Yurong Luanna Jiang

Dear Commons Community,

A Chinese graduate student drew wide applause with a speech at Harvard’s commencement ceremonies in late May. Online, it was a different story.

In her address, Yurong Luanna Jiang, who studied international development at the Harvard Kennedy School, spoke about her program’s diverse student body, recounting how on an internship in Mongolia last year she helped Indian and Thai classmates in Tanzania translate writing on a made-in-China washing machine over the phone.  As reported by The Wall Street Jounral.

Wearing an embroidered and beaded Chinese collar over her graduation robe, Jiang used the anecdote to extol the idea that “humanity rises and falls as one.”

The speech, as Harvard grapples with the federal government’s attempt to stop it from enrolling international students, was delivered in an often trembling voice. Jiang seemed close to tears as she said, “If there’s a woman anywhere in the world who can’t afford a period pad, it makes me poorer.” Faculty and students clapped at the line and at the speech’s conclusion: “We are bound by something deeper than belief: our shared humanity.”

Then came the online attacks, from both Chinese nationalists and Beijing critics. At a time when Harvard’s links to China and Chinese students in the U.S. have come under the Trump administration’s microscope, it illustrated the no-win situation for a group of students often viewed with suspicion over their allegiances both at home and in their host country.

Jiang said the video was subtitled and uploaded by friends who picked up the translation as a familiar expression that is “quite common in everyday language.”

Exiled Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Nathan Law said in a tweet criticizing Harvard’s choice of Jiang as a speaker that her use of phrases such as “shared future” and “shared humanity” mirrored a “worldview designed to allow Beijing to bypass democratic norms and scrutiny.”

“In some ways, my own experience has become a living illustration of my speech that we are living in a divided world in a hard time,” Jiang said in a statement to The Wall Street Journal. “It’s surreal to find myself accused simultaneously of being a U.S. spy and a Chinese spy.”

In China, online sleuths unearthed details of Jiang’s background, which led to more condemnation of her alleged privilege and ties to the West, including her education at a U.K. high school and Duke University undergraduate studies. Critics seized on her father’s alleged affiliation with a state-backed environmental organization, suggesting it had helped her get accepted at Harvard.

A few days after her speech, Jiang took to Chinese social media to defend herself. She said she grew up in an unstable family and had been bullied in middle school. She said her father had an unpaid position at the state-backed environment organization and hadn’t pulled strings to get her accepted at Harvard.

Other commentators drew attention to a video from a 2024 speech by Chinese Ambassador Xie Feng at the Harvard Kennedy School that showed Jiang standing behind the stage, watching as a protester was being removed from the audience by another student, an incident widely criticized by Republican lawmakers. Rep. John Moolenaar (R., Mich.), chairman of a House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party, called the removal of the student the work of a “pro-CCP agitator” who faced no blowback from the university.

Jiang declined to comment on the event. A person close to her said Jiang wasn’t involved in either the organization of the event or the removal of the student.

Harvard declined to comment, citing student privacy but referred to a website detailing how the university selects graduate ceremony speakers.

For decades, Harvard has trained scholars, entrepreneurs, doctors and executives from humble backgrounds in China. The Ivy League university has also provided training to many Chinese bureaucrats and education to the children of some top Communist Party officials. Harvard’s alleged ties with the Communist Party have emerged as a leading line of attack in President Trump’s pressure campaign against Harvard.

It wasn’t the first time a Chinese student in the U.S. has faced online vitriol.

In 2017, Yang Shuping, a Chinese graduate of the University of Maryland, faced criticism after she called American air quality “fresh and sweet, and oddly luxurious” in a commencement speech and said that in China she wore a face mask against the pollution. Critics said she was pandering to her U.S. audience by implicitly criticizing China.

On her Chinese social-media account, Yang apologized, saying she loved her homeland and was proud of its prosperity and development.

Tony 

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading, Original Sin, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson.  I blogged about it when it first was published a month ago (see: New Book – “Original Sin” by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson Paints a Damning Portrait of an Enfeebled Biden Protected by His Inner Circle | Tony’s Thoughts).

Tapper and Thompson depict Joe Biden as out of touch and whose family and aides enabled his campaign for a second term as president.  Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times on May 14^th.  According to the review, the book is “a damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term. The authors trace the deluge of trouble that flowed from Biden’s “original sin”: the sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris; and an American public lacking clear communication from the president and left to twist in the wind. “It was an abomination,” one source told the authors. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.”

My take on Original Sin is that it is a good book for those who want to familiarize themselves with the machinations of Biden, his advisers, and his wife, Jill, during the Democratic nomination period. However, if you were someone who followed cable news before and during the nomination, there is not that much that is new here.  About a third of the book is devoted to the Biden-Trump debate and its aftermath.

In reading Original Sin, I  believe that Tapper and Thompson could have spent more ink on what the major cable news outlets such as CNN were providing.  They have reporters covering the President every day. They must have had suspicions and could have warned their viewers and American public.  They didn’t and the country is suffering for it.

Tony

———————————————————————————————

The New York Times

A Damning Portrait of an Enfeebled Biden Protected by His Inner Circle

By Jennifer Szalai

Published May 13, 2025Updated May 14, 2025

ORIGINAL SIN: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson

In Christian theology, original sin begins with Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge. But Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson’s “Original Sin” chronicles a different fall from grace. The cover image is a black-and-white portrait of Joe Biden with a pair of hands clamped over his eyes. The biblical story is about the danger of innocent curiosity; the story in this new book is about the danger of willful ignorance.

“The original sin of Election 2024 was Biden’s decision to run for re-election — followed by aggressive efforts to hide his cognitive diminishment,” Tapper and Thompson write. On the evening of June 27, 2024, Democratic voters watched the first presidential debate in amazement and horror: A red-faced Donald Trump let loose a barrage of audacious whoppers while Biden, slack-jawed and pale, struggled to string together intelligible rebuttals.

Trump’s debate performance was of a piece with his rallies, a jumble of nonsensical digressions and wild claims. But for many Americans, the extent of Biden’s frailty came as a shock. Most of the president’s appearances had, by then, become tightly controlled affairs. For at least a year and a half, Biden’s aides had been scrambling to accommodate an octogenarian president who was becoming increasingly exhausted and confused. According to “Original Sin,” which makes pointed use of the word “cover-up” in the subtitle, alarmed donors and pols who sought the lowdown on Biden’s cognitive state were kept in the dark. Others had daily evidence of Biden’s decline but didn’t want to believe it.

Tapper is an anchor for CNN (and also served as a moderator for the presidential debate); Thompson is a national political correspondent for Axios. In an authors’ note, they explain that they interviewed approximately 200 people, including high-level insiders, “some of whom may never acknowledge speaking to us but all of whom know the truth within these pages.”

The result is a damning, step-by-step account of how the people closest to a stubborn, aging president enabled his quixotic resolve to run for a second term. The authors trace the deluge of trouble that flowed from Biden’s original sin: the sidelining of Vice President Kamala Harris; the attacks on journalists (like Thompson) who deigned to report on worries about Biden’s apparent fatigue and mental state; an American public lacking clear communication from the president and left to twist in the wind. “It was an abomination,” one source told the authors. “He stole an election from the Democratic Party; he stole it from the American people.”

This blistering charge is attributed to “a prominent Democratic strategist” who also “publicly defended Biden.” In “Original Sin,” the reasons given for saying nice things in public about the president are legion. Some Democrats, especially those who didn’t see the president that often, relied on his surrogates for reassurance about his condition (“He’s fine, he’s fine, he’s fine”); others were wary of giving ammunition to the Trump campaign, warning that he was an existential threat to the country. Tapper and Thompson are scornful of such rationales: “For those who tried to justify the behavior described here because of the threat of a second Trump term, those fears should have shocked them into reality, not away from it.”

Biden announced that he would be running for re-election in April 2023; he had turned 80 the previous November and was already the oldest president in history. Over his long life, he had been through a lot: the death of his wife and daughter in a car accident in 1972; two aneurysm surgeries in 1988; the death of his son Beau in 2015; the seemingly endless trouble kicked up by his son Hunter, a recovering addict whose legal troubles included being under investigation by the Justice Department.

Yet Biden always bounced back. The fact that he defied the naysayers and beat the odds to win the 2020 election was, for him and his close circle of family and advisers, a sign that he was special — and persistently underestimated. They maintained “a near-religious faith in Biden’s ability to rise again,” the authors write. “And as with any theology, skepticism was forbidden.”

In 2019, when Biden announced a presidential run, he was 76. It was still a time when “Good Biden was far more present than Old Biden.” By 2023, the authors suggest, that ratio had reversed. Some of his decline was hard to distinguish from what they call “the Bidenness,” which included his longtime reputation for gaffes, meandering stories and a habit of forgetting staffers’ names.

But people who didn’t see Biden on a daily basis were increasingly taken aback when they finally laid eyes on him. They would remark on how his once booming voice had become a whisper, how his confident stride had become a shuffle. An aghast congressman recalls being reminded of his father, who had Alzheimer’s; another thought of his father, too, who died of Parkinson’s.

The people closest to Biden landed on some techniques to handle (or disguise) what was happening: restricting urgent business to the hours between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m.; instructing his writers to keep his speeches brief so that he didn’t have to spend too much time on his feet; having him use the short stairs to Air Force One. When making videos, his aides sometimes filmed “in slow motion to blur the reality of how slowly he actually walked.” By late 2023, his staff was pushing as much of his schedule as they could to midday.

When White House aides weren’t practicing fastidious stage management, they seemed to be sticking their heads in the sand. According to a forthcoming book by Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf, Biden’s aides decided against his taking a cognitive test in early 2024. Tapper and Thompson quote a physician who served as a consultant to the White House Medical Unit for the last four administrations and expressed his dismay at the idea of withholding such information: “If there’s no diagnosis, there’s nothing to disclose.”

Just how much of this rigmarole was desperate rationalization versus deliberate scheming is never entirely clear. Tapper and Thompson identify two main groups that closed ranks around Biden: his family and a group of close aides known internally as “the Politburo” that included his longtime strategist Mike Donilon and his counselor Steve Ricchetti. The family encouraged Biden’s view of himself as a historic figure. The Politburo was too politically hard-nosed for that. Instead, its members pointed to Biden’s record in office and the competent people around him. The napping, the whispering, the shuffling — all that stuff had merely to do with the “performative” parts of the job.

Tapper and Thompson vehemently disagree. They offer a gracious portrait of Robert Hur, the special counsel who investigated Biden’s handling of classified materials and in his February 2024 report famously described the president as a “sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Biden and his team were incensed and tried “to slime Hur as an unprofessional right-wing hack,” but the authors defend his notorious line. They emphasize that it is incumbent upon a special counsel to spell out how the subject of an investigation would probably appear to a jury — and that what Hur wrote about Biden was true.

Of course, in an election like 2024, when the differences between the candidates are so stark and the stakes are so high, nearly every scrap of information gets viewed through the lens of “Will it help my team win?” Even competently administered policy could not compensate for a woeful inability to communicate with the American people. In a democracy, this is a tragedy — especially if you believe, as Biden did, that a second Trump term would put the very existence of that democracy in peril.

Earlier this month, in what looks like an attempt to get ahead of the book’s publication, Biden went on “The View” to say that he accepts some responsibility for Trump’s victory: “I was in charge.” But he was dismissive about reports of any cognitive decline. In “Original Sin,” Tapper and Thompson describe him waking up the morning after the 2024 election thinking that if only he had stayed in the race, he would have won. “That’s what the polls suggested, he would say again and again,” the authors write. There was just one problem with his reasoning: “His pollsters told us that no such polls existed.”

Dear Commons Community,

Elon Musk, who led a scorched-earth strategy in recommending the dismantling of federal agencies and laying off tens of thousands of workers, continued burning bridges after leaving his special White House job advising President Donald Trump.  Here are six takeaways in the latest development of their feud courtesy of USA Today.

Trump ‘very disappointed’ with Musk

Musk has called the cost of Trump’s legislative package of tax and spending cuts a “disgusting abomination,” and urged lawmakers to kill it.

Trump responded during an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz by saying he was disappointed with Musk. Trump blamed Musk’s criticism on the legislation aiming to end incentives for electric vehicles, which Musk’s company Tesla manufactures, and for discarding his choice to head the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which works with Musk’s SpaceX rockets.

“I’m very disappointed with Elon,” Trump said. “I can understand why he’s upset.”

“Elon and I had a great relationship,” Trump added later. “I don’t know if we will anymore.”

Musk endorses third impeachment of Trump

When someone else suggested on social media that Trump should be impeached and replaced by Vice President JD Vance, Musk replied, “Yes.”

The House impeached Trump during his first term. Once was for his urging Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate his Democratic rival, Joe Biden. The second time was for inciting the riot Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol.

The Senate acquitted Trump both times after failing to get a two-thirds majority for conviction.

Musk predicts recession from Trump tariffs

Musk upped the ante by predicting Trump’s tariffs – the centerpiece of his economic policy – would cause a recession.

“The Trump tariffs will cause a recession in the second half of this year,” Musk wrote on social media.

Trump has argued the tariffs would bring the government billions in revenue and force manufacturers to bring jobs back to the U.S. He has also used tariffs as leverage to negotiate trade deals with other countries.

Musk alleges Trump connection to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein

Jeffrey Epstein was a financier charged federally with sex trafficking. He died by suicide in a New York jail cell in August 2019. Conspiracy theorists have speculated that powerful people silenced Epstein rather than have their secrets exposed.

Trump and Epstein were filmed and photographed together at parties. In 2002 Trump praised the wealthy businessman as a “terrific guy” but he has since distanced himself from him.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said she would declassify the government’s files on Epstein but about 200 pages released Feb. 27 implicated no one else.

“Time to drop the really big bomb,” Musk said in a June 5 post on X. “@realDonaldTrump is in the Epstein files. That is the real reason they have not been made public. Have a nice day, DJT!”

The White House responded that Musk was unhappy with Trump’s legislative package.

“This is an unfortunate episode from Elon, who is unhappy with the One Big Beautiful Bill because it does not include the policies he wanted,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. “The President is focused on passing this historic piece of legislation and making our country great again.”

Trump threatens to cancel Musk’s government contracts and subsidies

Trump later threatened on social media to cancel Musk’s government contracts and subsidies.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump said. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Tesla’s shares dropped 14%, losing about $150 billion in market share, on June 5.

Trump’s legislative package seeks to end government subsidies for electric vehicles. Musk’s SpaceX also relies on billions in contracts to transport people and supplies to the International Space Station. The government must rely on private rockets or the rockets of other countries for such trips after retiring the space shuttle program.

“In light of the President’s statement about cancellation of my government contracts, @SpaceX will begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft immediately,” Musk wrote.

Trump adviser Steve Bannon urges deportation of Musk

One of Trump’s informal advisers, Steve Bannon, told the New York Times he was urging the president to launch several investigations into Musk, including whether he should be deported.

Musk came to the U.S. on a student visa and has since become a naturalized citizen, but critics have raised questions about whether Musk overstayed the terms of his original visa.

“They should initiate a formal investigation of his immigration status, because I am of the strong belief that he is an illegal alien, and he should be deported from the country immediately,” Bannon said.

These two deserve each other!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

H. Holden Thorp has an editorial this morning’s Science entitled , “America is ceding the lead in creating the future.” He cites Peter Drucker who stated: ”the best way to predict the future is to create it”—a view that applies to science as well. Thorp goes on to lament that current Trump policies regarding research are ceding leadership in science to other countries.  Here is an excerpt.

The renowned American management consultant and author Peter Drucker is often credited as saying that “the best way to to predict the future is to create it” much as to the business world. It implies that gaining insights and ideas that lead to new discoveries and technologies allows victory in the marketplace, ahead of the competition. As the Trump administration continues to drastically defund and dismantle basic science in America, the United States is presenting other countries with opportunities to take the lead in seeing farther ahead, anticipate where scientific and technological prowess is going, and create the future, while the United States stands on the sidelines. This is a matter not only of scientific prestige but also of economic vitality. The country will no longer be at the forefront of commercializing breakthroughs and leveraging them for maximum economic and societal benefit. Moreover, this will trigger a massive transition for the global scientific community and alter the framework that shapes how the world’s economies connect and grow.

Measured by its share of published research, the United States was already falling behind before the latest cuts and attacks. For example, the percentage of papers published in Science with at least one corresponding author with funding from the US federal government has been declining over the past 7 years (2018 to 2024), decreasing from 54 to 44%. By contrast, the number of published papers originating from China has doubled during this time. In Science Advances, the number of papers published from China and the United States in 2024 was roughly the same. If this trend continues, the same will be true in a few years for Science and is likely to happen even sooner as the US government retreats from supporting research and China and other countries continue to increase their investments.

For now, the United States arguably remains the leader in the hot areas of artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, with many of the advances coming from US-based corporate entities such as Google DeepMind and Microsoft. But commercial success in these areas grew out of basic research in computer science and solid-state physics in universities, funded by the federal government. With a bottom line to consider, for-profit businesses likely would not have started these disciplines from scratch. The recent market panic caused by the advances in AI by the Chinese company DeepSeek shows that this leadership is far from guaranteed. Moreover, applying these technologies in medicine and elsewhere will rely on still more basic research— research now threatened by sweeping cutbacks inflicted by the Trump administration.

The United States will no longer have the same window into the technologies of the future that will allow it to shape and anticipate commercial and societal advances.

A world where the United States is no longer leading the scientific enterprise will still benefit from science. Human creativity flourishes everywhere, after all, and other countries and cultures will have greater opportunities to shape the future in new ways. The global enterprise will adapt to the lack of American leadership, but the steep loss for the country itself is unambiguous. The United States will no longer have the same window into the technologies of the future that will allow it to shape and anticipate commercial and societal advances. This will eventually reduce the market successes and global leadership that the United States has boasted since World War II.

At a US Senate hearing in April on the importance of biomedical research, bipartisan support was expressed for continued investment, although whether senators in the Republican party will defy the president and rectify the cuts remains unknown. In his testimony, Sudip Parikh, the chief executive officer of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS, the publisher of Science), noted that the language of chemistry used to be German and that only in the past 50 years did the German language stop being a requirement for chemistry degrees in the United States. “Twenty years from now,” he said, “what is going to be the language of science? Is it going to be English? I don’t know that for certain.” It is a sobering thought. Scientific knowledge is, fortunately, a public good, and as such, its benefits transcend international boundaries. But relinquishing its prominence in creating the future is nothing short of devastating for the United States.

So True!

Tony

Karine Jean-Pierre

Dear Commons Community,

Former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has become an independent after serving under two Democratic presidents, according to the publisher of a new book from Jean-Pierre due out this fall.

Jean-Pierre, whose encounters with White House reporters grew tense last year amid questions concerning former President Biden’s age and health, will detail in her new book the weeks that led to his 2024 campaign departure, per a publisher’s description.

The book, “Independent: A Look Inside a Broken White House, Outside the Party Lines,” pledges to take readers through the “betrayal by the Democratic Party” that prompted Biden’s decision.

In it, Jean-Pierre will urge Americans to “embrace life as Independents” in an assessment of what she sees as a broken two-party system.

“In a hard-hitting yet hopeful critique, Jean-Pierre defines what it means to be part of the growing percentage of our fractured electorate that is Independent,” the announcement reads.

Political independents make up a dominant voting bloc, with an average of 43% of U.S. adults identifying as independent in 2023, per Gallup data.

What she’s saying: “I think we need to stop thinking in boxes and think outside of our boxes and not be so partisan,” Jean-Pierre said in a video shared to Instagram.

“If you are willing to stand side by side with me, regardless of … how you identify politically, and as long as you respect the community that I belong to and vulnerable communities that I respect, I will be there with you,” she said.

CNN conservative commentator Scott Jennings on Wednesday congratulated Democrats for “getting rid of” former White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre after recently revealing her decision to become an independent.

“I’d like to congratulate Democrats for ridding yourselves of this untalented mediocrity,” Jennings said on CNN’s “The Arena with Kasie Hunt.” “I mean, this is the most self-aggrandizing liar that has ever held this job.”

OOH!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Elon Musk, once Trump’s key ally in cutting government spending, is launching an all-out attack on President Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and policy bill, urging his 220 million-plus followers on social media to lobby their lawmakers and “KILL the BILL.” As reported by USA Today.

Musk, who formally left his job working for Trump on May 30, has been publicly lambasting the Republican president’s signature legislation that would extend 2017 income tax cuts and implement new tax cuts on tipped wages and overtime that were central promises from his successful 2024 presidential campaign.

Those provisions are expensive, and Musk is now railing against the overall bill’s costs. The House-passed legislation is expected to add around $2.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next 10 years if it were to become law, according to the most recent nonpartisan analysis.

In highlighting his fiscal concerns, Musk argued the legislation’s price tag undermines the work that he did leading the Department of Government Efficiency cost-cutting project. On June 3, Musk called the bill a “disgusting abomination” and suggested that Republicans who voted for the package – all but two of them in the House – should face primary challenges.

“I think he’s flat wrong. I think he’s way off on this, and I’ve told him as much, and I’ve said it publicly and privately,” House Speaker Mike Johnson responded on June 4 when pressed on Musk’s public comments.

Trump, known to lash out at his critics, has pushed back on Republicans senators who oppose his tax bill but has remained silent about Musk.

A senior White House official told USA Today that Trump is disappointed by Musk’s criticisms over the tax bill but the president is committed to get the legislation passed.

The argument signals a showdown between Trump and his billionaire former advisor, and it may threaten to derail the legislation as Musk inflames existing tensions in the Republican conference. Several GOP senators, including Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, Rick Scott, R-Florida, and Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, have also raised concerns about the package’s overall cost.

Like other “big name” supporters such as Chris Christi and Rudy Giuliani, Musk leaves Trump’s orbit.

Tony

Tom Thibodeau

Dear Commons Community,

The New York Knicks shocked fans and the entire NBA world by firing head coach Tom Thibodeau, despite recent success. Thibodeau led them to back-to-back 50-win seasons and their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years. Still, the front office decided it was time to move in a new direction.  Here are key reasons why the Knicks let Thibodeau go courtesy of MSN.

A Championship Mindset Drives the Decision

Team president Leon Rose made the organization’s priorities clear.

“We are singularly focused on winning a championship,” Rose said. That statement signaled what mattered most—progress alone wasn’t enough.

Even after the Knicks reached new heights under Thibodeau, they still fell short of the ultimate goal. The decision to part ways shows how serious they are about finding the right leader to deliver that elusive title.

The Knicks firing Tom Thibodeau may read harsh, but in reality, it reflects their urgent need to take the next step.

Playoff Adjustments Came Too Late

During the Eastern Conference Finals, critics say Rick Carlisle outcoached Thibodeau. In Game 3, Thibodeau changed his lineup for the first time by choice all season. That adjustment helped New York win two games, but the team was already down 2–0. Thibodeau waited too long.

His reluctance to trust the bench hurt the team. He gave meaningful minutes to Landry Shamet and Delon Wright only in desperation. The Knicks bench finished second-worst in playoff scoring.

A different coach might have acted sooner—and smarter.

Overworked Starters Wore Down

All season long, Thibodeau leaned heavily on his starters. Josh Hart led the NBA in minutes. Mikal Bridges and OG Anunoby also ranked in the top five. Even Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns landed in the top 20.

Players began to feel the strain. Bridges reportedly asked Thibodeau to cut back the starters’ minutes. Yet, the coach held firm to his old-school approach. That stubbornness wore thin by the time the postseason arrived.

The Knicks firing Thibodeau reflects not only a headline but also months of growing tension within the locker room.

Offense Became Predictable and Stale

While Brunson shined in his role as the primary ball-handler, the offense often stalled. Bridges and Anunoby became corner spot-up shooters, rarely involved in creating plays.

The Towns-Brunson two-man game never took off. The ball stuck too often in Brunson’s hands, and the offense became predictable.

A new coach may better unlock the roster’s offensive potential. The front office wants a system that maximizes every player—not just the stars.

The Voice Grew Old

Shams Charania summed it up: “The Knicks needed a new voice.” That sounds cliché, but it’s real.

NBA players rotate through coaches throughout their careers. They outgrow voices, especially stern ones like Thibodeau’s. Five years is a long time for one voice to dominate a locker room. Thibodeau’s approach grew stale.

The move by the Knicks to fire Thibodeau reflects the belief that a fresh voice can rejuvenate the team’s culture and push them forward.

What’s Next for the Knicks?

The Knicks extended Thibodeau just last summer. But that didn’t stop them from acting now. They’re playing for keeps. They believe their window to win is open—especially with uncertainty looming for top teams like Boston.

While Thibodeau helped build this foundation, the Knicks want someone else to take them across the finish line.

I am a life-long Knick fan and am sorry to see Thibodeau go.  I wish him luck!

Tony

Ever Forward

Dear Commons Community,

In 2019, my wife and I visited France and had the privilege of visiting the American D-Day Memorial sites in Normandy – Utah Beach, Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach and the American Memorial Cemetery – where there are more than 9,000 American casualties buried.

Ever Forward is the bronze statue that sits at the entrance to Omaha Beach.  It shows an American soldier helping a wounded comrade.

The Memorial Cemetery is a place of serenity with its thousands of crosses.  At 5:00 pm every evening, taps are played to remember our honored dead (see video below).

Today, I especially remember my two uncles John and Anthony DeMichele, both of whom were in Normandy in World War II.

Tony

Dana Bash and Hakeem Jeffries

Dear Commons Community,

CNN anchor Dana Bash grilled House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) on Sunday while asking him about a recent CNN poll finding only 16% of Americans believe the Democrats “have strong leaders.”

Bash began the conversation by pressing Jeffries on his promise to take decisive action if federal authorities targeted House Democrats, which they have.

“That’s the constitutional blueprint that was given to us by the framers of the United States democracy that we have inherited over the last few centuries. And so we’re going to continue to undertake our congressional responsibility notwithstanding efforts by the Trump administration to try to intimidate Democrats,” he continued, adding:

It’s unfortunate that our Republican colleagues continue to be nothing more than rubber stamps for Trump’s reckless and extreme agenda and the American people I think will ultimately reject that next year when we will take back control of the House of Representatives. In the meantime, in terms of how we will respond to what Trump and the administration has endeavored to do, we will make that decision in a time, place, and manner of our choosing, but the response will be continuous and it will meet the moment that is required.

Bash, clearly unimpressed, pressed for clarification, “What exactly does that mean? Have you not decided how to respond?”

Jeffries replied, “We’ve publicly responded in a variety of different ways. We haven’t let our foot off the gas pedal in terms of additional things that may take place with respect to our congressional oversight authority and capacity. We will respond in a time, place, and manner of our choosing if this continues to happen.”

“You believe, as Jerry Nadler said, that the administration is trying to intimidate Democrats?” Bash followed up.

“I think the administration is clearly trying to intimidate Democrats in the same way that they’re trying to intimidate the country. This whole shock and awe strategy, this flood the zone with outrageous behavior that they’ve tried to unleash on the American people during the first few months of the Trump administration is all designed to create the appearance of inevitability,” he replied, adding:

But Donald Trump has learned an important lesson – the American people are not interested in bending the knee to a wannabe king. So the reason why Donald Trump actually is the most unpopular president at this point of a presidency in American history – the American people will have rejected this approach. And we, as congressional Democrats, will continue to reject this approach.

Bash then pivoted to a recent CNN poll, noting, “Mr. Leader, you brought up polls, so let me tell you about a new one that just came out here at CNN this morning. It shows that only 19% of Americans say that your party can get things done, 36% say the same about Republicans, and just 16% say your party has strong leaders. It’s pretty rough, and you are one of those leaders. How do you turn that around?

“Well, we don’t have the presidency right now, so that’s always going to be challenging a few months after a presidential election. But we have to continue to make the case that Democrats are of course the party that is determined to make life more affordable for everyday Americans, for hard-working American taxpayers, that we believe that we need to lower the high cost of living which for decades has been going up while the size of the middle class has been going down. So understandably, there’s real frustration amongst the American people. They should be frustrated–” Jeffries replied.

“But they are frustrated with you as well! With Democrats as well,” interjected Bash.

“Of course, they’re frustrated with the system. But what is interesting, Dana, I think you’re aware of this, every single public poll that has come out since the Trump presidency has had congressional Democrats winning the generic ballot against congressional Republicans, and in fact, we know this is not simply speculative. In every single high-profile special election – Iowa in January, New York in February, Pennsylvania in March, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race in April, and most recently in Albuquerque, the mayor’s race in May – Democrats have won. So the American people are actually being very clear and decisive in saying who they trust more to govern,” he concluded.

This interview demonstrates the lack of leadership that exists nationally in the Democratic Party.  Locally and at the state level, there are Democrats who show some leadership but there is no one nationally.

Tony

Sen. Bernie Sanders. Samuel Corum via Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Senator Bernie Sanders bluntly told BBC Radio 4 why Democrats can only blame themselves for the results of the 2024 election.

During his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, Sanders said it was wrong to pin Kamala Harris’ defeat on then-President Joe Biden’s late retreat from the race.

“It was the fault of Kamala Harris and her consultants,” he said plainly, before laying out how Democrats failed to “run a campaign designed to speak to the American working class.”

Sanders told the station that while President Donald Trump may be “reasonably popular,” Democrats could have beaten him if they addressed the struggles everyday Americans face during the campaign.

“I ran all over the country trying to elect Kamala Harris and begged them: Talk to the needs of the working class. Talk about raising the minimum wage to a living wage,” he continued. “Talk about real health care reform. Talk about building the kinds of massive amounts of housing that we need, and putting checks on landlords’ greed on housing.”

But instead of listening to Sanders, the Harris campaign decided to rely on “billionaire friends” and anti-Trump Republicans like former U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.).

“Kamala spent more time with Liz Cheney almost than with anybody else. What is that message out to working-class people?” he asked.

Sanders added that using billionaire “Shark Tank” star Mark Cuban as a surrogate was also a major misstep for Democrats.

“To my mind that was a campaign that absolutely should have been winnable,” but consultants and the 1% led them astray, he said.

“The bottom line here is the Democrats have to answer a very simple question: Which side are you on?”

Talking about the party’s current strategy in an interview with The Washington Post published last week, the senator had a similar message.

“Do Democrats do enough?” he asked himself. “No.”

.“The difference that I have with the Democratic leadership is not in the need to vigorously oppose Trump,” he explained. “It’s to bring forth an agenda that resonates with working-class families. And I think there are a number of Trump people who will support that agenda.”

Even before ballots were cast, observers were wary about Democrats’ decision to bank on big-name supporters like Oprah Winfrey, Beyoncé, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez and more, wondering whether it would pay off.

And in the fallout from the 2024 election, politics insiders were even more critical.

“Celebrity endorsements say a lot: they say you’re a liberal, an elitist, and a cultural progressive. An Oprah or Clooney endorsement is the kiss of death in large swaths of the country now,” Republican strategist William F.B. O’Reilly told The New York Times in a postmortem election analysis.

I don’t think celebrity endorsements are the kiss of death but if that is all you are offering, you lose!

Tony