News Bytes
2.18.25
High time we call a spade a spade. Thank merciful heaven—people are finally waking up!
This batch of News Bytes includes snippets of articles – most encouraging, some not so much, but all vital information. Follow the links embedded in the titles to read complete articles.
Sources include The Guardian, New York Times, USA Today, and more. There are also links to Valentine’s Substack where we have restacked an article by Robert Reich and another by Michael Moore (including our own comments), and a link to the Supplements Gallery (new!) on our website, with relevant photos and a visual account of Santa Fe, New Mexico’s response to the National Rally on Monday, February 17.
As always, we hope you’ll be interested, encouraged, and above all inspired to find your own ways to fight fascism and a global oligarchy’s plot to control the planet!
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Federal judge says Trump administration violated court order in funds freeze litigation
Judge John McConnell ordered the government to restore frozen funds while citing a Supreme Court case about contempt for noncompliance with court orders.
Feb. 10, 2025, 2:35 PM MST
By Jordan Rubin
UPDATE (Feb. 12, 2025, 9:33 a.m. ET): A federal appeals court panel on Tuesday rejected the Trump administration’s bid to halt a Rhode Island district court judge’s ruling that blocked the federal funds freeze. This latest loss for the administration is not the final word in the case as litigation continues.
What happens if the Trump administration defies court orders? The question is top of mind these days, after statements from Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance broadly raised the possibility. On Monday, we got the beginnings of an answer to the question of how the courts might push back if judges believe their orders aren’t being followed.
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Shutting Down the Country? The New Yorker
“We Might Have to “Shut Down the Country”
Anthony Romero, the A.C.L.U.’s executive director, talks about what he thinks could happen if the Trump Administration defies the authority of the courts.
February 16, 2025
Photograph by Andrew Harnik / Getty
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In less than a month, Donald Trump has come through on his promise to exact retribution on his enemies and to set about overhauling the federal government. Whole agencies are potentially being tossed, to use Elon Musk’s heedless language, into “the wood chipper.” To understate matters radically, Trump has sparked many debates. One of them is how close is the United States to a constitutional crisis: Are we headed toward one, on the brink, or already there?
If there is going to be a concerted resistance to Trump’s blizzard of executive actions, it will likely play out largely in courts across the country and, ultimately, in the Supreme Court. And if the Administration spurns court orders, what happens next will conceivably determine the fate of democracy and the rule of law in our time. Chief Justice John Roberts himself said in December, as the Biden Administration began closing shop and the incoming Trump Administration made its intentions increasingly clear, that in our current politics, we now live with the “specter of open disregard for federal court rulings.” And what would such a conflict look like with MAGA loyalists like Pam Bondi leading the Justice Department, Pete Hegseth leading the Department of Defense, and Kash Patel leading the F.B.I.? Some legal scholars recommend a keep-your-powder-dry attitude for the time being. But there has arguably not been such a potentially dramatic test of the country’s constitutional order since the Civil War era.
The American Civil Liberties Union, a major player in this drama, has been quick to file lawsuits on, among other issues, birthright citizenship, which the Administration seeks to eliminate. Anthony Romero, who is fifty-nine and grew up in public housing in the Bronx and later in New Jersey, has been the executive director of the A.C.L.U. since 2001. I spoke with him recently for The New Yorker Radio Hour. His sense of resolve and confidence were all in evidence. But if things go south and Trump defies the courts, he said, “we’ve got to shut down this country.” What does that mean? Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
(Click on the story’s title to follow the link for the entire conversation.)
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There are many ways Trump could trigger a global collapse. Here’s how to survive if that happens
It could be wildfires, a pandemic or a financial crisis. The super-rich will flee to their bunkers – the rest of us will have to fend for ourselves
Tue 18 Feb 2025 03.00 EST
Though we might find it hard to imagine, we cannot now rule it out: the possibility of systemic collapse in the United States. The degradation of federal government by Donald Trump and Elon Musk could trigger a series of converging and compounding crises, leading to social, financial and industrial failure.
There are several possible mechanisms. Let’s start with an obvious one: their assault on financial regulation. Trump’s appointee to the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Russell Vought, has suspended all the agency’s activity, slashed its budget and could be pursuing Musk’s ambition to “delete” the bureau. The CFPB was established by Congress after the 2008 financial crisis, to protect people from the predatory activity that helped trigger the crash. The signal to the financial sector could not be clearer: “Fill your boots, boys.” A financial crisis in the US would immediately become a global crisis.
But the hazards extend much further. Musk, calling for a “wholesale removal of regulations”, sends his child soldiers to attack government departments stabilising the entire US system. Regulations, though endlessly maligned by corporate and oligarchic propaganda, are all that protect us from multiple disasters. In its initial impacts, deregulation is class war, hitting the poorest and the middle classes at the behest of the rich. As the effects proliferate, it becomes an assault on everyone’s wellbeing.
(Click on the story’s title to follow the link for the entire article.)
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Critical moment in history’: Protests across US target Trump, Musk
USA TODAY
Groups opposed to President Donald Trump’s agenda and his top adviser Elon Musk converged on cities across the nation Monday to express outrage with slogans such as “Not My President’s Day” and “No King’s Day.”
The rallies, led by the 50501 Movement and other organizations, come less than two weeks after the last round of widespread rallies and street marches.
“We witness, with growing alarm, how our constitutional rights are trampled upon, how the authority of the President is being usurped by those who seek to consolidate power for personal gain,” 50501 said in a statement on its website. “Meanwhile, President Trump systematically dismantles the very guardrails designed to ensure accountability across the branches of government.”
The 50501 Movement − 50 states, 50 protests, one day − was started by grassroots organizers spreading the word on Reddit forums, Instagram, Bluesky, Discord and other social websites. 50501 said it has 115,000 members on its Reddit page.
Developments:
∎ Thousands gathered to protest outside the U.S. Capitol, waving flags, carrying protest placards and chanting “This is what democracy looks like!”
∎ In New York City, hundreds of protesters marched behind a banner reading “Stop the GOP coup” and chanted several slogans, including “No one elected Elon Musk!”
∎ In Texas, a crowd gathered in Austin chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Elon Musk has got to go!” and “No justice, no peace!”
∎ In Colorado, a few dozen protesters gathered outside Rocky Mountain National Park carrying signs such as “I speak for the trees” and chanting “No king, no crown, we the people won’t back down.”
(Click on the story’s title to follow the link for the entire article.)
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Hundreds of Artists Call on N.E.A. to Roll Back Trump’s Restrictions
A letter signed by 463 playwrights, poets, dancers, visual artists and others pushes back against new grant requirements that bar the promotion of diversity or “gender ideology.”
“It was important in this moment to signal to the N.E.A. and to anyone else paying attention that artists were aware of what was happening,” said Annie Dorsen, a writer and theater director who spearheaded the letter-writing effort. Credit…Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Feb. 18, 2025 Updated 2:05 p.m. ET
In one of the first signs of collective pushback to the Trump administration’s arts initiatives, several hundred American artists are calling on the National Endowment for the Arts to roll back restrictions on grants to institutions with programming that promotes diversity or “gender ideology.”
Among the 463 writers, poets, dancers, visual artists and others who signed the letter are the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwrights Jackie Sibblies Drury, Lynn Nottage and Paula Vogel. There is also one name with striking historical resonance: Holly Hughes, a performance artist who in 1990 was one of the so-called N.E.A. Four, denied funding by the agency because of concern from conservative critics at the height of that era’s culture wars.
“In some ways this just feels like déjà vu all over again,” Ms. Hughes, now a professor of art and design at the University of Michigan, said in a telephone interview. “These funding restrictions are a good barometer for who is the easy punching bag in American culture at the moment.”
Subscribe to The Times to read as many articles as you like.
Michael Paulson is the theater reporter for The Times.
See more on: U.S. Politics
(Click on the story’s title to follow the link for the entire article.)
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Click on the following links for relevant photos and more good reading: