#1,035: Another Day, Another Decree

Was it really only a couple of months ago that you could get up in the morning and look at the headlines without cringing or feeling nauseous? Remember when the POTUS wasn’t the top (and second and third) story covered on the evening news? When was the last time that “flooding the zone” (wherein receivers flood one side of the field at different levels) was a term known mostly to football aficionados? Today, it is the province of snarky, weirdly-wired political strategists, and connotes overwhelming the opposition (whether political or media) through a determined bombardment of off-the-wall initiatives . . . day in and day out.

One day it’s Felon47 ousting the entire Kennedy Center board, replacing them with his loyalists and then being voted in as Chairman; another day, his press office creates a new media policy, taking credentials away from any reporter/journalist/wire service he feels has treated him poorly. Then there’s HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s announcement that his fiefdom . . . uh, department will soon begin to amass the private medical records of millions of Americans in his new effort to study autism, as well as announcing that “new” vaccines will undergo placebo-controlled trials . . . both of which fly in the face of scientific reason and medical ethics. (n.b. I will be devoting a future piece on placebo-controlled studies in the next several weeks. I’m still trying to figure out how to take on RFK’s utterly troglodytic daydreams without using 4-letter words . . .)

And just when you thought IT and his merry pranksters couldn’t get any further away from reality, it would seem that the White House is planning a massive military parade to celebrate their vaunted leader’s 79th birthday on June 14. If it actually happens, it will include armored vehicles and several thousand troops parading past a reviewing stand on Constitution Avenue near the White House. According to a report published in U.S.A. Today, “Parade units will mark critical mileposts in the Army’s history from soldiers in Revolutionary War attire to Army Rangers and Stryker armored vehicles to commemorate the Global War on Terror.” Plans call for 6,686 soldiers, 50 aircraft, seven bands and 152 vehicles, including 92 categorized as “heavy.” Those include M-1 Abrams tanks and vintage World War II Sherman tanks. Yesterday, in a posting on his TRUTH SOCIAL media platform, he announced that he planned to change the name of Veterans Day on November 11 to “Victory Day for World War I” as well as declaring May 8, the date that Nazi Germany surrendered in 1945, “Victory Day for World War II” instead of VE Day, as it is commonly known in the United States. If this were to take effect, it of course would mean that the vast majority of living veterans would be left out in the cold (there are, to the best of my knowledge no surviving veterans of the “Great War” [the original name for WWI] and less than 1% of the 16.4 million Americans who served during WWII still with us today.)

Those who follow the news closely (and there seem to be far fewer these days) know that many, if not most, of IT’s executive orders are being challenged in the courts. Moreover, many of these federal courts have issued stays or injunctions on his proposed actions. In one recent case, SCOTUS unanimously ruled that the regime “try to release” a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported to a mega-jail in El Salvador. In their unanimous decision, the justices declined to block a lower court’s order to “facilitate” bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Moreover, the lower court judge, Paula Xinis, directed the White House to provide her with daily updates on what steps they are taking to bring Senor Garcia back to the U.S. As of today, the White House has failed to budge . . . despite freely admitting that he was deported due to an “administrative error.” This has all the makings of a constitutional crisis; it brings to mind President Andrew Jackson’s comment on the court’s 1832 decision in Worcester v. Georgia: “ “Justice John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!” (It should be noted that this quote first appeared twenty years after Jackson’s death in newspaper publisher Horace Greely’s 1865 two-volume history of the Civil War. Nonetheless, the sentiment has come down through the ages.)

IT’s flagrant ignoring of judicial fiats is not only leading the United States to a potential Constitutional crisis; it is also having a chilling effect across onthe courts as more and more judges and their families are becoming targets of a new MAGA war. As noted in a report published by Reuters just yesterday, The families of at least 11 of the jurists [who have ruled against the Trump administration] have been targeted with threats and harassment.”

Another day, another decree. Just yesterday, IT signed an executive order that makes me madder than a mosquito in a mannequin factory. Say what? If IT gets his way, he is going to end federal funding for both National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) - two of this nation’s greatest public treasures. Felon47’s stated reason for wielding the executioner’s axe (and it may be anywhere between terribly difficult and unconstitutional for him to do this) is that the two (NPR & PBS) produce biased coverage and what he calls “left-wing” propaganda. in his order, IT instructed the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds public broadcasters in the United States, to end federal funding for NPR & PBS, to the extent allowed by law. Truth be known, the outlets receive only a small portion of their funding from Congress, with the lion’s share coming from donors and sponsors. (Annie and I have long been major contributors to both our local NPR and PBS outlets. I mean, what would an early a.m. be without Morning Edition, a lunchbreak without Fresh Air, a late afternoon-early evening without All Things Considered or a Saturday night without our favorite British comedies (Are You Being Served?, Keeping up appearances, Mr. Bean, Still Open All Hours, and As Time Goes By?)

And lest we forget, most PBS stations air both Sesame Street and the ever-popular (though long gone) Mr. Rogers Neighborhood. NPR is especially important in the rural parts of America; frequently it is the only source of information during weather emergencies.

FYI: The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a taxpayer-backed private entity created by an act of Congress, is funded two years in advance to protect it from political maneuvering. It was created in 1967 to “promote and help support public broadcasting. It’s mission is to ensure universal access to non-commercial, high-quality content and telecommunications services.” In issuing his executive order calling for the CPB board to “cease federal funding for NPR and PBS,” IT claimed that the two entities were ideologically biased: “Neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens," the order says. "The CPB Board shall cancel existing direct funding to the maximum extent allowed by law and shall decline to provide future funding." It should be noted that it is not clear that POTUS has the authority to make such orders to CPB under the law.

CPB is already suing the Trump administration over his executive order seeking to fire three of its five board members; on Friday, it dismissed the validity of the president's new order. "CPB is not a federal executive agency subject to the President's authority," the corporation wrote in a statement issued this past Friday. "Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government."

The CPB noted that the statute Congress passed to create it "expressly forbade 'any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over educational television or radio broadcasting, or over [CPB] or any of its grantees or contractors."

On his social media platform, IT recently blasted the two national public broadcasting networks, posting in all caps: "REPUBLICANS MUST DEFUND AND TOTALLY DISASSOCIATE THEMSELVES FROM NPR & PBS, THE RADICAL LEFT 'MONSTERS' THAT SO BADLY HURT OUR COUNTRY!"

Will these national treasures - NPR and PBS - survive? I believe they shall. Members of Congress should start hearing from their constituents - especially those who live in places where information is scarce - and let them know just how important these two entities are to both their sanity and their safety. Please, if you haven’t made a contribution to your local PBS or NPR station, consider doing so. It is one of the easiest and best investments you can make; the return on your dollars is incalculable. Every civilized democracy in the world has its version of the CPB. . . whether it be the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation, Radio France and the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation (SRG-SSR) which broadcasts in more than 30 languages . . . to name just a few.

People on both sides of the aisle often mourn and and moan about the debasement of the press . . . often asking “why can’t there be people like Walter Cronkite (1916-2009) “the most trusted man in America” reporting the news anymore?”

If Walter were still alive (he passed in 2009 at age 92) and still presenting the news, he would, no doubt, end his nightly broadcast with the familiar words “And that’s the way it is,” and hopefully one of his most important thoughts . . . one that is right up there with Thomas Jefferson:

Freedom of the press is not just important to democracy . . . it IS democracy.