Lmst

Editorial cartoon: Got your passport?

Two neighbors chat in the front yard. One says to the other:

"I've got my passport."

The neighbor asks:

"You're headed out of the country?"

The next panel widens the scope of the scene to reveal a dog on the leash of the neighbor who answers:

"No, I'm taking the dog for a walk."

FIFA, not Trump, decides World Cup details, and it doesn’t plan on relocating matches – Las Vegas Sun (PDF)

Editor’s Note: I am proud of the newspaper, Las Vegas Sun, for their support of American freedoms, and institutions. This article in today’s paper is an example of their journalism experience and progressive approach. They are using AI, translating into Spanish for readers, and more. This an example of their work, and the Big Brother, LVRJ, prints them as part of a long relationship and deals. –DrWeb

#2025 #2026 #America #Boston #BostonMA #DonaldTrump #Education #FédérationInternationaleDeFootballAssociation #Games #History #LasVegasSun #Libraries #Massachusetts #Politics #Resistance #Soccer #Sports #Trump #TrumpAdministration #WorldCup

What if America elected a Democratic version of Trump? – Las Vegas Sun News

Sun Editorial:

What if America elected a Democratic version of Trump?

President Donald Trump speaks during a lunch with African leaders in the State Dining Room of the White House, Wednesday, July 9, 2025, in Washington. Photo by: Evan Vucci / Associated Press

Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025 | 2 a.m.

View more of the Sun’s opinion section

Imagine, for a moment, that Democrats were the ones behaving as President Donald Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have behaved over the past nine months. Imagine a Democratic president, with control of both chambers of Congress, wielding the levers of federal power not as instruments of governance but as cudgels to punish dissent, intimidate rivals and neuter oversight. Imagine a Democratic Supreme Court, unbothered by precedent, waving through almost every assertion of executive authority, no matter how brazenly opposed to the Constitution or the Founders’ vision of a nation in which power is vested in the people that it might be. Picture the very norms of constitutional governance — checks and balances, free expression and political pluralism — tossed aside with the casualness of a talk-show sound bite.

For conservatives who shrug at Trump’s abuses because he is “their” president, the thought experiment should be sobering. For if today’s Republicans accept a vision of unbound executive power, they are accepting it not just for Trump but for whoever comes next. And history has a way of turning tables. One day soon, it could be a liberal president wielding unchecked power against conservatives and their allies — and by then, Republicans will have no one to blame but themselves.

A glimpse into an alternate reality

Let’s sketch the scene. A highly progressive president, backed by a progressive majority in both houses of Congress, appoints liberal podcasters to nearly all Cabinet positions. He declares the Republican Party, the Heritage Foundation, American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, the House Freedom Caucus, the Federalist Society and other conservative organizations as “domestic extremist organizations” and begins deploying masked federal agents and U.S. military forces to Florida, Texas, Arizona and the solidly Republican and conservative suburban communities across the South and West. Their purpose is to monitor and perhaps detain known conservatives. The deployment order would be justified under the pretext of “maintaining order” in dangerous communities where people have fought for decades to build up private arsenals that threaten the peace and stability of the United States. The events of the Jan. 6 insurrection are offered as evidence. All members of the Proud Boys are detained on sight and held without trial.

The occupying federal force has no time or patience for Americans wishing to exercise their First Amendment rights, and Republicans who attempt to protest are promptly tackled to the ground and arrested for disorderly conduct. Those with a firearm, even one that is legally registered, find themselves charged with assaulting a federal agent with a deadly weapon, even though the weapon never left its holster. Few speak out against the injustice for fear of becoming the next target.

Private schools, including Christian colleges and universities, are warned that their licenses to operate and tax exempt status may be revoked unless they demonstrate loyalty to the administration’s “equity and justice” agenda. Simply employing conservative faculty members runs the risk of making a school a target for government funding cuts. Meanwhile, students espousing conservative ideologies face constant harassment from federal investigators that are laser focused on finding — or inventing — a reason to arrest them, deport them, revoke their federal student aid or otherwise make their life difficult.

Federal contractors that donated to Republican candidates find their government contracts suspended until they agree to “pro bono” work on behalf of climate refugees. Attorneys who file lawsuits against the administration are sanctioned personally, their law firms stripped of security clearances, their employees barred from federal courthouses.

When hurricanes or wildfires strike red states, they are forced to fend for themselves without any federal aid.

Any country with internal or external policies that the president doesn’t like faces immediate tariffs of 75%. Foreign media is required to ask friendly questions lest their economy at home suffer the president’s wrath. Meanwhile, the president’s family actively launches companies and partnerships around the world netting them billions in personal income.

Conservative journalists are detained at airports and interrogated about their sources. Their phones are taken from them, forcibly unlocked and all social media and text messages examined. And broadcasting companies like News Corp, Sinclair and Nexstar discover that allowing anyone on the air who criticizes the president could result in a loss of their broadcasting license. Media company mergers are only allowed when it’s proven that the editorial voice of the merging companies fully support the president and the Democrats.

Americans who criticize the government are designated “possible insurgents” and have their finances audited by a special IRS unit dedicated to “patriot enforcement.”

Strangely, only “South Park” is able to attack the administration and does so vigorously. No one can quite figure out how “South Park” gets away with skewering those in power. Rumors are it has to do with something nearly extinguished from the national psyche: courage.

Would Republicans cheer this muscular assertion of state power? Would they embrace bending international trade and policy to the personal whims and obsessions of the president? Would they accept that this is just what the executive branch is allowed to do? Or would they, rightly, call it what it is: authoritarianism draped in the language of legitimacy?

The Republican bargain

The irony is rich. For decades, conservatives have argued that government is inherently coercive and must be constrained by law, custom and a vigilant citizenry. They warned that Democrats were the ones who couldn’t be trusted with power, that progressives would use the state to reengineer society and punish dissent.

And yet, confronted with a Republican president who has done exactly that — deployed the military against civilians, targeted political opponents with prosecutions and punished private businesses for ideological nonconformity — the vast majority of the GOP have not only tolerated it but celebrated it.

They have cheered as the Supreme Court has abandoned its role as a check, instead rubber-stamping Trump’s assertions of unreviewable power. They have remained silent as congressional lawmakers were intimidated for attempting to exercise constitutionally mandated oversight.

They have looked the other way as U.S. residents, including green card holders and even U.S. citizens were threatened, assaulted, detained or deported for no reason beyond the language they spoke or the color of their skin. They have watched as masked agents of the government have occupied U.S. streets, throwing unwitting people into the back of unmarked vans without explanation. They have excused the administration’s chilling message to students, activists and late-night talk-show hosts: Dissent is grounds for exile.

And when Stephen Miller, the president’s deputy chief of staff, declared that “The Democrat party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization,” Republican lawmakers did not recoil at this rejection of political pluralism. They nodded along.

A dangerous president and a dangerous precedent

Precedent cuts both ways. If Republicans today insist that presidents may target their political opponents with the machinery of the state, what is to stop a Democratic president tomorrow from doing the same? If the GOP embraces the idea that military deployments into U.S. cities are legitimate tools of domestic governance, what will conservatives say when troops are deployed to Omaha, Jacksonville, Anaheim, Tulsa or Colorado Springs, under a future Democratic administration?

The president has taken to targeting law firms whose attorneys investigated him, stripping their security clearances, barring them from federal buildings and conditioning contracts on political loyalty. Judges who issue unfavorable rulings are denounced as “radical left lunatics” or “deranged,” while the president fans the flames of impeachment threats.

Editor’s Note: Read the rest of the story, at the below link.

Continue/Read Original Article Here: What if America elected a Democratic version of Trump? – Las Vegas Sun News

#2025 #America #DemocratLikeTrump #DonaldTrump #Editorial #Education #Health #History #LasVegasSun #Libraries #LibraryOfCongress #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Masked police raids in Trump’s America could target you next – Las Vegas Sun News

EDITORIAL:

Masked police raids in Trump’s America could target you next

Immigration agents detain two men at a car wash on Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, in Montebello, Calif. Photo by: Gregory Bull / AP

Tuesday, Aug. 19, 2025 | 2 a.m.

View more of the Sun’s opinion section

Two fathers are dead. Their families shattered. And the blame rests squarely with Donald Trump. In the span of barely a month, immigration enforcement raids under his administration have claimed the lives of a farmworker in Ventura County, Calif., and another man struck by a vehicle on the freeway while fleeing a chaotic Home Depot roundup in Monrovia, Calif. These deaths were not unavoidable tragedies, they were foreseeable consequences of reckless policy and deliberate intimidation.

The Monrovia death unfolded with sickening familiarity. Witnesses say federal agents descended on the Home Depot parking lot — a known gathering place for day laborers — without warning, sowing panic among workers. Shouts of “la migra, corre.” (“Immigration, run!”) sent men scattering. One fled over a concrete wall and straight into freeway traffic. Minutes later, he lay mortally injured. His daughter arrived at the scene, desperate for news. She left in tears.

This would be horrific enough on its own. But the raid itself may well have been unlawful. More than a month ago, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order forbidding immigration sweeps that target people based on race, language, occupation or location. Yet ICE pressed ahead, violating not just the spirit but potentially the letter of the court’s directive.

Mere hour after the death in Monrovia, heavily armed agents staged arrests and shows of intimidation outside the Japanese American National Museum, where California Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference. This was no coincidence. It was a calculated display meant to send a message: federal power will be used to humiliate, menace and silence political opponents.

These troubling tactics are part of clear and certain effort to establish a police state in the U.S. The signs are everywhere in Trump’s administration: masked troops, significant domestic surveillance, using the military in city streets, defining opponents as less than human, treating protest as insurrection and, importantly, the defiance of the judiciary.

Most Americans under 40 — especially white Americans — have little direct experience with secret police or police states after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. But now there are signs such times may be returning. China, El Salvador, Russia, Hungary, Argentina and of course, the Trump administration, are all on a path leading to private police organizations that ignore the rule of law and commit acts of terrorism designed to traumatize the nation.

If you think that describing some of the actions of federal agents right now as “terrorism” is an overstatement, we’d ask you to consider that the FBI describes terrorism as a violent, criminal and ideologically motivated act. Under the USA PATRIOT Act and Homeland Security Act, terrorism involves attempts to coerce civilian populations or influence government conduct through armed acts of violence or intimidation. ICE’s recent raids check every box. Wearing a badge doesn’t change that reality.

In fact, history has shown that authoritarian states are often introduced by a wave of domestic terrorism administered by agents of the state. It’s about more than shock and awe, it’s about traumatizing the population such that it will be pliable to the demands of the state just to get some relief from the pressure. Importantly, citizens of authoritarian states can fall victim to such tactics just as quickly as immigrants and others who are perceived as outsiders.

We are already seeing U.S. citizens swept up in ICE raids, thrown to the ground, brutalized and forcibly taken into custody despite committing no crime. In one particularly notable incident, an 18-year-old high school student repeatedly told federal officers that he was a citizen and that he could prove it. He recorded a federal officer responding by telling him “You got no rights here, you’re an illegal brother.” His crime: being a brown American in the age of Donald Trump.

Trump and our cosplaying Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have imagined an ICE whose sole purpose is to rid the United States of brown-skinned Spanish-speaking people, whom they perceive as less than human, even if they are citizens, long-time productive residents or young people who have never known any other home. Such tactics violate the Constitution and the core concept of law enforcement that has served this country in good stead for decades. It also violates a spirit of Americanism that welcomes law-abiding immigrants, who historically have fueled economic growth.

While thousands of Americans have taken to the streets to protest these brutal tactics, every instance of Trump, Noem and ICE leadership ignoring court orders, denying civil rights and otherwise seeking to neuter the power of the judiciary is another step toward a repressive police state. And too many Americans are sitting on the sidelines and refusing to get involved as our nation transforms into a cheap junta in real time.

The consequences are not abstract. Two people are dead. These were husbands, fathers and human beings who wanted nothing more than the opportunity to work hard and earn a fair wage to provide for their family. Their blood is on Trump’s hands. Innocent people have been jailed, including some innocent people sent to hellhole prisons in other countries. People who are arrested are denied the opportunity to prove their case before a judge.

There is a moral rot at the core of these operations. Law enforcement exists to protect the public, not to terrify it or act as a secret police force doing Trump’s extrajudicial bidding. Proper law enforcement should not hide behind masks. Masks are for thugs and criminals. Masks are for people ashamed of their actions.

The lawlessness and recklessness with which ICE is carrying out its immigration goals threatens not only immigrant communities, but U.S. citizens and the rule of law itself. America cannot allow armed intimidation, racial profiling and disregard for the courts to become normalized tools of governance. The lives already lost are a damning testament to where that path leads. The masked police could be coming for you next, if you have an unpopular idea or the wrong skin color.

DWD Editor’s Note: Thank you Las Vegas Sun. These masked zero-police are not normal. This President is not normal. Hang in there!

Continue/Read Original Article Here: Masked police raids in Trump’s America could target you next – Las Vegas Sun News

#2025 #America #DonaldTrump #Gestapo #Goons #Health #History #Ice #LasVegas #LasVegasSun #Libraries #Library #LibraryOfCongress #Nazis #Nevada #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Science #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Forcing a revisionist version of history on American citizens is not patriotic – Las Vegas Sun

President Donald Trump salutes during a military parade commemorating the Army’s 250th anniversary, coinciding with his 79th birthday, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Washington, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and first lady Melania Trump watch. Photo by: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP
Wednesday, June 25, 2025 | 2 a.m.

EDITORIAL: Forcing a revisionist version of history on American citizens is not patriotic

President Donald Trump salutes during a military parade commemorating the Army’s 250th anniversary, coinciding with his 79th birthday, Saturday, June 14, 2025, in Washington, as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and first lady Melania Trump watch. Photo by: Julia Demaree Nikhinson / AP
If the masked ICE agents at schools and sanctuaries and the uniformed soldiers on the streets of Los Angeles weren’t enough to convince you of President Donald Trump’s authoritarian instincts, look no further than the QR codes now posted across America’s national parks, museums and historic sites. The codes, which call on the American people to report the supposedly un-American activities of their fellow countrymen are subtle, scannable reminders of the nation’s democratic backsliding under Trump.
The signs and QR codes stem from an executive order misleadingly titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History.” That order, combined with an accompanying Interior Department directive, asks visitors to report park rangers, reenactors, historians, archaeologists, docents and other federal staff or interpretive signage that shares historical facts that might tarnish the myth of unblemished American morality and supremacy.
Instead, the order demands that signage, exhibits and staff commentary focus exclusively on “the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people,” without specifying who is included under the umbrella of “American.” Unfortunately, Trump’s obsession with erasing the history and contributions of immigrants, Indigenous Americans, people of color or other people who have traditionally lacked societal power belies the insidious goals of the order: to erase and, yes, to lie about the complex and often painful stories that define who we are as a nation and how we came to be here today.
History is not meant to be a comfort blanket, it’s an explanation. And if America can’t bear an inquiry into how we arrived here, we risk becoming a nation more committed to self-delusion than self-reflection, more committed to platitudes than progress.
Consider for a moment the origins of the country as an isolated group of colonies that, despite being vastly outgunned, successfully revolted against the greatest military power of the era. In the process, they founded a country in which certain inalienable rights are enshrined in the Constitution and “rags to riches” stories are not only possible but are at the core of what we now call “the American dream.” That story is worth celebrating on its own, but it becomes even more inspirational when put in the context of the history of tyranny and oppression faced by the colonists, and the long odds of their success.
Yet Trump’s directive would remove that context from post-Revolutionary War history by erasing references to the moments in which the American government or American people became the oppressors. The president has already targeted the Smithsonian Institution, threatening to remove exhibits and personnel he deemed “inappropriate” for their discussion of topics such as racism, sexism and homophobia. And earlier this year, the story of the Tuskegee Airmen was removed from Air Force training videos because they discussed how the celebrated WWII pilots not only faced dangerous threats in the skies above Europe but also the threat of violent racism at home.
Like the Tuskegee Airman, stories of American triumph, bravery, innovation and success are worthy of celebration. But for some of those accomplishments, the scope and scale is only magnified when put into the context of the injustices and obstacles that some Americans have overcome. Put simply, all of history should be on display, not just the good or just the bad — all of it.
Imagine being a ranger at Fort Monroe in Virginia, where some of the first enslaved Africans arrived in 1619, and later, where self-emancipated people found refuge during the Civil War. For decades, your job has been to tell that full, complicated story — the suffering and the sanctuary. Now you must weigh every word, unsure whether a smartphone-wielding visitor will scan a QR code and report you for not being “patriotic” enough to spread revisionist propaganda.
Worse still, the directive encourages Americans to turn on one another. It’s not enough for the Trump administration to rewrite the narrative, it wants to deputize everyday citizens as thought police, regardless of background, motives or expertise. Loyal federal employees will be reported on entirely false pretenses because someone scanned a bar code out of panic at learning something about our past. It’s the stuff of witch hunts and a perverse transformation of our national parks, historic sites and museums like the Smithsonian — spaces designed for education and reflection — into battlegrounds in MAGA’s ongoing culture war.
But there’s a silver lining: The American people aren’t buying it
During the first few weeks of the program, instead of flooding the Interior Department with denunciations of “woke” federal staff, park visitors have used the QR codes to push back, calling on Trump and the Interior Department to rescind the EO and accompanying directive.
At Independence Hall, the birthplace of American democracy, one comment captured the absurdity of the effort perfectly: “The truth isn’t the problem. Pretending it is — that’s the real offense.”
The Trump administration’s fear of uncomfortable facts reveals a profound misunderstanding of American exceptionalism. Our greatness does not come from pretending we’ve never erred. It comes from the fact that we are one of the few nations on earth with the capacity, the courage and the legal right to reflect, to openly call for reform and to make progress toward a better future for everyone who calls this country home.
Recalling the history of the Civil Rights Movement isn’t just a reminder of the cruel barbarity of slavery or Jim Crow, it is also a celebration of the courage and heroism of those who fought — and continued to fight to this day — for dignity and equality. The current moment of backsliding notwithstanding, our history is, generally speaking, the story of a people learning to be better over time.
Just as importantly, these events are reminders of what not to do going forward. It’s how we learn to be better as a nation. Indeed, it’s how we learn to be great, rather than just declaring ourselves great on a red hat.
Staff at federal parks, historic sites and museums deserve our support, not our surveillance. In a time when so much of our public discourse is polluted by distortion and denial, the signs urging us to report them must come down.
Museums, parks and historic sites should remain places where we can learn not only about the mountains and plains that make America beautiful, but also about the people who have worked those lands and called them home, both in the past and today.
And one day, perhaps, there will be a museum exhibit dedicated to Trump’s executive order and the moment when Americans stood up against the erasure of truth and reminded the world that confronting our past and learning from it, is part of what makes America great.
Source Links: Forcing a revisionist version of history on American citizens is not patriotic – Las Vegas Sun News

#2025 #America #CNN #DonaldTrump #History #LasVegasSun #Libraries #Opinion #Politics #Resistance #Trump #TrumpAdministration #UnitedStates

Where I Stand:
The lesson of ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ in 2025: Tell the truth!
By Brian Greenspun (contact), Sunday, June 8, 2025 | 2 a.m.
Before we say good night, we could use some good luck — and some good old American patriotism!
Given today’s fearful political climate, replete with the retribution for which the Trump White House is now famous, it was an act of bravery for cable network CNN and actor George Clooney to broadcast this past Saturday night the live Broadway play, “Good Night and Good Luck.”
Playing to thousands of New York’s theatergoers is one thing. But broadcasting on a national cable network the story of famed CBS newscaster Edward R. Murrow’s courageous condemnation of the infamous American demagogue, Sen. Joe McCarthy, is quite another. Especially now.
That’s because we are well on our way to repeating the dark and disconcerting history of the McCarthy witch-hunting days because, as Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
I don’t know whether Americans can’t remember the Mc-
Carthy era or never knew it (which would be an education failure to be sure), but the result is the same.
What we have witnessed this past week — besides the humiliation of the United States of America around the world — is what can happen in the blink of an eye when the person in power decides to turn that enormous power against another American. In this case, the power couple was President Donald Trump and the richest man on the face of the earth, Elon Musk.
I am not sure yet which one will survive — Mothra or Godzilla — but what I do know is that the United States of America may not survive the constant berating of our American institutions by the very people elected and appointed to uphold their honor.
Read more: untitled post 47399Source Links: The lesson of ‘Good Night and Good Luck’ in 2025: Tell the truth! – Las Vegas Sun News

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TRUMP LOSING WHAT MIND HE HAD
Mastodon Post

The Latin Times

Major Swing State Newspaper Sounds Alarm on Trump's 'Troubling' Cognitive Health: 'Showing Clear Signs of Mental Illness'

The editorial underscored that Trump's current cognitive struggles present "an existential threat to American democracy."

Published Oct 31 2024, 10:37 AM EDT

https://www.latintimes.com/major-swing-state-newspaper-sounds-alarm-trumps-troubling-cognitive-health-showing-clear-564192

This article is very much worth reading and sharing. The article's most important paragraph, to my way of thinking, says, "'The nation must confront the fact that beyond his hateful character, he is crippled cognitively and showing clear signs of mental illness,' the editorial continued, warning that Trump, if elected, would be the oldest president inaugurated and claimed that his cognitive state is concerning beyond political preference."

#2024election #2024elections #2024presidentialelection #crazyoldman45 #crazyoldmantrump #democrats #dems #donaldtrump #elections #lasvegassun #presidentialelection #presidentialelection2024 #trump #uselection #uselection2024 #uselections #uselections2024 #uspresidentialelection #uspresidentialelection2024