News

“Experts are divided”

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged journalism law on by

A Washington Post article header has drawn outrage on Bluesky. Here it is:

How Trump is blasting through norms and testing limits of his power
 
Experts say President Donald Trump’s actions have pushed the country into fraught territory. They are divided on whether he has breached constitutional guardrails.

That implies that a significant number of experts think Trump hasn’t “breached constitutional guardrails.” Who are these experts? The one person they cite is Steven Calabresi, a law professor at Northwestern University and co-chair of the Federalist Society. The article says:

He praised Trump’s embrace of a concept called the “unitary executive theory,” which posits that the president has supreme power over the executive branch, including the ability to remove officials.
 

In particular, Calabresi said, he was pleased with Trump’s moves to dismiss members of the Federal Trade Commission and the National Labor Relations Board.

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Trump goes after voters 1

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged law liberty on by

Donald Trump’s latest decree takes his power-grabbing to a new level. He has commanded the states to alter their laws to require proof of citizenship for voting. He has no legal authority at all to do this. The Constitution lets the states run elections; Congress has a limited ability to set requirements, and the president has no authority without an act of Congress. He is relying on intimidation of state officials and federal judges to get his way. Claiming the personal authority to decide who can vote is the action of a dictator or would-be dictator.
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Authoritarianism and the control of names

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged language Trump usage on by

Authoritarian regimes control language as a way to control thought. And let’s face it, the United States is well on its way to becoming an authoritarian regime. Congress is asleep. It’s not clear how much the courts can do in the long run. Trump has made it clear that he can rename things at a whim and punish those who don’t use the names he chooses.

He issued a decree that the Gulf of Mexico shall henceforth be called the Gulf of America. The USGS updated its data accordingly, and the change quickly flowed into Google Maps, DuckDuckGo, and other online information sources. More significantly, Trump has banished Associated Press from the Oval Office for not falling into line. AP has said, “As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences,” so it continues to use “Gulf of Mexico” as the primary name.
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Rewriting the news in place

This entry was posted in Commentary News and tagged fake news journalism on by

This weekend I was informed of a truly outrageous statement by Karoline Leavitt. At least it would have been truly outrageous if it were true, but it now looks like fake news. A response I got on Bluesky pointed at an article on the news aggregator Newsbreak, with the headline “Karoline Leavitt shocks as she tells press ‘Jesus didn’t have electricity either’.” This seemed outrageous even for the Trump team; it wouldn’t fit their line to admit that tariffs could result in privations. I checked for confirmation and found an MSN article with the same claim. This made me think it was reliable. I was wrong.
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Trump reverses the meaning of censorship

This entry was posted in Censorship Commentary News and tagged censorship law liberty on by

In Newspeak, freedom is slavery. In Trumpspeak, freedom of speech is censorship.

Brendan Carr, whom Trump wants to head the FCC, has declared his intent to “smash the censorship cartel” using the agency’s power. According to the Washington Times, “He is threatening the platforms with revocation of their federally granted immunity against content-based lawsuits.” He’s presumably referring to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, one of the few parts to survive legal challenges. It says that in general operators of websites that allow public posting of commentary can’t be held liable for what third parties post. Without it, website operators would have to keep a quick finger on the “Delete” button to keep potentially defamatory comments from showing up. They’d need to err on the side of caution. Many sites would probably find it easiest to eliminate the comments section.
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