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The Dictatorship

Trump wants Linda McMahon to lead the command of his war on universities

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Trump wants Linda McMahon to lead the command of his war on universities

When Donald Trump announced his choice of former World Wrestling Entertainment executive Linda McMahon to lead the Department of Education, his statement shouted that with her at the helm, “We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES.” The sentence was a reference to Trump’s previous pledge to shut down the department entirely — a promise Republicans have been making since it was created in 1979.

But axing the entire department was always unlikely — not just because it would require congressional action, but because what Trump actually wants is more federal control over education, not less.

The real focus in the new Trump administration will be higher education.

Like everything else in Trump’s vision for government, he wants the department McMahon would lead to be more corrupt, more ideologically right wing and less capable of doing the job it is supposed to do. In the past, McMahon has promoted private school vouchers that drain money from public schools, and she will surely do so again. But the real focus in the new Trump administration will be higher education. The war on universities is about to begin.

This war has both practical and political purposes for the GOP. For decades, demonizing higher education has been a favorite tactic for Republicans. They believe universities stand in fundamental opposition to the right’s project, and in many ways they’re correct: Most professors are liberal, and critical inquiry often undermines conservative ideas and values.

During the campaign, Trump released a video laying out his plan to “reclaim our once-great educational institutions from the radical left.” He promised to use the “secret weapon” of accreditation, punishing schools that don’t follow his instructions by stripping them of the certification without which they might not survive. “I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist maniacs and lunatics,” he said, and replace them with Trump-approved accreditors who will bring a more MAGA-friendly approach to higher education.

Trump also said he would have the Justice Department target “schools that continue to engage in racial discrimination,” by which he clearly meant efforts to promote diversity; his allies are planning to invert the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division so it focuses on alleged anti-white racism. If universities do not meet Trump’s standard, they “will not only have their endowment taxed, but through budget reconciliation, I will advance a measure to have them fined up to the entire amount of their endowment.”

Seizing the endowments of universities would almost certainly be illegal, but Trump is spoiling for a fight, and his “secret weapon” is a powerful threat. Accreditation is vital to every university; without it, their students can’t get federal loans and they can’t receive federal research funding (more than half of university research funds come from the federal government).

This assault is already going on at the state level, where Republicans have passed laws outlawing diversity programs, weakening tenure protections and gagging professors from discussing certain ideas. No politician has waged war on his state’s higher education system with more venom than Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. A 2023 report from the American Association of University Professors called DeSantis’ efforts “a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history, which, if sustained, threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state.”

In Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump has an enthusiastic partner for this fight.

Trump is essentially promising to mount the same kind of attack from Washington. And there’s more. Project 2025 proposed to “deny loan access to students at schools that provide in-state tuition to illegal aliens.” (Trump, of course, disavowed Project 2025, but since the election, those around him have embraced it.) That would mean any student attending a state school in one of the 25 states (plus Washington, D.C.) that allow undocumented students to pay in-state tuition would have their loans cut off.

In Vice President-elect JD Vance, Trump has an enthusiastic partner for this fight. Earlier this year, as a senator, Vance sponsored legislation to take federal funding from universities that allowed undocumented students, including DACA recipients legally allowed to work, to have campus jobs. Vance has expressed admiration for the way Viktor Orbán, the authoritarian prime minister of Hungary, seized control of Hungarian universities as part of his effort to silence his critics. Vance argued that because universities are not properly educating students, “there needs to be a political solution to that problem.”

While Trump and Vance are no doubt sincere in their disgust with diversity and other liberal ideas, their war on universities is driven by politics. We are now in an age of education polarization; in 2020Joe Biden beat Trump among voters with college degrees by 24 points, and when the data comes in from 2024, the results will probably be similar. The same trend is visible in many Western democracies, as voters with more education increasingly support left-wing parties.

It isn’t just that Republicans are less interested in getting the support of voters with college degrees; they’re also eager to use universities as a foil and a scapegoat. We saw that last year when they put on what were essentially show trials of Ivy League presidents over protests against Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip. The purpose wasn’t to defend Jewish students (you’ll forgive me if I have trouble granting the sincerity of Rep. Elise Stefanik, lead inquisitor and one of the most cynically opportunistic characters in Washington); it was to make elite universities an object of anger and contempt.

When Republicans attack higher education as a cauldron of radical ideas that will turn your children against you, they not only undermine colleges and universities that are essential to America’s economy and innovation, they also feed distrust in institutions as a whole that has served Trump so well.

Trump has made many threats against both K-12 and higher education; we don’t know how many he’ll follow up on, or how much enthusiasm Linda McMahon will bring to this fight. But even if he accomplishes only some of his goals, the damage to our country, and one of its greatest engines of social and economic progress, will be severe.

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The Dictatorship

Trump administration to send ‘hundreds more’ federal agents to Minneapolis

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Trump administration to send ‘hundreds more’ federal agents to Minneapolis

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Sunday that “hundreds more” federal officers are being sent to Minneapolis following the killing of a 37-year-old Minnesota woman by an ICE agent last week.

Noem told Fox News that the surge of federal forces are being sent “in order to allow our ICE and Border Patrol individuals working in Minneapolis to do so safely.”

The additional officers are expected to arrive on Sunday and Monday, Noem said.

The surge was announced after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis on Wednesday in an incident that has drawn large protests against the Trump administration’s widespread deployment of federal agents and National Guard troops to major U.S. cities. The demonstrations continued through the weekend as thousands of people protested in Minneapolis and other cities across the country.

Local and state officials, including Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, D, and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob FreyD, were outraged by the killing and have doubled down on demands for immigration officials to leave the city, arguing they are making the area less safe.

At a news conference after Good’s killing, Frey told immigration officials to “Get the fuck out of Minneapolis” and vowed to get justice.

Frey told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday: “I don’t want our police officers spending time working with ICE on immigration enforcement… You know what I want our police officers doing? I want them stopping murders from happening. I want them preventing car-jackings.”

Cellphone video said to have been taken by Jonathan Ross, the ICE officer who fatally shot Good, was released Friday. The new video does not clearly demonstrate that Good was attempting to hit Ross with her car, as Trump officials have claimed.

Earlier bystander footage shows the wheels turned to the right as Good’s car pulls forward, away from Ross, who then shoots Good through the car’s windshield.

Noem and other Trump administration officials have called Good a “domestic terrorist,” and repeatedly claimed that she had tried to “run over” immigration officers.

Minnesota saw a massive 30-day surge of federal agents beginning earlier this month, with roughly 1,000 additional officers deployed to Minneapolis and St. Paul, including from ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Minneapolis is one of many cities targeted by the administration in a nationwide crackdown on crime and immigration. Since President Donald Trump took office for a second term last year, immigration agencies and National Guard troops have been sent to cities including Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Charlotte, N.C., and Memphis.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

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The Dictatorship

National Portrait Gallery changes Trump portrait, removes text about Jan. 6

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National Portrait Gallery changes Trump portrait, removes text about Jan. 6

The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., has swapped out a portrait of President Donald Trump and removed text about his two impeachments and the Jan.6 insurrection at the Capitol.

The White House announced the news on Saturday, sharing a photo of the black-and-white portrait of the president in the Oval Office with his fists on the desk taken by White House photographer Daniel Torok.

The previous phototaken by Washington Post photojournalist Matt McClain, showed Trump in a red tie with text on a nearby wall that read, in part: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials.

A spokesperson for the Smithsonian told MS NOW that it is “beginning its planned update of the America’s Presidents gallery which will undergo a larger refresh this Spring” and that “the history of Presidential impeachments continues to be represented in our museums, including the National Museum of American History.”

A White House spokesperson said that “for the first time in history, the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery has hung up an iconic photo taken by the White House honoring President Trump. His unmatched aura will be seen and felt throughout the halls of the National Portrait Gallery.”

The Colorado legislature agreed last year to remove a portrait of Trump from the state Capitol after he called the painting “the worst.” He also said his photo on the cover of Time magazine in 2025 was taken from an unflattering angel, calling it the “Worst of All Time.”

Last week, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said that a federal law requiring Congress to hang a plaque in the Capitol honoring law enforcment officers who helped protect the Capitol on Jan. 6, was “not implementable.” But senators quickly passed a resolution to “prominently display” the plaque in the Senate wing of the building.

Erum Salam is a breaking news reporter and producer for MS NOW. She previously was a breaking news reporter for The Guardian.

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The Dictatorship

Bob Weir and the Grateful Dead’s music will endure for generations

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Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist, co-lead vocalist and one of the primary songwriters for the Grateful Dead, died Saturday at the age of 78. His passing leaves only two surviving founding members of the band, drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, both of whom performed with Weir as part of what is likely the last “official” Dead offshoot band, Dead and Company.

Often seen as the little brother figure to the larger-than-life Dead co-founder Jerry Garcia, Weir was the subject of a documentary appropriately titled, “The Other One” — which was also the name of a Dead song known for its particularly freaky jams when played live.

The mystery and the adventure and the promise of the new — even now, that’s the draw of a Dead show.

Weir, who was only 16 when he first started playing with Garcia, was known for rocking his signature short jean shorts on stage, and for being the relative sex symbol among a comparatively motley-looking group of hairy hippies. Among the band’s best-loved songs, Weir had a primary hand in tunes like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Cassidy,” “Jack Straw,” Estimated Prophet,” and “The Music Never Stopped.”

Never heard of any of those? You’re not alone. That’s one of the most curious (and to the band’s critics, infuriating) things about the Dead: They’re a titan of classic rock-and-roll, and basically had no hits.

The Grateful Dead’s one hit single, “Touch of Grey,” reached No. 9 on the Billboard charts in 1987. They had only a handful of radio-friendly studio tracks, and yet they’re one of the most enduring, iconic and highest-grossing live acts of all time. And they still draw, as evidenced by eight years of stadium tours by Dead and Company, followed by several residencies at the Sphere in Las Vegas and a run of shows in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park last summer to commemorate the Dead’s 60th anniversary. Even Dead cover bands, like Joe Russo’s Almost Dead (JRAD) and Dark Star Orchestra, regularly fill huge venues like Red Rocks.

Despite its unconventional path to superstardom, of any rock band born in the 1960s — with the exception of the Beatles — I’d argue the Grateful Dead’s music stands the best chance of enduring among future generations.

As “kids these days” stop buying guitars as a right of passage, and as rock-and-roll continues its terminal descent from being the dominant genre of popular music, there are a number of reasons for why young people continue to gravitate toward the Dead. Among them is the fact that although the band stopped releasing original music decades ago, the ways the songbook is performed have continued to evolve radically over the years, in keeping with the Dead’s spirit of improvisation, collaboration and generosity toward young musicians.

The Grateful Dead’s first gig (billed as the Warlocks) took place in a Northern California pizza parlour in May 1965. For the next three decades they would play thousands of shows — including Woodstock and its evil twin, Altamont. They would evolve from their early bluegrass and blues-heavy sound into something more psychedelic, heavy on jams — many of them a gormless mess, but still more of them capturing an ecstatic and transcendent musical kaleidoscope.

They’d incorporate jazz, funk, even disco into their sound (again, with various degrees of success, but never inhibited by a fear of failure). But they were always a dance band. People came to Dead shows to dance. And they still do.

When Garcia, the group’s de facto leader, died of a heart attack in a rehabilitation center in August 1995, the Grateful Dead never performed under that name again. But there were many Dead side projects, mostly led by Weir or bassist Phil Lesh, who died in 2024.

They were always a dance band. People came to Dead shows to dance. And they still do.

Deadheads are fond of touting the fact that no two Dead shows are the same — setlists are never duplicated — and it’s rare for the band to play the same song twice during a particular run of shows. To that end, no two Dead side-project bands are the same, either. Whether under names like Furthur, Rat Dog, Wolf Bros, etc., Weir’s bands typically played at a slower tempo, while Lesh’s virtuoso “Phil and Friends” pickup bands changed so often that the audience not only didn’t know what songs would be played, they didn’t even know what style the band would play in.

The mystery and the adventure and the promise of the new — even now, that’s the draw of a Dead show. And the Dead not only continues to bring in younger fans, grumpy Gen Xers like myself — who formerly made a show of their disdain for the hippies like the Dead — have come around in recent years as “mid-life Deadheads,” a phenomenon I wrote about in 2023.

The music writer Steven Hyden noted in his book, “Twilight of the Gods: A Journey to the Center of Classic Rock,” that Weir and Lesh, in particular, took “a lead role in handpicking the people who will carry their music forward once they’re gone.” I was one of the delighted — and stunned — audience members who saw Weir join Joe Russo’s Almost Dead on stage for their 10th anniversary show at Brooklyn Bowl in 2023, and I was also in the audience for Lesh’s last New York area show at the Capital Theater in 2024, when he performed his entire final encore with JRAD as his backing band.

Next weekend, JRAD is coming back to the Cap for a run of sold-out shows, and I’ll be there with a few thousand friends, laughing and dancing and maybe crying a little bit, but all in joyful remembrance of Bobby — listening to the music evolve some more.

Weir, who was reportedly diagnosed with cancer in July, leaves behind his wife Natascha and daughters, Monet and Chloe.

It’s the Dead’s anarchic spirit of freedom that places no limits on what the music could become. And it’s the generosity and humility of guys like Bobby Weir who gave the gift of the Dead to generations he’ll never get to see.

Anthony L. Fisher is a senior editor and opinion columnist for MS NOW.

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