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Trump, a Fascist Tyrant, Targets Universities and the Media
Trump is trying to destroy our nation's most vital asset—our innovative minds and ability to think for ourselves.
Mar 10, 2025
Trump is following Putin’s, Xi’s, and Orban’s playbook. First, take over military and intelligence operations by purging career officers and substituting ones personally loyal to you.
Next, subdue the courts by ignoring or threatening to ignore court rulings you disagree with.
Intimidate legislators by warning that if they don’t bend to your wishes, you’ll run loyalists against them. (Make sure they also worry about what your violent supporters could do to them and their families.)
Then focus on independent sources of information: the media and the universities. Sue media that publish critical stories and block their access to news conferences and interviews.
Then go after the universities.
Last week, Trump threatened in a social media post to punish any university that permits “illegal” protests. On Friday he cancelled hundreds of millions in grants and contracts with Columbia University.
This is an extension of Republican tactics before Trump’s second term. Prior to Trump appointing her ambassador to the United Nations, former Representative Elise Stefanik (Harvard class of 2006) browbeat presidents of elite universities over their responses to student protests against Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, leading to several presidents being fired.
Senator Josh Hawley (Stanford class of 2002 and Yale Law class of 2006) called the student demonstrations signs of “moral rot” at the universities.
But antisemitism was just a pretext.
JD Vance (Yale Law 2013) has termed university professors “the enemy” and suggested using Victor Orban’s method for ending “left-wing domination of universities.”
I think his way has to be the model for us: not to eliminate universities, but to give them a choice between survival or taking a much less biased approach to teaching. [The government should be] aggressively reforming institutions … in a way to where they’re much more open to conservative ideas.”
Trump is also targeting diversity, equity, and inclusion programs on university campuses.
But of all Trump’s and Republicans’ moves against higher education, the most destructive is the cancelation of research grants and contracts. The destruction is hardly confined to Columbia and other suspected left-wing bastions.
Research universities depend on funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.
Trump reportedly aims to slash the budget of the National Science Foundation by up to two-thirds. And he’s instructed the National Institutes of Health to no longer honor negotiated rates for “indirect costs” on grants that it administers — money that universities use for laboratory space and research equipment.
In defiance of court orders, Trump has largely maintained a freeze on NIH funding.
As a result, many of America’s great research universities have stopped hiring and are cutting Ph.D. programs — in some cases rescinding offers to accepted students.
Trump’s moves are consistent with the tyrant’s playbook, but they’re also jeopardizing America’s national security and competitiveness.
Trump speaks of putting America First, but his attack on the nation’s great research universities is ensuring that the U.S. comes in second — to China.
Although America has long been the global leader in scientific output, China is now surging ahead. Even before Trump’s cuts in research funding, China was projected to match U.S. research spending within five years.
China has already surpassed the U.S. as the top producer of highly cited papers and international patent applications. It now awards more science and engineering Ph.D.s than the U.S.
Tyrants close universities. Fascists burn books. Trump is destroying America’s most important asset — its innovative mind.
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Social Security Administration Workers Can No Longer Read the News at Work
"Local news blocked," one employee said. "So if there was a local shooting or something, I wouldn't be able to see."
Mar 06, 2025
The Trump administration's sweeping attacks on journalism and federal workers continued Thursday with an announcement that Social Security Administration employees can no longer access "general news" websites on government devices.
The Washington Postnoted the email in an update to its Thursday reporting that earlier this week, acting SSA Commissioner Leland Dudek told top staff that members of President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by billionaire Elon Musk, are leading efforts to shrink the agency—which critics slam as a push toward privatization.
"DOGE people are learning and they will make mistakes, but we have to let them see what is going on at SSA," Dudek said, according to notes from the meeting. "I am relying on longtime career people to inform my work, but I am receiving decisions that are made without my input. I have to effectuate those decisions."
The newspaper reported that "on Thursday morning—three hours after the publication of this story—an all-staff email went out to SSA employees informing them that they would be prevented 'effective today' from accessing certain websites on their government devices, including 'online shopping,' ' general news,' and 'sports.'"
The email—a screenshot of which was posted on the Musk-owned social media site X by independent journalist Justin Glawe, author of the newsletter American Doom—states that "these additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems."
An SSA spokesperson said in a statement that "employees should be focused on mission-critical work and serving the American people," but they "may request an exception if they have a business need for job-specific duties."
As Glawe pointed out: "To all the people saying BUT YOU SHOULDN'T READ NEWS AT WORK—they are government employees, so reading news and staying informed is part of their job. They're not working at a car dealership."
While SSA messaging frames the policy as an effort to promote safety and efficiency, and the email did not include a list of blocked websites, Wiredrevealed that some outlets "at the forefront of the reporting" on DOGE have been banned:
Wired has confirmed with two sources inside the SSA that Wired.com is no longer accessible today, though it was accessible previously.
The sources also confirmed that the websites of The Washington Post, The New York Times, and MSNBC were inaccessible. However, the sources were able to access other news websites including Politico and Axios.
"Local news blocked," says one source at SSA, who was granted anonymity over fears of retribution. "So if there was a local shooting or something, I wouldn't be able to see."
It's unclear who has implemented the block list or what criteria were used to populate it, but it appears not to be based on ideological grounds, as Fox News and Breitbart are also blocked.
The policy change comes amid a flurry of reporting on Musk calling Social Security "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time" during a recent podcast interview with Joe Rogan as well as efforts to shrink the agency and shut down multiple offices nationwide.
Over 150 House Democrats wrote in a Tuesday letter to Dudek that "Social Security helps approximately 70 million beneficiaries—including seniors, people with disabilities, children, and their families—put food on the table, pay the rent, heat their homes, cover medical bills, and more... Shuttering field offices and gutting SSA staffing has nothing to do with 'governmental efficiency.'"
Other federal agencies are also under assault by DOGE and its billionaire leader—who is facing new limits from the president. Citing two officials, Politicoreported that during a Thursday Cabinet meeting attended by Musk, "Trump told top members of his administration that Musk was empowered to make recommendations to the departments but not to issue unilateral decisions on staffing and policy."
While working to gut the federal government, the Trump administration has also taken aim at journalism. Amid a spat with The Associated Press over its refusal to use Trump's preferred name for the Gulf of Mexico, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt announced last week that the administration will now decide which outlets get to participate in the presidential press pool.
That came a week after the Postreported that the U.S. State Department told embassies and consulates to cancel "all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals."
According to the newspaper, a memo "directed procurement teams at embassies and consulates to prioritize the termination of contracts with six news organizations in particular: The Economist, The New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, The Associated Press, and Reuters."
Similarly, as Rolling Stonedetailed Thursday: "In the first weeks of the Trump administration, DOGE canceled subscriptions to services like Politico Pro, which many agencies rely on to stay abreast of legislation moving through Congress. DOGE also incorrectly identified a contract with a wing of Thomson Reuters as going toward news subscriptions. In fact, the contract—signed by the Defense Department under the first Trump administration—was with Thomson Reuters Special Services and dealt with preventing cyber threats."
The Republican president has a long record of attacking news outlets and individual reporters—from his frequent declarations of "fake news" to
reportedly inquiring about how he could jail journalists if he returned to the White House.
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Palestinian Filmmaker Demands End to US-Backed 'Ethnic Cleansing' of Gaza, West Bank in Oscar Speech
"There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy," said Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham. "The foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path."
Mar 03, 2025
The winner of the 2025 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Film has been unable to obtain distribution in theaters or on streaming platforms in the U.S.—despite being the highest-grossing Oscar-nominated documentary in the rest of the world—but American viewers were able to hear directly from its filmmakers on Sunday night in speeches that condemned the U.S.-backed "ethnic cleansing" of Palestinians.
The directors behind No Other Land, Israeli journalist Yuval Abraham and Palestinian activist and lawyer Basel Adra, accepted the Oscar while speaking out about the subject matter of their film, which was filmed between 2019-23, before Israel began its bombardment of Gaza in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
"When I look at Basel, I see my brother, but we are not equal," Abraham said. "We live under a regime where I enjoy freedom under civil law, and where he is governed by military laws."
Adra and Abraham made the film to tell the story of Masafer Yatta, a collection of towns in the occupied West Bank where Adra lives and where Israeli authorities and settlers have been attacking and evicting residents for years—claiming Israel has a right to use the land for a military training facility. The film chronicles Israeli soliders' killing of Adra's brother and their attacks on West Bank communities by demolishing homes, tearing down playgrounds, and filling water wells with cement so Palestinians cannot rebuild.
In his Oscar acceptance speech, Adra spoke as a new father of a two-month-old.
"My hope to my daughter is that she will not have to live the same life I am living now, always fearing violence, home demolitions, forced displacement that my community, Masafer Yatta, is facing every day," said Adra. "No Other Land reflects the harsh reality we have been enduring for decades and still resist as we call on the world to take serious actions to stop the injustice and to stop the ethnic cleansing of Palestinian people."
Journalist Mehdi Hasan said he was "stunned" that the direct condemnation of "ethnic cleansing" targeting Palestinians was "supportively applauded" by the elite Hollywood audience.
"Times are changing," said Hasan.
Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, agreed, saying the success of No Other Land despite the refusal of U.S. distributors to bring it to U.S. audiences, and the enthusiastic applause that Abraham and Adra garnered, "must scare [the America-Israel Public Affairs Committee AIPAC] and its allies," naming the powerful pro-Israel lobby that holds sway with both Democrats and Republicans.
"They are winning politically but losing culturally," said Beinart. "Their attack ads can't stop Blue America's shift in collective consciousness on the question of Palestinian freedom. If politics really is downstream from culture, they're in trouble."
Abraham, who has reported extensively for +972 about Israel's rules of engagement in Gaza and its targeting of civilian infrastructure, called for an end to "the atrocious destruction of Gaza and its people."
"There is a different path, a political solution without ethnic supremacy, with national rights for both of our people," said Abraham. "And I have to say, as I am here, the foreign policy in this country is helping to block this path."
Israel, which is set to receive $3 billion in weapons in a package approved by President Donald Trump last week, has forcibly displaced Palestinians from the West Bank since January, when a temporary cease-fire was reached in Gaza.
Over the weekend, Israel once again began blocking all humanitarian aid to the enclave, where more than 48,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces since October 2023.
Just before Abraham and Adra accepted the Oscar, the Palestinian news agency Wafareported that Israeli soldiers had detained three people in one of the villages in Masafer Yatta and settlers threw stones at residents, destroyed solar panels, and damaged water tanks.
No Other Land has received international accolades including at the Berlin International Film Festival last year, where Abraham condemned "apartheid" in his acceptance speech and subsequently received death threats.
On Democracy Now! on Monday morning, Adra repeated his call for the international community to "take measures and act seriously to end these demolitions and ethnic cleansing that is happening everywhere in Gaza and the West Bank."
"The world just keeps watching and not taking serious actions," said Adra.
Last week, advocates rebuked the BBC for canceling plans to air another documentary, Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone.
The fact that Adra and Abraham's film "can't get a distributor in the U.S.," said Hasan, "tells you everything about censorship in the U.S."
Abraham toldThe New York Times last month that the filmmakers have heard from many Americans asking how they can watch No Other Land, prompting them to release it independently with plans to show the film in about 100 theaters in the United States.
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