Chief Justice John Roberts. Reuters.

Dear Commons Community,

Chief Justice John Roberts decried calls from President Trump and his supporters to impeach judges who have ruled against administration policies, saying that the courts should be left to resolve legal disputes through the traditional system of litigation. As reported by The Wall Street Journal.

“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said Tuesday in a statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”

To be sure, judicial impeachments have been floated for political purposes before.

In 1970, House Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R., Mich.), the future president, called for impeaching Justice William O. Douglas, a pugnacious liberal who recently had published a book, “Points of Rebellion,” sympathizing with the era’s radical movements. Last year, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) filed impeachment articles against Justice Clarence Thomas, the current court’s most conservative member whose undisclosed acceptance of lavish gifts from wealthy patrons prompted critics to question his ethics.

Impeachment threats against district judges over preliminary orders issued at the outset of litigation are all but unheard of—let alone from the president.

To remove a judge, the House would have to approve articles of impeachment and the Senate, following a trial, would need to convict by a two-thirds vote. While the odds of that are slim, Roberts and other judges have warned that incendiary rhetoric from political leaders can lead to intimidation of judges and even threats to their and their families’ safety.

Trump loves to intimidate because he is such a cowardly bully.

Tony

President John F. Kennedy waves from his car in a motorcade approximately one minute before he was shot, Nov. 22, 1963, in Dallas.  (AP Photo/Jim Altgens, File)

Dear Commons Community, 

Unredacted documents related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released yesterday following an order by President Donald Trump shortly after he took office.

More than 1,100 files consisting of over 31,000 pages were posted on the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration’s website in the evening. The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have previously been released.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Larry J. Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics and author of “The Kennedy Half-Century,” said he had a team that started going through the documents but it may be some time before their full significance becomes clear.

“We have a lot of work to do for a long time to come, and people just have to accept that,” he said.

Trump announced the release Monday while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, saying his administration would be releasing about 80,000 pages.

“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said.

Researchers had estimated that the number of files still released either in whole or in part was around 3,000 to 3,500. And last month the FBI said it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination.

Jefferson Morley, vice president of the Mary Ferrell Foundation, a repository for files related to the assassination, said in a statement posted on the social platform X that the release is “an encouraging start.” Complete versions of about a third of the redacted documents held by the National Archives have now been made public, he said, an estimate of over 1,100 of about 3,500 documents.

“Rampant overclassification of trivial information has been eliminated and there appear to be no redactions, though we have not viewed every document,” Morely said.

The National Archives said on its website that in accordance with the president’s directive, the release would encompass “all records previously withheld for classification.” But Morley said what was released Tuesday did not include two-thirds of the promised files or any of the recently discovered FBI files.

Interest in details related to Kennedy’s assassination has been intense over the decades, with countless conspiracy theories spawned.

He was killed Nov. 22, 1963, on a visit to Dallas, when his motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown and shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn’t quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.

Oswald was a former Marine who defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.

Files in the new release included a memo from the CIA’s St. Petersburg station from November 1991 saying that earlier that month, a CIA official befriended a U.S. professor there who told the official about a friend who worked for the KGB. The memo said the KGB official had reviewed “five thick volumes” of files on Oswald and was “confident that Oswald was at no time an agent controlled by the KGB.”

The memo added that as Oswald was described in the files, the KGB official doubted “that anyone could control Oswald, but noted that the KGB watched him closely and constantly while he was in the USSR.” It also noted that the file reflected that Oswald was a poor shot when he tried target firing in the Soviet Union.

In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.

Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.

Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remained unseen.

Sabato said that his team has a “long, long list” of sensitive documents it is looking for that previously had large redactions.

“There must be something really, really sensitive for them to redact a paragraph or a page or multiple pages in a document like that,” he said. “Some of it’s about Cuba, some of it’s about what the CIA did or didn’t do relevant to Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Some of the previously released documents have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination.

For those of us who were alive in 1963, the subsequent investigation by the Warren Commission never satisfied our curiosity of what actually happened particularly since the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was murdered by Jack Ruby while in police custody.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway increased its holdings in Japan’s five biggest trading houses, according to Japanese regulatory filings published yesterday.  As reported by Fortune.

Berkshire grew its stake in Mitsui to 9.82% from 8.09%, in Mitsubishi to 9.67% from 8.31%, in Marubeni to 9.3% from 8.3%, in Sumitomu to 9.29% from 8.23%, and in Itochu to 8.53% from 7.47%. 

While the additional Japanese investments were disclosed yesterday, the exact timing of the transactions is unclear, though the annual letter in late February telegraphed what was coming.

The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

In contrast, Berkshire sold a net $134 billion in equities in 2024, ending the year with a cash pile of $334.2 billion—nearly double from a year ago and more than its shrinking stock portfolio of $272 billion. 

Meanwhile, U.S. stocks began nose-diving in mid-February after President Donald Trump began imposing tariffs; he has since continued rolling out more. So far, he has hit China, Canada, Mexico, steel, and aluminum with higher duties, and reciprocal tariffs are due April 2.

The Nasdaq has tumbled into correction territory, and the S&P 500 also passed the correction threshold last week but soon pared its decline to less than 10% from its peak.

That’s left investors wondering if Buffett will finally make a major purchase of stock or clinch a mega-deal for a company after complaining for years that valuations have been too high.

But analysts told Fortune earlier that a big splash is still unlikely as valuations haven’t gone down far enough, noting that Buffett usually prefers to be patient.

“He has no interest in timing the market’s bottom, nor does he chase short-term rebounds,” Armando Gonzalez, founder of AI-powered research platform Bigdata.com, said. “Instead, he waits for moments when fear drives prices to levels where the risk-reward equation tilts decisively in his favor.”

Warren Buffett knows the economy and foresaw the instability that Trump brought to it!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Raphaël Glucksmann, a French politician is making headlines in his country for suggesting that the U.S. is no longer worthy of the Statue of Liberty, that was a gift from France nearly 140 years ago.

As a member of the European Parliament and co-president of a small left-wing party in France, Glucksmann does not claim to speak for all of his compatriots.

But his assertion in a speech this weekend that some Americans “have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants” reflects the broad shockwaves that U.S. President Donald Trump’s seismic shifts in foreign and domestic policy are triggering in France and elsewhere in Europe.

“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” Glucksmann said, speaking Sunday to supporters of his Public Place party, who applauded and whistled.

“It was our gift to you. But apparently you despise her. So she will be happy here with us,” Glucksmann said.

For background, Lady Liberty was initially envisaged as a monumental gesture of French-American friendship to mark the 100th anniversary of the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence.

But a war that erupted in 1870 between France and German states led by Prussia diverted the energies of the monument’s designer, French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi.

The gift also took time to be funded, with a decision taken that the French would pay for the statue and Americans would cover the costs of its pedestal.

Transported in 350 pieces from France, the statue was officially unveiled Oct. 28, 1886.

Is France’s government offering asylum to Lady Liberty?

No. French-U.S. relations would have to drop off a cliff before Glucksmann found support from French President Emmanuel Macron’s government.

For the moment, the French president is treading a fine line — trying to work with Trump and temper some of his policy shifts on the one hand but also pushing back hard against some White House decisions, notably Trump’s tariff hikes.

Macron has let his prime minister, François Bayrou, play the role of being a more critical voice. Bayrou tore into the “brutality” that was shown to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his White House visit and suggested that Trump’s administration risked handing victory to Russia when it paused military aid to Ukraine.

Glucksmann’s party has been even more critical, posting accusations on its website that Trump is wielding power in an “authoritarian” manner and is “preparing to deliver Ukraine on a silver platter” to Russia.

In his speech, Glucksmann referenced New York poet Emma Lazarus’ words about the statue, the “mighty woman with a torch” who promised a home for the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

“Today, this land is ceasing to be what it was,” Glucksmann said.

Amen!

Tony

Credit:  Joan Wong.

Dear Commons Community,

Ms. O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review and a professor in the English department at Yale University, had a guest essay in The New York Times yesterday entitled, “The End of the University as We Know It.”  Her main thesis is that:

“Conservatives have been trying to reshape the American university since the federal government began funding it in earnest in the mid-20th century. But now the Trump administration appears prepared to destroy it. The [Trump] administration has issued sweeping executive orders and deployed the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash funding; dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and intervene in university policy. On March 7 the administration announced it was pulling $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, alleging “continued inaction” to protect the civil rights of Jewish students on campus during the protests against the war in Gaza. The result, if all goes through, will be nothing less than the permanent diminishment of research universities and an upheaval of the free speech principles at the core of the country.”

She goes on further by observing that the attack on universities is really an attack on freedom of ideas:

“the real wound ran deeper: the quiet, creeping sense that something larger — the very idea of the university as a place of free inquiry — was slipping away. In an era when both the right and the left have had their moments of speech policing and ideological rigidity, some hope this moment will force universities to rethink their own commitments to open inquiry, that it will serve as an invitation to resist the intellectual and moral narrowing that happens not only through government decree but also through the hardening of internal orthodoxy.

But the more likely outcome is that this moment will close, rather than expand, the range of what is possible. Because what we are witnessing is not just an attack on academia or a set of fiscal reforms or a painful political rebalancing. It is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist. We may not yet know its full cost, but we will feel its consequences for decades.”

I agree with much of what O’Rourke says but I am going to be a bit more optimistic that the core purpose of the academia is to promote freedom of ideas and it will survive.

Her entire guest essay is below.  Excellent commentary!

Tony

———————————————————————————–

The New York Times

The End of the University as We Know It

March 16, 2025

By Meghan O’Rourke

The rumors had been building for months: The Trump administration was coming for the universities. In the weeks after the president issued the first executive orders of this term, the effects rippled through my academic world: A Rutgers conference on H.B.C.U.s was canceled; graduate students on visas asked a professor I know if it was safe for them to travel; a colleague at a public university texted about an undergraduate crying in his office, worried about the job landscape. There was news of endangered climate projects, grant pages disappearing (and sometimes later reappearing) as people were applying to them and forestalled scientific programs of all kinds, including one at Columbia’s maternal health center studying how to reduce America’s maternal mortality rate.

A meeting at Yale, where I teach, to discuss the impact of the Trump administration’s policies had to be moved to a larger auditorium because so many concerned faculty members showed interest in attending. After listening to a bracing description of the financial implications of the government edicts, we milled about, stunned. The reality was much worse than we had imagined. I run a small program for students who want to be editors and writers. In the grips of uncertainty, I stayed up late that night to figure out which parts I would have to kill if my budget was cut. I finally realized there was no good solution; in that scenario, I would have to cancel the whole thing.

Conservatives have been trying to reshape the American university since the federal government began funding it in earnest in the mid-20th century. But now the Trump administration appears prepared to destroy it. The administration has issued sweeping executive orders and deployed the so-called Department of Government Efficiency to slash funding; dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives; and intervene in university policy. On March 7 the administration announced it was pulling $400 million in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University, alleging “continued inaction” to protect the civil rights of Jewish students on campus during the protests against the war in Gaza. The result, if all goes through, will be nothing less than the permanent diminishment of research universities and an upheaval of the free speech principles at the core of the country.

This attack on higher education has been a long-brewing project for Trump-aligned conservatives. Christopher Rufo, a key architect of the assault, has been explicit about the strategy: use financial pressure to put universities into what he called “existential terror,” making compliance seem like the only viable option, forcing them to dismantle programs and reshape hiring and curriculums. Mr. Rufo, who was invited to Mar-a-Lago to discuss higher education overhauls shortly after Donald Trump was elected again, views universities as having been “captured” by leftist ideology and rejects the idea that diversity is a worthwhile goal. He envisions a radical restructuring of the humanities, replacing current frameworks with what he confusingly calls a “classical” model while bringing in more conservative faculty members.

This assault isn’t happening in a vacuum, of course. Decades of conservative attacks have primed the public to see universities as elitist indoctrination centers. These attacks date at least to the Red Scare in the 1950s, when suspected Marxist professors were forced to testify before the Senate (and the F.B.I. leaked disparaging information about 400 teachers and professors to their employers). But more recently these attacks have evolved into a strategic, well-funded campaign. As Ellen Schrecker, a historian who studies higher education and political repression, noted in a 2023 essay: “During the culture wars of the 1980s and 1990s … right-wing philanthropists poured millions of dollars into demonizing higher education as infested by ‘political correctness’ whose advocates supposedly purveyed a dogmatic brand of left-wing identity politics while suppressing free speech and conservative discourse on their campuses.”

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Mr. Trump and his allies have hammered home that message, fueling Republican distrust in academia, even as soaring tuition costs put private institutions ever more out of reach and the pandemic deepened skepticism in expertise. Gallup polls found that in 2015, 57 percent of Americans had a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in higher education, a figure that had dropped to 36 percent by 2023. Among Republicans, it cratered from 56 percent to 20 percent. Some of this distrust stems from the fact that since the late 1990s, the number of university faculty members who identify as liberal has risen, while the numbers of moderates and conservatives have declined. But it’s also the product of the right’s campaign against universities, which has caricatured them as breeding grounds for a narrow-minded woke ideology that brooks no dissent, rather than the large, complicated places they are. While there have been instances of a campus left that was hubristically convinced of its own point of view, the reality for most of us who teach on campus looks nothing like the distorted portrait that the right has painted.

Indeed, it’s crucial to acknowledge the qualitative difference between any excesses the left has committed in the enforcement of campus norms and speech and the federal government’s decision to use the full force of state power to prevent people from saying things it doesn’t like. As Hari Kunzru, a novelist who teaches creative writing at N.Y.U., put it to me recently, “The notion that this is a justified response to the excesses of the left is not a legitimate framing.” The destruction underway is not a considered reaction to allegations of civil rights violations or a fine-tuned reform of university policy. Instead, it is a hammer smashing a very complicated mechanism. It will have real, damaging consequences across party lines. It will dismantle expertise that benefits America and its status in the world. Cancer research. Maternal health. Climate-related technology. All this will be materially worse off. The economic impacts will be enormous. But so, too, will be the cultural ones. What is really happening here is an attack on the American faith in knowledge as a value and a public good that has served us well.

For much of its history, the American university has stood at the intersection of knowledge production and national interest. The Morrill Act of 1862, which established land-grant universities, was one of the first federal efforts to expand access to higher education, aligning colleges with the needs of a growing industrial economy. In 1890, the Second Morrill Act brought funding to historically Black colleges and universities and reinforced the idea that higher education was a public good, one that served not only individuals but also the broader needs of the nation. But it was World War II and the Cold War that fundamentally transformed universities into engines of state power, binding research to military and technological supremacy.

The war effort had demonstrated the strategic value of academic research. Universities played a crucial role in projects like the Manhattan Project and the development of radar, showing that scientific breakthroughs created by university research could determine military superiority. In 1945, Vannevar Bush, a key wartime science administrator, argued that the federal government should sustain this partnership in peacetime, leading to the creation of the National Science Foundation in 1950. From then on, higher education was integral to American dominance on the global stage.

By the 1960s, in the wake of Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite, America was seized by a national fervor for scientific and technological education. Federal R & D funding skyrocketed, supporting not just engineering and military projects but also the social sciences, humanities and the arts. Universities became hubs of government-backed knowledge production. In 1957, funding from the National Science Foundation stood at $40 million; by 1968, it had climbed to nearly $500 million. These investments fueled space exploration, medical research, literary magazines and global diplomacy. Knowledge in this era was not partisan; it was a national asset.

Yet this arrangement also carried contradictions with it. While the university thrived on public funding, the presence of left-wing voices among its students and faculty members made it a target for conservatives, who, as evidenced by the Red Scare, were already profoundly distrustful of left-leaning academics. Ronald Reagan targeted Berkeley’s free speech movement in his campaign to become governor of California. In the late 1960s, President Richard Nixon’s administration debated cutting university funding over Vietnam War protests on campuses. Though it never followed through, more than 100 people without tenure were fired for their political activities, and states considered bills to criminalize participation in campus protests. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush attacked “political correctness” for restricting “enterprise, speech and spirit” and leading to “bullying.” But on a broader level there seemed to be a tacit sense on the right that for all of its problems, the modern research university was of real value — even a great strength of America, a reason people come here, an instrument of soft power and, indeed, a branding tool. As Nixon himself originally put it, when he rejected House-proposed legislation to end federal funding to universities that allowed campus protests of the war, doing so would be “cutting off our nose to spite our face.” The responsibility, he insisted, “should be on the college administrators.”

Not now. What is distinctive about what is happening is that the very concept of the research university as an autonomous institution is under direct attack. The shift is stark. If, during the Cold War, the government funded universities as a way of strengthening America, Mr. Trump’s second administration treats them as a threat to be dismantled. The real question driving their “reforms” is not whether federal support for universities should continue but whether universities deserve to exist in their current form at all.

If the university has always been politicized one way or another, why should conservatives care about protecting the intellectual freedom currently housed in what are predominantly liberal institutions? The answer is earnest and aspirational: because the serious, reflective work of scholarship benefits us all. Because academic freedom makes it possible to critique institutionality from within at a time when institutions rule our lives. Because it permits intellectuals and scientists to question realities we have become complacent about. Because it creates space for values that live outside the capitalist marketplace. Because it houses art and artists. Yes, the university can be, like any community anywhere, divisive, censorious, sometimes too ideologically homogeneous. But when it works, it trains people to think critically, powerfully and unflinchingly. The strongest critiques of the National Institutes of Health I’ve heard, for instance, have been voiced not by Mr. Trump or Elon Musk but by academics who understand its workings and have the theoretical framework to imagine how to reform it.

The Trump administration’s orders arrive at a precarious moment in America — a moment of transformative technologies, escalating climate crises and global instability. It’s a moment that demands more from universities, not less. “The core mission of the humanities is more important than ever,” Robin Kelsey, a former dean of arts and humanities at Harvard, told me. As he explained, the humanities as we know them emerged in response to the violence of the two world wars, precisely because those conflicts revealed that scientific progress does not guarantee moral progress. A humanist education teaches us to question dominant narratives, to recognize how certain ways of thinking rise to prominence while others fade from view.

Dr. Kelsey warned against abandoning the humanities precisely when their lessons are most needed. “One of the contradictions at the heart of the humanities,” he said, “is that they are supposed to practice the same skepticism, open inquiry and refusal of dogma that science is known for — while also addressing questions about meaning, virtue and ethics, which had long been the domain of religion.” That contradiction has made the humanities both essential and vulnerable, open to attack from those who see them as frivolous or politically suspect. But what is now more clear than ever is that Mr. Rufo and other Trump-aligned ideologues actually know how important the humanities, and the civic and aesthetic values they explore, are. That is precisely why so much effort is being spent on trying to impose a set of nostalgic, premodern views at the heart of the university.

The defunding of Columbia and the threat of cuts have sent a chill through the halls of academia. If the battle over universities were only about budgets, the fight might be different. But what is being targeted is something more profound: the ability of institutions to sustain the freedoms that form the foundation of our democracy. Mr. Trump campaigned on free speech: “I’ve stopped all government censorship and brought back free speech in America,” he told Congress on March 4. But make no mistake: His administration is trying to force universities to conform — and to make its faculty members quite literally stop saying or studying things that they don’t want said out loud or studied. Most egregiously, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, recently wrote the dean of the Georgetown University Law Center, a Catholic institution, saying that it was “unacceptable” for the school to “teach D.E.I.” (whatever that means) and declaring that until Georgetown revised its curriculum, his office would refuse to hire — that is, would blacklist — its students.

The obvious threat here is that institutions will fall in line with the administration’s broadest goals in order to preserve their funding. But beyond that, there is the deeper threat that the Polish poet Czesław Miłosz identified in “The Captive Mind,” his exploration of how intellectuals adapt to authoritarian regimes. Living under Soviet rule, Mr. Miłosz observed that artists and scholars, without direct coercion, anticipated the regime’s desires, adjusting their behavior before the government even had to intervene. Fear reshaped their internal weather, dictating what they would — and wouldn’t — say.

That fear, or one like it, is settling now into American institutions. Last week, it became more difficult to get affected professors and university administrators to talk to me, whereas before, many had been eager to weigh in. The silence was instructive. In a faculty meeting I attended recently, in a high-ceilinged room with carved wood and delicately painted windows, anxiety reverberated. We were warned of funding cuts. But the real wound ran deeper: the quiet, creeping sense that something larger — the very idea of the university as a place of free inquiry — was slipping away. In an era when both the right and the left have had their moments of speech policing and ideological rigidity, some hope this moment will force universities to rethink their own commitments to open inquiry, that it will serve as an invitation to resist the intellectual and moral narrowing that happens not only through government decree but also through the hardening of internal orthodoxy.

But the more likely outcome is that this moment will close, rather than expand, the range of what is possible. Because what we are witnessing is not just an attack on academia or a set of fiscal reforms or a painful political rebalancing. It is an attack on the conditions that allow free thought to exist. We may not yet know its full cost, but we will feel its consequences for decades.

Idaho school district orders teacher to remove ‘Everyone is welcome here’ sign.

Dear Commons Community,

An Idaho teacher is in a standoff with her own school district after officials ordered her to remove classroom signs, including one that reads, “Everyone is welcome here.”

Sarah Inama, a sixth-grade history teacher at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian, Idaho, says she won’t comply with the order, arguing that the message is a fundamental part to ensuring a positive learning environment for her students.

Inama, who has taught at the school for five years, says her commitment to inclusivity isn’t about politics. It’s about her passion for education and students.  As reported by TODAY.com and NBC News.

“I love the area that I teach,” she says in an interview with TODAY.com. “It’s really a valuable thing for people to know our human history, things that humans have accomplished, our time on this earth, things that they’ve overcome, patterns that exist.”

Five years ago, when she first put up the two signs, it was to make sure students knew they were in an open and welcoming space. Now, she says she is risking her job in the name of those values.

A notice from her school district

Inama says the controversy began in January when her principal and vice principal came to her classroom to inform her that two posters on her walls were controversial and needed to be removed, a detail the district verified in an email to TODAY.com. Inama says other teachers were given similar instruction, but she was caught off guard by the directive.

Photos of the two posters show that one features the phrase “Everyone is welcome here,” with an illustration of hands in different skin tones. The other says that everyone in the classroom is “welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued” and “equal.”

“I was just so confused,” she recalls. “I still can’t even wrap my head around what they’re referring to as far as why it’s controversial.”

Inama says the principal cited district policy that classrooms must respect the rights of people to express differing opinions and that decorations are to be “content-neutral.”

“There are only two opinions on this sign: Everyone is welcome here or not everyone is welcome here,” she says. “Since the sign is emphasizing that everyone, in regards to race or skin tone, is welcome here no matter what, immediately, I was like, the only other view of this is racist. And I said, ‘That sounds like racism to me.’”

A change of heart

Feeling pressured, Inama removed the signs, but reconsidered as the decision weighed on her into the following weekend.

“I told my husband, ‘I have to put that sign back up,’” she recalls.

That Saturday, she says her husband accompanied her back to the school where she re-hung the signs and emailed her principal to let him know.

“I just was not interested in taking it down,” she says. “I didn’t agree with why they were asking me to take it down. And for that reason, it was back up.”

According to Inama, the principal warned her that her refusal constituted insubordination and could result in further action.

TODAY.com has reached out to the principal for comment on Inama’s allegations but did not receive a response.

A compromise

A meeting was soon arranged with district personnel, including West Ada School District’s chief academic officer Marcus Myers and a West Ada Education Association representative.

In its email to TODAY.com, West Ada School District states that the meeting was arranged to “provide further clarification and support” to Inama and to “discuss concerns about the poster and how it violates Policy 401.20.” The policy says that banners in the classroom must be “content-neutral and conducive to a positive learning enviornment.”

TODAY.com reached out to Myers for comment regarding the district’s decision and his role in the discussion with Inama but has not yet received a response.

Inama says the officials offered to purchase any alternative signs for her classroom during the meeting, just as long as they didn’t have the same messages as her current posters. Challenging the request, Inama pointed out that district policy classifies motivational posters as learning aids, which she argued should be allowed under the current rules.

Inama says the conversation escalated when Myers attempted to justify the request to remove her posters saying that “the political environment ebbs and flows, and what might be controversial now might not have been controversial three, six, nine months ago, and we have to follow that.”

The more the discussion continued, Inama says she became increasingly convinced that what the district was asking her to do was wrong.

“The more that we talked about it, the more it just solidified,” she says. “It seems so gross what they’re asking me to compromise about. I mean, there’s no way you’ll convince me that the differing view they’re trying to protect of that sign is not racist.”

She says the meeting ended without resolution and another warning, this time that further action might be necessary if she did not comply.

Legal counsel intervenes

After their meeting, Inama says the district offered to have legal counsel review her position, but that she would have to submit an email explaining why she believed the poster did not violate policy.

“I typed a big, long email and sent it off to them about why it was important for me to keep this poster up and why I don’t find it to be in violation,” Inama explains.

A week later, the district responded, maintaining that the signs violated policy. Inama says she was told she has until the end of the school year to remove them.

In a statement issued to TODAY.com via email, Niki Scheppers, chief of staff for communications at West Ada School District, explains the district’s decision to enforce its policy.

“West Ada School District has been and always will be committed to fostering a welcoming and supportive learning environment for all students while upholding district policies,” the statement reads.

“Classrooms are places where students learn to read, write, think critically and build the skills needed for future success. While classroom decorations can contribute to the atmosphere, a truly welcoming and supportive environment is built through meaningful relationships and positive interactions between staff and students, not posters on the walls. Our focus is on fostering kindness, respect and academic achievement so that every student can thrive in a distraction-free learning environment.”

According to the statement, approved classroom displays include the Idaho state flag, instructional materials like the periodic table or U.S. Constitution, student artwork, approved club information and school-sponsored achievements. Other permitted items include temporary displays of world flags for educational purposes, personal family photos of employees and promotional materials from colleges or professional sports teams.

“This policy is designed to maintain consistency across all classrooms while ensuring that no one group is targeted or offended by the display of certain items.”

The district underlined that its policies are not intended to limit free speech but to ensure fairness in classroom materials.

“While we respect individuals’ rights to express their perspectives, it is important to reaffirm that this situation is not about limiting speech or expression but about ensuring consistency in our classrooms and maintaining a learning environment free from distraction,” the statement said.

The district confirmed that legal counsel determined Inama’s poster must be removed and that she has until the end of the school year to find an alternative that complies with policy.

Fighting for her students, no matter the cost

Despite the district’s ruling, Inama refuses to remove the signs, even if it means risking her job.

“I would feel so sad to like leave my students before the end of the year, and financially, it would be difficult, but I just feel like your job, like your specific workplace, is not like your whole identity,” she explains. “There’s no way I would be able to allow myself to just take it down and roll over to what I feel like they’re asking me to do.”

Inama says what helps her now is knowing that she is not alone in her resistance. She says hundreds of people — including teachers across the district — have reached out to extend their support since her story became public.

“I’d say at least half of them are from other teachers in this district and in some of the other districts in Idaho and in other states,” she says.

Above all, Inama says she will prioritize the students seated in her classroom and stand by what she believes to be right.

Good for her!

Tony

An armed volunteer for the Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch Program stands guard near a community center.  Courtesy of NBC News.

Dear Commons Community,

This story appeared on NBC News.

Nearly every morning for the last month, Jay has been waking up before sunrise to drive around the streets of Lincoln Heights, patrolling neighborhood bus stops to make sure children are getting to school safely.

“We have a very tight community, so all of our kids, they know us,” he said.

But for anyone outside the community, Jay’s presence might be a mystery. He wears a face covering along with tactical vests, and Jay is not his real name, which he asked not to use to prevent harassment from hate groups.

He’s a member of the Lincoln Heights Safety and Watch program, an initiative that started shortly after Feb. 7, when a neo-Nazi group waving swastika flags and shouting racial slurs demonstrated on a highway overpass just on the edge of this majority-Black community about 30 minutes north of Cincinnati.

Officers from Evendale, which borders Lincoln Heights, and the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office both responded that day. No arrests were made, and Evendale police officers did not take down any names or identifying information from members of the neo-Nazi group, according to the mayor’s office. The Hamilton County Prosecutor’s office is currently investigating the incident to see if criminal charges could be filed.

In a statement, Evendale Mayor Richard Finan said officers’ emphasis on de-escalation “resulted in the incident’s resolution without injuries to any of the persons involved, passersby or law enforcement officers. During this evolving scene, protecting life took priority over immediate identification.” The Evendale Police Department was the first to respond to the incident, which took place on a bridge linking Evendale with Lincoln Heights.

But for Daronce Daniels, the safety and watch group’s spokesperson, the police response was just as alarming as the neo-Nazi appearance, making residents feel they wouldn’t be protected if another hate group were to visit their town.

“They’ve been very clear that if it happens again, they’ll allow it to happen again, that their hands are tied,” Daniels said.

Lincoln Heights residents said the police response to the incident was insufficient, prompting Daniels and other members of the Heights Movement, an existing community empowerment organization, to devise the safety and watch program, which includes armed volunteers wearing tactical gear and face coverings. Some of the same volunteers who helped mentor youth through the Heights Movement are now going on armed patrols. Ohio state law allows anyone legally allowed to own a gun to open carry without a permit.

“I’ve never felt safer as a Black man in my community than I have right now,” Daniels said. “These are my friends. These are my cousins, my brothers, my sisters, my aunties.”

Local business owner Eric Ruffin was accosted in his car by the neo-Nazi group as he was coming home from a work meeting.

He said he supports law enforcement, but that its handling of the Feb. 7 demonstration doesn’t give him faith that it will protect him in the future. For that reason, he says he’s proud of the neighborhood safety and watch program, even though he wishes it weren’t needed.

“What I don’t understand is how I can be standing here in America in 2025 and somebody can walk up to my window with a swastika and have guns and call me the N-word and law enforcement watch,” Ruffin said.

“We don’t want to become what we hate. You know, we don’t want to become a group of people that walk around feeling like we have a reason in America to have to protect ourselves. That’s what the Nazis want.”

The village of Lincoln Heights was formed in 1923 for Black families escaping the South, and it incorporated in 1946 as the “first African American self-governing community north of the Mason-Dixon Line,” according to the town’s website. However, residents say the community has been underserved by local municipalities, and its police department was disbanded in 2014, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer, leaving it under the jurisdiction of the Hamilton County Sheriff.

For many safety and watch volunteers, that history plays a role in their decision to add to their everyday duties as parents and workers.

“It’s just something that our grandfathers and our great-grandmothers — they started this. So we’re going to make sure that that history stays intact,” said one volunteer, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from hate groups.

Yard signs that read “We Support Lincoln Heights Safety & Watch” are peppered throughout the town, and community members could be seen waving to safety and watch volunteers as they stood guard near the local elementary school one Tuesday morning.

Chantelle Phillips said she saw the neo-Nazi rally playing out on social media as it happened. She said she trusts the neighborhood protection group to be more proactive than officers with the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office, whose jurisdiction includes Lincoln Heights.

“I feel like it’s more secure now,” Phillips said. “I know my son can walk home and be OK.”

Hamilton County Sheriff Charmaine McGuffey is now calling on the Ohio state Legislature to pass laws that make it illegal to wear a mask “for the purpose of intimidation” while open carrying. She said this measure would have given her officers more leeway to make arrests during the neo-Nazi rally.

In an interview with NBC News, she defended her officers’ response on Feb. 7 but said she understands why Lincoln Heights residents are concerned for their safety. Still, she worries that an armed confrontation between neighborhood residents and another hate group could lead to a dangerous situation.

“They feel they need to arm their residents, and they’re allowed to,” McGuffey said. “At some point, we are going to likely face a very dangerous situation that we are trained to handle. But the unknown is, who else is armed? How many juveniles are standing around with a gun in their hand? I cannot be more emphatic that this issue that we’re embedded in, and the way that people are reacting and acting with guns with open carry is directly related to the inaction of legislators who say they support law enforcement, who say they support families and order, and they do not.”

Tony

An artist’s impression shows a red dwarf (left) and a white dwarf (center) closely orbiting each other. Astronomers believe the tight orbit causes the stars’ magnetic fields to interact, releasing radio pulses every two hours. – Daniëlle Futselaar/artsource.nl

Dear Commons Community,

Over the past decade, scientists have detected a puzzling phenomenon: radio pulses coming from within our Milky Way galaxy that would pulse every two hours, like a cosmic heartbeat. The long radio blasts, which lasted between 30 and 90 seconds, appeared to come from the direction of the Ursa Major constellation, where the Big Dipper is located.

Now, astronomers have zeroed in on the surprising origin of the unusual radio pulses: a dead star, called a white dwarf, that is closely orbiting a small, cool red dwarf star. Red dwarfs are the most common type of star in the cosmos.

The two stars, known collectively as ILTJ1101, are orbiting each other so closely that their magnetic fields interact, emitting what’s known as a long period radio transient, or an LPT. Previously, long radio bursts were only traced to neutron stars, the dense remnants left after a colossal stellar explosion.

But the discovery, described in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature Astronomy, shows the movements of stars within a stellar pair can also create rare LPTs.

“We have for the first time established which stars produce the radio pulses in a mysterious new class of ‘long period radio transients,’” said lead study author Dr. Iris de Ruiter, a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Sydney in Australia.

The unprecedented observations of such bright, long radio bursts from this binary star system are just the beginning, astronomers say. The discovery could help scientists better understand what types of stars are capable of producing and sending radio pulses across the cosmos — and in this case, reveal the history and dynamics of two entwined stars.

Locked in a stellar dance

To solve the Milky Way mystery, de Ruiter devised a method to identify radio pulses lasting seconds to minutes within the archives of the Low-Frequency Array telescope, or LOFAR, a network of radio telescopes throughout Europe. It’s the largest radio array that operates at the lowest frequencies detectable from Earth.

De Ruiter, who developed her method while she was a doctoral student at the University of Amsterdam, uncovered a single pulse from observations made in 2015. Then, focusing on the same patch of sky, she found six more pulses. All of them appeared to originate from a faint red dwarf star. But de Ruiter didn’t think the star would be able to produce radio waves by itself. Something else had to be instigating it.

The  pulses differed from fast radio bursts, which are incredibly bright, millisecond-long flashes of radio waves. Almost all FRBs originate from outside our galaxy, and while some of them repeat, many appear to be one-off events, de Ruiter said. Fast radio bursts are also much more luminous. 

“The radio pulses are very similar to FRBs, but they each have different lengths,” said study coauthor Charles Kilpatrick, research assistant professor at Northwestern University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, in a statement.

“The pulses have much lower energies than FRBs and usually last for several seconds, as opposed to FRBs which last milliseconds. There’s still a major question of whether there’s a continuum of objects between long-period radio transients and FRBs, or if they are distinct populations.”

De Ruiter and her colleagues conducted follow-up observations of the red dwarf star using the 21-foot (6.5-meter) Multiple Mirror Telescope at the MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins in Arizona, as well as the LRS2 instrument on the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, located at the McDonald Observatory in the Davis Mountains in Texas.

The observations showed the red dwarf was moving back and forth rapidly, and its motion matched the two-hour period between radio pulses, Kilpatrick said. The back-and-forth motion was due to another star’s gravity tugging on the red dwarf. The researchers were able to measure the motions and calculate the mass of the companion star, which they determined to be a white dwarf.

The team found that the two stars, located 1,600 light-years from Earth, were pulsing together as they orbited a common center of gravity, completing one orbit every 125.5 minutes.

Deciphering mysterious pulses

The research team believes there are two possible causes behind the pulses. Either the white dwarf has a strong magnetic field that routinely releases the pulses, or the magnetic fields of the red dwarf star and the white dwarf interact as they orbit.

The team has planned to observe ILTJ1101 and study any ultraviolet light that may be emanating from the system, which could reveal more about how the two stars have interacted in the past. De Ruiter also hopes the team can observe the system in radio light and X-rays during a pulse event, which could shed light on the interaction between the magnetic fields.

“At the moment the radio pulses have disappeared completely, but these might turn back on again at a later time,” de Ruiter said.

The team is also combing through LOFAR data in search of other long pulses.

“We are starting to find a few of these LPTs in our radio data,” said study coauthor Dr. Kaustubh Rajwade, a radio astronomer in the department of physics at the University of Oxford, in a statement. “Each discovery is telling us something new about the extreme astrophysical objects that can create the radio emission we see.”

Other research groups have found 10 long radio pulse-emitting systems over the past couple of years, and they are trying to determine what creates them because the pulses, all of which originate in the Milky Way, “are unlike anything we knew before,” de Ruiter said.

Unlike the short bursts produced by pulsars, or rapidly spinning neutron stars, LPTs can last anywhere from a few seconds to nearly an hour, said Natasha Hurley-Walker, radio astronomer and associate professor at the Curtin University node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research in Australia. Hurley-Walker was not involved in the new study.

“Looking back, transient radio sources have stimulated some of the most exciting discoveries in astrophysics: the discovery of pulsars and therefore neutron stars, the discovery of FRBs which have unlocked the capacity to measure the otherwise invisible matter between galaxies, and now the discovery of LPTs, where we’re only at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what they will tell us,” Hurley-Walker said via email. “What’s fascinating to me is that now that we know these sources exist, we’re actually finding them in historical data going back decades — they were hiding in plain sight. 

Scanning the sky with powerful radio telescopes will only lead to more incredible findings, she said.

“The biggest would most likely be the discovery of technosignatures via SETI,” Hurley-Walker said of signals that could be created by intelligent life, which is something the SETI Institute has sought out for decades.

Most interesting! 

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In a dramatic break with much of their party, ten Senate Democrats voted alongside Republicans yesterday to pass a six-month funding bill, averting a government shutdown with just hours to spare. The move defied a majority of the chamber’s Democrats who opposed the measure, underscoring deep divisions over how to confront President Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress.

Ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Sen. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada were among the first Democrats to publicly back the Republican funding bill, arguing that a shutdown would only strengthen Trump’s hand. They were joined by six more Democrats—Dick Durbin of Illinois, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Gary Peters of Michigan, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire—as well as Angus King, a Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats.   As reported by Time.

“This was not an easy decision,” Cortez Masto, who represents a state that Trump carried last year, said in a statement. “I’m outraged by the reckless actions of President Trump, Elon Musk, and Republicans in control of Congress, so I refuse to hand them a shutdown where they would have free rein to cause more chaos and harm.”

For many Democrats, the bill was more than just an unfavorable spending deal; it was a moment to push back against what they see as the Trump Administration’s creeping executive overreach. The legislation stripped away numerous funding directives, giving Trump the power to reallocate money as he saw fit without fear of judicial intervention.

The spending measure, which passed the House earlier in the week, was presented to the Senate as a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. The vote in the Senate was 62-38, with 37 Democrats opposing the bill along with Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, who wanted the measure to codify Trump’s cuts to foreign aid.

Schumer’s decision to support the bill marked a turn from earlier in the week when he sought a 30-day extension to negotiate a bipartisan compromise. His pivot drew sharp criticism from House Democrats, who had largely united against the measure. At a retreat in Leesburg, Va. Thursday night, they made urgent appeals to their Senate counterparts, with lawmakers texting and calling senators throughout the day. “I think there is a deep sense of outrage and betrayal,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York told reporters at the retreat. “And this is not just about progressive Democrats. This is across the board. The entire party.”

Prior to the vote, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democratic appropriator, published a list of examples of programs that the measure could allow Trump to change, such as diverting resources from combating fentanyl to funding mass deportation efforts and giving him more authority to pick which health-care or mental health programs to implement.

Adding to the opposition was the bill’s treatment of Washington, D.C., which would have been forced to roll back its budget to the prior year’s levels, requiring $1.1 billion in cuts. Schumer said immediately prior to the vote that he had negotiated a deal with Senate Republicans to pass a D.C. funding fix—but the measure would still need to pass the House, which is on recess.

The political implications of voting with Republicans are uncertain, but the vote ensured that the government would remain funded through September, averting furloughs for federal workers and disruptions to key services.

However, the anger within the Democratic caucus is likely to linger, and could spell trouble for Schumer, who has led Senate Democrats since 2017. While no Senator has publicly called for his ouster, murmurs of discontent have grown louder, particularly among progressives who feel he has conceded too much ground to Republicans.

Here are the nine Democrats, and one independent, who helped avoid a shutdown:

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.)

The Senate Minority Leader, who has been the chamber’s top Democrat since 2017, sent shockwaves when he announced he would back the Republican spending bill on Thursday evening.

“While the [continuing resolution] bill is very bad, the potential for a shutdown has consequences for America that are much, much worse,” Schumer said on the Senate floor in announcing his decision.

He argued that a shutdown would allow Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to accelerate efforts to dismantle federal agencies. “A shutdown will allow DOGE to shift into overdrive,” he warned on Friday. “Donald Trump and Elon Musk would be free to destroy vital government services at a much faster rate.”

While Schumer framed his support as a necessary step to prevent Republicans from exploiting a shutdown, many in his party saw it as a surrender. His vote, combined with his leadership in pushing the bill forward, has fueled speculation about whether his position atop the Democratic Senate caucus remains tenable. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, when asked on Friday whether Schumer had “acquiesced” to Trump, Jeffries sidestepped the question: “That’s a question that is best addressed by the Senate.” Asked if the Senate needed new Democratic leadership following Schumer’s move, Jeffries replied: “Next question.”

Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.)

Cortez Masto, who represents a state that Trump carried last year, emphasized that her decision to support the bill was not taken lightly. She cited concerns that a shutdown would provide Trump and his allies with more opportunities to erode federal institutions.

“A government shutdown would be devastating for the American people,” she said in a statement, arguing that it would force thousands of Nevadans to work without pay and delay the courts which are weighing lawsuits against the Trump Administration. “The last government shutdown cost the American economy $11 billion and thousands of hardworking Americans were harmed. I cannot vote for that,” she said.

As one of the more moderate Democrats in the Senate, Cortez Masto has often navigated a fine line between party unity and the political realities in Nevada, where she was narrowly re-elected to a six-year term in 2022. In voting for the bill, she broke with fellow Democratic Senator from Nevada, Jack Rosen, who voted against it. The pair rarely split on issues.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

Durbin, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, had not publicly shared how he would vote for the Republican spending bill before he walked onto the Senate floor. Ultimately, he voted for it.

In siding with Republicans and nine other Democrats, Durbin broke with fellow Illinois Democratic Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who said she was a “hell no” on the bill.

In a statement posted to X, Durbin said: “There is very little about this CR that I like—but there is even less I like about shutting down the government.” He added that he was “disappointed” that Republicans would not work with his party to pass a 30-day stopgap measure that would have given Congress more time to reach a bipartisan agreement.

Durbin, who is 80, has served in the Senate since 1997 and is widely expected to retire soon.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.)

Fetterman, who represents a state Trump won in both 2016 and 2024, has been an outspoken critic of his party’s political messaging in recent months. He was the first Democratic Senator to announce his support of the Republican spending bill, arguing that a shutdown would have given Republicans the power to dictate the terms of reopening the government.

“You don’t start wars unless you have an exit plan. We had no exit plan,” Fetterman said. “That would give [Republicans] the absolute, absolute ability to decide, on their terms, how to reopen it after we shut it down, just to respond to our highly agitated left part of our party.”

Fetterman, who was elected to a six-year term in 2022, has consistently positioned himself as willing to buck Democratic orthodoxy when he believes it serves working-class voters. His decision to back the bill fits within his broader critique of Democratic messaging, which he has repeatedly argued fails to resonate with key voting blocs.

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.)

Gillibrand, who chairs the Senate Democratic campaign arm, joined her fellow New York Senator in backing the bill. While Schumer’s support carried the weight of party leadership, Gillibrand’s vote signaled that even some Democrats focused on electoral strategy saw avoiding a shutdown as the better political option.

Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.)

Hassan, a former governor, was once considered a vulnerable Democrat given her narrow win in 2016. Her lead in 2022, when she was re-elected to a second six-year term, was less narrow. But New Hampshire remains a competitive state for both parties. Last year, voters there backed Democrats for Congress and Kamala Harris for President, but also elected a Republican governor and expanded Republican majorities in the state legislature.

Both Hassan, and New Hampshire’s other Senator, Democrat Jeanne Shaheen, voted for the Republican spending bill.

Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)

King, a Maine Independent who caucuses with Democrats, referred to the vote as “two really bad choices” in a video posted to X. He added that he voted for the spending bill “because a shutdown would open the door to unprecedented, lasting damage.”

While Maine is far from a swing state, it shifted slightly to the right in the previous presidential election. King, 80, is a particularly popular figure within the state; he has served in the Senate since 2013 and was a two-term Governor before that. King won a third six-year term in the Senate in November.

“The problem is with a shutdown, the President and Elon Musk and the OMB have almost unfettered discretion about what happens,” King said. “Who’s essential, who’s not essential, what agencies can get to work, which ones don’t. And in my view, and in the view of many of my colleagues, this is a significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.”

Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.)

Another Senator from a state Trump won in 2024, Peters defended his decision to vote for the Republican spending bill: “I believe Congress must do its most basic job to keep the lights on,” he said in a statement.

“When the first Trump Administration shut down the government, they repeatedly broke the law,” he added. “This time, they would take it even further.”

Michigan’s other Democratic senator, Elissa Slotkin, voted against the bill. Their conflicting votes highlight the difficult balancing act for Democrats in battleground states, where political calculations often involve not just party loyalty, but also the concerns of a divided electorate.

Earlier this year, Peters announced he would not run for re-election when his current term ended in 2026.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii)

In a statement, Schatz called his vote a “difficult and close call” but said he ultimately “made the determination that a flawed bill was better than no bill at all.”

“I understand people’s frustration — I share it,” he said. “But Trump and the Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress, presented us with a bad choice and a worse choice. Both would produce terrible outcomes, but a shutdown would be more devastating for everyone.”

Referencing the opposition to his vote from progressives, he added that Democrats “can’t let disagreements about strategy and tactics divide us.” Schatz has served in the Senate since Dec. 2012, easily winning re-election to a second full term in 2022.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.)

Shaheen, who announced earlier this week that she will not run for re-election in 2026, said in a statement that a government shutdown “would have hurt Granite Staters and enabled President Trump and Elon Musk to do more harm.”

She said she hoped Congress would stop relying on “never-ending continuing resolutions” like the one passed today, which she warned would only increase instability in government operations. A continuing resolution, also known as a CR, is a temporary funding measure that allows the federal government to keep operating at current spending levels when Congress fails to pass a full appropriations bill—a common theme in recent years.

While I would have liked to have seen Trump and the Republicans handed a defeat, it was probably the prudent thing to do not to cause a government shutdown.

Tony