward more and more cruelty toward immigrants.
But the narrative that L.A. is under siege is hard to make stick. Protesters have been filming the bands playing and people dancing at the protests, which remain small. They have also filmed the ICE agents shooting less-lethal bullets at individuals, including an Australian journalist who was speaking to a camera when she was shot from behind. The complaint against SEIU leader David Huerta, who has been charged with conspiring to impede an officer, says that he walked and sat on a public sidewalk in such a way that he blocked an ICE van before an officer pushed him to the ground and arrested him.
Economist Paul Krugman notes that “Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been,” and Newsom has been meeting the claims of MAGA politicians that the city is a hellscape with actual statistics showing that California is safer than their own states. He reminded Oklahoma senator Markwayne Mullin that Oklahoma’s murder rate is 40% higher than California’s and, after Alabama senator Tommy Tuberville called for Newsom to be arrested, retorted: “Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Its murder rate is ranked third in the entire country. Stick to football, bro.”
As Maria Sacchetti of the Washington Post noted today, California recently became the fourth largest economy in the world. It has the highest number of immigrants in the country—although many have moved in the past few years to more affordable states—and unemployment numbers are close to the national average.
But Trump has always managed his public affairs by projecting dominance in a fake world; his political instincts for keeping attention on himself have been compared to the kayfabe of professional wrestling.
This afternoon he upped the ante again. In a speech at the Army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Trump delivered a fiercely partisan speech that sounded like it was written by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. In front of a crowd of enlisted personnel who journalist Jane Coaston reported had been carefully selected to be Trump supporters and “to be fit and not look fat,” Trump claimed the U.S. was under a “foreign invasion” because of “stupid people or radical Left people or sick people.” He goaded the personnel into booing Newsom and Bass.
Since the days of George Washington, the American armed forces have been strictly nonpartisan, declaring their allegiance to the U.S. Constitution itself rather than to any leader.
Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles noted that Trump is “turning the world’s powerful military away from its focus on Russia and China toward a new enemy—the American people themselves.” He mused: “I’ve been saying that I felt Trump’s dramatic escalation in recent days was driven in part by Musk’s emasculation of him last week. I also wonder whether it’s being driven by Zelensky’s profound humiliation of Putin, and Putin lashing out at Trump for not delivering Ukraine to him.”
Steven Lee Myers of the New York Times reported today that right-wing bots, trolls, conspiracy theorists, and MAGA influencers are flooding social media with messages designed to attack immigrants and Democrats and defend Trump. Many of those accounts are linked to Russia and Russian disinformation.
It certainly feels as if administration officials are going for broke in ways that benefit Russia. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard today released a video warning that the world is close to a nuclear war caused by a political elite that expects it can survive one in special bunkers. Gabbard has a history of parroting Russian propaganda, and famously, Russian president Vladimir Putin has used the threat of nuclear war to press his demands against Ukraine.
A YouGov poll out today shows that only 34% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of Marines to the Los Angeles area to respond to protests over the enforcement of immigration laws while 47% do not approve. Only 38% of American adults approve of Trump’s deployment of National Guard soldiers to L.A., while 45% disapprove. A strong majority—56%—of Americans think state and local officials should take the lead in responding to the L.A. protests, while only 25% think the federal government should.
Strikingly, 50% of adults disapprove of the administration's handling of deportations, while only 39% approve.
Those numbers were gathered before Pentagon comptroller Bryn MacDonnell told the House Defense Appropriations Committee today that the Pentagon estimates the cost of federalizing the National Guard and deploying the Marines to Los Angeles at $134 million.
Today the Department of Justice announced it was indicting Representative LaMonica McIver (D-NJ) on three counts of “forcibly impeding and interfering with federal law enforcement officers” after a May 19 event in front of a Newark, New Jersey, ICE detention center. McIver was at the detention center with others as part of her oversight responsibilities, and a video shows her being jostled with a crowd that includes an ICE officer, but no one breaks stride. McIver called the charges “a brazen attempt at political intimidation.”
Tonight Governor Newsom delivered a prime-time address about the events of the past few days. He outlined the story of the ICE raids and Trump’s escalation of conflict. He urged protesters to exercise their First Amendment rights peacefully and warned that anyone participating in violence would be held accountable.
Then the governor launched into a wholesale condemnation of the Trump regime. He warned that “if some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.”
Newsom called Trump out for firing the government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for fraud, and for declaring war “on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing. He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment…. [H]e’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than…, in his own words, ‘for getting elected.’”
“[T]his isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles,” Newsom said. “When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.”
“Democracy is under assault right before our eyes,” Newsom said. “This moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball…to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.”
Newsom urged Americans to stand up for the country. “I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear,” he said. “But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment,” Newsom said.
“Do not give in to him.”
While President Donald Trump is trying to project strength by ordering a federalized National Guard and the Marines into Los Angeles, a new Quinnipiac poll of American registered voters out today reinforces that both Trump and his policies are unpopular. The numbers are remarkable.
The poll shows that 38% of registered voters approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president; 54% disapprove. Voters aren’t keen on Trump’s appointees, either. Thirty-eight percent of voters approve of the way Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is handling his job; 53% disapprove. Thirty-seven percent of voters approve of the way Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is handling his job, while 46% disapprove. Thirty-eight percent approved of the work billionaire Elon Musk did, while 57% said it was either “not so good” or “poor.”
More voters disapprove than approve of Trump’s handling of immigration issues (43% approval to 54% disapproval), deportations (40% approval to 56% disapproval), the economy (40% approval to 56% disapproval), trade (38% approval to 57% disapproval), universities (37% approval to 54% disapproval), the Israel-Hamas conflict (35% approval to 52% disapproval), and the Russia-Ukraine war (34% approval to 57% disapproval).
Voters are opposed to the budget reconciliation bill the Republicans have dubbed the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” (and Democrats have called the “Big, Beautiful Betrayal”) by 53% to 27%. While the measure cuts almost $800 billion out of Medicaid over the next ten years, only 10% of registered voters believe the federal funding for Medicaid should decrease.
There is little good news for the administration in economic numbers, either. Yesterday, the World Bank, an international organization of 189 countries, joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in concluding that Trump’s trade war would cut U.S. economic growth sharply. The World Bank estimates that growth will fall by half in 2025 compared to 2024. In 2024 U.S. economic growth was 2.8%; in 2025, the World Bank predicts growth of just 1.4%. It forecasts that Trump’s trade wars will cut global economic growth from 2.8% in 2024 to 2.3% in 2025.
After promising 90 tariff deals in 90 days, Trump has been desperate for a deal with China. In retaliation for Trump’s high tariffs, China tightly controlled exports of rare earth minerals and the magnets made from them, which the U.S. needs to build cars, electronic products, and missiles. Rare earth minerals are valuable minerals that are not uncommon, but are present in such small concentrations the amount of labor it takes to refine them is enormous. Most of them are currently mined in China. As Ana Swanson reported yesterday in the New York Times, late last month Ford had to close a Chicago factory temporarily and other companies have been forced to suspend some of their operations.
On Sunday, on CBS’s Face the Nation, top White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said: “The point is we want the rare earth, the magnets that are crucial for cellphones and everything else, to flow just as they did before the beginning of April,” that is, before Trump imposed his “Liberation Day” tariffs.
Today Trump posted, “OUR DEAL WITH CHINA IS DONE,” although China simply called it a “framework” and neither Trump nor Xi has agreed to it. Malcolm Ferguson of The New Republic wrote that the proposed deal simply revives a May deal that rolled tariffs back for 90 days. Further, the rare earth deal only lasts for six months.
University of Michigan economist Justin Wolfers wrote: “The US & Chinese trade negotiators have negotiated a handshake agreement to seek signoff to agree that a previously-agreed agreement was still their agreed upon agreement. (That agreement is not an agreement but a framework for seeking future agreements).” He added: “Notice that not only are we not getting a better deal, we’re not even getting back to where we were at the start of the Administration.”
Before the House Ways and Means Committee today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Trump is likely to extend the 90-day pause on his tariffs with countries to whom the administration is speaking.
Meanwhile, Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon of Military [dot] com confirmed today that the troops Trump addressed in a partisan speech at Fort Bragg had been handpicked Trump supporters with a fit physical appearance. (One message simply read: “No fat soldiers.”) Toropin and Beynon reported: “The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump's diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.” They also reported that an Oklahoma-based retailer was selling pro-Trump and right-wing campaign-style merchandise at the event, a violation of military policy.
When questioned about Trump’s undermining of the traditional nonpartisanship of the military, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell told the journalists: “Believe me, no one needs to be encouraged to boo the media. Look no further than this query, which is nothing more than a disgraceful attempt to ruin the lives of young soldiers.”
But a commander at Fort Bragg commented, “This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution,” speaking with Military [dot] com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. “This was shameful. I don’t expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term.”
Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee Roger Wicker (R-MS) and chair of the House Armed Services Committee Mike Rogers (R-AL) have said nothing. Ron Filipkowski of MeidasTouch, who served as a Marine, called their silence “a betrayal of their duty to the military and the Republic.”
The administration’s policies continue to gather opposition. More than 90 scientists at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, signed and another 250 supported anonymously a letter sent to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and NIH leader Jay Bhattacharya titled the Bethesda Declaration. The scientists used as a model Bhattacharya’s own October 2020 Great Barrington Declaration, which echoed the political plan of the first Trump White House and called for ending any attempt to control Covid-19 and instead simply letting it spread.
The Bethesda Declaration said: “[W]e dissent to Administration policies that undermine the NIH mission, waste public resources, and harm the health of Americans and people across the globe.” It said the leaders of NIH and members of Congress who oversee it are prioritizing “political momentum over human safety and faithful stewardship of public resources.” They called out the politicization of research by stopping high-quality, peer reviewed grants and contracts, thus throwing away “years of hard work and millions of dollars,” risking the health of participants in studies, and damaging public trust.
They noted that some of the signers felt they had to remain anonymous while others, “due to a culture of fear and suppression created by this Administration[,] chose not to sign their names for fear of retaliation.”
Giselle Ruhiyyih Ewing of Politico reported today that former Trump allies are turning on Federal Bureau of Investigation director Kash Patel and deputy director Dan Bongino. Both of them had pushed a number of conspiracy theories on right-wing media before Trump appointed them to office, and supporters expected that they would expose the “Deep State” once they were in power. But they have not released new information about the Jeffrey Epstein case, which right-wing adherents believe will show a list of people who are implicated in the convicted sex offender’s actions. Micah Morrison at the right-wing Judicial Watch wrote: “Conservative insiders are alarmed by mounting signs that Patel and Bongino have been taken hostage by the Deep State consensus and are failing to bring meaningful change to the FBI.”
Yesterday, voters in districts in Florida, Massachusetts, and Oklahoma chose state House and Senate members in special elections. G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes that in five of the six, Democrats continued to overperform relative to their 2024 numbers.
Politico’s Lisa Kashinsky, Calen Razor, and Mia McCarthy reported today that of the 50 Republican members of Congress they surveyed, only 7 said they planned to go to the June 14 military parade in Washington, D.C. Although the parade is in honor of the 250th anniversary of the creation of the U.S. Army, the chairs of the House and Senate Armed Services committees do not plan to attend.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY), who has criticized Trump’s budget reconciliation bill, yesterday said: “I love parades, but I’m not really excited about $40 million for a parade. I don’t really think the symbolism of tanks and missiles is really what we’re all about…. All the images that come to mind are Soviet Union and North Korea.”
Today, Paul told Jordain Carney of Politico that the White House has uninvited him from the annual White House picnic for members of Congress and their families, a move that Paul learned of only when he tried to pick up the tickets and that he called “incredibly petty.” He commented that the “level of immaturity is beyond words.”
