Trump and Sam Altman in the White House.  Credit…Jim Watson/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Maureen Dowd, had a piece yesterday entitled, Fast Times at West Wing High, in which she reviews the latest shenanigans in the White House among Trump and tech giants including Elon Musk, San Altman, and Steve Zuckerberg. 

Here are two clips from her column:

“the digerati gazed east and discovered a fascinating new toy they could fight over: the American president. Suddenly, Democratic Silicon Valley is Trump country. The moment crystallized when Zuckerberg — fed up with Democrats’ sermonizing about his company’s failure to shut down misinformation in 2016 — bought a yacht, put on a gold necklace and got a streetwear makeover, declared that Donald Trump’s response to the assassination attempt was “one of the most bad-ass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” and ended fact-checking at Meta.”

And:

“the tech moguls thought: This could be cool, to not only control all communications and manipulate all emotions in the country, but to reprogram the government’s regulatory engine so it runs like we want it to! Just give some puny millions to Trump’s campaign and inauguration, throw some flattery at the unquenchable maw of Trump’s ego, and you were suddenly at his elbow onstage in the Capitol when he swept back into power.

Trump is a 78-year-old Luddite who has a beautiful young woman nicknamed the “human printer” following him around with a petite printer in her backpack. She cranks out positive stories to show him and takes dictation for his social media posts. He still prefers a Sharpie to a keyboard.

Yet suddenly he’s the savior of TikTok teens and crypto bros. King Donald’s court is filled with the lords of the cloud, courtiers who are bringing their chaos and drama to a Trump orbit brimming with chaos and drama.”

Her entire column is below.

Boys just want to have fun!

Tony

The New York Times

Fast Times at West Wing High

Jan. 25, 2025

By Maureen Dowd

Opinion Columnist, reporting from Washington

When I drove around Silicon Valley in 2017, talking to tech gods for a magazine piece, trying to figure out if A.I. would be friend or foe, Washington barely seemed to be on their radar.

As far as they were concerned, they were the nation’s capital. In D.C., pols merely passed laws. In Silicon Valley, techies were creating a new species, trying to conjure a nonhuman sentient mind. Forget Henry Adams; this was Mary Shelley stuff. Some tech titans were buoyant about the future. Some were wary. Elon Musk warned we might be “summoning the demon.”

Silicon Valley was run by a bunch of boys with toys. Brilliant, quirky young engineers trying to get more toys than the others, better rockets or self-driving cars or robots. They were developing a monopoly on Americans’ attention, learning how to ratchet up the algorithms to create division, distrust and envy, siloing people and spreading angst — all under the innocent guise of connecting us and making our lives better.

Within their own elite circle, the tech billionaires were volatile — sometimes friendly, sometimes feuding, sometimes, in the case of Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, threatening cage matches, sometimes, in the case of Musk, selling off his houses and sleeping on friends’ couches. They were the richest, most potent men in the world, with a visceral high school vibe. They were the bitchiest, weirdest mathletes in history.

Eventually, the digerati gazed east and discovered a fascinating new toy they could fight over: the American president. Suddenly, Democratic Silicon Valley is Trump country. The moment crystallized when Zuckerberg — fed up with Democrats’ sermonizing about his company’s failure to shut down misinformation in 2016 — bought a yacht, put on a gold necklace and got a streetwear makeover, declared that Donald Trump’s response to the assassination attempt was “one of the most bad-ass things I’ve ever seen in my life,” and ended fact-checking at Meta.

Wow, the tech moguls thought: This could be cool, to not only control all communications and manipulate all emotions in the country, but to reprogram the government’s regulatory engine so it runs like we want it to! Just give some puny millions to Trump’s campaign and inauguration, throw some flattery at the unquenchable maw of Trump’s ego, and you were suddenly at his elbow onstage in the Capitol when he swept back into power.

Trump is a 78-year-old Luddite who has a beautiful young woman nicknamed the “human printer” following him around with a petite printer in her backpack. She cranks out positive stories to show him and takes dictation for his social media posts. He still prefers a Sharpie to a keyboard.

Yet suddenly he’s the savior of TikTok teens and crypto bros. King Donald’s court is filled with the lords of the cloud, courtiers who are bringing their chaos and drama to a Trump orbit brimming with chaos and drama. At the inauguration, the tech tycoons outranked most of the political class in the seating placement — sitting on par with former presidents.

It’s a remarkable spectacle watching an entirely new power center flock to Washington, fight for Trump’s attention, jockey to prove their loyalty, post groveling encomiums to Trump, throw money at him, clamor for eight-figure mansions around town.

As the OpenAI chief Sam Altman gushed on X this past week: “watching @potus more carefully recently has really changed my perspective on him,” adding, “i’m not going to agree with him on everything, but i think he will be incredible for the country in many ways.”

Trump, who always wanted elites to love him, relishes the crème de la tech lining up to kiss his ring. If they see him as a new toy to compete over, he sees them the same way.

The returning president wasted no time putting the cat among the pigeons when he held a news conference Tuesday announcing a joint venture among OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle called “Stargate” to generate about $100 billion in computing infrastructure for A.I., with a goal to invest $500 billion by the end of Trump’s term.

Trump, savoring his new image as a champion of Silicon Valley in its bid to beat out China on A.I., showcased Altman at the White House, even though he knows Altman and Musk — who co-founded OpenAI — are in a legal feud. Elon has accused his former pal, Sam, of deserting their original mission when he changed its nonprofit status to for-profit; Altman allies think Musk is just jealous that the young, ragtag crew working in a makeshift office blasted off a few years after he left, ultimately creating ChatGPT.

Musk went bananas (or more bananas) on X, declaring that the troika did not have the money for such an initiative. Altman fired back, saying Musk was wrong, and Musk escalated the brawl by posting old Altman tweets criticizing Trump.

It was an eye-popping crack in the Donald/Elon bromance, which is being watched closely now that Trump has given Musk the power to roam the West Wing, where he is working out of an office on the second floor, and take a hatchet to government.

Furious Trump aides told Politico that the mercurial Musk got over his skis, discrediting a project Trump had just called “tremendous” and “monumental.”

Did Trump think flirting with Musk’s nemesis was a good way to put Elon in his place and remind people that there’s only one star of the Trump show?

Asked by reporters about Musk undermining him, Trump was nonchalant. He knows from digital insults.

The president dismissed it as a personality clash, noting that Musk “hates one of the people,” allowing, “I have certain hatreds of people, too.”

The colliding egos of Silicon Valley have joined the colliding egos on the Potomac, but the president is not perturbed. Mixing it up, stirring conflict for its own sake, this is just how Donald Trump has fun.

Dan Snyder:  Photo Courtesy of the Associated Press.

Dear Commons Community,

Yahoo Sports is reporting that the  former owner of the Washington Commanders, Dan Snyder, “f***ing hates” the success the team has had this year.  This afternoon the Commanders will be playing the Philadelphia Eagles for the championship of the NFL’s National Football Conference.  The Washington Commanders are a win away from reaching the Super Bowl and with rookie quarterback Jayden Daniels leading the way, the franchise is going through a rebirth.  As reported by Yahoo Sports and ESPN.

New ownership, a potential franchise quarterback and a revitalized fan base defines the current state of the Commanders. It wasn’t that way for a long time under Daniel Snyder, and the team’s 2024 success, coupled with the way Snyder was ejected from the NFL, has reportedly led to hurt feelings from the former owner.

An ESPN story from Seth Wickersham and Don Van Natta Jr. reports a longtime associate of Snyder attended a dinner with the former Washington owner in the fall and had one takeaway when it comes to the Commanders’ success this season.

“He f***ing hates it,” the associate reportedly told a colleague.

Snyder bought the team in 1999 when the franchise was known as the Redskins. The lack of on-field success — six playoff appearances in 24 years — coupled with a dysfunctional and toxic workplace off the field ultimately led to the team’s 2023 sale to Josh Harris.

It was a transaction that Snyder tried to derail, Wickersham and Van Natta report. While still negotiating with Harris, Snyder was contemplating ways to retain the franchise.

One thought Snyder reportedly had was to announce that his behavior over the years was due to alcohol, but that he had given up drinking and was a changed man. The $6 billion minimum price tag was also purposefully set knowing that only a limited number of parties could afford it. Harris and his group paid $6.05 billion.

Once the process reached closing, Snyder reportedly refused to share his bank information to allow Harris to wire the money. After friends, including former Washington head coach Joe Gibbs, and family members pressed him to let go of the team, he finally relented late in the night, hours before an event was scheduled welcoming the Harris group as new owners.

Minutes after NFL team owners unanimously approved Harris’ purchase, the league released a 23-page report containing the findings of Mary Jo White, the attorney tasked with investigating sexual harassment and financial impropriety allegations against Snyder.

The conclusions of the report would be devastating for a man still in the NFL. It corroborated serious harassment allegations from former Commanders employee Tiffani Johnston and claimed the club had cooked its books to avoid sharing money with the NFL.

In response to the investigation, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell fined Snyder $60 million — a fine that Snyder initially refused to pay but was ultimately made part of the ownership transaction.

Snyder, now 60, lives in London with numerous legal issues still pending in the U.S. He reportedly was interested in buying part of a Premier League soccer team, but other sources said that American football is his only interest.

“He isn’t a fan of other sports,” a source told ESPN. “He’s a fan of the [Commanders]. That was the biggest thing.”

“Poor Dan”!

Tony

Cardinal Timothy Dolan

Reverend Mariann Edgar Budde

Dear Commons Community,

Celia Viggo Wexler,  author of “Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope” had a guest essay in yesterday’s New York Daily News entitled, “How Catholic bishops fail their country” that focuses on the political positions of the country’s Catholic leadership.  She specifically compares the roles that New York’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan played during Trump’s inauguration and a prayer service  that the Reverend MariannEdgard Budde led in the Washington Cathedral. She commented that Budde spoke truth to power while Dolan did not.  Here is Wexler’s introduction.

“Two prelates played prominent roles at the inauguration of President Trump. One seized the opportunity to speak truth to power; the other did not.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the most prominent Catholic leader in the country, gave the invocation on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda. The Right Rev. Mariann Budde, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, led the inauguration prayer service the next day at the Washington National Cathedral.

Budde minced no words, speaking directly to the new president seated just a few feet away:

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now, … on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands …”

But Budde’s courage stands in marked contrast to Dolan’s silence, even after Trump fulfilled his pledge to go after undocumented immigrants, even in churches and schools.

The silence is nothing unusual. As a Catholic feminist, I’m ashamed to say that the voices of Catholic leaders, whose flock includes about 30 million Catholic voters, have largely been missing in the struggle to save America’s soul.

That’s because for too many Catholic bishops, the marginalized and vulnerable have one key failing: they’ve already been born.

Why didn’t the bishops raise the alarm much sooner when Catholic voters might have paid attention? Because the bishops are focused on one issue — opposition to abortion.”

She is right on.  American bishops have been blind to any issue but abortion even when Pope Francis condemns policies directed at vulnerable immigrants.

I already sent one email earlier this week to the New York Archdiocese criticizing Cardinal Dolan’s presence and comments at Trump’s inauguration.

Wexler’s entire piece is below.

Tony

——————————————————–

The New York Daily News

How Catholic bishops fail their country.

By Celia Viggo Wexler:

January 25, 2025

Two prelates played prominent roles at the inauguration of President Trump. One seized the opportunity to speak truth to power; the other did not.

New York Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the most prominent Catholic leader in the country, gave the invocation on Monday in the Capitol Rotunda. The Right Rev. Marian Budde, who heads the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, led the inauguration prayer service the next day at the Washington National Cathedral.

Budde minced no words, speaking directly to the new president seated just a few feet away:

“In the name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now, … on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing war zones and persecution in their own lands …”

But Budde’s courage stands in marked contrast to Dolan’s silence, even after Trump fulfilled his pledge to go after undocumented immigrants, even in churches and schools.

The silence is nothing unusual. As a Catholic feminist, I’m ashamed to say that the voices of Catholic leaders, whose flock includes about 30 million Catholic voters, have largely been missing in the struggle to save America’s soul.

That’s because for too many Catholic bishops, the marginalized and vulnerable have one key failing: they’ve already been born.

Why didn’t the bishops raise the alarm much sooner when Catholic voters might have paid attention? Because the bishops are focused on one issue — opposition to abortion.”

In the 2016 campaign, Trump pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade, ending the nearly 50-year-old constitutional protection for legal abortion.

This was one promise he kept, an accomplishment not lost on strident Catholic abortion foes, and their biggest clerical cheerleaders.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) made that clear in its 2024 voters’ guide. Candidates’ positions on abortion should be the “pre-eminent priority” for Catholics.

In 2024, more than six out of 10 devout white Catholics — 64% — preferred Trump over Kamala Harris. Latino Catholics voted for Harris, but by much smaller margins than for Joe Biden in 2020. Overall, 53% of Catholics supported Trump. In 2020, Biden narrowly won the Catholic vote by 1%. Catholics make up about one-fifth of the electorate.

To be sure, if the bishops had spoken out earlier it might not have necessarily influenced enough voters to change the results. But they could have raised the alarm post-election.

The bishops said they were keeping their powder dry until the administration gave a stronger signal of its plans. “We are waiting to see what takes shape,” said El Paso Bishop Mark Seitz, who chairs the bishops’ committee on migration. The bishops then would “raise our voice loudly” in opposition.

Now that Trump is putting his plans into action, where are those loud voices? Bishop Seitz ultimately did decry Trump’s decision to empower federal immigration agents to enter churches, schools, and possibly even hospitals to round up the undocumented. Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich raised similar concerns.

But Archbishop Timothy Broglio, the head of the USCCB, issued a statement on the Trump executive orders that was the bare minimum one would expect from the Catholic Church. He deemed the executive orders on immigrants and refugees, foreign aid and the death penalty, “deeply troubling,” but praised Trump’s order recognizing two biological sexes, male and female.

Indeed, the USCCB was promoting only one protest event on its website: a prayer vigil before yesterday’s annual March for Life, which the bishops have long supported, and which brings thousands of Catholic students and parishioners to the nation’s capital to lobby Congress to protect the unborn.

Fifty years ago, some Catholic leaders were wiser and bolder. Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, longtime president of Notre Dame University, was held in such high esteem that he served on a score of presidential commissions, including the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, whose hearings on racism led to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Speaking in 1974, during the Vietnam War, Hesburgh maintained: “We cannot be loud in condemning abortion after being silent about napalmed Vietnamese or seemingly unconscious of the horrible present fact that 60% of the children already born in the poorest countries … die before the age of 5.”

But those days are gone. Most prelates will go to bat for the “pre-born.” Their passion for life declines dramatically after delivery.

Wexler is the author of “Catholic Women Confront Their Church: Stories of Hurt and Hope” (2016, Rowman & Littlefield.) She has written extensively about Catholic feminism and church politics.

Dear Commons Community,

On Thursday, Trump signed an executive order aimed at declassifying any remaining federal records relating to the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, his brother, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, as well as the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“Everything will be revealed,” Trump told reporters.

Although the previously classified documents may help prove or disprove the many conspiracy theories that have popped up in the six decades since the killings, Jack Schlossberg, the son of Caroline Kennedy and grandson of JFK, isn’t on board with their declassification.

The 32-year-old political correspondent for Vogue magazine took to X after Trump’s executive order and wrote that there was “nothing heroic” about the release of documents.

“The truth is a lot sadder than the myth — a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme,” he wrote. “Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back. There’s nothing heroic about it.”

Considering that Schlossberg’s grandfather was murdered in cold blood, many people were surprised he didn’t see the value of releasing any documents relating to the tragedy.

I am one of those who would like to see the release of these documents.  As a teenager when Kennedy was assassinated, I was devastated.  Kennedy was a hero for many in my generation.  We never felt we got the full story of what happened. So, respectfully, I welcome a declassification.

Tony 

Credit…Jarod Lew for The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

New York Times columnist, Michelle Goldberg, has a piece this morning entitled,  “Trump’s Plan to Crush the Academic Left.”  She focuses on Chris Rufo, the influential right-wing strategist who spearheaded the campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., initiatives, and his ambitions for a second Trump presidency. Goldberg said he hoped  to see Donald Trump’s administration aggressively investigate Ivy League institutions that practice “rampant” discrimination against white, Jewish and Asian students and faculty members, particularly through D.E.I. programs, which aim to boost the representation of groups deemed underprivileged. If they were found to have violated the law, he wanted the schools put under a federal consent decree, “so that the federal government can get them into compliance by force.” 

She concludes that many of these schools will capitulate under pressure from the White House and other Trump-controlled federal agencies.

The entire article is below.

Tony

———————————————————————-

The New York Times

Trump’s Plan to Crush the Academic Left

Jan. 24, 2025

By Michelle Goldberg

Opinion Columnist

Last year, Chris Rufo, the influential right-wing strategist who spearheaded the campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., initiatives, told me about his ambitions for a second Trump presidency. He hoped, he said, to see Donald Trump’s administration aggressively investigate Ivy League institutions that, according to Rufo, practice “rampant” discrimination against white, Jewish and Asian students and faculty members, particularly through D.E.I. programs, which aim to boost the representation of groups deemed underprivileged. If they were found to have violated the law, he wanted the schools put under a federal consent decree, “so that the federal government can get them into compliance by force.”

More broadly, he imagined a complete transformation of American academia. “If you have the full weight of the White House, the full weight of the Department of Education and a platoon of right-wing lawyers trying to use all of the statutory and executive authority that they have to reshape higher education, I think it could be a thing of tremendous beauty,” he told me.

The model for such a multipronged assault, said Rufo, was Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis created an “enormous improvement in the culture.” One place to see what this looks like in practice is New College of Florida, where DeSantis made Rufo a trustee. Once a progressive redoubt, it currently offers classes like “The ‘Woke’ Movement,” whose course description says, “What has become known colloquially as the ‘woke’ movement is best understood as a kind of cult.”

Now Rufo, who met with Trump’s education team on Inauguration Day, is seeing his vision start to become reality. With one of his first executive orders, Trump set up sweeping investigations into D.E.I. in the private sector, instructing federal agencies to identify up to nine investigative targets among major institutions, including colleges and universities “with endowments over $1 billion,” a category that includes all the Ivies.

Another executive order lays the groundwork for deporting foreign students and professors who engage in anti-Israel activism, something Trump promised during his campaign. It calls for ensuring that “aliens otherwise already present in the United States” aren’t hostile to its citizens, culture, government or institutions, and “do not advocate for, aid or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security.”

These are two of the opening salvos in a campaign to crush the academic left. “There’s kind of a multifront threat right now as to whether or not you can express views that are unpopular with the folks in the White House and executive agencies and continue to enjoy the protections of the First Amendment on academic freedom,” said Will Creeley, legal director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, which fights both left- and right-wing infringements on free speech.

Many Americans, including plenty of people who didn’t vote for Trump, won’t mourn the end of tedious corporate D.E.I. trainings and have little sympathy for radical student protesters. “I’ve been talking with executives in Silicon Valley, investors on Wall Street and administrators within the universities,” Rufo told me on Thursday. “They’re all telling me the same thing: The resistance to Trump’s agenda is at an all-time low.”

But this climate of liberal resignation only makes the administration’s plans more ominous. Under the cover of rolling back unpopular left-wing excesses, Trump’s team is trying to assert political control over American higher education, and it seems to be pushing on an open door.

Some of the coming crackdown will be couched as a reaction to campus antisemitism. Rufo described critical race theory, post-colonial studies and D.E.I. as “intimately related ideologies,” of which left-wing antisemitism is but one expression. “They’re nesting dolls. Antisemitism, anti-white hatred and the desire to overthrow the West are all built on the same foundation.” It is that foundation that the administration seems bent on attacking.

Creeley, at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, predicts that many state legislatures, local officials and university trustees are going to enlist, either out of enthusiasm or expediency, in the crusade to bring the academic left to heel. “I think you’ll see professors investigated and terminated. I think you’re going to see students punished, and I think you’re going to see a pre-emptive action on those fronts,” he said.

Just look at what’s happened at Harvard this week. On Tuesday it announced that, as part of a lawsuit settlement, it would adopt a definition of antisemitism that includes some harsh criticisms of Israel and Zionism, such as holding Israel to a “double standard” and likening its policies to Nazism. Though Harvard claims that it still adheres to the First Amendment, under this definition a student or professor who accuses Israel of genocidal action in Gaza — as the Israeli American Holocaust scholar Omer Bartov has — might be subject to disciplinary action.

In a further act of capitulation, the Harvard Medical School canceled a lecture and panel on wartime health care that was to feature patients from Gaza because of objections that it was one-sided, The Harvard Crimson reported.

“I think that Harvard likely read the room, so to speak, from a political perspective, and decided to cut their losses,” said Creeley. In this period of capitulation, it probably won’t be the last school to fall in line.

Judge John C. Coughenour – appointed by Ronald Reagan in 1981

Dear Commons Community,

A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked President Trump’s executive order to end automatic citizenship for babies born on American soil, dealing the president his first setback as he attempts to upend the nation’s immigration laws and reverse decades of precedent.

In a hearing held three days after Mr. Trump issued his executive order, a Federal District Court judge, John C. Coughenour, sided with Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, the four states that sued, signing a restraining order that blocks Mr. Trump’s executive order for 14 days, renewable upon expiration. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order,” he said.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Frankly,” he continued, challenging Trump administration lawyers, “I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar would state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It just boggles my mind.”

Mr. Trump responded hours later, telling reporters at the White House, “Obviously we’ll appeal it.”

The president’s order, one of several issued in the opening hours of his presidency to curtail immigration, both legal and illegal, declared that children born in the United States to undocumented immigrants after Feb. 19 would no longer be treated as citizens. The order would also extend to babies born to mothers who are in the country legally but temporarily, such as tourists, university students or temporary workers, if the father is a noncitizen.

In response, 22 states, along with activist groups and expectant mothers, filed six lawsuits to halt the executive order, arguing that it violates the 14th Amendment. Legal precedent has long interpreted the amendment — that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States” — applies to every baby born in the United States, with a few limited exceptions: Children of accredited foreign diplomats; children born to noncitizens on U.S. territory occupied by an invading army; and, for a time, children born to Native Americans on reservations.

The courts have never recognized the constitutional legitimacy of further limitations on birthright citizenship, and Judge Coughenour of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington did not appear eager to break with that pattern on Thursday.

Judge Coughenour’s order marks the beginning of what will almost certainly be a long battle between the new administration and the courts over Mr. Trump’s ambitious second-term agenda, which seeks to transform American institutions in ways that could be interpreted as running afoul of law and precedent. Other orders, including attempts to strip job protections from career federal employees and accelerate deportations, are also facing court challenges.

Brett Shumate, a lawyer for the federal government, said the administration’s order on birthright citizenship was “absolutely” constitutional. He argued on behalf of the Trump administration that undocumented immigrants “remain subject to a foreign power” and therefore “have no allegiance to the United States.” Nor, the government argued in a filing, would their American-born children.

After the ruling, a Justice Department spokesman promised that the department “will vigorously defend” Mr. Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship before the courts and “the American people, who are desperate to see our nation’s laws enforced.”

The 14th Amendment refers to people who are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. The judge asked the government whether undocumented immigrants’ children who committed a crime would be subject to U.S. law. Mr. Shumate responded that they would be “subject to the jurisdiction with respect to the laws of this country, but not with respect to the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment.”

“Citizenship is different,” Mr. Shumate said.

To that, Judge Coughenour’s decision was emphatic: “I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” he said. “This is a blatantly unconstitutional order. Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?”

In the case before Judge Coughenour, who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan, the four state attorneys general argued that Mr. Trump’s order would deny rights and benefits to more than 150,000 children born each year and leave some of them stateless. States would also lose federal funding for various assistance programs.

The states’ 32-page complaint cited testimony from former Assistant Attorney General Walter Dellinger. In 1995, Mr. Dellinger told Congress that a law limiting birthright citizenship would be “unconstitutional on its face” and that even a constitutional amendment would “flatly contradict the nation’s constitutional history and constitutional traditions.”

Federal government lawyers in the hearing pleaded for more time, saying a delay in ruling would make little difference since the executive order would not take effect until next month. The states responded that the administration’s order created an immediate burden for them, requiring them to alter systems that determine eligibility for federal-backed programs, and that the status of babies born to undocumented mothers in the meantime would be unclear.

A separate federal lawsuit challenging the executive order filed by 18 other states and two cities is being considered by a court in Massachusetts. Four other lawsuits by activists and pregnant mothers have been filed in the district courts of Maryland, Massachusetts and New Hampshire, as well as the Central District of California.

In a status conference about the Maryland case on Thursday, Joseph W. Mead, an attorney at Georgetown Law School’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection who represents four pregnant mothers and two nonprofit groups, argued that the courts should intervene quickly so that the mothers could know the legal status of their future children.

“Mothers today now have to fear that their children will not be given the U.S. citizenship that they’re entitled to,” he said.

After the hearing in Seattle, Nick Brown, the attorney general in Washington State, called the executive order “un-American.” But he warned the fight against it is far from over.

“We will be back in court,” he said, “as will many other people across the country.”

This will likely drag out for quite a while!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading, “Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter ” by Clare Mulley.  It is the story of Elzbieta Zawacka – nom de guerre “Zo” – a fearless World War II resistance fighter who operated in Poland.  A teacher, she became one of the most decorated women of World War II for her relentless fighting of the the German occupation of her country.  She took incredible risks including a thousand mile-journey through German occupied Europe in order to reach London as an emissary of the Polish Home Army command.  After completing this mission, to return home, she became the only woman to ever parachute behind enemy lines into Poland.  The author, Clare Mulley, is a first-rate story teller.  I had read her previous, The Spy Who Loved, The Secrets and Lives of Christine Granville, one of Britain’s most daring and decorated special agents during World War II. In Agent Zo, Mulley duplicates the literary excellence of The Spy Who Loved… If you are at all interested in the contributions of women during World War II,  I highly recommend Mulley’s work

Below is a review of Agent Zo, compliments of the New Journal of Books.

Tony

—————————————————————————————————————–

New York Journal of Books

Agent Zo: The Untold Story of a Fearless World War II Resistance Fighter

Author:   Clare Mulley

Reviewed by:  Marissa Moss

“an exceptional job bringing this complicated and compelling history to light”

Clare Mulley, historian and author specializing in World War II, does an exceptional job bringing this complicated and compelling history to light. Elzibieta Zawacka, known as Agent Zo, fought her entire life for women’s military worth to be recognized, first in the Polish Home Army fighting the Nazis, then under the Soviet dominated rule in post-war Poland, finally as an archivist and historian in a democratic Poland. This book is one Zo herself would be proud of, modest though she was about her own impressive achievements.

The amount of research Mulley did is truly staggering, especially given that almost all of it had to be done with the aid of translators. She manages to tell Zo’s personal story as the gripping adventure it was while also providing the bigger canvas of her lifetime. Mulley lays out the broader histories such as the little-known aspects of Poland’s post-war history, the Soviet domination and repression that resulted in the arrest and torture of people, including Zo.

All this was done in service of the revisionist history imposed on the country to erase the resistance army that had fought so long and so hard to free Poland, the people knowing the history had to be erased, along with any documentation. Besides that, Mulley weaves in the history of women in the military and Poland’s unique recognition of the valuable role women could play, granting them the same military status as men long before any other country in Europe.

The history of the Polish resistance and women’s military status are closely linked. As Mulley writes:

“Around 40,000 women would eventually be sworn in as members of the Polish Home Army, making it the largest resistance force in occupied Europe. Initially, they served in liaison, as messengers and couriers, as paramedics and in logistics; the day-to-day functioning of the early underground resistance would have been impossible without them.”

Women went on to more dangerous assignments. Zo herself risked death many times to get crucial information to the Allies. She ferried cash, weapons, and information, zigzagging across enemy territory, once even parachuting back into Poland, a first for a woman. She was involved in so many high-level missions, she developed quite a reputation and ended up with the rank of brigadier general (retired).

“Resourceful, determined and courageous, for many of her colleagues Zo had become a ‘true legend of the Home Army’ as soon as she had crossed wartime borders for the hundredth time.’  ‘She is a courier of extraordinary self-reliance,’ one report recorded. ‘She is decisive and steady, which is why she was capable of escaping by jumping from a train.'”

Zo was instrumental in getting women the recognition they deserved from the Home Army, advocating for a decree that would grant them equal status.

“The more Zo had seen of the women’s auxiliaries in Britain, the more convinced she had become that the Home Army needed their own distinct service model. . . . The main problem, as she saw it, was ‘how best to present the difficult matters that were so completely ignored or misunderstood by men.'”

Zo’s many achievements during the war are well summed up:

“For four long years she had organized and run an intelligence network, crossed wartime borders over a hundred times as a courier and, as an emissary, challenged and changed military policy and practice at the highest level. Along with her colleagues, she had helped grow the Home Army into an organisation that could wreck over a thousand enemy train engines in a single week, and supplied the intelligence that paved the way for many of the Allied bombing raids. She had also seen her entire family arrested, and the execution of many of her friends.”

The Nazi surrender should have brought Zo the peace she had fought for with so much courage. Instead, “she felt that her country’s occupation by one hostile foreign power [Nazi Germany] had now been replaced by another [Soviet Russia], and Poland was still not free.”

Zo herself would was sent to prison, arrested for being part of a network spying on the communist government. She wasn’t part of any such group but looked guilty simply because of her past. Like many of her compatriots in the Home Army, her real crime lay in telling the story of Poland’s resistance, a story that contradicted the official Soviet version. Tortured and put in prison for years, Zo was finally freed, determined to collect even more stories of the Home Army, especially the part played by women.

Zo was officially recognized with many awards and medals, but to her what really mattered was the history she had lived through. She created a vast archive, hoping to educate a new generation about their country’s history. This book serves her mission well.

Marissa Moss is the author of A Soldier’s Secret: The Incredible Ture Story of Sara Edmonds, a Civil War Hero.

Dear Commons Community,

The creator of ChatGPT, OpenAI, is teaming up with another US tech giant, a Japanese investment firm and an Emirati sovereign wealth fund to build $500 billion of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in the United States.

The new company, called The Stargate Project, was announced by Donald Trump who billed it “the largest AI infrastructure project by far in history.”  As reported by the BBC.

The venture, which began under President Joe Biden’s term in office, announced $100 billion of funding was being made available immediately, with the rest to come over four years, creating an estimated 100,000 jobs.

It is a partnership between OpenAI, Oracle, Japan’s Softbank and MGX, a tech investment arm of the United Arab Emirates government.

The AI industry has exploded in recent years, creating massive extra demand for the data centers which it relies on, while also raising concerns about the huge amounts of water and power such facilities require.

Elon Musk, however, clashed with Trump and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman over the Stargate project.  

Musk, a close Trump adviser who helped bankroll his campaign and now leads a government cost-cutting initiative, questioned the value of the investment yesterday.

“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote on his social platform X. The project  has well under $10 billion  secured. I have that on good authority.”

Altman responded Wednesday to say Musk was “wrong, as you surely know” and inviting Musk to come visit the first site in Texas that is already under construction.

Billionaires squabble and poor Trump is in the middle!

Tony

Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde and the Trumps

Dear Commons Community,

The Right Rev. Mariann Edgar Budde, the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, delivered a powerful sermon during a prayer service on Tuesday marking President Donald Trump’s inauguration. And Trump, who was in attendance, was less than pleased.

During the service at Washington National Cathedral, Budde made a direct plea for “mercy” to Trump, who was seated in the front with Melania and other family members and Vice President JD Vance. She asked the newly inaugurated president to have “mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now.”  As reported by The Huffington Post.

Budde then referenced some of Trump’s campaign promises and the flurry of executive orders he’d issued on the first day of the second term of his administration, such as his attempt to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants and his executive order rolling back protections for transgender people.

“There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families, some who fear for their lives,” Budde said in her sermon.

She then talked about the people who work hard at various jobs across the country who “may not be citizens or have the proper documentation,” but the “vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”

“They pay taxes and are good neighbors. They are faithful members of our churches and mosques, synagogues, gurdwaras and temples,” she said. “I ask you to have mercy, Mr. President, on those in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away.”

“Our God teaches us that we are to be merciful to the stranger, for we were all once strangers in this land,” she said. (Watch her entire sermon here.)

Trump has since lashed out at Budde over her remarks, writing on his Truth Social platform that Budde is a “so-called Bishop” and “Radical Left hard line Trump hater.” He charged that she “brought her church in the World of politics in a very ungracious way.”

“She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” he wrote.

The president also demanded an apology, but Budde has declined.

“I am not going to apologize for asking for mercy for others,” she told Time magazine on Wednesday.

Budde, who has used her platform to call attention to civil rights issues and to challenge Trump before, received wide praise online for addressing Trump directly in her sermon. Supporters of Trump criticized the bishop, accusing her of politicizing the prayer service.

But faith leaders have historically found inspiration for their social justice activism in their religion. And Budde “certainly has the Christian faith on her side” when it comes to the messages in her sermon, said William Willimon, a bishop in the United Methodist Church, an author and a professor of the practice of Christian ministry at Duke Divinity School.

Willimon said that Budde’s plea for mercy was “particularly moving.”

“There’s no instance in the life, work, teachings of Jesus where mercy ever takes a backseat to anything else,” he told HuffPost, adding, “Not only is Jesus merciful, he commands his followers to be merciful.”

“Even to those who are our enemies and those who wrong us, he ordered mercy,” he added.

The messaging behind Budde’s sermon was rooted in her faith.

Willimon said that he was moved and felt “proud” of Budde’s sermon. He emphasized that she presented the sermon as an “issue of mercy.”

“Mercy is a Christian virtue,” he said, later adding that “government officials are often not known for being merciful.”

Trump is “a president that’s shown great mercy for convicted criminals who attacked the government in his name,” he said, seemingly referencing Trump’s pardons for those convicted in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, “and yet is so stunningly unmerciful with these vulnerable immigrants and others.”

Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance and an ordained Baptist minister, said that as he watched Budde deliver her sermon, he saw how “deeply she was drawing on her spiritual calling to say what she knew the Gospel was inspiring her to say.” (

“I was grateful for her courage to speak gently, but truthfully, to the most powerful man in the world,” he told HuffPost.

It was important that Budde, a Christian leader, addressed Trump in her sermon.

Raushenbush said that Budde was “acting as a pastor” to Trump in that moment. She was “giving spiritual direction to someone in her congregation who happened to be the president of the United States.”

“You could see that Trump was unused to anyone, much less a Christian leader, speaking to him in any way that wasn’t simply delivering praise,” he said, later adding, “In the kindest way, she was offering him a moment to reflect and even repent. The fact that his heart was too hardened to hear it is on him — not her.”

Willimon said that the Christian faith, particularly in the context of the presidential inaugural events that have taken place this week, has been “misrepresented.” He pointed to faith leaders who participated in the inauguration, such as the Rev. Franklin Graham, who he believed delivered “divisive” and “political” comments.

“So I thought it was wonderful for [Budde] at this particular time to stand up and say, in effect, ‘By the way, world, Christians see these matters differently,’” he said.

Faith leaders should speak up on issues that affect communities.

“Religious leaders have a twofold obligation, which is to help congregants cultivate a relationship to the sacred, the Divine or spirituality, as well as to help individuals understand their moral obligations to each other,” Raushenbush said. “If you are only doing one or the other, you are not fully fulfilling your role as a faith leader.”

“So, of course, we have to talk about how transgender people are being targeted, because they are our neighbors — and in my Christian tradition, we have an obligation to love our neighbor as much as we have an obligation to love God,” he said. “Same with immigrants and others. We cannot sit these questions out and still say that we follow the mandates of Jesus.”

Willimon said that although some pastors may choose to not speak up on social justice issues on certain occasions or address certain issues in places beyond the pulpit — perhaps in counseling or at small gatherings — it’s still, overall, important to “speak up.”

“We should speak up,” he said, particularly if you know a lot about a particular subject and “feel Jesus put you up to it.”

Those criticizing Budde for the themes of her sermon are missing the mark.

“It makes me wonder just how much they know about the Christian faith or the church,” Willimon said of Budde’s critics.

He added, “What they’re really saying is not that Christians shouldn’t engage in politics, it’s just Christians shouldn’t engage in politics that I don’t approve of.”

He said that he’d ask Budde’s detractors to ask themselves whether they thought she accurately spoke up for the Christian faith and whether her message was derived from Scripture.

“And the answer to that is resoundingly yes,” he said.

Willimon said that Budde’s sermon should be viewed as a model for preachers and that there are other Christian leaders across the country spreading similar messages in their communities.

Raushenbush said that people criticizing Budde as being “political” have “clearly not read the Bible.”

“There is a lot in the Bible about welcoming the stranger and the immigrant and the outcast,” he said.

Raushenbush said he found it “striking” that Budde’s sermon was deemed controversial or “radical,” since her words were “squarely within the mainstream Christian tradition.”

He also called out those who spew Christian nationalist rhetoric, spreading hate and violence.

For those people, their “real objection” to Budde is that she’s a “Christian who put forward another way — one of mercy, kindness and unity,” he said.

Amen!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Monday, Donald Trump issued a flurry of executive orders, several of which could effect higher education especially those related to diversity, equity and inclusion. He banned DEI efforts across the federal government, eliminated a number of programs related to race and gender, and declared that there were “two sexes.” As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The flurry of executive orders and policy revocations sends a message about opposition to DEI that could prompt colleges to act preemptively, some higher-ed experts say.

Trump’s actions come as Republican state lawmakers and colleges in red states have eliminated or altered diversity offices, programs, and jobs on campuses.

With federal funding on the line — millions in student financial aid, as well as lucrative contracts and research grants — more colleges could be motivated to revisit their DEI efforts, said Eboo Patel, founder and president of Interfaith America.

“It seems very plausible that higher-education institutions will pre-comply, even before the Department of Education or the National Science Foundation writes it into specific projects,” Patel said. “Universities will adopt the spirit of the executive order.”

While the Trump administration has not yet signed an executive order specifically directed at higher education, Trump did end White House programs focused on advancing educational equity and opportunities for Hispanic, Native American, and Black students. The administration also rolled back efforts supporting tribal colleges and Hispanic-serving institutions.

Spared was the White House’s program focused on historically Black colleges, which Trump supported during his first term; in 2017, he signed an executive order to move the HBCU program into the White House from the Education Department.

Emmanual A. Guillory, senior director of government relations at the American Council on Education, said executive orders and revocations are common for new presidents. Former President Joe Biden signed 160 executive orders during his administration, many of which aimed to undo the 220 executive orders from Trump’s first term.

Even though Trump just got rid of several programs focused on students of color and minority-serving institutions, “it doesn’t mean that there wouldn’t be a forthcoming executive order with some different language,” Guillory said. “Every president is going to have their stamp on things.”

How the executive orders will be implemented, Guillory said, will be most important.

“Right now, what has been signed doesn’t necessarily, we believe, have a direct, hard impact,” he said. “But what comes after will matter.”

Guillory added that the American Council on Education is prepared for the new administration: “We are looking forward to working with the new political appointees.”

Meanwhile, an executive order asserting that the government will only recognize “two sexes” took aim at Title IX protections for transgender students that were championed by the Biden administration. (Those protections are enshrined in federal regulations, but a court blocked their enforcement this month.)

Trump’s order directed the forthcoming U.S. attorney general to issue guidance that Title IX does not require “gender identity-based access to single-sex spaces,” and barred federal funds from being used “to promote gender ideology.”

Trump also issued nearly a dozen executive orders on immigration, including efforts to limit birthright citizenship and require the Department of Homeland Security to fingerprint all undocumented immigrants. Trump’s pledges to crack down on immigration have created uncertainty and confusion for the country’s 400,000 undocumented college students — many of whom benefit from the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA — and 1.1 million international students.

Trump also revoked a Biden-era policy that effectively shielded undocumented immigrants from arrest while inside educational institutions, churches, and hospitals. On Tuesday, more than 20 states and cities sued over the executive order on birthright citizenship, a right enshrined by the 14th Amendment.

“The biggest change might be that foreign students and immigrants (or their children) enroll less frequently, putting strain on the institutions that rely on them when enrollments are dropping among the native-born,” Harry J. Holzer, a professor of public policy at Georgetown University, wrote in an email.

Trump’s actions on DEI reflect a broader shift in the public’s perception of diversity-related programs, Holzer said. Colleges have increasingly come under scrutiny for race-conscious hiring practices, for instance, with critics saying such efforts are discriminatory and limit free speech.

“DEI practices have made many students and faculty afraid to express moderate or conservative views,” Holzer said. “But Trump’s practices could now make progressives and people of color more fearful. Free expression is harmed either way.”

We will have to wait and see how these play out in our colleges and universities.

Tony