The Dictatorship
Why this Jackie Robinson Day feels different than all the others
They say there are no stupid questions in journalism, and I tested that theory as a college newspaper reporter when I asked an MLB legend about the even more legendary Jackie Robinson. Was Robinson picked over more talented Negro League players to integrate baseball, I asked eight-time All-Star and former National League President Bill White“because he was so nice?”
“Nice?!” he shot back. “Jackie wasn’t nice! Jackie was tough!”
White apparently hadn’t gotten the memo about there being no stupid questions. “Nice?!” he shot back. “Jackie wasn’t nice! Jackie was tough!”
I’d like to believe that my question was not only a function of my youth but also evidence of the way that civil rights history has been taught in the United States. From Rosa Parks to Martin Luther King Jr. to John Lewis and Robinson, we’ve generally been fed a fairy-tale narrative that pits nice, perfectly pleasant and unoffending Black heroes against cartoonishly mean and ignorant white people. And, as in all fairy tales, the nice folks inevitably win.
On Tuesday, as it has since 2004, Major League Baseball is commemorating the day 78 years ago that Robinson played his first game with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But this Jackie Robinson Day lands in the middle of a conservative plot to eliminate talk of pioneering Black heroism and, more specifically, to eliminate mention of the villainy from white people that made Black heroism necessary.
The way that the history of American racism, and Black people’s response to it, has generally been taught is deeply flawed. It’s the equivalent of promoting PG-rated versions of R-rated historical events. But now the Trump administration is on a campaign to outright replace the truth of our history with deliberate distortions and lies, give a G rating to even the most disturbing American history, and essentially outlaw the telling of the truth.
Consider a recent edit the National Park Service made to a webpage that niceifies Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad. The Underground Railroad had been described as promoting “the resistance to enslavement through escape and flight” but was edited to suggest that it was a part of the “American civil rights movement” that bridged “the divides of race.”
The hell it did.
The previous language was restored — it was deleted by mistake, the park service stated — but a descendant of Tubman was right to ask, “Why do they want to erase our Black history? Why are we such a threat to certain Americans?” It wasn’t hard to answer her own question: “The answer is racism.” On one page managed by the National Park Service, according to The Washington Post, the phrase “enslaved African Americans” was changed to “enslaved workers.”
As mentioned in a previous column, somebody at the Defense Department, reportedly responding to President Donald Trump’s and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s anti-DEI fixation, briefly removed a webpage that described Robinson’s time in the U.S. Army as a second lieutenant.
Years before Rosa Parks would do the same, Robinson had refused a bus driver’s order that he move to the back of a bus. Not only did he not accept the humiliation of being assigned to the rear, but in an argument that ensued, he told another soldier, “If you call me a n—– again, I’ll break you in two.”
Maybe if I’d heard more about that Robinson when I was a child, then I’d have known how foolish it was to describe him as “nice.”
When my family visited the Jackie Robinson Museum in Lower Manhattan last week, we saw a quote on display that reveals the discipline — or, as White put it, the toughness — that Robinson maintained. Not just for his sake, but for his people’s sake.
Maybe if I’d heard more about that Robinson, then I’d have known how foolish it was to describe him as “nice.”
Less than six months into his time in the majors, he told a writer for the New York Post, “Plenty of times, I wanted to haul off when somebody insulted me for the color of my skin…If I lost my chance, the Negro might lose his chance, too… The whole thing was bigger than me.”
The museum portrays him as a complicated figure who didn’t fit neatly into any of the boxes that we’ve placed Black civil rights activists into. He was too conservative for some Black people, too outspoken for some white people, and ultimately, it seems, it could be as hard to pin him down as it was to tag him out during a steal attempt. Malcolm X, who had been a fan, came to believe Robinson was too accommodating to white people, but Robinson would later stand with the Black Panthers in BrooklynNew York, as they challenged police brutality.
In ballparks across the country today, we’ll see players wearing No. 42 and we’ll see glowing tributes about Robinson’s contributions to the game and to the country. There may be some mention of his legendary toughness in the game. If so, I hope it’s made clear how tough he was off the diamond, too — and how the evils of racism and segregation made his toughness necessary.
The Dictatorship
Changing the meaning of ‘harm’ in the Endangered Species Act will harm endangered species
ByDerrick Z. Jackson
On Tuesday the Trump administration officially published in the Federal Register what may be a mortal blow to the Endangered Species Act, the key law that aided the spectacular recovery of birds like the bald eagle and the peregrine falcon. The administration’s new rule, which was issued by the Interior and Commerce departments and becomes effective Sept. 14, deletes a critical definition of what constitutes “harm” to species on the brink of extinction.
Under the old definition, harm wasn’t limited to actions that directly killed or injured wildlife. Developers, industrial polluters and landowners were also prohibited from rolling out bulldozers and backhoes and causing “significant habitat modification or degradation” that damaged or destroyed endangered species’ “breeding, feeding or sheltering” areas.
There is a whole world of lesser-known toads, salamanders, turtles, bees, butterflies and fishes that could blink out before we know it.
There are 2,300 species listed under the Endangered Species Act. Some of the more widely known species are the northern spotted owlthe California condorthe Florida pantherthe whooping cranethe manatee and some species of wolves. But there is a whole world of lesser-known toads, salamanders, turtles, bees, butterflies and fishes that could blink out before we know it.
It is obvious who benefits from this outrageous change. Oil and gas drillers, building contractors, mining companiesroad construction groups, ranchers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have all chafed at the appropriately broad interpretation of “harm.” In one statementthe Independent Petroleum Association of America claimed the Endangered Species act was “destroying economic growth and job creation.” In a bald-faced press release hailing the change, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum called the old rules a “regulatory trap.” The new ones, he said, will “reduce unnecessary permitting, cut compliance costs, and eliminate confusion for landowners, small businesses, energy producers, farmers, ranchers and local governments.”
Now it is wildlife that will be confused, trapped and possibly exterminated with unfettered development. Environmental groups are suing the administrationbut the odds of blocking the new rule are long given our ultraconservative Supreme Court, which has robotically rolled back even environmental protections that have a direct impact on wildlife.
In 2023 the Supreme Court drastically limited the definition of a wetland. In more sane days, the Environmental Protection Agency called wetlands a “biological supermarket.” More than one-third of all the nation’s endangered and threatened species live full time in wetlands, and more than half of such species spend some time in them.
The court ruled against a generous definition of a wetland even though between 2009 and 2019according to the Interior Department under the Biden administration, the nation lost an area of vegetated wetlands larger than the size of Rhode Island. By the way, groups that filed briefs to reduce the scope of wetlands included agricultural interestsmining interests, the U.S. Chamber of Commercethe American Petroleum Instituteand the National Association of Home Builders.
This latest rule is a neon green light inviting developers to plow through the wetlands that are left, cut down more forests, build along sensitive coastlines, cast fishing nets into precious feeding grounds for migratory birds and whales, and dump more pesticides and chemicals. The rule is changing despite many studies showing that the biggest threat to threatened creatures is, in fact, habitat loss. Globally, a 2022 study found that habitat destruction affects 9 of 10 species threatened with extinction. In the United States, a 2019 study published in the journal Conservation Science and Practice found that habitat modification was the most common threat to species listed under the Endangered Species Act. The study said current federal and state regulations “are not adequate enough to prevent habitat loss.” Yet the Trump administration has set up the nation to accelerate the loss.
I am writing and photographing on islands where one of the lesser-known endangered species, the roseate tern, nests.
On the day the administration posted the rule change, I was, to borrow from Otis Redding, literally sittin’ on the dock of the bay, watching these protections roll away. I am writing and photographing on islands where one of the lesser-known endangered species, the roseate ternnests. It is a beautiful bird with sharp, elegant plumage. Like most tern species in North America, that plumage made them a target for gunners in the late 1800s and early 1900s to provide feathers for women’s hats. Even with federal protections, the tern population grew back slowly, partially because of habitat loss in the 20th century.
They are long-distance migrants that zoom from the Northeast to South America for the winter. But before they get there, most roseates make a major pit stop on Cape Cod. They roost at night on strips of beaches and sandbars. “It’s an area for parents to refuel after spending the summer raising their young, and it is a training ground for young, inexperienced birds to work on their hunting skills,” said Don Lyons, director of conservation science at the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute, based in Bremen, Maine.
The institute is an outgrowth of Project Puffin, which restored Atlantic puffins to islands in Maine after hunting caused about a century’s absence of the birds. I am the co-author, with the project’s founder, Steve Kress, of two books on that restoration.
Lyons said he was not aware of any major planned development on the Cape where the roseates go, but he warned that all coastal areas where birds either nest, rest or winter are at major risk of many threats with increased development. “More people also mean more raccoons, skunk, coyotes, dogs and domestic cats that could predate on the birds,” he said.
Lyons, who himself migrates to Oregon State University every fall to be a seabird science professor, talked about another bird on the West Coast that is not a household name: the marbled murrelet. It is a small, blocky cousin of puffins seen in Pacific waters. The marbled murrelet, which is listed as threatened in Washington, Oregon and California, is one of the most mysterious and difficult seabirds in North America to study, Lyons said. Unlike many seabirds that nest in dense, noisy colonies, the marbled murrelet flies from the ocean into dense, dark old-growth coastal forests to nest in solitude on the branch of a redwood or Douglas fir, hidden by the tree canopy.
The bird is such a recluse that the first murrelet nest was not discovered until 1974 — and only then by a maintenance worker who was climbing a redwood in a state park. The bird’s breeding habits make it a potential casualty for developers or loggers who could easily claim they didn’t know the bird was in a tree they just cut down. Even if a developer missed a tree with a nest, any thoughtless fragmenting of the forest could allow easier access for nest predators, such as jays, ravens, crows, owls and hawks. According to a Washington state wildlife report last yearnesting habitat losses due to logging have been so “substantial” that the state population of marbled murrelets fell from 7,500 birds in 2015 to 4,400 in 2023.
If puffins nested in trees, we’d probably do a better job of protecting trees.
Don Lyons, director of conservation science at the National Audubon Society’s Seabird Institute
“They’re susceptible to habitat loss because they’re a specialized bird in a resource that has real economic value to people,” Lyons said. He said the bird was symbolic of many species that do not have much of a constituency outside of the conservationists who study them. “They don’t have the charisma of other birds,” Lyons said. “If puffins nested in trees, we’d probably do a better job of protecting trees.”
My colleague Kress, the man who brought puffins back to two islands in Maine, starting in the 1970s with chicks translocated from Canada, said the Trump administration’s elimination of habitat protections was particularly egregious. It was only in the last 15 years that the wintering home of Maine’s puffins started to be understood. As it turned out, some puffins spend the late winter in the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts, 130 miles southeast of Cape Cod.
Because of its wealth of deep-sea corals, and terrain that concentrates nutrients and smaller fish for terns, puffins, turtles, dolphins, rays, sharks and whales, President Barack Obama declared the area a national marine monument in 2016, closed to commercial fishing and oil and gas drilling. This year, Trump reopened the monument to commercial fishing. In a press release touting the potential bounty of tuna, swordfish, mackerel, squid and red crab, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said“Restoring fishing in the Northeast Monument sends a signal that our fishermen are valued in the United States.”
To Kress, the signal is that wildlife no longer has a value. “This is a case of actively causing a species to decline and disappear,” he told me. “This is not a case of mere neglect. You don’t have to kill a bird to harm it. Take habitat away, they’re doomed.”
Derrick Z. Jackson
Derrick Z. Jackson is a Union of Concerned Scientists fellow in climate and energy at the Center for Science and Democracy. A former columnist for The Boston Globe, he’s the co-author of “Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock.”
I visited Russia with friends for the 2018 FIFA World Cup, and it was one of the great trips of my life.
Entering the country was a breeze. Between chasing matches in three cities, we drifted about with no particular agenda other than entertaining ourselves. We wandered through parks, drank vodka, admired the beautiful architecture, temporarily picked up smoking cigarettes, looked at art and partied day and night. Russia is not known for a warm public culture, but it was easy in such a festive atmosphere to make local friends — some of whom I stayed in touch with long after that summer. The experience went so smoothly, and I felt so good about the experience, that between returning to the States and the end of the World Cup, I somehow found myself rooting for Russia’s team (alongside others) as it progressedeven suspiciously soin the tournament. When I think back on the trip, I remember the rich Russian culture that rarely gets covered in the Western press.
A political scientist might describe my fond memories of my Russia World Cup trip as a perfect example of the efficacy of sportswashing — that is, governments staging sports events to launder their reputation and divert attention from their misdeeds. The World Cup brightened my perspective on Russia: A well-run tournament, organic social connections and pleasant vibes improved my feelings toward the country. I spent little time thinking about Russia’s vicious ruler or authoritarian repression, and my stories about the fun surrounding the games I saw likely encouraged others to consider traveling there, or at least to think of the country a bit more positively.
President Donald Trump was handed a golden opportunity to boost America’s image to international visitors here for the 2026 World Cup. He is the reason, after all, the world is suffering from higher oil prices. He can’t find his way out of a mortifying war he’s clearly losing, tourism is plummetingand his international reputation is in swift decline.
But he blew it.
Trump achieved the opposite of sportswashing. His policies were hostile to visitors, he injected politics into the tournament, and he even brazenly meddled with what was happening on the pitch. In sum, his style of hosting cast the U.S. in an unusually negative light during the most widely watched cultural event in the world. Trump’s inability to see beyond his most reflexive impulses to throw red meat to his base sabotaged the larger opportunity to impress the world and soften his image. His failure to be the welcoming, gracious tournament host mirrors the way he operates with increasing frequency in domestic politics — blinkered, self-defeating. Trump’s modus operandi is one own goal after another, and an embarrassment for the United States.
Trump injected the corrupt kleptocratic energy he governs with into a global sporting event that’s designed to be meritocratic.
World Cup hosts have often relaxed their entrance policies to simplify and expedite the arrival of World Cup ticket holders. Notably, this is true even for countries with restrictive immigration policies, including Russia and Qatarthe last two World Cup hosts. But for far too many people in 2026, a World Cup trip was hellish, if not impossible. This year, The New Yorker observedis “the first time a World Cup host has blocked visitors from participating countries en masse.” Fans from more than a quarter of the countries participating in the tournament faced bans, high rates of visa rejections or restrictions from the U.S. The head of the Jordanian fan association told the BBC he took more than 40 documents with him to his visa appointment, and his application was rejected. “If the head of the fan association was refused, who will be accepted?” he asked. (The U.S. does not provide explanations for why visas are rejected.) A Somali referee was not allowed in the U.S. to do his job. A number of individual playersincluding team members from Iraq and Haiti, struggled to get visas or were detained in airports. Many sports journalists from the Middle East and Africa were denied entry.
The Iranian soccer team got treated like a band of murderers instead of elite professional athletes. Many members of the team’s support staff were barred from entering the U.S., and the team was forced to move its base training camp from the U.S. to Mexico. It was also given less time in the U.S. to prepare and recover after matches. The U.S. government’s mistreatment of the team and its clear attempt to stigmatize it likely affected Iran’s play. In short, the Trump administration wrongly disadvantaged and punished the team from a country he is upset about losing to in a war.
Also during the tournament, the Trump administration made social media posts supporting the U.S. team laced with right-wing nationalist rhetoric, including the slogan “DEFEND THE HOMELAND.” Such posts are antithetical to the World Cup, a tournament widely held as one of the world’s foremost examples of international harmony and exchange.
Trump’s most egregious misstep was aggressively lobbying FIFA President Gianni Infantino”https://www.ms.now/opinion/us-belgium-balogun-trump-red-card”>to reverse FIFA’s one-game suspension for U.S. striker Folarin Balogun after he received what appears to have been an undeserved red card in the the U.S. match with Bosnia-Herzegovina. FIFA reversed the suspension, which The New York Times noted marked “the first time since 1962 that FIFA has allowed a player to appear in a game when they would have been suspended after being sent off in the World Cup.” FIFA did not overturn the call itself, it only rescinded part of the punishment — and only after Trump leaned on the venal Infantino, who has long maintained a fawning posture toward Trump. If FIFA were not cartoonishly corruptit would have resisted pressure from Trump to protect the integrity of the tournament. But FIFA’s corruption is legendaryand after it rolled over, Trump boasted about the sordid affair.
An Austrian friend told me he thought the red card call against Balogun unfairly robbed the American team of a valuable player and he initially wanted the U.S. to win its next match. But after Trump’s intervention, he flipped and rooted for Belgium, and was satisfied by the 4-1 result.
Trump could not even for a brief moment imagine a whole world of people who simply want to see honorable competition and delight in being together for the sake of being together.
I’m sure he wasn’t alone. Belgium’s team went viral mocking Trumpand its soccer association posted on X“Overturn this.” Trump injected the corrupt kleptocratic energy he governs with into a global sporting event that’s designed to be meritocratic, and not only did it not help the U.S. prevail, it resulted in terrible vibes and a burst of cynicism about the event. I couldn’t help but notice an uptick in social media conspiracy theories of FIFA rigging refereeing and results after the episode, a growing suspicion that everything was for sale.
All the vices Trump has displayed during this tournament — win at any cost, revel in cruelty, act with hostility toward outsiders — only make sense as an attempt to excite his shrinking die-hard base. But successful, rational autocrats know how to cater to different audiences and think strategically about unique opportunities, and Trump does care about how he’s received by the international community. A number of Russians bitterly noted to me during the 2018 World Cup that authorities had relaxed law enforcement and taken a shockingly lax attitude toward street demonstrations. They considered it Russia’s attempt to present a deceptive picture of an open society to visitors. Trump could have taken a monthlong break from his usual culture wars — at no cost to his domestic standing — and built up some international political capital. But he can’t help himself. Trump could not even for a brief moment imagine a whole world of people who simply want to see honorable competition and delight in being together for the sake of being together.
None of this is to say that most fans who made it to the U.S. didn’t have a grand time and experience some heart-warming cultural exchanges. But the good feelings of our visitors happened despite Trump and his myriad offenses. The tournament succeeded in generating joy despite Trump’s unholy alliance with Infantino. Instead of allowing those visitors to focus on the best of America, he showed them the worst of himself.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
“[A] lot of the people who are going and getting four-year degrees, they’re not like engineers and doctors. They have effectively fake jobs,” Vice President JD Vance told podcast host Mike Rowe last week. This is ironic, given that the Constitution doesn’t even give the vice president a full-time job. The position carries just two responsibilities: breaking ties in the Senate and not dying. Every vice president has to decide how to fill the rest of their time. Al Gore championed emerging technologies and the environment. Dick Cheney massively expanded the surveillance state. Vance goes on podcasts to spread conspiracy theories.
In his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance denounces conspiracy theorists as “fringe lunatics.” But once a paranoid ethos became nonnegotiable for an ambitious Republican, he changed his tune. Now, Vance appears to be the administration’s chief conspiracy communicator. This week, Vance went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to discuss the big lie of voter fraud, aliens, the deep state, Jeffrey Epstein and why so many people have accused him of being an antisemite.
“So I have, like, effectively unlimited access to information,” Vance boasted. But there’s a catch.
Vance’s mission is to keep low-propensity male voters and their idols, like Rogan, in the MAGA fold despite Trump hiding the Epstein files, breaking his promise of no new wars and failing to release any juicy details about extraterrestrials or the Kennedy assassination. That means walking a delicate line between validating the paranoids’ worldview and praising his boss.
“What is it like being the vice president?,” Rogan asked, hard-hitting as ever, “Like how much access do you have to information?
“So I have, like, effectively unlimited access to information,” Vance boasted. But there’s a catch.
“I’ve said that I am going to look into the UFO thing,” Vance explained. “And I’ve been saying that for a year and a half and I haven’t done it yet because I haven’t had the time.”
Vance insisted that he had been too busy trying to make Trump’s war with Iran as successful as possible and calling senators about the housing bill.
The vice president also agreed with his host that the Los Angeles mayoral race was “super sus.” The two men traded insinuations about Democrats recruiting homeless people to vote in the primary — without providing supporting evidence. (Even if that were true, homeless people don’t lose their voting rights, and it’s fair to assume those who did vote weren’t fans of Pratt, whose platform was putting the homeless in camps.) But proof was beside the point. This was an opportunity for Vance to champion the SAVE Act, Trump’s doomed voter ID legislation, and fume about how counting immigrants on the Census, as the Constitution requires, is stealing congressional representation from states with low immigration rates.
No conspiracy theory presented a more challenging balancing act for Vance than Epstein. Vance campaigned on releasing the Epstein files, only for Trump to try to cover them up.
“Most people seem to think [Epstein] was Mossad,” Rogan said.
“Yeah,” Vance replied, “Mossad or CIA or some other deep state.”
Epstein was indeed a close friend of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (who has not been implicated in any crimes and now says he regrets their association).
If Epstein were a potential Israeli spy, however, you might think that the Trump Justice Department would have been more interested in finding out how he might have compromised high-level American officials, corporate leaders and celebrities. But apparently not. Vance did not elaborate on the reasons for this apparent disconnect, though he assured the audience, “I’ve asked were there, like, were there documents connecting Jeffrey Epstein directly to our intelligence agencies or anybody else’s? And the answer is, ‘No, but if that existed, it wouldn’t exist in 2026.’”
The job of vice president may be fake, but the benefits are real. MS NOW’s Carol Leonig and Vaughn Hillyard recently revealed that Vance’s Secret Service detail is “fed up” with the travel demands of Vance and his family. Had it not been for a thunderstorm, the Secret Service would have ferried Vance and his son to his son’s golf lesson by helicopter. Vance should probably enjoy the perks of office while he can. He’s not delivering for the conspiracist base that he hopes will preserve his political longevity.
Lindsay Beyerstein is an investigative journalist in Brooklyn, New York. She writes a weekly column for The Editorial Board and is working on a book about conspiracy theories and American politics. Follow her on Bluesky.
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