MAKE IT MAKE SENSE: Trump launches invasion of his own TV screen
What’s behind the Portland incursion, universities impose loyalty tests, hip-hop standards
THE GIST: The battle for Portland — and for January 6
Portland, Oregon, is the latest target of Donald Trump’s militarized ire. Following months of protest against the ICE presence there, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has moved to federalize and deploy 200 Oregon National Guard troops to the city, which has (along with the state) sued to stop the move.
Why Portland, though? It’s the West Coast’s bastion of weird, but demonstrations this summer have been relatively small, far smaller than the large George Floyd-sparked protests that put tens of thousands of Portlanders in the streets. As Anna Griffin of The New York Times reports, the trigger was Trump’s television habit:
A Fox News report in September that intermingled images of the small nightly protests at an ICE facility in Portland over the summer with video from the much larger 2020 protests prompted the president to say he “didn’t know that was still going on,” and to threaten to send in troops.
It’s disturbing enough that Trump’s belief in a “war-ravaged” Portland that is “like living in hell” comes out of a confusion of television and reality. And it’d be bad enough if it were only confusion — of a piece with his posting of an AI-rendered video of himself pitching imaginary miracle cures, or his fixation on elevator sabotage? But he isn’t the only one rewriting reality, and where Trump is turning protestors into insurrectionists, his allies are doing the opposite, the better to confuse the rest of us. Earlier this month, Georgia Republican Congressman Barry Loudermilk relaunched a panel to investigate what “really” happened on January 6, 2021. But what story do congressional Republicans want to tell?
“They can’t even seem to settle on which conspiracy theory they want to advance,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who served on the previous Jan. 6 panel and serves on the new one. “Was it Antifa? Did it not happen at all? Did Donald Trump really win the election? They can’t figure out what it is they want to say, and it’s because it’s just a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories.”
In a way, it doesn’t matter so much what story they choose — whatever direction the investigation goes, it helps obfuscate the history of the event that started in earnest with Trump’s inauguration-day pardon of the participants. The more confusing, the better. But will Americans really develop, as George Orwell wrote of the citizens of 1984’s dystopia, the “ability to BELIEVE that black is white, and more, to KNOW that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary” — or can they learn to see through the fog?
BIGGER PICTURE: Loyalty oaths
The White House expanded its war on American universities this week, with the launch of a broad probe into alleged antisemitism within the Cal State University system, Texas Tech’s overturning of academic freedom to comply with an executive order on gender terminology, and the news of an impending revision of the federal grant allocation process to make awards based on universities’ support for Donald Trump’s policies — rather than, say, scientific merit.
And already embattled Northwestern University barred 300 students from registering for classes because they refused to watch an antisemitism training video; the students wrote in an open letter that the video would “reinforce, rather than reduce, the proliferation of discriminatory bias in our communities.”
It put us in mind of what Wesleyan University president Michael S. Roth told us about the respect universities owe their students, no matter what they might believe:
The first piece I wrote after the inauguration was probably about Khalil, with whom I would not agree politically… But I just could not believe that there wasn’t a general expression of outrage from colleges and universities that a student, or a recently graduated student, would be summarily arrested like that with no indication of any crime being committed…
I see the human cost for those individuals as very high. And I think that the cost for American freedom is enormous because it really tells people, watch what you say on social media. Watch what you say in a school newspaper.
And Northwestern has gone further here, penalizing students not just for what they might say, but for what they might not want to hear. And for what? Tom Perkins reported for The Guardian, “Despite the university requiring students to undergo the training, the Trump administration still cut $790m in research funding.” Compliance buys very little.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT: The new standards
Drummer and bandleader Kassa Overall has been playing at the boundary of jazz and hip hop for most of his career, but on his latest album, Cream, he and his ensemble (Emilio Modeste on soprano saxophone, Tomoki Sanders on tenor, Bendji Allonce on percussion, Matt Wong on electric piano, and Junius Paul on bass) don’t so much blend genres as take on hip-hop classics as if they were standards, with surprisingly timeless results.
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Are we supposed to believe that the FBI is part of antifa???!!! I’m confused.
I grew up on the east coast, with high school and college in the Midwest. I raised my children in the Midwest. I was always an outlier, never fit in. Thirty years ago, I moved to Oregon, and it was like a breath of fresh air. I’m still an outlier, but less so, probably because Oregon has lots of outliers. I’m grateful to be here, and I wish Oregon had never even crossed Trump’s mind. He needs to back off!