Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Former National Security Adviser John Bolton is back to criticizing Trump following last week’s FBI search of his home and office.

Bolton, speaking out for the first time since the FBI conducted its searches, penned an Aug. 25 op-ed in the Washington Examiner that referenced the FBI investigation as the former Trump aide resumed criticizing Trump’s foreign policy on Ukraine.

“Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy today is no more coherent than it was last Friday when his administration executed search warrants against my home and office,” Bolton wrote, repeating the same line in a post X. “Collapsing in confusion and haste, Trump’s negotiations may be in their last throes, along with his Nobel Peace Prize campaign.”

The focus of the FBI’s Aug. 22 searches targeting Bolton wasn’t clear, but Vice President JD Vance said it involved “classified documents.” Democrats have slammed the Justice Department’s investigation of Bolton as a politically motivated attack against a Trump adversary.

During Turmp’s first term, the Justice Department started a criminal investigation and filed a federal lawsuit that sought to block publication of Bolton’s book, “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

Bolton, who also served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has been a regular critic of Trump since serving for him in his first term. Trump has previously canceled Bolton’s security clearance and security detail, despite an Iranian assassination plot.

“I’m not a fan of John Bolton,” Trump told reporters last week after the FBI executed its searches of Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland home and Washington D.C. office. “He’s a real sort of a lowlife.”

Imagine Trump calling someone a lowlife who he appointed as his national security adviser.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It seems like everyday Trump threatens to investigate somebody. On Sunday, Trump threatened to investigate Chris Christie over a decade-old political scandal and revoke ABC News’ broadcasting license after the Disney-owned network aired an interview in which the former governor sharply criticized the president.

“Donald Trump sees himself as the person who gets to decide everything, and he doesn’t care about any separation. In fact, he absolutely rejects the idea that there should be separation between criminal investigations and the politically elected leader of the United States,” Christie said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” while discussing the FBI’s Friday morning raid of Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton’s home and office.

“I just watched Sloppy Chris Christie be interviewed” on ABC’s “This Week,” Trump posted to his social media platform hours later. He accused Christie, a former Trump ally, of lying “about the dangerous and deadly closure of the George Washington Bridge in order to stay out of prison,” referring to the 2013 “Bridgegate” scandal in which several Christie aides and allies colluded to create traffic jams on the bridge to punish a local Democratic mayor. (Christie was never implicated in the scandal and has long denied any connection to the conspiracy.)

Christie and Trump have a long and rocky relationship. The former governor endorsed Trump after dropping out of the 2016 presidential primary and became a close adviser to the president. Following Trump’s defeat and subsequent attempt to overturn the 2020 election, Christie sought to establish himself as one of Trump’s chief Republican critics and ran against him in the 2024 GOP primary.

Two former officials linked to Christie’s office were found guilty on all charges in connection with the Bridgegate scandal. The Supreme Court threw out the convictions in 2020, and Trump at the time tweeted his congratulations to Christie, then a close ally.

“Congratulations to former Governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, and all others involved, on a complete and total exoneration (with a 9-0 vote by the U.S. Supreme Court) on the Obama DOJ Scam referred to as ‘Bridgegate,’” the president tweeted.

Trump’s Sunday comments come days after his administration reopened a probe into the president’s former national security adviser-turned-critic Bolton over whether he disclosed classified information in a 2020 book. The move immediately drew criticism that Trump was using the muscle of the US government to target a political foe, though the specific basis for the searches was not clear.

Over an hour after Trump’s initial post on Sunday, he returned to Truth Social to attack ABC News, this time roping in NBC News to claim the networks “give me 97% BAD STORIES” and baselessly call them “AN ARM OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY.” The president then claimed that, “ACCORDING TO MANY,” both networks should “HAVE THEIR LICENSES REVOKED BY THE FCC.”

“I would be totally in favor of that because they are so biased and untruthful, an actual threat to our Democracy,” Trump added.

An hour later, he continued the threats, writing that ABC and NBC “should lose their Licenses for their unfair coverage of Republicans and/or Conservatives, but at a minimum, they should pay up BIG for having the privilege of using the most valuable airwaves anywhere at anytime!!! Crooked ‘journalism’ should not be rewarded, it should be terminated!!!”

Trump’s calls for the FCC to strip the networks of their broadcasting licenses come as the agency, under chair Brendan Carr, has reopened investigations into complaints of media bias against ABC, NBC and CBS. In the final days of the Biden administration, Carr’s predecessor had dismissed the probes, but Carr, a Trump loyalist, reopened them after taking office.

ABC did not immediately respond to a request for comment. NBC declined to comment.

Oops there goes another former Trump supporter!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday opened the door to cutting interest rates for the first time in nearly a year, he noted the tremors beginning to shake a main pillar of the U.S. economy: the labor market.

Concerns about the pace of job growth were heightened earlier this month after government data showed a sharp slowdown in hiring in July, along with much weaker payroll gains in May and June than previously thought. The disappointing numbers were alarming enough for Trump to question their accuracy and to fire the head of the agency tasked with compiling the data.

Yet labor experts tell CBS News they weren’t surprised by the downturn, and caution that more pain could be in store for job seekers. Data released since the August 1 job numbers shows companies are delaying hiring as they adjust course to account for headwinds including fresh U.S. tariffs and the advent of artificial intelligence, they say.

“There’s a real cooling in the labor market,” Andy Challenger, senior vice president of executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told CBS MoneyWatch. “We’re also having lots of individual conversations with companies that are letting us know to expect future layoffs.”

He added, “So for me, there is more reason to be pessimistic about the labor market than optimistic we’ll see some major bounce back.”

Here are three charts that could point to a serious downturn in the U.S. job market.

Fewer workers are getting hired

Overall, U.S. employers in 2025 have added fewer jobs on a monthly basis compared with the pace of gains in recent years, when companies sought to expand as the economy roared back from the pandemic. In 2024, employers hired an average of 168,000 workers each month, but that has slowed to an average of 35,000 over the past three months, Powell said on Friday.

The risk is that the labor market could weaken from here, which could lead to “sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment,” Powell said.

The slowdown could spur the Fed to cut its benchmark interest rate, policymakers’ main tool for energizing the economy and job growth, at its meeting next month for the first time since December 2024. Lowering rates could bolster the labor market because it would make it cheaper for consumers to borrow, driving spending, for businesses to invest, including by adding workers.

More long-term job seekers

Another troubling sign is a recent surge in long-term job seekers, or people who have been searching for a job for more than 27 weeks. In July, about 1.8 million Americans had been looking for work for more than 27 weeks, a jump of about 64% from three years earlier and 20% from a year ago.

It may not get easier to find work anytime soon, given signs from employers that they intend to continue to cut jobs, Challenger said.

“Don’t take the summer off” from looking for new work, he advised job-hunters. “It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the labor market will be better in three to six months.”

A jump in unemployed young workers

At the same time, young workers are also having more trouble finding their first jobs, which has been blamed on everything from slowing economic activity this year to employers adopting artificial intelligence in place of entry-level workers.

To be sure, the nation’s unemployment rate remains low, at 4.2%. Yet that statistic is backward-looking, reflecting the labor market’s strength in previous months — it says little about economic conditions moving forward.

Meanwhile, for new college graduates the current job market amounts to “a perfect storm,” said career coach Tracey Newell.

“Companies are limiting new entry-level roles, and AI is replacing many traditional ‘starter’ jobs,” she added, noting that it isn’t unusual for employers these days to receive hundreds of job applications for a single position.

A lot of insightful albeit troubling information here.

Tony

Courtesy of Daniel Zender / The Atlantic; Getty

Dear Commons Community,

The Wall Street Journal had a scathing editorial over the weekend arguing it’s becoming “increasingly clear that vengeance is a large part, maybe the largest part” of how Trump “will define success in his second term.” (See: Trump’s Vendetta Campaign Targets John Bolton – WSJ)

Trump’s campaign for vengeance “took an ominous turn” with the FBI raid of his former national security adviser-turned-critic John Bolton’s home on Friday, said the newspaper’s conservative editorial board, which has criticized the president on multiple issues since his return to office.

“It’s hard to see the raid as anything other than vindictive,” said the Journal, which suggested Trump may view the “process itself to be the punishment even if there is ultimately no criminal charge” or hope the raid will silence Bolton.

“The real offender here is a President who seems to think he can use the powers of his office to run vendettas,” the board concluded. “We said this was one of the risks of a second Trump term, and it’s turning out to be worse than we imagined.”

Yes!

Tony

 Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her column yesterday took aim at Trump’s recent ravings about slavery in America and how “our tortured history of slavery is getting in the way of America being “the HOTTEST country in the world”. He ranted: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” adding, “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”

She concluded:

“We had about 700,000 Americans die in a war over slavery. As presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the New York Times’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs: “It’s the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America.”

Abe Lincoln, whose top hat and rifles are in the Smithsonian, urged Americans to move past the US civil war “with malice toward none, with charity for all”.  Trump has malice for all, charity toward none.”

The entire column is below

Important reading!

Tony

————————————

The New York Times

Trump’s Slavish Stupidity

Maureen Dowd

Sun Aug 24 2025 – 11:53

I raised my hand. The nun called on me.

She was telling my grade-school class at Nativity – seven-year-olds in green uniforms – about the pitiless epoch of slavery.

I thought I had an important counterintuitive point to make – even though it would be another decade before I knew what “counterintuitive” meant.

“One thing,” I piped up, “is that we got all these really great people in our country

Although Washington has always been very segregated, my family lived in an integrated neighbourhood and my two best friends were black sisters named Deborah and Peaches. I was about to tell the nun about them when she crooked her finger and beckoned me to the front of the room.

When I got there, she roughly pulled me over her lap, yanked my pinafore up and spanked me hard – delivering many whacks. The other students gawked.

I got the message: there was no silver lining to slavery. There is nothing positive to say. Ever. Under any circumstances.

If only that nun were still around to drill that into the president’s thick skull.

Donald Trump is what the nuns called “a bold, brazen piece”, transgressing in nefarious and damaging ways. He said this week that he’s worried about getting into heaven. He should be. The no-nonsense Franciscan sisters at Nativity would have warned him to worry. He has invented new commandments, beyond the usual 10, to break.

He told Fox & Friends he hoped that if he brokered peace between Russia and Ukraine, he could slip through the Pearly Gates.

“I want to try and get to heaven if possible,” he mused. “I’m hearing that I’m not doing well. I am really at the bottom of the totem pole.”

Trump unveiled a dramatic new painting of himself hanging in the West Wing, with his favourite scowl, striding away from a conflagration. It’s a perfect metaphor – he sets fires and leaves destruction in his wake.

On Tuesday, the president posted a screed against the Smithsonian. It was jarring to read, given how many happy childhood memories I have of the beloved “nation’s attic”. I saw Dorothy’s ruby-red slippers there and the first ladies’ inaugural dresses and the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk plane and the ominous Enola Gay bomber.

Back in 1982, working at Time, I covered the cleaning and inventory of the Smithsonian’s 78 million items – only 3 per cent were on display – and saw all the wild, wonderful and weird detritus behind the scenes, including Teddy Roosevelt’s Teddy Bear, Mrs Grover Cleveland’s wedding cake box, leftover Tang from the astronauts, stuffed white rats that had been used in a Soviet space shot, a miniature compass embedded in an acorn from an oak tree that George Washington planted at Mount Vernon, 100,000 bats, 24,797 woodpeckers, 10 specimens of dinosaur excrement, a male gorilla preserved in formaldehyde, and the pickled brains of some former Smithsonian officials.

Trump is unmoved. He wants to live in the Whiter House. On Truth Social, he ranted: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been – Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” adding, “This Country cannot be WOKE, because WOKE IS BROKE.”

He said that he had “instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.”

If Barack Obama was the first to use the presidency as a springboard to Netflix, Donald Trump is the first to use the presidency to be a gadfly, flitting around and sticking his vindictive nose where it doesn’t belong – like John Bolton’s closets and the nation’s attic. It’s going to take a long time to fix all the horrible overreaches of this president.

Trump is a dark genius at distorting reality into deceptive narratives to reshape history – insisting the 2020 election was stolen and turning the January 6th insurrectionists into pardoned “patriots”. Now he’s trying to say that we shouldn’t dwell so much on slavery. He’s a walking, talking deepfake.

He thinks our tortured history of slavery is getting in the way of America being “the HOTTEST country in the world”. (The Saudis told this to Trump to puff him up, and he’s been repeating it ever since.)

Trump whitewashing slavery is the ultimate act of white privilege from a nepo baby who is the apotheosis of white privilege.

We had about 700,000 Americans die in a war over slavery. As presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told the New York Times’s Zolan Kanno-Youngs: “It’s the epitome of dumbness to criticize the Smithsonian for dealing with the reality of slavery in America.”

Abe Lincoln, whose top hat and rifles are in the Smithsonian, urged Americans to move past the US civil war “with malice toward none, with charity for all”. Trump has malice for all, charity toward none.

He’s tried to restore Confederate statues and names. He’s retreating from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. His flunkies have downplayed black icons such as Harriet Tubman, the Tuskegee Airmen and Jackie Robinson.

That kind of behaviour could make a nun kick in a stained-glass window. And it certainly won’t get you into heaven.

Dear Commons Community,

Conservative pundit Ben Ferguson defended Trump’s administration Friday on CNN over its interview of Ghislaine Maxwell, the former accomplice of late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, who claimed in a just-released transcript that Trump wasn’t involved in their crimes.

The “NewsNight” panel consequently erupted into a heated debate and name-calling.

Maxwell is currently seeking a presidential pardon and was moved to a minimum-security prison in Texas, but only after agreeing to an interview with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in which she claimed never having seen Trump in a compromising situation.

“There’s nothing wrong with asking those questions,” said Ferguson about the interview.

“You guys are angry that they decide to sit down with someone who, by the way, is alive, because the other person … is dead,” he continued. “Epstein’s dead. You have [only] one [known other] person who’s heavily involved in this [ongoing sex trafficking scandal].”

The other panelists were skeptical that a convicted sex trafficker seeking a pardon would incriminate the only person who could give her one. Comedian Pete Dominick told Ferguson, “Dude, Ben, you live at the top of bullshit mountain” — before going even further.

“You’ve become the party of protecting pedophiles,” Dominick added.

Ferguson went on to argue that Maxwell’s prison interview should be taken seriously, as it could provide authorities with new information and potentially identify additional suspects. Former FBI agent and CNN legal analyst Asha Rangappa, however, wasn’t convinced.

“Do you believe Ghislaine Maxwell is guilty?” she asked Ferguson, who said he does.

Rangappa then reminded Ferguson that Maxwell denied her own guilt during the prison interview, which makes her even less trustworthy. Ferguson argued it shouldn’t be “shocking” that “most criminals lie” — clearing the way for a bona fide mic-drop moment.

“Then why on Earth would you believe anything she said?” Rangappa asked.

Ferguson argued that law enforcement officials “interview a lot of guilty people,” and that Maxwell’s case was no different. “NewsNight” host Abby Phillip noted that Maxwell “got a perk” by being transferred to a cushier prison, however, after singing Trump’s praises to Blanche.

“Why was she moved?” Phillip asked Ferguson. “Why was she moved, Ben?”

The Republican pundit shared no argument before the segment cut to commercials. 

Anyone want to take a bet that Maxwell will be pardoned!

Tony

Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

In the annals of William Shakespeare’s legacy, a twist has emerged that’s as dramatic as any of the Bard’s plays: the real “Shakespeare” behind a centuries-old family document has been revealed… and it’s not the man we expected. Here is the story as published in Biography.com and Popular Mechanics.

In 1757, a bricklayer found a religious document hidden in the rafters of the Shakespeare House in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. Historians have long attributed the document, which was signed, “J. Shakespeare,” to William’s father, John.

But a study in Shakespeare Quarterly, from scholars at the University of Bristol, claims John wasn’t actually the writer of the scrutinized document. Instead, the researchers say it was William’s relatively unknown younger sister, Joan Shakespeare Hart, who is mentioned by name in only seven surviving documents from her lifetime, study author Matthew Steggle said in a statement:

“Virginia Woolf wrote a famous essay, Shakespeare’s sister, about how a figure like her could never hope to be a writer or have her writing preserved, so she has become something of a symbol for all the lost voices of early modern women. There are hundreds of thousands of works surviving from her brother, and until now, none at all, of any description, from her.”

In the tucked-away document, which heavily cites an obscure 17^th century Italian religious tract called The Last Will and Testament of the Soul, the writer pledges to die a good Catholic death. If the writer was indeed John Shakespeare, who remained a devout Protestant until his death in 1601, it would have indicated a major shift in his beliefs and suggested a clandestine life during an era when secret allegiance to the Catholic Church in Elizabethan England could have been dangerous. For this reason, many experts have suspected the document to be forged.

But in the recent study, Steggle used internet archives to track down early editions of The Last Will and Testament of the Soul in Italian and six other languages and concluded the document could have only been written after John Shakespeare’s death. That left Steggle with just one other “J. Shakespeare”: Joan.

Joan, who was five years younger than William, survived for 30 years after her brother’s death, and long resided in the family home where the document was found.

“Even 30 years ago, a researcher approaching a problem like this would have been based in a single big research library, using printed catalogues and even card catalogues to try to find copies of this text,” Steggle said in the statement. “But research libraries have now made many of their resources available digitally, so that it is possible to look across many different libraries in different countries at once, and what’s more, you can look through the whole text, not just at the title and other details.”

Steggle emphasized the importance of this approach in aligning the document’s quotes with the original timing of the composition of The Last Will and Testament of the Soul. Joan, then, who outlived her tradesman husband and had four children in the old Shakespeare family house, had to have been the secret Catholic supporter.

The mystery flourished for centuries, in part, because William Shakespeare himself was a secretive figure, Biography writes.

Shakespeare, who lived from 1564 to 1616, left behind no letters, no handwritten manuscripts, few contemporary accounts, and only six signatures, all spelled differently. It seems almost unbelievable to scholars and critics that the country boy from Stratford-upon-Avon who never attended university wrote 37,000 words for his plays and added roughly 300 words to the English vocabulary.

Yet, the scarcity of Shakespeare’s personal artifacts does little to dim the luster of his legacy, which stands in stark contrast to his modest, mysterious origins.

The early years of Shakespeare’s life are murky. According to Biography, he was born to a father, John, who managed a portfolio as a landowner, moneylender, local official, and glover and leather craftsman. Instead of pursuing higher education, Shakespeare’s knowledge was gleaned from life experiences, absorbing wisdom from his dad’s civic engagements and perhaps gaining insights from his son-in-law, who was a doctor.

The idea that Shakespeare kept his London-based professional life separate from his personal life in Stratford-upon-Avon plays into the recent findings regarding his sister, Joan. “This secretive attitude,” Biography writes, “may have been because much of his family were known Catholic sympathizers and chose to live quietly in Protestant Elizabethan England. In fact, some believe Shakespeare himself received Catholic communion on his death bed.”

Shakespeare wasn’t known to be loud and boisterous; instead, he carried an air of mystery, relishing the relative anonymity provided by Stratford life. Following his marriage to Anne Hathaway and the birth of their children, there’s a seven-year gap in his historical record. These are known as the “lost years.”

Speculation about William Shakespeare’s “lost years” varies widely; some suggest he may have been in hiding due to accusations of poaching, while more substantiated theories propose he was making a living as an actor and playwright in London. But despite this period of obscurity, Shakespeare’s reputation flourished through his poetry, sonnets, and plays.

As a prominent member of the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, a renowned London acting company, Shakespeare invested in his craft, and his financial success allowed him to buy New Place, one of the largest houses in Stratford-upon-Avon. Shakespeare’s theatrical endeavors didn’t stop there; in collaboration with fellow actors, he started the iconic Globe Theater, which became synonymous with his celebrated playwriting and solidified his legacy.

As Shakespeare grew his name in London’s theaters, he simultaneously established himself as a prominent figure in his hometown of Stratford. Acquiring the family estate in 1601 and subsequently purchasing 107 acres the following year, he strategically invested in additional properties. Experts suggest that the income from leasing these lands gave him the financial stability to pursue his writing.

Meanwhile, Joan resided in the Shakespeare family home amidst speculation and secrets. And its rafters served as a vault for her Italian-inspired religious writings—a hidden gem that’s still sparking scholarly intrigue, and revealing new layers to the Shakespeare legacy today.

Interesting story!

Tony

FBI Removing Boxes from John Bolton’s Home

Dear Commons Community,

FBI agents yesterday searched the Bethesda, Maryland, home of former Trump national security adviser John Bolton in connection with a probe about his handling of classified records, according to multiple news reports.

ABC’s Katherine Faulders reported the search was approved by a federal magistrate judge in Maryland.

Bolton told CNN he was unaware of the FBI search, which was first reported by the New York Post, and would look into it.

Trump claimed he wasn’t given advance notice of the search of Bolton’s home.

“I don’t know about it. I saw it on television this morning. I’m not a fan of John Bolton; he’s a real sort of a lowlife,” Trump said.

“He’s not a smart guy, but he could be very unpatriotic,” he continued.

Bolton, who served for 17 months in the national security adviser role in Trump’s first term, has since turned into a fierce critic of the president.

Earlier this year, Trump revoked Bolton’s Secret Service protection as well as his security clearance.

The Department of Justice had launched a criminal investigation into Bolton during Trump’s first term over a book he published in 2020 titled “The Room Where It Happened:

A White House Memoir,” detailing his time in that administration, to look into whether it contained classified national security information. The DOJ had also previously, unsuccessfully tried to block the publication of the book.

“What he did do is he took classified information, and he published it during a presidency,”

Trump told Fox News of Bolton in June 2020. “I believe that he’s a criminal, and I believe, frankly, he should go to jail for that.”

In June 2021, under former President Joe Biden’s administration, the DOJ ended the probe and dropped a lawsuit seeking to block the former Trump official from getting any proceeds from his memoir’s sales.

But CNN reported that criminal investigation has now resumed, citing a source familiar with the matter.

FBI Director Kash Patel, who had included Bolton in a list of enemies he described as “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State” in his book “Government Gangsters,” posted a vague message on social media, appearing to reference the raid.

“NO ONE is above the law… @FBI agents on mission,” he said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi shared Patel’s post, adding: “America’s safety isn’t negotiable. Justice will be pursued. Always.”

Vice President JD Vance also reposted Patel’s statement. Vance claimed the investigation isn’t politically motivated in an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” Friday.

“We are investigating Ambassador Bolton, but if they ultimately bring a case, it will be because they determine that he has broken the law,” he told moderator Kristen Welker.

“We’re going to be careful about that,” he added. “We’re going to be deliberate about that, because we don’t think that we should throw people — even if they disagree with us politically, maybe especially if they disagree with us politically — you shouldn’t throw people willy-nilly in prison. You should let the law drive these determinations, and that’s what we’re doing.”

But Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) told “CNN News Central” the search of Bolton’s home has the echoes of political retribution.

“This is obviously a message sent to John Bolton, but it’s also a message that’s trying to be sent to other potential critics, or current critics of Donald Trump, that if you continue to criticize him … you may be next on his list of targets at the FBI,” Krishnamoorthi said.

Trump had recently taken issue with Bolton’s criticism of his decision to sit down with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Anchorage, Alaska, as part of the president’s effort to bring the war in Ukraine to a close. Trump had also accused Bolton of making it much harder for him to secure a peace deal to end the conflict.

Trump retribution continues!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and NewsNation senior political contributor George Will joined “On Balance” to discuss how the United States needs help from Europe if President Trump’s bid to ensure peace between Ukraine and Russia is to succeed:

LELAND VITTERT, NEWS NATION HOST: Why should America be stronger about fighting Vladimir Putin than Europe collectively is right now? Why is it upon President Trump, in your mind and so many others, to stand stronger than Europe is willing to stand, as you point out, for its own safety and security?

GEORGE WILL: Well, first, let’s not prejudge what Europe is going to do.  Germany now has the fourth largest defense budget in the world. And Britain and France, two nuclear powers, have signed a new agreement to extend their nuclear umbrella, if you will, to European security.

Not just their national securities. So I think it’s arguable, Leland, that Europe is stepping up considerably. But beyond this, there is no reason to believe that Ukraine is the last morsel on the plate for Mr. Putin. He will-is very apt to turn his attentions to Eastern Europe, to Hungary, where there’s a regime that is, I think it’s fair to say, sympathetic to Putin, Mr. Erdogan’s Hungarian government. There are the three Baltic states who are members of NATO. And Article 5 still exists.

An attack on one is an attack on the NATO alliance. So we’re playing with fire here. And there’s not just smoke.

There’s actual fire.

LELAND VITTERT: Fair enough. And I think you rightly point out the dangers and the fire that exists. Bill O’Reilly, on the program last night, made the point that Donald Trump should be given time to maneuver, when I argued that sanctions must come now, that we must speak Vladimir Putin’s language, because of the risks of a sociopath, as Vladimir Putin is, with the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Take a listen.

     (BILL O’REILLY: Putin would, in my opinion, use nukes. He’d use them. And when you’re dealing with a guy like that, when life     matters not at all, life  doesn’t matter one bit to him, you’ve got to be very, very careful and methodical.)

LELAND VITTERT: Given that there is now conversation, there is now negotiation, which I think is a good thing, because we’re at least talking about ending this war, rather than just continuing the funding of a war that neither side can win, is Trump not entitled to more time?

GEORGE WILL: Well, speaking of time, he said, 50 days, Mr. Putin, or there’ll be severe consequences. Then he said 10 days, Mr. Putin, or there’ll be severe consequences. The 10 days came and went, no consequences.

Now he says, if we don’t make progress, and he says, it’s over to you to do this, Mr. Zelensky, Putin will find himself in a rough situation. Leland, there comes a point when people just aren’t going to take seriously what he says. Remember, Leland, how there was a kind of alarm and convulsion here in Washington when Barack Obama said, I’m drawing a red line about the use of chemical weapons in Syria.

Syria then did what he had said was crossing a red line, and nothing happened. It is serious business when a great nation loses its credibility. And I think we’re in the process of doing that.

Most definitely!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Trump administration has quietly rescinded long-standing guidance that directed schools to accommodate students who are learning English, alarming advocates who fear that schools will stop offering assistance if the federal government quits enforcing the laws that require it.

Since March, the Education Department has also laid off nearly all workers in its Office of English Language Acquisition and has asked Congress to terminate funding for the federal program that helps pay for educating English-language learners. Last week, education advocates noticed that the guidance document related to English learning had a new label indicating it was rescinded and remains online “for historical purposes only.”

On Tuesday, Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann said that the guidance for teaching English learners, which was originally set forth in 2015, was rescinded because it “is not in line with Administration policy.” A Justice Department spokesman responded to questions by sending a link to the July memorandum and said he had no comment when asked whether the guidance would be replaced.

For decades, the federal government has held that failing to provide resources for people not proficient in English constitutes discrimination based on national origin under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

In rescinding the guidance, the Trump administration is signaling that it may stop enforcing the law under that long-standing interpretation. The Education and Justice departments have been responsible for enforcing the law.

In the July memorandum, Attorney General Pam Bondi cited case law that says treating people, including students, who aren’t proficient in English differently does not on its face amount to discrimination based on national origin.

Other guidance related to language access for people using services across the federal government is also being suspended, according to the memo, and the Justice Department will create new guidance by mid-January to “help agencies prioritize English while explaining precisely when and how multilingual assistance remains necessary.” The aim of the effort, Bondi said in a statement published alongside the memo, is to “promote assimilation over division.”

The consequences for school districts were not immediately clear, but advocates worry that rescinding the 2015 guidance could open the door for weaker instruction for English learners and upend decades of direction from the federal government to provide English-language services to students who need them.

“The Department of Education and the Department of Justice are walking away from 55 years of legal understanding and enforcement. I don’t think we can understate how important that is,” said Michael Pillera, an attorney who worked at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights for 10 years and now directs the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Without pressure from the federal government to comply with the law, it is possible that some school districts will drop services, Pillera said, particularly as many districts struggle with financial pressures.

“It’s going to ripple quickly,” he predicted. “Schools were doing this because the Office for Civil Rights told them they had to.”

Many districts will probably not change their services, but rescinding the guidance opens the door, said Leslie Villegas, an education policy analyst at New America, a think tank. Advocates may watch for changes in districts that previously had compliance problems or those that had open cases with the Office for Civil Rights related to English-language instruction, she noted.

“The rescission of this guidance may create the mentality that no one’s watching,” Villegas said.

In recent months, the Justice Department notified at least three school districts — in Boston; Newark; and Worcester, Massachusetts — that the government was releasing them from government monitoring that had been in place to ensure they offered services to English-language learners.

Officials in Worcester said they expected the action even before Trump took office. But in Boston, some parent advocates questioned why the monitoring had ended, the Boston Globe reported.

Supporters of immigration restrictions argued that relieving pressure on schools to provide these services might be helpful, especially given the costs to districts.

“If you devote all these resources to these kids coming in [to school] completely unprepared, inevitably it will diminish the quality of education others are getting,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

Todd DuBois, communications director for U.S. English, a group that advocates for English as the official and common language, said some education is needed to help “bridge the gap” for students who do not speak English, but the group is concerned that multilingualism “gets in the way of teaching English literacy earlier in life.”

The requirement to serve English-language learners in school is based on two federal statutes. The first is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on national origin, among other traits. A landmark 1974 Supreme Court case, Lau v. Nichols, interpreted this law to include a mandate for English-language services in schools.

The second federal law at issue is the 1974 Equal Educational Opportunities Act, which requires public schools to provide for students who do not speak English. A 1981 case decided in federal appeals court, Castañeda v. Pickard, laid out a test to determine whether schools were properly providing services to English learners in school.

In 2015, the Justice and Education departments published their 40-page guidance document, explaining how schools can properly comply with these laws and avoid potential federal investigations and penalties.

“For a teacher, it was kind of like the Bible,” said Montserrat Garibay, who headed the Office of English Language Acquisition under the Biden administration. “If, in fact, we want our students to learn English, this needs to be in place.”

In her memorandum, Bondi said that in addition to cutting back on multilingual services the administration deems “nonessential,” federal agencies would be tasked with boosting English education and assimilation.

“Instead of providing this office with more capacity and more resources to do exactly what the executive order says — to make sure that everybody speaks English — they are doing the total opposite,” Garibay said.

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which supports immigration enforcement measures, suggested the federal government should not direct how school districts offer services. But he also said that teaching children English is consistent with efforts to make sure people living in the United States speak English.

“I’m all for English-language education. We probably need to do even more of that,” he said. “If you’re going to let people in who don’t speak English, then you want them to be acquiring English as soon as possible.”

Tony