The Dictatorship
The stunning hypocrisy of red state leaders stepping up to help Trump take over D.C.
In one sense, the decisions of the governors of Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia to send National Guard troops from their states to aid President Donald Trump’s authoritarian takeover of Washington, D.C., should not have surprised anyone. Like their GOP colleagues in Congress, these red-state executives are eager to show their fealty to the MAGA leader. But in another sense, it is a truly stunning development coming from politicians who love nothing more than to tout their allegiance to the Constitution and the Second Amendment.
Just five months ago, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey proclaimed such allegiance when he signed three pieces of legislation that his office said were “meant to protect the 2nd Amendment rights of West Virginians.” Morrisey said at the time: “As Governor, I will always support and defend West Virginians’ God-given constitutional rights. The bills I signed today further enshrine West Virginia’s strong support for the Second Amendment.”
This is not the first time that President Trump has tested the loyalty of red-state governors in this way.
But let’s compare the decisions of Morrissey, South Carolina’s Henry McMaster, Mississippi’s Tate Reeves and Ohio’s Mike DeWine to deploy their states’ National Guard with the language of the Second Amendment. It reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Note why the militia is needed: for the “security of a free State” [emphasis added]. That is hardly what Donald Trump’s use of the National Guard is designed to secure.
The GOP governors likely know that. But Trump carried all but seven of Ohio’s eighty-eight counties and won 55% of the popular vote. He received 58% of the vote in South Carolina and 70% in West Virginia, where he also carried every county. The governors were eager to make clear that they, as McMaster explainedstand “with President Trump as he works to restore law and order to our nation’s capital.” Or take Morrisey, who said“West Virginia is proud to stand with President Trump in his effort to restore pride and beauty to our nation’s capital.”
This is not the first time that Trump has tested the loyalty of red-state governors in this way. In June 2020, during the nationwide protests following the murder of George Floyd, he asked state chief executives from across the country to send National Guard to Washington, D.C.
As The Washington Post reported at the time: “The request had the effect of cleaving state militias along partisan lines, according to interviews and internal Guard documents. While red states jumped to answer the president’s call, governors and Guard commanders in blue states were incredulous.”
“The result,” the Post continues, “was a deployment to the nation’s capital that military historians say appears to have been without precedent: Over 98 percent of the 3,800 troops that arrived in the District came from states with Republican governors.”
Five years later, the deployment of troops from Trump-loving states in the District of Columbia, where every one of Trump’s Democratic opponents has received over 90% of the vote and where Blacks make up almost 45% of the population, is no less disturbing. It looks like another effort to achieve “total domination” — as Trump put it in 2020 — in the least Trump friendly place in the country.
Alexander Hamilton thought it was important that states have their own military force.
“Total domination” by the federal government was hardly the rallying cry for the people who wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Quite to the contrary. They had seen firsthand the British use military forces to subdue and oppress people in the colonies. And they feared “that the president would use standing armies to oppress the citizens, as the British had done, and turn us into a garrison state,” as Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., then serving in the House, wrote in 2020.
The drafters of the Declaration of Independence included among the British monarchy’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” the following: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures; He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power;” and kept “large bodies of armed troops among us.”
That’s why people like Alexander Hamilton thought it was important that states have their own military force. They thought state militias would resist, not aid, the federal government, should it want to follow the British example.
Hamilton made this clear in 1788, before the ratification of the Constitution or the Second Amendment. “If standing armies,” he wrote, “are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions.”
Hamilton hoped that militias controlled by the states would be all that would be necessary to assure peace in the new Republic and did not think that they ever would threaten liberty. They would, after all, be composed of “our sons, our brothers, our neighbors, our fellow-citizens.”
The National Guard had its origins in the militias about which Hamilton wrote. The Guard traces its start to 1636, when the Massachusetts Bay Colony established the first colonial militia.
Whatever their views on whether the Second Amendment guarantees an individual right to bear arms, historians generally agree that one of the key purposes of the amendment was to ensure that states had the resources needed to resist encroachments on liberty perpetrated by the federal government. As Supreme Court Justice James McReynolds put it in 1939“In a militia, the character of the labourer, artificer, or tradesman, predominates over that of the soldier.”
Troops from Ohio, South Carolina, Mississippi and West Virginia deployed in Washington are being asked to display the character of soldiers, not that of the “neighbors” that Hamilton envisioned. Hamilton thought that there would be no danger “from men who are daily mingling with the rest of their countrymen and who participate with them in the same feelings, sentiments, habits, and interests.”
Sending members of state National Guards to a place different in “feelings, sentiments, habits and interests” from the District of Columbia may please the president. But it should not please Americans eager to preserve freedom and honor the legacy of the Founding generation.
Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College. The views expressed here do not represent Amherst College.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s administration is placing economic sanctions on a major China-based oil refinery and roughly 40 shipping companies and tankers involved in transporting Iranian oil.
The move, announced Friday and first reported by The Associated Press, makes good on Trump’s threat to impose secondary sanctions on companies and countries that do business with Iran. It’s also part of his Republican administration’s overall ramped-up campaign to cut off Iran’s key source of revenue — its oil exports.
Concurrently, the U.S. this month imposed a physical blockade on the Strait of Hormuzthe Persian Gulf waterway that is crucial to global energy supplies.
The sanctions, which cut off the companies from the U.S. financial system and penalize anyone who does business with them, come just a few weeks before President Donald Trump and China’s Xi Jinping are due to meet in China.
Included in Friday’s sanctions is Hengli Petrochemical’s facility in the port city of Dalian, which has a processing capacity of roughly 400,000 barrels of crude oil per day, making it one of the biggest independent refineries in China.
The Treasury Department says Hengli has received Iranian crude oil shipments since 2023 and has generated hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue for the Iranian military.
The advocacy group United Against Nuclear Iran said in February 2025 that Hengli is one of dozens of Chinese purchasers of Iranian oil.
China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil, importing 80% to 90% of Iranian oil before the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran broke out, though the crude — transported by a shadow fleet of vessels — often has its origin obscured but arrives in China as oil from countries such as Malaysia. Smaller refineries, known as teapot refineries, typically are the buyers of Iranian oil.
Iran has previously said that its demands for ending the war include the lifting of sanctions.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Friday that his agency “will continue to constrict the network of vessels, intermediaries and buyers Iran relies on to move its oil to global markets.”
Earlier this month, Bessent’s department sent a letter to financial institutions in China, Hong Kong, the UAE and Oman threatening to levy secondary sanctions for doing business with Iran and accusing those countries of allowing Iranian illicit activities to flow through their financial institutions.
Bessent said during a White House press briefing on April 15 that the administration has told countries “that if you are buying Iranian oil, that if Iranian money is sitting in your banks, we are now willing to apply secondary sanctions, which is a very stern measure.”
The sanctions come as the global energy trade is in turmoil as war around the Persian Gulf chokes off oil and natural gas shipments, causing prices to soar.
Treasury has tried to quell the impact of rising oil prices issuing temporary sanctions waivers on Russia oil and a one-time waiver on Iranian oil already at sea.
The AP was making efforts to contact Chinese officials for comment on the sanctions.
China has disagreed with previous U.S. sanctions, but its major companies and banks still comply with U.S. sanctions because they are more exposed to the U.S.-dominated financial system.
After the U.S. earlier this month sanctioned a Chinese refinery accused of buying Iranian oil, Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington, said the use of the sanctions “undermines international trade order and rules, disrupts normal economic and trade exchanges, and infringes upon the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies and individuals.”
Democratic National Committee Chair Ken Martin on Saturday defended his decision not to release a full autopsy of the party’s 2024 election losssaying it would “allow people to point fingers, place blame” instead of focusing on this year’s midterm elections.
Speaking to MS NOW’s “The Weekend,” Martin argued that “re-litigating” the 2024 presidential election would distract Democrats from their goal of winning the midterms in November and the 2028 presidential race.
He said Democrats are planning for what they expect to be an “unprecedented assault on our elections” from President Donald Trump, who has already signaled his intention to have federal officials “take over” the elections.
The party’s focus, Martin said, should be on protecting free and fair elections and defeating Republicans and Trump, rather than “engaging in a back and forth” over where it went wrong in 2024.
After then-Vice President Kamala Harris lost to Trump, the DNC ordered a review of where the party fell short. But 10 months later, Martin said the committee would not release the full 2024 autopsya decision that has prompted still-grieving Democrats — including potential 2028 candidates — to prescribe their own solutions to winning over voters.
Martin has repeatedly said that releasing the full report would distract Democrats from taking on Trump. But a growing number of DNC members, Democratic leaders and elected officials are urging him make those findings public, NBC News reported last week.
Martin said Saturday that he wants to keep the party’s focus on “the top lines” and that a 200-page report “allows people to sort of engage in navel-gazing.” He said it would not be helpful for people to harp on “what ifs” over the last election when “none of us have a time machine.”
“I’m not here to protect anyone, right? What I’m here to do is win elections,” he said, adding, “What we’re focusing on right now is the future, not the past.”
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.
The Dictatorship
Trump is preparing White House Correspondents’ Dinner jokes — while the real comedians stay home
Breaking with decades of tradition, the White House Correspondents’ Association will not feature a comedian at its annual gala this Saturday night. Instead, “the world’s most celebrated mentalist,” Oz Pearlmanwill entertain the throngs of journos, politicos, corporate overlords and Beltway influencers at the Washington, D.C. Hilton.
Among those luminaries will be President Donald J. Trump who, in his capacity as president, has previously boycotted the event. This time around he’ll deliver an address. The president seems to be feeling confident about his performance, as evidenced by this social media post:
In honor of our Nation’s 250th Birthday, and the fact that these ‘Correspondents’ now admit that I am truly one of the Greatest Presidents in the History of our Country, the G.O.A.T., according to many, it will be my Honor to accept their invitation, and work to make it the GREATEST, HOTTEST, and MOST SPECTACULAR DINNER, OF ANY KIND, EVER!
According to his daughter-in-law Lara Trump, he’s even been working with joke writers to prepare for the occasion.
Last year the WHCA disinvited Amber Ruffin. Many felt the association was caving to pressure from MAGA world.
All of which raises three interrelated questions. First, as the New York Times wonderedwhat could possibly go wrong? Second, will Trump dump on the countless media figures in attendance whom he has already disparaged, threatened, and even sued? And third, why is it that Trump can crack jokes about everything from the pope to unloading sludge on No Kings protestors, but won’t stand for a little comedic ribbing himself?
As for the mentalist, maybe he’ll ask the WHCA’s members to think of a number — like the number of cowardly decisions they’ve made in Trump’s second term. The non-profit, which describes its mission as helping “to facilitate robust coverage of the presidency,” has already sacked a comedian; last year the WHCA disinvited Amber Ruffin. Many felt the association was caving to pressure from MAGA world.
Ruffin certainly thought so. In 2025, she claimed that her dismissal was due to “talking s—” about Trump. “I think it’s a good thing that I lost the gig,” she added, “because I was going to show up there and act all the way out.”
The same strategy of appeasement appears to be in play this year, which would account for the unusual choice of a mentalist as host. The press organization, presumably under pressure from the same White House it’s supposed to cover, has thus gone beyond merely cancelling a comedian — no, this feels like a move to cancel comedy itself at its signature event.
There are a number of important things that happen during the event, including bestowing awards and scholarships to members of the media. And I don’t mean to blow my nose in the First-Amendment-inscribed pocket handkerchiefs that some attendees plan to wear to protest the administration’s anti-free speech policies, but I will say this: If you remove comedy from the WHCA Dinner, that leaves the high-profile entertainment up to a lot of HR-non-compliant afterparties and a mushroom cloud of Trump’s Victory 45-47 cologne.
My point is that the country needs Ruffin’s “acting all the way out.” America needs comedians to poke the powerful right in their grimacing faces. A liberal democracy that permits that sort of subversion makes itself stronger.
Since 1983, the WHCA dinner has deputized assorted clowns to preside over this quirky but vital ritual (only in 1999, 2003 and 2019 did an entertainer other than a comedian perform at the event).
Most WHCA comic headliners have executed their patriotic duties with verve and venom. Liberal or left-leaning stand-ups have lit up Republicans. Stephen Colbert in 2006 reminded America that George W. Bush “stands for things,” but also, “on things like aircraft carriers and rubble, and recently flooded city squares.” In 2017, Hasan Minhaj joked he did “not see” (which he pronounced as “Nazi”) Steve Bannon. A year later, Michelle Wolf referred to an absent Trump as “the one p—- you’re not allowed to grab.”
Since 1983, the WHCA dinner has deputized assorted clowns to preside over this quirky but vital ritual.
But liberal or left-leaning comedians are comedians first. As such, they’ve rarely missed an opportunity to dunk on Democrats as well. In 2013, Conan O’Brien taunted Barack Obama that he only won the presidency because Mitt Romney was his opponent. In 2016, Larry Wilmore made everyone in the room extremely uncomfortable by directing a racial slur at the nation’s first Black commander in chief. Roy Wood Jr. in 2023 reflected upon how odd it was that 80-year-old Joe Biden was begging for four more years of work.
I can think of one way to rebut the charge that WHCA is canceling comedy: Invite a humorist with RedState street cred to entertain at next year’s “nerd prom.” The right-wing comedy sector is booming. Many conservatives are devoted fans of stand-up and they have no shortage of skilled humorists to follow. Instead of a manosphere-adjacent mentalist like Pearlman, the WHCA should have platformed a manosphere-adjacent stand-up like Shane Gillis, Tony HinchcliffeAdam Carolla or countless other seasoned acts that could have easily played the gig.
All of these more conservative comedians, I surmise, are also comedians first. Had the WHCA invited them, Trump and his crew would have invariably been rinsed and roasted, patriotically. No one would have claimed that “liberal bias” motivated the barbs — have you ever listened to Hinchcliffe? Had WHCA simply done that, a weird and sloppy democratic tradition would have persevered. Life would go on, as it always does.
So would Trump’s wars, deportations, voter suppression schemes, corruption, lies and so forth. But the jokes would linger like funny prayers to ironic gods, permitting us to at least collectively recognize how absurd our predicament has become.
Jacques Berlinerblau is a professor of Jewish civilization at Georgetown University.
- US sanctions China-based oil refinery and 40 shippers over Iranian oil
- ‘Just do the math’: GOP senators get antsy about Trump Cabinet shakeup
- Senate Republicans clear go-it-alone path for ICE funding
- Dirk Kempthorne, former Idaho governor and U.S. Interior secretary, dies at 74
- Altman says OpenAI ‘deeply sorry’ for not flagging Canadian school shooter’s ChatGPT posts
- Pompeo casts doubt on renewed US-Iran talks: ‘I’m not optimistic’
- Can AI agents protect our privacy?
- Prison reformdoesn’tneed to wait for tragedy
- US envoys head to Pakistan as Iran throws cold water on direct talks
- Safe space: Zeldin ducks drama amid Cabinet ousters
-
Politics1 year agoFormer ‘Squad’ members launching ‘Bowman and Bush’ YouTube show
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoLuigi Mangione acknowledges public support in first official statement since arrest
-
Politics1 year agoFormer Kentucky AG Daniel Cameron launches Senate bid
-
The Dictatorship1 year agoPete Hegseth’s tenure at the Pentagon goes from bad to worse
-
Uncategorized1 year ago
Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
-
Politics1 year agoBlue Light News’s Editorial Director Ryan Hutchins speaks at Blue Light News’s 2025 Governors Summit
-
The Dictatorship8 months agoMike Johnson sums up the GOP’s arrogant position on military occupation with two words
-
The Josh Fourrier Show1 year agoDOOMSDAY: Trump won, now what?