True Blue Progress

East Coast progressive grateful that Trump is no longer in the White House but worried that the GOP has become an authoritarian cult of personality and conspiracy theories. This blog is a secondary blog (focused mostly on politics) to my main Contemplating Life, the Universe & Everything blog (which covers a wider range of topics--not just politics).

[bowlby4]

[bowlby4]

[contemplatingoutlander]

Those monuments are to pro-slavery traitors. Period. There's no other honest explanation for them. The fact that she knows that and doesn't care is the problem.

[saywhat-politics]

Trump Administration to Dismantle Ocean Monitoring System

The $368 million network of instruments collecting data in both the Atlantic and Pacific has been critical to climate and ocean research.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/climate/ocean-observatories-initiative.html

[contemplatingoutlander]

According to The New York Times:

Scientists have used data from the system to understand how the ocean is absorbing greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, how changes in ocean temperature such as marine heat waves might affect fisheries or signal bigger shifts in the climate, and coastal flooding along the East Coast. The station in the Irminger Sea has been key to understanding changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current, a global conveyor belt of water that some scientists are concerned may be weakening as a result of climate warming. A collapse of the current could have severe weather effects. [....] Craig McLean, who was the acting chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration during the first Trump term, said the move was part of a pattern in the Trump administration. “This reflects the further lack of understanding that the current administration has of scientific value and scientific merit,” Dr. McLean said. “By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership.” [color emphasis added]

Trump is indebted to the fossil fuel industry for their 2024 election support, so he is doing everything he can to dismantle climate science, regardless of the damage it will do to the planet.

It's like with COVID, when Trump said, “If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

The problem is that even if Trump doesn't allow scientists in this country to measure changes in ocean temperature, it won't stop climate change from happening--it will just stop the US from being able to more accurately predict climate changes, and to be better prepared for them.

source [modified]

[saywhat-politics]

Bari Weiss brings Trumpism to “60 Minutes”

CBS News is pushing out dissenters, replacing them with inexperienced hires

Bari Weiss brings Trumpism to “60 Minutes”

Sophia Tesfaye

Mon, June 1, 2026 at 9:30 AM MST

Bari Weiss is running the Trump playbook at “60 Minutes.” It goes like this: Take an institution that still commands public trust, install loyalists with no relevant experience in positions of authority, fire the people who push back, dress the whole operation in the language of reform — fairness, innovation, a new direction — and you dare anyone to prove that what you’re really doing is building a protection racket.

For years before she landed at CBS News in October, Weiss built a career criticizing ideological conformity and supposed institutional intolerance. Yet in her brief tenure atop the network’s news division, she has presided over exactly the kind of purge-and-replace operation that has become synonymous with Trumpism.

Donald Trump does not govern by expertise; he governs by loyalty and the elimination of dissent, filling critical posts with people whose chief qualification is that they will not tell him no. Weiss has imported this model into the most-watched program in American television.

[2bpoliticallycurious]

Ironically, Bari Weiss is doing everything that she criticized the NY Times of doing, but tenfold. She didn't like working at the Times because she felt they had a liberal bias. But she is taking her conservative bias and getting rid of good journalists and pretty much destroying 60 Minutes.

Walter Cronkite must be turning in his grave.

[robertreich]

Follow the money.

[saywhat-politics]

Happy Pride Month, California!

Governor Gavin Newsom and First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom wish Californians a happy Pride Month.

[saywhat-politics]

Here’s your citation: http://beatty.house.gov/media-center/press-releases/court-reverses-unlawful-renaming-and-halts-shutdown-of-kennedy-center-reaffirming-the-rule-of-law

WASHINGTON, D.C.—U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper issued a ruling reversing the unlawful renaming and halting the planned closure of t

[ladytuarach]

[ladytuarach]

[ladytuarach]

[juicetrump2]

Hegseth Personally Nixed Black and Female Officers’ Promotions

A new report confirms that a recent, conspicuously white and male promotion list was no accident.

[2bpoliticallycurious]

Those officers that Hegseth removed from the promotion list should sue for discrimination.

[bowlby4]

[contemplatingoutlander]

Anti-intellectualism & Spite Cement MAGA's Loyalty to Trump

Below is a (lightly edited) comment to an article in The New York Times about how Trump is destroying clean energy initiatives, and consequently, hurting the country.

The [war against clean energy is the] world's stupidest culture war. Sadly, as far as current American politics goes, the stupid is the point. Of course Trump is repaying oil companies for funding his campaign, and yeah he has a petty reason to hate wind energy, but the biggest problem is that his energy policy isn't costing him votes. Perhaps the Iran war causing a dramatic increase in gas prices is hurting Trump, but his general policy of favouring oil and coal over renewables actually helps him politically. Why? It's as simple as it is awful, and almost no one will talk about it. The real reason MAGA is so loyal to Trump is much greater than any policy. It's even greater than the overt racism. The central principle that ties together all the disparate blocs that comprise the MAGA movement is anti-intellectualism, and the central emotional appeal is spite. [color emphasis added] The main thing Donald Trump learned during his mediocre turn as a student at Wharton is that many, many people were much smarter than him. Some might respond to that realization by working harder at their studies. Trump invented the laughable fiction of his unerring gut that was so superior to the Poindexters' [intellect] he learned to resent and envy and hate. The common thread through MAGA is that same resentment towards people who make them feel inadequate. "The scientists say renewable energy is the future? We'll show them!" Close to half of Americans are people who want to coal roll a Prius with their Dodge Ram turbo diesels. It's the revenge of the stupid. — Rob, Vernon, B.C. The New York Times Comments, May 12, 2026

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” ― Isaac Asimov

______________________ Meme sources: 1) Coal roll Prius: Image & quote; 2) Asimov quote: Statue image, quote & original meme

[bowlby4]

[2bpoliticallycurious]

A balanced budget can happen when you collect taxes from the wealthy and unpaid fines from corporations.

It NEVER happens by giving tax breaks to the wealthy and corporations.

Who knew? 🤷🏻‍♀️

[saywhat-politics]

ABC Blasts FCC Early Renewal Demand as ‘Unconstitutional Retaliation’

In a letter, WABC-TV New York says it ‘submits this license renewal application under protest,” noting the regulator ‘had not demanded early

In a letter, WABC-TV New York says it ‘submits this license renewal application under protest,” noting the regulator ‘had not demanded early renewal in over five decades’

WASHINGTON—The Walt Disney Co.’s ABC-owned stations called a Federal Communications Commission order that they file early license renewals “unlawful, arbitrary, and unconstitutional.”

[2bpoliticallycurious]

“The Order is inconsistent with a legitimate exercise of investigative authority and is plainly incompatible with the First Amendment,” the letter said. “Worse, the Order opens the door to an assault on the Station’s license, while the Commission searches for a legal pretext to achieve its desired goal. This effort to suppress speech under the guise of bureaucratic process must not prevail. WABC files this application without waiving any rights, and calls on the Commission to rescind the Order.” [....] “The only plausible reason to issue the Order is to punish the Station for speech the government does not like,” the letter concluded. “Commissioner Gomez recognized in her May 11, 2026 letter what the record makes plain: The Commission’s actions against Disney and ABC constitute ‘not a series of coincidental regulatory actions but a sustained, coordinated campaign of censorship and control, carried out through the weaponization of the FCC’s authority as a federal regulator and aimed at pressuring a free and independent press and all media into submission.’ This is not a partisan point. Senator Ted Cruz [R-Texas] called one of Chairman Carr’s threats to broadcasters ‘dangerous as hell’ and warned that “[g]overnment officials threatening adverse consequences for disfavored content is an unconstitutional coercion that chills protected speech.’”

Brendan Carr has to go. Ironically, he used to rail against "the censorship cartel." Clearly the only censorship he disapproves of is "fact checking" of right-wing information sources.

Clearly, Carr now has his own right-wing "censorship cartel" called the FCC, which he uses as a cudgel to censor media that he considers to have a "liberal bias." (Of course he would never go after Fox News or other right-wing media for having a "right-wing bias.")

Paging the Supreme Court.

Do you even care about the First Amendment anymore?

[bowlby4]

[ladytuarach]