Dear Commons Community,

The University of Virginia yesterday reached an agreement with the Trump administration to suspend five investigations into allegations that the university’s diversity policies and programs violated civil-rights law.  As reported by The Chronicle of Higher Education.

In a community message, Paul G. Mahoney, the interim president, announced that through 2028, UVa will send the U.S. Department of Justice quarterly updates on its efforts to comply with federal law and to “apply July 2025 Justice Department guidance as relevant, to the extent consistent with judicial decisions.”

That guidance articulates the Trump administration’s broad view of the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision to ban race-conscious admissions, arguing that it should be interpreted to outlaw a wide range of practices that reference race or identity. (The ruling itself only mentions admissions policies.)

The university did not agree to external monitoring, and Mahoney assured community members that UVa would not be disadvantaged in competing for federal funding. Additionally, UVa did not admit to violating the law.

“We will also redouble our commitment to the principles of academic freedom, ideological diversity, free expression, and the unyielding pursuit of ‘truth, wherever it may lead,’ as Thomas Jefferson put it,” Mahoney wrote, referencing UVa’s founder.

In return, the Justice Department is suspending its probe of UVa, which resulted, most notably, in the resignation of James E. Ryan as president in June. Unlike Columbia and Brown Universities, which struck deals with the government earlier this year, UVa will not have to pay money to the government or an outside entity.

Ryan, who had been UVa’s president since 2018, oversaw a significant expansion of its DEI efforts, which drew the attention of federal officials when Trump retook office in January. Though UVa closed its central diversity office in March, the Department of Justice accused UVa the following month of failing to fully stamp out practices that the government believed to be discriminatory. A band of conservative alumni in and outside of the Trump administration insisted Ryan step down, and when he did, Ryan characterized his decision as important for preserving jobs and grants at UVa.

According to the Trump administration, UVa will have to make more changes to curtail its DEI programs: A Justice Department statement said that if the university “completes its planned reforms prohibiting DEI … the department will close its investigations.”

If the DOJ finds UVa isn’t making sufficient progress in complying with the law, the university will have 15 days to fix problems. After that, if the DOJ still is not satisfied or if the university and the department encounter a conflict, the government can end the agreement and restart its investigations.

The federal government has also reached agreements with Brown and Columbia Universities and the University of Pennsylvania to resolve investigations into their adherence with civil-rights law. Negotiations with Harvard University and the University of California at Los Angeles have hit roadblocks.

UVa was one of nine campuses initially asked to review the Trump administration’s “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” which offered institutions preferential access to federal funding if they made a series of Trump-aligned changes to their operations. UVa declined to sign the compact, as did six others in that first pool.

In a statement after The New York Times reported Tuesday that UVa and the Justice Department were nearing a deal, the co-chairs of Wahoos4UVA, an activist group that opposes the Trump administration’s involvement in university affairs, wrote that the proposed settlement was “far worse” than the compact.

“It is a capitulation to a regressive ideology that significantly oversteps what is required by law,” wrote Ann Brown and Chris Ford, both alumni. “It places into existence a permanent compliance regime with ongoing federal oversight, and without judicial review, public accountability, or the protections of due process.”

Reaction to the UVA deal on social media was fast and furious.  Here is a sample.

“Another shakedown by these fascist goons,” SUNY Oswego professor Dan Baldassarre wrote on X.

“What a bunch of cowards,” former radio journalist Greg Hernandez wrote on Bluesky.

“Add the University of Virginia to the list willingly succumbing to Fascism,” Joan Resnick Ehrlich wrote on Bluesky.

“Do not attend the University of Virginia. Any university that bends the knee doesn’t deserve your attendance,” one wrote on Bluesky.

“Avoid the University of Virginia at all costs,” another wrote on Bluesky.

“Now the University of Virginia has to live with their mediocrity in bowing down to Trump’s authoritarianism,” another person wrote on Bluesky.

Tony

Melania Trump and Michael Wolff.  Courtesy of The Daily Beast/Getty

Dear Commons Community,

Author Michael Wolff claims in a lawsuit that First Lady Melania Trump threatened to sue him for over $1 billion in damages if he didn’t retract Jeffrey Epstein-related statements he recently made about her.

Wolff sought unspecified damages in the lawsuit filed yesterday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Nicholas Clemens, a spokesperson for Melania Trump, issued a statement, saying: “First Lady Melania Trump is proud to continue standing up to those who spread malicious and defamatory falsehoods as they desperately try to get undeserved attention and money from their unlawful conduct.”

In his lawsuit, Wolff said Melania Trump and her husband, Donald Trump, “have made a practice of threatening those who speak against them” with costly legal actions “to silence their speech, to intimidate their critics generally, and to extract unjustified payments and North Korean style confessions and apologies.”

He said the threats “are designed to create a climate of fear in the nation so that people cannot freely or confidently exercise their First Amendment rights.”

According to the lawsuit, the threats are also meant to shut down inquiry into the couple’s involvement with Epstein, the notorious financier who killed himself in a New York federal jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

The lawsuit came on the day that Melania Trump’s lawyer had set as a deadline for Wolff to retract statements, issue an apology and pay damages to his client.

The lawyer, Alejandro Brito, wrote on Oct. 15 that she would be “left with no alternative” but to sue for over $1 billion after the statements had caused her “overwhelming reputational and financial harm.”

Through his lawsuit, Wolff announced his intention to use the legal action to put the president and his wife under oath to answer questions about Epstein. Wolff has published a dozen books, including four bestsellers about the president.

Wolff said in the lawsuit that Melania Trump’s threat to sue came over statements he made to “The Daily Beast” and in three videos published on social media, although he added that some statements were incomplete phrases and were taken out of context.

Others, the lawsuit said, were protected speech. For instance, the statement that the Trumps were in a “sham marriage, trophy marriage,” was a “fair and justified” statement of opinion, it said.

The lawsuit noted that Wolff never said Melania Trump was involved in any of Epstein’s crimes.

Among the statements the lawsuit said were true were those saying Melania Trump was “very involved” in Epstein’s social circle, where she met her future husband, and that Donald Trump liked to have sex with his friend’s wives and first slept with Melania Trump on Epstein’s private jet.

The lawsuit said it was fair to question how Melania Trump fits into the Epstein story.

And, it added, it was proper to “find out what happened in Mr. Trump’s and Epstein’s 10 years of pursuing models, including supermodels, runway models, catalog models, Eastern European models, and girls who just dreamed of being models.”

According to the lawsuit, that subject “will be one of the zones of inquiry that this lawsuit will have to undertake.”

Wolff conducted interviews with Epstein before his death.

Go get ’em Mr. Wolff!

Tony

Federal agents gather outside a Manhattan federal building, where migrants who were detained in a raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were brought in, in New York City on October 21, 2025.

Dear Commons Community,

Federal agents yesterday raided several busy lower Manhattan streets in an immigration enforcement operation targeting street vendors.

Video by local news outlets showed masked agents on foot and cuffing people in the afternoon along Canal Street, a popular tourist hub in the Chinatown neighborhood. It’s unclear how many people were taken into custody.

Protests ensued in the area. Traffic halted as agents took people into custody while bystanders recorded events on their phones.

Video obtained by USA TODAY showed an armored Department of Homeland Security vehicle driving down Lafayette Street, from the direction of Canal, toward a Manhattan federal building, which houses immigration court and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding area. Protesters are seen screaming at marching agents as they shove people out of the way to make way for the vehicle.

Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, said that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies conducted a “targeted, intelligence-driven operation on Canal Street” that “focused on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods.”

Canal Street is a common area where people sell clothing, accessories and food on heavily congested sidewalks.

Agencies also included FBI, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, IRS Criminal Investigations and Customs and Border Protection, she said.

“During this law enforcement operation, rioters who were shouting obscenities, became violent and obstructed law enforcement duties including blocking vehicles and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin said in a statement.

At least one person was arrested on suspicion of assaulting a federal officer, she said, adding more details would soon be available on people arrested.

Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said he saw agents initially detaining African vendors on the street and putting them in unmarked vehicles. Agents refused to answer questions about who was being taken into custody, or whether agents had judicial warrants to arrest them, Awawdeh said.

Then, as advocates and bystanders began gathering, dozens of agents swarmed the area along with the military vehicle, he said. Agents used batons and mace on demonstrators.

“If they’re trying to give us a warning shot, New Yorkers are ready to fight for one another, and peacefully fight for one another,” Awawdeh told USA TODAY in a phone call from the scene. “We’re going to fight for our democracy, because that’s what this is coming down to.”

New York City police said on social media it had no involvement in the federal operation. Mayor Eric Adams said New York City doesn’t cooperate with federal law enforcement on civil deportations, in accordance with local laws, which are commonly called sanctuary policies.

“Our administration has been clear that undocumented New Yorkers trying to pursue their American Dreams should not be the target of law enforcement, and resources should instead be focused on violent criminals,” he said on social media.

In January, ICE conducted highly publicized raids in New York City. Agents have also detained people attending immigration court hearings or ICE check-ins in lower Manhattan.

On social media, Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said Trump claims he was “targeting the worst of the worst.” Instead, she said, agents used “batons and pepper spray on street vendors and bystanders on Canal Street.”

Tony

USA Today

Dear Commons Community,

A federal judge in Virginia has ordered the Pentagon to restore books and curriculum that were removed from its schools following efforts by the Trump administration to weed out perceived “wokeness” from the military and education.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued the Department of Defense in April on behalf of six military families who objected to the actions taken at schools in the Department of Defense Education Activity, often referred to as DoDEA, in the weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

More than 67,000 students attend classes at DoDEA locations in the United States and 11 other countries.  As reported by USA Today.

U.S. District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles’ Oct. 20 ruling is only on a preliminary injunction the ACLU requested in May, meaning it is in place as litigation continues, and only applies to the five schools attended by the children involved in the lawsuit.

The Department was ordered both to “immediately restore the library books and curricular materials” removed since Jan. 19 and barred from any “further removals.”

Tolliver Giles previously ordered that the list of nearly 600 books affected by the department’s actions be made public. They included “A is for Activist” by Innosanto Nagara, “Being Jazz: My Life as a (Transgender) Teen” by Jazz Jennings and “From #BlackLivesMatter to Black Liberation” by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

The ACLU called the Oct. 20 ruling an “important victory.”

““The censorship taking place in DoDEA schools as a result of these executive orders was astonishing in its scope and scale, and we couldn’t be more pleased that the court has vindicated the First Amendment rights of the students this has impacted,” ACLU senior staff attorney Emerson Sykes said.

Among the plaintiffs was Jessica Henninger, a mother of children in DoDEA who previously told USA TODAY  she felt “helpless” amid the changes because of its operation by the Department of Defense, which the Trump administration has renamed the Department of War.

“It’s a slippery slope if you’re going to start saying that the federal government can dictate what is allowed and what is not allowed to be taught to our children,” she said. “You’re opening up the door there to a lot of executive overreach and politicization of an education system, which is just not something that is ever okay.”

Ms. Henniger has it right!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Trump said Sunday that the Donbas region of Ukraine should be “cut up,” leaving most of it in Russian hands, to end a war that has dragged on for nearly four years.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Let it be cut the way it is,” he told reporters aboard Air Force One. “It’s cut up right now,” adding that you can “leave it the way it is right now.”

“They can negotiate something later on down the line,” he said. But for now, both sides of the conflict should “stop at the battle line — go home, stop fighting, stop killing people.”

Trump’s latest comments came after Ukrainian drones struck a major gas processing plant in southern Russia, sparking a fire and forcing it to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan, Russian and Kazakh authorities said Sunday.

The Orenburg plant, run by state-owned gas giant Gazprom and located in a region of the same name near the Kazakh border, is part of a production and processing complex that is one of the world’s largest facilities of its kind, with an annual capacity of 45 billion cubic meters. It handles gas condensate from Kazakhstan’s Karachaganak field, alongside Orenburg’s own oil and gas fields.

According to regional Gov. Yevgeny Solntsev, the drone strikes set fire to a workshop at the plant and damaged part of it. The Kazakh Energy Ministry on Sunday said, citing a notification from Gazprom, that the plant was temporarily unable to process gas originating in Kazakhstan, “due to an emergency situation following a drone attack.”

Ukraine’s General Staff said in a statement Sunday that a “large-scale fire” erupted at the Orenburg plant, and that one of its gas processing and purification units was damaged.

Kyiv has ramped up attacks in recent months on Russian energy facilities it says both fund and directly fuel Moscow’s war effort.

Trump says Ukraine may have to give up land for peace

Trump has edged back in the direction of pressing Ukraine to give up on retaking land it has lost to Russia, in exchange for an end to Moscow’s aggression.

Asked in a Fox News interview conducted Thursday whether Russian President Vladimir Putin would be open to ending the war “without taking significant property from Ukraine,” Trump responded: “Well, he’s going to take something.”

“They fought and he has a lot of property. He’s won certain property,” Trump said. “We’re the only nation that goes in, wins a war and then leaves.”

The interview was aired Sunday on Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” but was conducted before Trump spoke to Putin on Thursday and met with Zelenskyy on Friday.

Then on Sunday evening, while flying from Florida to Washington, Trump — who plans to meet Putin in Budapest in coming weeks — reiterated his stance that Ukraine will need to give up territory by having the fighting “stop at the lines where they are.”

“The rest is very tough to negotiate if you’re going to say, ‘You take this, we take that,’” he said. “You know, there are so many different permutations.”

The comments amounted to another shift in position on the war by the U.S. leader. In recent weeks, Trump had shown growing impatience with Putin and expressed greater openness to helping Ukraine win the war.

Contrary to Kyiv’s hopes, Trump did not commit to providing it with Tomahawks following his meeting with Zelenskyy. The missiles would be the longest-range weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal and would allow it to strike targets deep inside Russia, including Moscow, with precision.

Russians modified bombs for deeper strikes

Meanwhile, Ukrainian prosecutors claim that Moscow is modifying its deadly aerial-guided bombs to strike civilians deeper in Ukraine. Local authorities in Kharkiv said Russia struck a residential neighborhood using a new rocket-powered aerial bomb for the first time.

Kharkiv’s regional prosecutor’s office said in a statement that Russia used the weapon called the UMPB-5R, which can travel up to 130 kilometers (80 miles), in an attack on the city of Lozava on Saturday afternoon. The city lies 150 kilometers (93 miles) south of Kharkiv, a considerable distance for the weapon to fly.

Russia continued to strike other parts of Ukraine closer to the front line. In the Dnipropetrovsk region, at least 11 people were injured after Russian drones hit the Shakhtarske area. At least 14 five-story buildings and a store were damaged, said acting regional Gov. Vladyslav Haivanenko.

A Russian strike also hit a coal mine in the Dnipropetrovk region. Some 192 miners were brought to the surface without injury, the company that operates the mine said.

Ukraine’s General Staff also claimed a separate drone strike hit Russia’s Novokuibyshevsk oil refinery, in the Samara region near Orenburg, sparking a blaze and damaging its main refining units.

The Novokuibyshevsk facility, operated by Russian gas major Rosneft, has an annual capacity of 4.9 million tons, and turns out over 20 kinds of oil-based products. Russian authorities did not immediately acknowledge the Ukrainian claim or discuss any damage.

Russia’s Defense Ministry said in a statement early Sunday that its air defense forces had shot down 45 Ukrainian drones during the night, including 12 over the Samara region, one over the Orenburg region and 11 over the Saratov region neighboring Samara.

In turn, Ukraine’s air force reported Sunday that Russia during the night launched 62 drones into Ukrainian territory. It said 40 of these were shot down, or veered off course due to electronic jamming.

By ceding parts of the Donbas back to Russia means Putin wins the war!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

In a minutes-long strike Sunday inside the world’s most-visited museum, thieves rode a basket lift up the Louvre ’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels, officials said.

The daylight heist about 30 minutes after opening, with visitors already inside, was among the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory and comes as staff complained that crowding and thin staffing are straining security.  As reported by the Associated Press.

The theft unfolded just 250 meters (270 yards) from the Mona Lisa, in what Culture Minister Rachida Dati described as a professional “four-minute operation.”

One object, the emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, containing more than 1,300 diamonds, was later found outside the museum, French authorities said. It was reportedly recovered broken.

Images from the scene showed confused tourists being steered out of the glass pyramid and adjoining courtyards as officers closed nearby streets along the Seine.

A lift — which officials say the thieves brought and which was later removed — stood against the Seine-facing façade, their entry route and, observers said, a revealing weakness: that such machinery could be brought to a palace-museum unchecked.

French Crown Jewels at the Lourve

A museum already under strain

Around 9:30 a.m., several intruders forced a window, cut panes with a disc cutter and went straight for the glass display cases, officials said. Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said the crew entered from outside using a basket lift via the riverfront facade to reach the hall with the 23-item royal collection.

Their target was the gilded Apollon Gallery, where the Crown Diamonds are displayed, including the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia.

The thieves smashed two display cases and fled on motorbikes, Nunez said. No one was hurt. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the theft was already done.

Eight objects were taken, according to officials: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-century French queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; Empress Eugénie’s diadem; and her large corsage-bow brooch — a prized 19th-century imperial ensemble.

“It’s a major robbery,” Nunez said, noting that security measures at the Louvre had been strengthened in recent years and would be reinforced further as part of the museum’s upcoming overhaul plan. Officials said security upgrades include new-generation cameras, perimeter detection, and a new security control room. But critics say the measures come far too late.

The Louvre closed for the rest of Sunday for the forensic investigation to begin as police sealed gates, cleared courtyards and shut nearby streets along the Seine.

Daylight robberies during public hours are rare. Pulling one off inside the Louvre with visitors present ranks among Europe’s most audacious in recent history, and at least since Dresden’s Green Vault museum in 2019.

It also collides with a deeper tension the Louvre has struggled to resolve: swelling crowds and stretched staff. The museum delayed opening during a June staff walkout over overcrowding and chronic understaffing. Unions say mass tourism leaves too few eyes on too many rooms and creates pressure points where construction zones, freight routes and visitor flows meet.

Security around marquee works remains tight — the Mona Lisa sits behind bulletproof glass in a climate-controlled case — but Sunday’s theft also underscored that protections are not uniformly as robust across the museum’s more than 33,000 objects.

The theft is a fresh embarrassment for a museum already under scrutiny.

“How can they ride a lift to a window and take jewels in the middle of the day?” said Magali Cunel, a French teacher from near Lyon. “It’s just unbelievable that a museum this famous can have such obvious security gaps.”

The Louvre has a long history of thefts and attempted robberies. The most famous came in 1911, when the Mona Lisa vanished from its frame, stolen by Vincenzo Peruggia and recovered two years later in Florence. Another notorious episode came in 1956, when a visitor hurled a stone at her world-famous smile, chipping paint near her left elbow and hastening the move to display the work behind protective glass.

Today the former royal palace holds a roll call of civilization: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa; the armless serenity of the Venus de Milo; the Winged Victory of Samothrace, wind-lashed on the Daru staircase; the Code of Hammurabi’s carved laws; Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People; Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa. The objects — from Mesopotamia, Egypt and the classical world to Europe’s masters — draw a daily tide of up to 30,000 visitors even as investigators now begin to sweep those gilded corridors for clues.

Politics at the door

The heist spilled instantly into politics. Far-right leader Jordan Bardella used it to attack President Emmanuel Macron, weakened at home and facing a fractured parliament.

“The Louvre is a global symbol of our culture,” Bardella wrote on X. “This robbery, which allowed thieves to steal jewels from the French Crown, is an unbearable humiliation for our country. How far will the decay of the state go?”

The criticism lands as Macron touts a decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan — about €700 million ($760 million) to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the Mona Lisa a dedicated gallery by 2031. For workers on the floor, the relief has felt slower than the pressure.

What we know — and don’t

Forensic teams are examining the site of the crime and adjoining access points while a full inventory is taken, authorities said. Officials have described the haul as of “inestimable” historical value.

Recovery may prove difficult. “It’s unlikely these jewels will ever be seen again,” said Tobias Kormind, managing director of 77 Diamonds. “Professional crews often break down and re-cut large, recognizable stones to evade detection, effectively erasing their provenance.”

Key questions still unanswered are how many people took part in the theft and whether they had inside assistance, authorities said. According to French media, there were four perpetrators: two dressed as construction workers in yellow safety vests on the lift, and two each on a scooter. French authorities did not immediately comment on this.

Investigators are reviewing CCTV from the Denon wing and the riverfront, inspecting the basket lift used to reach the gallery and interviewing staff who were on site when the museum opened, authorities said.

Tony

Pete Hegseth, immature and unconfident, cannot accept a free press is integral to democracy.

Photograph: Mario Tama/Getty Images

Dear Commons Community,

Maureen Dowd in her New York Times column yesterday, skewered Department of Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth, calling him a “muttonhead” and “knowing he’s in over his head, Hegseth has grown more paranoid and resentful.” She focuses mainly on The Pentagon’s new policy to deny credentials to reporters who seek information that has not been approved for release. And that Hegseth already cut off access to large swathes of the Pentagon to reporters without escorts.

She concludes:

“Hegseth, immature and unconfident, cannot accept that a free press is integral to democracy. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Hopefully, the defense secretary who will take over when Hegseth is undone by the press for his ineptitude and un-American diktats will understand that.”

Below is her entire column!

Tony

————————————-

The New York Times

Fraidy-Cat at The Pentagon

Maureen Dowd

Sun Oct 19 2025 – 12:45

It is a truth generally acknowledged that Pete Hegseth is a muttonhead.

But I come not to bury the self-proclaimed “secretary of war”, rather to praise him.

He is going to spur some superlative Pentagon coverage. Because nothing gets a bunch of reporters going like being forced out of the building where they work and being told they aren’t allowed to do their jobs.

The Pentagon has said it will deny credentials to reporters who seek information that has not been approved for release. Hegseth already cut off access to large swathes of the Pentagon to reporters without escorts.

Journalists have walked the Pentagon’s halls since its opening in the second World War. They could stake out Jim Mattis, a defence secretary in president Trump’s first term, when he picked up his clothes at an in-house dry cleaners and have an off-the-record chat as he walked back to his office, shirts slung over his shoulder. They might bump into the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at a Pentagon Starbucks and have a conversation that could turn into a story.

Pentagon officials liked it because they could clock what the reporters were working on, and the reporters liked it because they could get tips.

Mainstream news outlets have generally been careful, responsible, sometimes even overly deferential, about covering our military and handling sensitive information.

This crackdown on reporting supposedly would protect such information, even though the secretary himself personifies the motto “loose lips sink ships”.

He was embarrassed by the revelations that the Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, had been mistakenly added to a chat about classified war plans on Signal, and that Hegseth had shared details of strikes against the Houthis in Yemen in a Signal chat that included his wife and brother, and that Elon Musk had been invited to a briefing on top-secret plans in the event of war with China.

And Hegseth, the former weekend Fox News anchor, does not like how the media covered him as he ascended – utterly unqualified and looking like the third lead of a cheesy spring-break movie.

As the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer wrote at the time, a trail of documents indicated that Hegseth was dumped from prior leadership positions for financial mismanagement, sexist behaviour and drinking on the job.

His tenure at the Pentagon has been marked by chaos as he pushed out several top black and female leaders and derided “fat troops” and “fat generals”.

Knowing he’s in over his head, Hegseth has grown more paranoid and resentful – qualities we need in the supervisor of a nearly trillion-dollar budget, supervising troops and weapons all over the world.

When I covered stories in Saudi Arabia, officials attached minders to us. But imposing such undemocratic, restrictive protocols at the Pentagon makes it seem as though we’re run by tinpot dictators.

Trump can seem more open with reporters. Attention is his oxygen, after all. But he continually maligns the media.

And there’s a creepy ‘Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ feel to the press corps at the White House now, as the perches of legacy media get filled with Maga ringers – like the two White House ‘reporters’ from Mike ‘MyPillow’ Lindell’s ‘news’ network.

One of the pillow reporters, Cara Castronuova, was among the handful of media representatives allowed in with Trump and president Volodymyr Zelenskiy of Ukraine on Friday. Castronuova’s penetrating “questions” consisted of gushing over Trump, who “stuck out his neck” for a Middle East peace deal, and chiding Zelenskiy for wanting the weapons that Trump had suggested he might give Ukraine. “As he said”, Castronuova tartly told the Ukrainian president, “we need our Tomahawks, too.”

Trump dodged Vietnam with his bone spurs excuse, and he has called the Iraq War “the single worst decision ever made.” So, somewhere, under all that bombast and desire to be praised rather than challenged, he knows we need a vibrant Pentagon media corps to ferret out the truth when our leaders are lying to us to prolong or start wars.

America’s greatest fiascos happened because there wasn’t enough sunlight cast on them. As a chastened JFK told the Times’s managing editor, Turner Catledge, after the Bay of Pigs: “Maybe if you had printed more about the operation, you would have saved us from a colossal mistake.”

After reporters – including those from Fox News and Newsmax – refused to agree to Hegseth’s 21 pages of conditions, the Defence Department’s official X account trolled them with a puerile meme.

Hegseth, immature and unconfident, cannot accept that a free press is integral to democracy. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Hopefully, the defence secretary who will take over when Hegseth is undone by the press for his ineptitude and un-American diktats will understand that.

Dear Commons Community,

The Massapequa School District cannot enforce a resolution barring transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms aligned with their gender identity, the state’s education commissioner ruled on Friday.

The ruling comes about a week after the New York Civil Liberties Union filed an appeal with New York State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, challenging the district’s “anti-trans facilities policy.” As reported by The New York Daily News.

“This decision reaffirms what we already knew: the Massapequa school board’s transphobic resolution flagrantly violates New York laws, which prohibit discrimination based on gender identity,” Emma Hulse, education counsel at the NYCLU, said in an emailed statement to the Daily News Friday.

“All students have a right to safe, inclusive learning environments, and trans students are no different. We will keep fighting until all trans students in Massapequa have the right to use the bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity,” Hulse said.

A middle school educator on Long Island told The News that she is part of a “very small minority” who welcomed the news, saying she was at her “wits’ end” with the barrage of “negative and hateful comments” she saw in a local moms’ Facebook group.

The Massapequa resident, who asked to remain anonymous, said that while discriminatory policies like this can harm transgender students at her school, they don’t seem to affect other students. “As far as I know, kids aren’t talking about it,” she said. “Seems the parents are more concerned.”

The Massapequa School District, one of the largest K‑12 systems in Nassau County, is located on Long Island’s South Shore, about 25 miles east of New York City. It serves more than 6,500 students across six elementary schools, a middle school, and a high school. In September, the district approved a resolution requiring students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their sex assigned at birth, in accordance with President Trump’s anti-transgender executive order.

According to the NYCLU, it is illegal for New York schools to discriminate based on a person’s gender identity or expression.

Earlier this year, the New York Attorney General’s Office and the State Education Department released a joint statement reaffirming that schools must continue to comply with protections already in place for transgender and nonbinary students.

On Tuesday, the Massapequa Board of Education responded to the state Department of Education’s order, saying the district remains “committed to ensuring the safety and dignity of all students” and “will continue to offer a gender-neutral locker room and bathroom option to any student who will be more comfortable using such a space.”

Good move by Commissioner Rosa!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Fall is in the air here at our lake cottage.  Here are views from our deck.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Millions of people  marched and rallied in cities across the U.S. and Europe yesterday for “ No Kings ” demonstrations decrying what participants see as the government’s  drift into authoritarianism under Trump.

People carrying signs with slogans such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” or “Resist Fascism” packed into New York City’s Times Square and rallied by the thousands in parks in Boston, Atlanta and Chicago. Demonstrators marched through Washington and downtown Los Angeles and picketed outside capitols in several Republican-led states, a courthouse in Billings, Montana, and at hundreds of smaller public spaces.  As reported by The Associated Press.

Trump’s Republican Party disparaged the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies, but in many places the events looked more like a street party. There were marching bands, huge banners with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The People” preamble that people could sign, and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes, particularly frogs, which have emerged as a sign of resistance in Portland, Oregon.

It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and came against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services but is testing the core balance of power, as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that protest organizers warn are a slide toward authoritarianism.

In Washington, Iraq War Marine veteran Shawn Howard said he had never participated in a protest before but was motivated to show up because of what he sees as the Trump administration’s “disregard for the law.” He said immigration detentions without due process and deployments of troops in U.S. cities are “un-American” and alarming signs of eroding democracy.

“I fought for freedom and against this kind of extremism abroad,” said Howard, who added that he also worked at the CIA for 20 years on counter-extremism operations. “And now I see a moment in America where we have extremists everywhere who are, in my opinion, pushing us to some kind of civil conflict.”

Trump, meanwhile, was spending the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida.

“They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king,” the president said in a Fox News interview that aired early Friday, before he departed for a $1 million-per-plate MAGA Inc. fundraiser at his club.

A Trump campaign social media account mocked the protests by posting a computer-generated video of the president clothed like a monarch, wearing a crown and waving from a balcony.

Nationwide demonstrations

In San Francisco hundreds of people spelled out “No King!” and other phrases with their bodies on Ocean Beach. Hayley Wingard, who was dressed as the Statue of Liberty, said she too had never been to a protest before. Only recently she began to view Trump as a “dictator.”

“I was actually OK with everything until I found that the military invasion in Los Angeles and Chicago and Portland — Portland bothered me the most, because I’m from Portland, and I don’t want the military in my cities. That’s scary,” Wingard said.

About 3,500 people gathered in Salt Lake City outside the Utah State Capitol to share messages of hope and healing after a protester was fatally shot during the city’s first “No Kings” march in June.

And more than 1,500 people gathered in Birmingham, Alabama, evoking and the city’s history of protests and the critical role it played in the Civil Rights Movement two generations ago.

“It just feels like we’re living in an America that I don’t recognize,” said Jessica Yother, a mother of four. She and other protesters said they felt camaraderie by gathering in a state where Trump won nearly 65% of the vote last November.

“It was so encouraging,” Yother said. “I walked in and thought, ‘Here are my people.’”

Organizers hope to build opposition movement

“Big rallies like this give confidence to people who have been sitting on the sidelines but are ready to speak up,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in an interview with The Associated Press.

While protests earlier this year — against Elon Musk’s cuts and Trump’s military parade — drew crowds, organizers say this one is uniting the opposition. Top Democrats such as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders are joining what organizers view as an antidote to Trump’s actions, from the administration’s clampdown on free speech to its military-style immigration raids.

More than 2,600 rallies were planned Saturday, organizers said. The national march against Trump and Musk this spring had 1,300 registered locations, while the first “No Kings” day in June registered 2,100.

“We’re here because we love America,” Sanders said, addressing the crowd from a stage in Washington. He said the American experiment is “in danger” under Trump but insisted, “We the people will rule.”

Republican critics denounce the demonstrations

Republicans sought to portray protesters as far outside the mainstream and a prime reason for the government shutdown, now in its 18th day.

From the White House to Capitol Hill, GOP leaders called them “communists” and “Marxists.” They said Democratic leaders including Schumer are beholden to the far-left flank and willing to keep the government shut to appease those liberal forces.

“I encourage you to watch — we call it the Hate America rally — that will happen Saturday,” said House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana.

“Let’s see who shows up for that,” Johnson said, listing groups including “antifa types,” people who “hate capitalism” and “Marxists in full display.”

Many demonstrators, in response, said they were meeting such hyperbole with humor, noting that Trump often leans heavily on theatrics such as claiming that cities he sends troops to are war zones.

“So much of what we’ve seen from this administration has been so unserious and silly that we have to respond with the same energy,” said Glen Kalbaugh, a Washington protester who wore a wizard hat and held a sign with a frog on it.

New York police reported no arrests during the protests.

Democrats try to regain their footing amid shutdown

Democrats have refused to vote on legislation that would reopen the government as they demand funding for health care. Republicans say they are willing to discuss the issue later, only after the government reopens.

The situation is a potential turnaround from just six months ago, when Democrats and their allies were divided and despondent. Schumer in particular was berated by his party for allowing an earlier government funding bill to sail through the Senate without using it to challenge Trump.

“What we are seeing from the Democrats is some spine,” said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, a key organizing group. “The worst thing the Democrats could do right now is surrender.”

YES!

Tony