Three Good Links

I see this stratification in the classroom and on the page every week. My students from districts that protected sustained reading through small class sizes, strict phone policies, and faculty who refused to teach to the test all arrive with their attention relatively intact. My students from districts that surrendered to devices and standardized testing arrive cognitively winded. A democracy that requires a literate electorate is now training one fraction of that electorate out of literacy while marketing to the other a “deep work” lifestyle as a luxury good. The students who cannot read a 20-page article today are the voters who will not be able to read a bill, or the jurors who cannot follow a closing argument, tomorrow.

Just before he confirmed his attendance at a neo-fascist summit in Portugal, Gregory Bovino, the former U.S. Border Patrol commander who was once the face of President Donald Trump's mass deportations, posted a photo on X showing himself giving a salute familiar to anyone who has heard of Nazi Germany.

While America250 lists its organization’s leaders online, Freedom 250 does not explicitly identify who is managing the group on a day-to-day basis. Much of the work to put on the group’s events is being done by Event Strategies Inc. and its Managing Partner Justin Caporale. ESI produced the Jan. 6, 2021, rally on the Ellipse that preceded the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Caporale is a longtime Trump ally and worked to put on some of the Trump 2024 campaign’s most memorable public events, including Trump's visit to McDonald's and the garbage truck photo op.

It is well known that the United States Navy Sea, Air, and Land  (US SEALs) have serious problems. The SEAL community has been plagued by extreme drug use and sexual assaults and has been found to engage in the murder of one of their own Special Operations Forces (SOF) personnel. All of these incidences have led to well-founded allegations of a problematic culture within the SEALs and contributed to general sentiments of unprofessionalism within both the larger SOF community (Green Berets, Delta Force, Ranger Regiment) and the SEAL community itself.  No case better represents this than the case of SEAL Edward Gallagher. This will undoubtedly be a case that many have heard of as it was very well-publicized, unlike other cases involving U.S. SOF and SEAL personnel.

Unlike other nations, Hegseth observed, Israel maintained “an ever-present understanding that the fragile peace they enjoy and their nation itself are preserved only through intentional, purposeful, and courageous action.” Here was a nation that could satisfy Hegseth’s unquenched thirst for military dominance in the Arab world. And unlike the United States, which sought technocratic rationales for war, Israel had the advantage of framing everything in biblical terms. “I find myself envious,” Hegseth concluded, “of the gravity and substance of the Israelis’ task.”

A “systemic lack of accountability” for sexual violence helped create a culture of impunity, the UN said, citing the assault and rape of a detainee from Gaza that was filmed on security cameras and reported to police by Israeli medics. The prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, described the alleged perpetrators as “heroic” and an attempt to prosecute them, which failed, as “criminal”. The victim was never charged or tried and has since been released. Over the past three years, violence, including rape, extreme hunger and humiliation, has been normalised in Israeli jails. Rights groups say detention centres have become “torture camps” for Palestinians.

What we see isn’t gratuitous government cruelty, chaos or vengeance. Instead, we see a persistent strategy to maximize fear and chilling effects in ways that are corrosive to freedom and democracy. Research suggests that surveillance, personal threats, uncertainty and abuse of power are key factors in doing so. The federal government has a clear and systematic pattern of employing these very mechanisms across a number of domains far beyond campuses. They are evident in militarized raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and in journalists being arrested and indicted for reporting on protests. They are made clear in the long list of political enemies the Trump administration has investigated or threatened, including the Federal Reserve chairman. And they can also be seen in the weaponization of technology, including ramping up surveillance to target critics and protestors.

This unprecedented level of U.S.-Israeli military integration stands in stark contrast to the traditional aid model of defense cooperation, in which Israel already stood out as the top recipient of U.S. military assistance. As laid out in a recent Quincy Institute brief, authored by Steven Simon, this shift from an aid model to a military integration model has troubling implications, namely: "The shift will strip away the political and diplomatic oversight mechanisms that make the relationship publicly accountable, moving it from a visible annual aid vote into the opaque machinery of defense acquisition, where oversight is limited and political accountability is minimal. The result would be a defense relationship that is simultaneously deeper and less transparent." This all comes at a time when the Israeli military has repeatedly used U.S. weapons in strikes that have violated international humanitarian laws in Gaza, and as Israel has repeatedly violated ceasefires (as has the U.S. itself) in the Trump administration’s unnecessary war with Iran. The enormous gulf between what most Americans want and what the president is doing when it comes to Israel and what Congress is proposing here should not be ignored.