#ft. bragg

Michael de Adder :: @deAdder

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"The most important office is office of citizen."

June 11, 2025

Robert B. Hubbell

The most consequential story on Tuesday continues to be that Trump is issuing blatantly illegal and unconstitutional orders. The deployment of federal troops to Los Angeles violates the Posse Comitatus Act and does not qualify for any statutory exception. That fact is omitted from nearly every story reporting on the situation in Los Angeles. But no such story is accurate or complete unless the first line says, “In violation of federal law and without justification, President Trump has ordered federal troops to Los Angeles . . . .”

Before addressing the fake state of emergency created by Trump, let’s skip to the solution: Tens of millions of Americans must take to the streets, expressing the will of the people in opposition to Trump's unlawful actions. Thousands of decentralized protests of millions of Americans will be beyond the ability of Trump to resist—even with the US military cosplaying as law enforcement officers.

It is vitally important that everyone join the No Kings Day protests—June 14, 2025. Find a protest near you: No Kings. On June 14, Flag Day, the story must be that millions of Americans rose to defend democracy instead of the obscenely expensive military parade ordered by Trump because no one else will celebrate his birthday.

For once, the New York Times is getting it right. In its Tuesday online edition, the first headline in Column A1 reads:

The Times’ news analysis reports, in part,

Legal scholars say the president’s actions are not authorized by the statutes he has cited and are, instead, animated by a different goal. “He is declaring utterly bogus emergencies for the sake of trying to expand his power, undermine the Constitution, and destroy civil liberties,” said Ilya Somin, a libertarian professor at Antonin Scalia Law School who represents a wine importer and other businesses challenging some of Mr. Trump’s tariffs.

For the usually stodgy Times, the above analysis amounts to a full-throated condemnation of Trump’s sham declarations of emergency.

The Times’ news analysis closed with a reference to the case of Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, in which the Court expressed skepticism of presidential declarations of emergencies because “emergencies beget emergencies”:

Justice Jackson wrote that the framers of the Constitution were wary of granting the president emergency powers.

“They knew what emergencies were, knew the pressures they engender for authoritative action, knew, too, how they afford a ready pretext for usurpation,” he wrote. “We may also suspect that they suspected that emergency powers would tend to kindle emergencies.”

Trump's declaration of emergency is an attempt to create an emergency justifying the deployment of troops. It is an illegal, unjustified use of the US military—and is grounds for impeachment, conviction, and removal from office.

As a point of personal privilege as an Angeleno native, I want to express my anger at the national media for facilitating Trump's misrepresentation of the situation in Los Angeles.

After seeing MSNBC play video on Tuesday of the same two Waymo cars burning (which occurred on Saturday), I drove around my neighborhood to take a video of peaceful city streets with commentary by me. The video is here:

A shareable link is here: The Real Los Angeles 6.10.25

Mayor Karen Bass imposed a curfew over a small area in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday evening. The tiny sector under curfew is a few blocks in Los Angeles County, which covers 4,752 sq. miles. Los Angeles County is roughly three times the size of Rhode Island, twice the size of Delaware, the same size as Connecticut, and half the size of New Jersey.

Imagine 10 blocks under curfew in an area the size of Connecticut because several dozen citizens are standing in front of a federal building—surrounded by 700 Marines, 2,000 National Guard, and the LAPD riot squad. That is the fake emergency that Trump has created by unlawfully deploying federal troops into Los Angeles.

The scale of Los Angeles County also highlights an important point about the limited ability of federal forces, even when they are misused by Trump. It took 700 Marines three days to travel 83 miles from Camp Pendleton to Los Angeles, where they have remained secluded inside a federal building housing a detention center. The Marines occupy one building in a single block of a county spanning 4,752 square miles.

On Tuesday evening, California Governor Gavin Newsom delivered a speech condemning Trump's actions. It deserves to be viewed, in full, by all Americans. The video of the speech is here: Meidas Touch Network, Exclusive: Governor Newsom Addresses State and Nation.

The full text of the speech is here: Governor of California, Democracy at a Crossroads.

Governor Newsom addressed all of Trump's unlawful conduct over the last four months, saying in part:

Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there. Trump and his loyalists thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control. By the way, Trump – he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence, as long as it serves HIM. What more evidence do we need than January 6th? I ask everyone to take the time to reflect on this perilous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution. Perpetrating a unified assault on American traditions. This is a President who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable for corruption and fraud. He’s declared a war on culture, on history, on science – on knowledge itself. Databases, quite literally vanishing. He’s delegitimizing news organizations and assaulting the First Amendment. At the threat of defunding them, he’s dictating what universities can teach. Targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundation of an orderly, civil society. [¶¶] Look, this isn’t just about protests in LA. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first – but it clearly won’t end here. Other states are next. Democracy is next. Democracy is under assault right before our eyes – the moment we’ve feared has arrived. [¶¶] The founding fathers did not live and die to see this moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis said it best: in a democracy, the most important office is not president, it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen. At this moment, we must all stand up and be held to a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please do so peacefully. I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that YOU are the antidote to that fear and anxiety.

Governor Newsom spoke the truth in a powerful speech.1

As before, we must remain disciplined and focused on protesting Trump's unlawful actions. We must avoid blaming members of the US military and LAPD who have been thrust into a chaotic situation against their will.

Stay calm—but show up! Your democracy needs you!

Troops at Fort Bragg jeer Newsom and Biden during Trump speech

Trump gave a partisan speech at Fort Bragg on Tuesday in which he attacked Governor Newsom, Joe Biden, the news media, and Los Angeles. During the speech, members of the US military appeared to jeer and boo at the names of politicians, the media, and Los Angeles. See Raw Story, 'Boo!' Trump prompts Army troops to jeer news media and cheer Robert E. Lee.

As readers of this newsletter know, I have been steadfast in defending the loyalty and professionalism of troops in our all-volunteer military. But each of the military members who jeered and booed elected officials, the news media, and a US city violated the DoD Directive 1344.10, Guidance for Military Personnel, which states, in part,

Per longstanding DoD policy, active duty personnel may not engage in partisan political activities and all military personnel should avoid the inference that their political activities imply or appear to imply DoD sponsorship, approval, or endorsement of a political candidate, campaign, or cause.

The commanders of Fort Bragg failed to maintain good military order by allowing troops under their command to participate in a partisan political rally that attacked Democratic officeholders and their former Commander-in-Chief. Allowing troops under their command to express partisan political viewpoints while in uniform is corrosive to public trust in the professionalism and neutrality of the military. The responsible commanders at Fort Bragg should resign or be disciplined for losing control of their troops.

As an aside, during Trump's speech, he announced that five military bases formerly named after Confederate traitors who killed hundreds of thousands of American soldiers during the Civil War would have their original Confederate names restored.

But because Trump realized that re-naming the bases for Confederate generals was unacceptable even for his white supremacist agenda, Trump's minions located US soldiers who have the same names as the Confederate generals and then renamed the bases after those US soldiers. See Task & Purpose, Trump reverts 7 Army bases to former names with new honorees.

So, for example, the former “Fort Robert E. Lee” will be renamed “Fort Lee” “in honor of Medal of Honor recipient Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Black Buffalo Soldier, for his heroism during the Spanish-American War.”

The cynical ploy to rename military bases to honor Confederate traitors by using the names of real American heroes is despicable.

Concluding Thoughts

Many people are distraught over the events in Los Angeles because they feel we have no control over the situation. While it is true that we cannot control the actions of everyone—especially agitators intent on hijacking peaceful protests—it is not true that we are powerless. We can seize control of the narrative by ensuring that millions of Americans take to the streets on June 14—No Kings Day and Flag Day.

If millions of Americans protest peacefully against Trump's unlawful actions, the media will give primacy to “We, the people,” rather than to the malignant narcissist.

As Governor Newsom said, “You are the antidote to fear and anxiety . . . . In a democracy, the most important office is not president, it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.”

We need only to act in order to overcome our feelings of helplessness and anxiety—and to regain control of the political narrative. Indeed, Trump's actions are those of a leader who is frightened about his grip on power. By acting in unison, we will prevail. Together, there is nothing we cannot do.

Konstantin Toropin and Steve Beynon at Military.com:

It was supposed to be a routine appearance, a visit from the commander in chief to rally the troops, boost morale and celebrate the Army's 250th-birthday week, which culminates with a Washington, D.C., parade slated for Saturday. Instead, what unfolded Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium -- blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.

As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom -- amid the president's controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles -- as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump's diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship. For this story, Military.com reached out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's office as well as the Army and the 82nd Airborne Division directly with a series of questions that ranged from the optics of the event to social media posts showing the sale of Trump campaign merchandise on the base, to the apparent violation of Pentagon policies on political activity in uniform. Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump's recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male. One unit-level message bluntly said "no fat soldiers." "If soldiers have political views that are in opposition to the current administration and they don't want to be in the audience then they need to speak with their leadership and get swapped out," another note to troops said. Service officials declined to comment when asked about the extent to which troops were screened, whether soldiers displaying partisan cheers on television -- a violation of long-standing Pentagon rules -- would be disciplined or if soldiers who objected to participating in the event, citing disagreements with the administration, would be disciplined or admonished in any way. "This has been a bad week for the Army for anyone who cares about us being a neutral institution," one commander at Fort Bragg told Military.com on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation. "This was shameful. I don't expect anything to come out of it, but I hope maybe we can learn from it long term." Experts were quick to come out and say that the public silence from military leadership is a missed opportunity to reinforce the military's nonpartisan nature. Meanwhile, the political leadership at the head of the Defense Department was far from apologetic. Adding to the spectacle, a pop-up shop operated by 365 Campaign, a Tulsa, Oklahoma-based retailer that sells pro-Trump and other conservative-coded memorabilia, was set up on-site with campaign-style merchandise on Army property. Soldiers were seen purchasing clothing and tchotchkes, including "Make America Great Again" chain necklaces to faux credit cards labeled "White Privilege Card: Trumps Everything." Permitting the sale of overtly partisan merchandise on an Army base likely runs afoul of numerous Defense Department regulations aimed at preserving the military's long-standing commitment to political neutrality.  [...] Trump is far from the first president to use the troops as a backdrop for a speech that had political notes. But experts say this speech crossed a line and showed the military's ethics can be vulnerable. [...] However, many of those examples were presidents choosing the setting to speak to the troops about military policy and issues that affected them personally, and with the exceptions of polite applause and laughs at presidential jokes, troops have not been especially vocal or reactive to the rhetoric being offered.

Draft Dodger Donald’s appearance at Fort Bragg this week was a partisan rally disguised as supporting the troops to prepare for the 250th birthday of the Army.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Trump’s gross abuse of the military takes an ugly turn—even for him

My new roommate is a chef, works two days a week here, and goes home to Mendocino/Fort Bragg for the rest of the time.  He came back a day early to pick up a shift and brought me a truly unexpected treat:  Two kinds of freshly-picked-from-under-the-Redwoods-this-morning forest mushrooms:  one he called “Yellow Hedgehog” (from the looks of the underside), and the other “Black Trumpets”.

As a former pro cook, this is truly a treat!  The flavors!  The aroma!  Even raw, they both are in a completely different world from store-bought mushrooms.

The yellow guys taste like BUTTAH!  Serious buttery goodness without the butter. 

The black trumpets are much earthier, and hold up well in soups/stews.

To save all of them for later use, he recommended using a sheet pan, sling some olive oil around, some salt/pepper, and roast for awhile.  Ten minutes at 350 they looked gorgeous and still had their body/shapes.  Letting them cool now, while nibbling, and will bag ‘em for freezing.

Look at how HUGE two of ‘em were.  And the colors!

The Army should never have named installations after former Confederate military officers who fought against the United States, a historian who has long studied the issue says.

And now is the time to correct the error, says Duke University’s Michael Newcity.

“These men were, by definition, traitors who had conducted war against the United States,” said Newcity, deputy director for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies at Duke University.

After moving to North Carolina in 1992, Newcity said in a phone interview with The News & Observer, he began researching why one of the Army’s largest bases, Fort Bragg outside Fayetteville, was named for Gen. Braxton Bragg, one of the top-ranking officers of the Confederate Army.

Fort Bragg is one of 10 Army bases named for Confederates.  They’re all in Southern states.

Half, including Bragg, were established during World War I and half during the 1940s.

“It just always mystified me why the Army, of all people, would have ever have thought it a good idea to name bases after these guys.”

Fort Bragg was established in September 1918, according to its website, as a place where the Army could do year-round artillery training.

Braxton Bragg’s history  

Many of the millions of soldiers and civilians who have trained and worked on the base since then may have not known that it was named after Gen. Braxton Bragg, whom the American Battlefield Trust describes as “one of the most controversial figures of the Confederate army.”

The Trust says Bragg was born on March 22, 1817, in Warrenton, the son of a carpenter whose father was determined to send him to the U.S. Military Academy.

According to the biography, Bragg received an appointment to the academy at age 16 through the political connections of his older brother and graduated fifth in the class of 1837.  He served in the Second Seminole War and the Mexican-American War before resigning from the military and moving to Louisiana to buy and run a sugar plantation, which relied on the labor of at least 125 slaves.

Bragg rejoined the military to serve in the Civil War, during which the Battlefield Trust says he “won partial victories — at places like Perryville, Stones River, and Chickamauga — but never delivered the finishing blow,” in part because his subordinate officers often hated him and refused to obey his battle orders.

Civil War historian Earl Hess wrote a biography of Bragg published by UNC Press in 2016, titled Braxton Bragg: The Most-Hated Man of the Confederacy, and said in a lecture at the Gettysburg College Civil War Institute conference in 2017 that while Bragg was a combative personality, he was unjustly painted by the press of his day as a failure in his personal life and military career.

Bragg was captured in 1865 and paroled in the same year.  He held a series of civilian jobs after the war and died suddenly in Galveston, Texas, in 1876 at the age of 59.

The Congressional Research Service took up the question of whether it was appropriate to keep Bragg’s and other former Confederate generals’ names on modern-day Army installations in 2017, 10 days after a woman was killed in Charlottesville, Va., during a protest over a monument to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

The CRS’s four-page report reiterated a quote from Brig. Gen. Malcolm Frost, who was chief of Army Public Affairs in 2015 when he said the naming of installations is a memorialization of a distinguished individual.

“Every Army installation is named for a soldier who holds a place in our military history,” Frost said, according to the report.  “Accordingly, these historic names represent individuals, not causes or ideologies.”

A preference for a shorter name  

Newcity said the naming of the installations was much simpler than that.

“I think where the Army got itself into real problems was when they needed to create dozens of new camps during World War I,” he said, and it needed an easy method of naming them.

At the time, Gen. William J. Snow was the Army’s chief of field artillery, and it was his job to approve the names of the new facilities being set up to train the soldiers pouring into service.  Newcity says that in his memoirs, Snow wrote that he told his subordinates the installations should be named for officers who had a connection to the place where they were located, and whose names had no more than five letters.

“Camp Zachary Taylor had been created, and Gen. Snow found it annoying to have to deal with a name that long when he was writing out communications,” Newcity said.

The establishment of the training bases coincided with the Jim Crow segregation era and the period during which the majority of Confederate monuments were commissioned and installed, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Military installations located in Southern states, where most of the recruits would be from the South, were named after former Confederate officers.  Installations in the North bore the names of former Union officers.  Newcity said some National Guard camps set up in Southern states where Northern recruits would be sent to train also were named for former Union notables.

As recently as February, Pentagon officials dismissed the possibility of renaming bases bearing the names of Confederate leaders.  But after sustained protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis has drawn new attention to racial inequities, Politico reported that Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy was open to the possibility earlier this week.  Citing a Pentagon source, Politico said Defense Secretary Mark Esper also supported the discussion.

A Fort Bragg spokesman referred calls on the matter to a military spokeswoman in Washington, who did not respond to a request for information about the discussion.

Pres. Donald Trump tweeted Wednesday he would approve no such thing.

“It has been suggested that we should rename as many as 10 of our Legendary Military Bases, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Benning in Georgia, etc.  These Monumental and very Powerful Bases have become part of a Great American Heritage, and a history of Winning, Victory, and Freedom,” the president tweeted.

“The United States of America trained and deployed our HEROES on these Hallowed Grounds, and won two World Wars.  Therefore, my Administration will not even consider the renaming of these Magnificent and Fabled Military Installations.

“Our history as the Greatest Nation in the World will not be tampered with. Respect our Military!” Trump said.

North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis also objected to the idea on Thursday.  The Republican-led Senate Armed Service Committee approved an amendment to the annual defense spending bill that would require the renaming of those bases within three years, according to reports.  Tillis, a Republican, voted against the amendment in a committee voice vote.

The Army accepted Black volunteers during the 1860s but didn’t have its first Black four-star general until 1975.

The military says more than 900,000 Black people served in World War II, but that the armed services didn’t deactivate the last segregated unit until 1954.  In 2016, the U.S. Army had more than 1 million members, including active duty, reserve and National Guard.  Of more than 471,000 active-duty members, 21% were Black, according to Army data.

‘Not the bases that are fabled’  

Fort Bragg is now home to more than 52,000 active-duty soldiers, more than 12,000 reserve and temporary-duty personnel, nearly 9,000 civilian employees and 63,000 military family members, according to the Army.

“I don’t know,” Newcity said.  “I guess maybe I invest too much significance to it. But how can you ask African Americans to fight on behalf of an armed forces that is so insensitive as to have bases named after, and honoring, men who fought to preserve slavery?

“They can say it’s about the individual and not the ideology, and they can talk about reconciliation.  But there is certainly nothing in the record to suggest a spirit of reconciliation motivating the names of these bases, other than perhaps with Southern whites within the U.S. Army.

“There is no aspect of that that involves reconciliation with African Americans.”

Newcity said the president’s suggestion that renaming the bases — some have suggested using the names of Medal of Honor recipients — would be disrespectful or somehow diminish their fabled history is wrong-headed.

“It’s not the bases that are fabled,” Newcity said.  “It’s what the guys on those bases have done that’s fabled.

“That’s what we remember.”

Staff writer Brian Murphy contributed to this report.

James Risen at The Guardian:

Since Donald Trump returned to office this year, his secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, has ripped the new names off a series of US army bases and brought back their old traitorous Confederate names. His actions have angered Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress, prompting a rare rebuke of the Trump administration by the Republican-controlled Congress last Tuesday. The GOP-led House of Representatives armed services committee voted on 15 July to block Hegseth from renaming the bases after Confederates. Two Republicans voted with the Democrats on the committee to pass the measure, which was an amendment to the Pentagon’s budget bill.

“What this administration is doing, particularly this secretary of defense, is sticking his finger in the eye of Congress,” said Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican representative who voted to stop Hegseth. Hegseth’s move elicited bipartisan anger because it flouted the law; Congress passed legislation in January 2021 to create a commission to choose new names for the bases named for Confederates and mandated that its recommendations be implemented by the Pentagon. That law was passed over a veto by Trump in the final days of his first term, and the name changes were later implemented by the Pentagon during the Biden administration.

The law is still on the books, and so in order to return to the old Confederate names, Hegseth has openly played games with their namesakes. The secretary claims he has renamed the bases after American soldiers from throughout US history who were not Confederates. But they all conveniently have the same last names as the original Confederate namesakes of the bases. For example, Fort Bragg is now supposedly named for Roland Bragg, who was an army paratrooper in the second world war; Fort Benning is now supposedly named for Fred Benning, a soldier who served in the army in the first world war.

Before the House vote, Hegseth’s efforts to skirt the law were also challenged in the Senate. In a hearing in June, Angus King, a senator from Maine, told Hegseth that he was returning the bases to the names of “people who took up arms against their country on behalf of slavery”. Hegseth insisted that the Pentagon had found non-Confederates with the same names to stay within “the limits of what Congress allowed us to do”. But during the same hearing, Hegseth briefly dropped the pretense that he wasn’t returning to the original Confederate names. He argued that “there is a legacy, a connection” for veterans with the old names. [...]

By the 21st century, there were still 10 army bases that were named for Confederates, and the Pentagon repeatedly resisted efforts to change their names, arguing that tradition outweighed the fact that the bases were named for traitors who had fought to preserve slavery. The Confederate base names were finally changed after the 2020 George Floyd protests; Fort Bragg became Fort Liberty, while Fort Benning became Fort Moore, named for the Vietnam war hero Hal Moore and his wife, Julia Moore. (Mel Gibson played Hal Moore and Madeleine Stowe played Julia Moore in the 2002 movie We Were Soldiers.) But those new names didn’t survive Trump’s return to office.

Ft. Bragg is the new elephant in the room?

An Escape from Home During Covid-19

My sister and both of our dogs woke up very early, donned our masks and ventured forth. Our goal for the day was San Diego to Berkeley without rush hour traffic and only a rest stop or two for gas and a dog-walk. We made it, only to choke on the air from the fires and the 98 degree heat. As we arrived ahead of schedule we were able to visit with another sister’s grandsons and daughter. A…