24 Years

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It is hard to believe it is 24 years since the 9-11 attack. In many ways, it seems to be ancient history. Many of my students were not yet born on that day. But in other ways, it seems like just yesterday.

I have written about my experience on that day before, and I will not repeat that lengthy reflection now.

But I will share, I think for the first time, the video of my interview that day which appeared on public television. I apologize. The video is a little choppy and grainy.

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This is Sick

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The post above was made on his personal social media account by the man 77 million Americans sent back to the Oval Office. It was repeated by the official account of the White House. It is literally a declaration of war by Donald Trump on a major America City. MAGA apologists have been scrambling to pass it off as a joke, a cute and meaningless quip. It is not.

This is simply disgusting.

The meme Trump posts is a take on a scene from the movie Apocalypse Now, Francis Ford Coppola’s epic set during the war in Vietnam. That’s the war Trump sat out, having found a doctor to write him a medical excuse saying he could not serve because he had “bone spurs.” Fifty-Eight thousand Americans died in that war. Most had been involuntarily drafted.

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Trump’s Economy

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The charts above are certainly things Donald Trump did not want to see. Unemployment rate up. Total employment down. They come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics‘ report on employment in the United States for August. Just last month the July report, showing a slowing economy, led Trump to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer. I wrote a few weeks ago that it was a case of shooting the messenger. Trump falsely claimed downward revisions in the August report were “rigged” to make Republicans look bad. BLS revisions are routine and based on updated employer data. It would be nearly impossible to “rig.”

Just 22,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were added in August. That was below expectations and continued the summer slowdown. The Unemployment Rate rose slightly to 4.3%, up from 4.2% in July. Long-Term Unemployment held steady at 1.93 million, now representing over 25% of all unemployed individuals.

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Trump’s Happy Labor Day

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As the nation celebrates Labor Day, Donald Trump is escalating his attack on the federal workforce by trying to strip union rights from more federal employees.

Trump signed an executive order targeting workers at key federal agencies like the National Weather Service and NASA, arguing for a “national security” exemption to circumvent collective bargaining rights. This is part of Trump’s broader strategy to diminish the power of labor unions, which have long been essential advocates for workers’ rights and protections.

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Trump Invades D.C.

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The tourist season in Washington, officially the “District of Columbia,” begins in April, about the time the cherry blossoms bloom. The nation’s capital is especially beautiful at that time. It is when school children from all over the nation arrive on a traditional trip to see the places they are familiar with from the news and to see the documents, faded though they may be, that were written to create the world’s first Constitutional democratic republic.

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Kill the Messenger

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Every damn day. That’s what it seems like. Every damn day the man seventy-seven million Americans voted back into office does something more outrageous than the day before. It is exhausting.

Trump eviscerates environmental protections. He accuses former President Barack Obama of treason. He rips up labor agreements. He plans to privatize Social Security. He forces the Smithsonian to take down an exhibit that includes his two impeachments. The European Union, Japan, Columbia University, and CBS are all surrendering to him.

And now he fires the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he doesn’t like the jobs numbers.

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Jim Lovell

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The world lost one of its greatest space explorers with the passing of James Arthur “Jim” Lovell Jr., who died peacefully on this week at the age of 97. Lovell embodied the spirit of American exploration and the courage to venture into the unknown that defined the golden age of space exploration.

Lovell’s extraordinary career spanned four spaceflights that helped write the early chapters of humans in space. He was among the first three men to leave Earth’s orbit and journey to the moon as command module pilot of Apollo 8 in December 1968, a mission that gave humanity its first close-up view of the lunar surface and the iconic “Earthrise” photograph that forever changed how we see our home planet.

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