
Presidential Pettiness
Presidents are, like the rest of us, flawed human beings. Many of them had volcanic tempers: Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Joe Biden, among others, reportedly could sling Anglo-Saxonisms with gusto. In public, most of them managed to convey an image of geniality. (Nixon might be the exception there, but he embraced being an uptight square and his admirers found it endearing.) But all of them, regardless of their personality, had at least some notion about government, some sense of what they wanted to accomplish in the most powerful office in the world.
Donald Trump exhibits no such guiding belief. From his first day as a candidate, Trump has appeared animated by anger, fear, and, most of all, pettiness, a small-minded vengefulness that takes the place of actual policy making. It taints the air in the executive branch like a forgotten bag of trash in a warm house on a summer day—even when you can't see it, you know it's there.
Trump's first run for office was itself a kind of petty tantrum. Trump had always wanted to run for president, a wish he expressed as far back as the 1980s. But Trump's journey from pro-abortion-rights New York oligarch to anti-abortion Republican populist picked up speed after President Barack Obama humiliated him at the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association dinner. Trump denies that Obama's jibes moved him to run, but he jumped into the open GOP field once Obama's two terms were coming to an end, and to this day, he remains obsessed with the first and only Black president—to the point that he misspoke on at least one occasion and said that he defeated Obama, not Hillary Clinton, to win his first term.
Trump's second term has been a cavalcade of pettiness; his lieutenants have internalized the president's culture of purges, retribution, and loyalty checks. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth's insistence, for example, on renaming U.S. military bases after Confederate leaders has led to clumsy explanations about how the bases are now named for men who had names that are exactly like the 19th-century traitors'. This kind of explanation is the sort of thing that high-school teachers get from teenage smart alecks who think they're being clever in class.
My colleague Shane Harris recently reported an appalling story about how former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper sponsored a rescue dog to become a working animal at the CIA. He named the dog Susan, after his late wife, an animal lover who volunteered at a local shelter. Clapper was looking forward to attending Susan's graduation ceremony at a CIA facility—but the agency, taking what it believed to be Trump's lead, barred him from even setting foot on CIA property. (Trump despises Clapper, and blames him for what Trump calls 'the Russia hoax,' among other slights against the president.) As Shane wrote: 'The upshot is that an octogenarian Air Force retiree who spent half a century in his nation's service was not allowed to attend a party for a dog he essentially donated to the government and named after his dead wife.'
Meanwhile, those still in government are being harassed and driven out of public service because of who they know—or even what they might be thinking. Over at the FBI, as I wrote earlier this month, Director Kash Patel is reportedly strapping people to polygraph machines to find out whether anyone is saying bad things about him. Michael Feinberg, a senior FBI counterintelligence agent, was told that he could accept a demotion or resign because of his friendship with Peter Strzok, an agent fired years ago who has long been an object of Trump's wrath.
Now Trump wants to fire Fed Chairman Jerome Powell because Powell refuses to lower interest rates and make Trump's economy look better than it is. (Inflation and joblessness are both rising.) Trump can't summarily fire Powell, but the president is taking the Fed chair's opposition so personally that he is already ginning up a baseless accusation that Powell is somehow guilty of malfeasance on a building project, on the theory that it might be the kind of misconduct that would allow Trump to remove him.
Even on matters of grave international importance, Trump governs by emotion rather than any coherent sense of policy. A few weeks ago, the president seemed to change course on the war in Ukraine. He said he would allow arms shipments to continue, and promised last week to have advanced systems such as Patriot missile batteries sent to Ukraine. Trump's own Defense Department was caught flat-footed after repeatedly putting a stop to those shipments. (After all, Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance seemed to be on Vladimir Putin's side after they engaged in an unseemly—and yes, petty— ambush of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House this past winter.)
But Putin had finally done something worse than murdering thousands of Ukrainian civilians and kidnapping Ukrainian children: He had made Donald Trump look like a chump. Putin refused to help Trump fulfill an unwise campaign promise by acceding to a cease-fire. Instead, the Russian president has unleashed some of the most violent attacks of the war, a raised middle finger to the White House and its chief occupant.
You can do a lot of bad things around Trump. You can ignore court orders. You can deport people without due process. You can let Ukrainian rivers fill with the blood of innocent people. But when you make Trump look weak or stupid, you've gone too far.
Trump's promises on Ukraine might amount to very little. Emotional reactions pass quickly, and Trump's attention span is measured in milliseconds; he flip-flops on everything from trade to friendships. So far, some shipments to Ukraine have resumed, but Trump has also offered Putin a respite of 50 days to come to the table—which would be just about the number of days left of good weather for military operations. ('Fifty days' could also be just another version of the way Trump uses 'two weeks' to punt issues that he doesn't want to deal with further downstream.)
Now Trump's attention seems to be on strong-arming the Washington Commanders and Cleveland Guardians football and baseball teams into reclaiming their old names, the Redskins and the Indians. It's possible that Trump is responding to some hidden groundswell of nostalgia. He's also not the first president to get fired up about Washington's home team: Obama was clearly interested in getting rid of the Redskins name, and undoing anything Obama did is something of a Trumpian rule.
More likely, however, Trump is focusing on this small issue in the hopes of picking a racist scab that will occupy the attention of his base—because much of that base right now is deeply angry about a supposed cover-up relating to Trump's former friend and the convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein.
Yet again, when trying to throw red meat to the faithful, Trump picked something small and silly. Trump rules by appeals to grievances—rather than focusing on substantive national problems—because at least some of the MAGA movement revels in that kind of cruelty. This culture-warring behavior helped get him elected, and Trump's voters have been willing to join him on these capricious roller-coaster rides for the first six months of his second term. But roller coasters don't have actual destinations, and sooner or later, even the most dedicated riders will want to get off.
Here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
Today's News
The Pentagon is starting to pull out 700 Marines who were sent to Los Angeles last month, as President Donald Trump's military deployment to the city winds down.
A federal judge appeared to be leaning in favor of Harvard University during today's hearing over Harvard's lawsuit claiming that the Trump administration moved to cut its federal research funding to the university for political reasons.
The Justice Department confirmed to Fox News that it has received a criminal referral from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who alleges that Obama administration officials 'manufactured and politicized intelligence' about Russia's interference in the 2016 election.
Dispatches
Evening Read
Should You Sunscreen Your Cat?
By Katherine J. Wu
For all of the eons that animal life has existed on Earth, the sun has been there too. And for all of those eons, animal life has had only one solution for intense exposure to the sun: evolution. Some creatures have thick, dark skin that's resistant to UV harm; others sprout fur, scales, or feathers that block the sun's rays. Many fish, reptiles, amphibians, and birds may produce a compound that protects their cells against the sun's damaging effects. Hippos, weirdly, ooze a reddish, mucus-y liquid from their pores that absorbs light before it can destroy their skin. And plenty of creatures have evolved behaviors that take advantage of their environment—rolling around in dirt or mud, simply retreating into the shade.
But certain modern animals have sun problems that natural selection can't easily solve.
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USA Today
15 minutes ago
- USA Today
Commanders and Guardians don't need to revert to racist names to be great again
Instead of focusing on the names of professional sports teams, maybe Trump should focus on releasing the Epstein files and lowering egg prices, as he promised. Help me out, Wisconsin. Please, no one tell President Donald Trump that Milwaukee used to have an MLB team called the Braves or that Marquette University used to be known as the Warriors. I don't want to jump into the way-back machine. You might have heard Trump is urging the Washington Commanders and the Cleveland Guardians to revert to their former team names, which included derogatory terms based on racist caricatures. He even suggested that if the Commanders did not change their name back, he would obstruct the NFL team's efforts to build a new $3.7 billion football stadium in Washington, DC. This stance is part of Trump's agenda to "Make America Great Again," even if it offends Native Americans who have criticized the previous names and images for decades. This can be seen as his latest attempt at what he believes is patriotism. I'm afraid he wants to take America so far back to a time when there was separate water fountains for Black and White people. Trump claims Native Americans 'want this to happen' In a July 20 post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump claimed that Native Americans want the names reverted. "There is a big clamoring for this," wrote Trump. "Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago." I'm uncertain how many Native Americans Trump consulted to conclude that "massive numbers" want the name changed back. Even if that were true – which I doubt – it raises the question of why they would like the name to be reverted in the first place. Take our poll: Trump wants Washington Commanders to revert to old name. Should they? | Opinion Forum Following George Floyd's killing by a Minneapolis police officer, there was a renewed effort to remove Confederate statues seen as symbols of slavery and racism and to eliminate racist sports team names. By the end of 2020, nearly 100 Confederate monuments had been taken down, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Efforts begun in the Biden administration to rename offensive and derogatory place names – including many in Wisconsin – were halted by Trump-appointed Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The Washington football team rebranded as the Commanders in 2022 following the controversy surrounding their original name. Similarly, the Cleveland baseball team changed their name to the Guardians in 2021 after going by their original name since 1915. Neither Washington nor Cleveland appears willing to cave to pressure to revert to names they used in the past simply to appease Trump, and they should firmly stand by this decision. Furthermore, if Trump interferes with the Commanders' efforts to secure a new stadium, the NFL should consider legal action. This could prevent Trump from targeting other teams in similar ways. What would stop him from pushing teams to return to leather helmets or reinstating outdated rules intended to protect players? Milwaukee Brewers, Marquette Golden Eagles changed names Imagine what will happen if Trump discovers Milwaukee's past? Before moving to Atlanta in 1966, the MLB franchise used a logo with a laughing Native American with a mohawk and feather. What about my alma mater, Marquette University? Will he pressure the school to change from the Golden Eagles back to 'the Warriors,' which in 1961-71 featured Willie Wampum, a Native American with a giant cartoonish head and Indigenous clothing? I must admit that I had a hard time adjusting to the name changes for Washington and Cleveland. The team change for the nation's capital was especially difficult for me because, as a football historian, I remember the great battles between the Washington (derogatory name) and the Green Bay Packers. Do you remember the 1983 football game between Washington and Green Bay at Lambeau Field, which became the second-highest scoring game in Monday Night Football history? Washington's quarterback, Joe Theismann, and the Packers' quarterback, Lynn Dickey, combined to throw for nearly 800 yards. The Packers won the game 48-47 with a field goal by Jan Stenerud. Opinion: Trump bans AP and words he doesn't like. 'Free speech' was never about the First Amendment. This game quickly made the Washington team my second favorite. Although its logo featured an image of Blackfeet Chief Two Guns White Calf, I didn't find anything wrong with the depiction of the Native American with a red face. For years, I hadn't fully understood the significance and racial implications of the derogatory name and imagery associated. That changed after a conversation with one of my former editors, Ricardo Pimentel. He posed a thought-provoking question: "James, what if the Washington team was called the Washington N-words?" While no one would ever take it that far, his words made me rethink and recognize the impact of such imagery. This is something that Trump should consider before interfering with professional sports. Instead, he might want to focus on delivering on promises he made to the American people, you know about releasing the Jeffrey Epstein case files and lowering egg prices. James E. Causey is an Ideas Lab reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, where this column originally appeared. Reach him at jcausey@ or follow him on X: @jecausey

USA Today
15 minutes ago
- USA Today
Ukraine's Zelenskyy promises new plan to fight corruption following protests
KYIV, July 23 (Reuters) - Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy promised a quick new plan on Wednesday to fight corruption, after a law curbing the independence of anti-graft agencies triggered the first street protests of the war and rare rebukes from European allies. Opposition lawmakers and European officials called on Wednesday for Kyiv to reverse the law, which Zelenskiy signed overnight. It was rushed through parliament on Tuesday a day after the security services arrested two anti-corruption officials for suspected Russian ties. In his nightly televised address, Zelenskiy said the corruption fighting agencies - an investigating agency known as NABU and a prosecutor's office known as SAPO - would continue to function "but without any Russian influence". "It all must be cleansed," he said. In the morning, he met officials including the heads of NABU and SAPO and said he would unveil a new plan to fight corruption within two weeks. More: Putin stalls. Trump changes his mind. Ukraine targets Moscow. Latest on the war. "We hear society," he wrote on Telegram. "We all have a common enemy – the Russian occupiers, and the protection of the Ukrainian state requires sufficient strength of the law enforcement and anti-corruption systems, and therefore a real sense of justice." STRONGEST CRITICISM OF THE WAR The law prompted some of Kyiv's European allies to deliver their strongest criticism of Zelenskiy's government since Russia's invasion in 2022. Several hundred people took to the streets in Kyiv and other large Ukrainian cities late on Tuesday to protest, the first such demonstrations of the war. More: President Trump says Zelenskyy should not target Moscow with strikes "This is complete nonsense from the President's Office," Solomiia Telishevska, 20, a student in Kyiv on holiday, told Reuters. "This contradicts what we are fighting for and what we are striving for, namely to (join) the European Union." The law's critics say the government appears to be trying to curb the work of anti-corruption agencies to protect officials. After decades when Ukraine was seen as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, cleaning up its government has been held up as the most important condition for Kyiv to join the European Union and integrate more broadly with the West. More: Ukraine celebrates Trump's weapons reversal, but the 'devil's in the details' The issue risks antagonising Kyiv's most loyal allies at a particularly risky time, when it is trying to smooth over the relationship with Washington, where President Donald Trump has frequently criticised Zelenskiy. "Ukraine's anti-corruption institutions are vital to its reform path. Restricting them would be a significant setback," Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp said in a post on X. Benjamin Haddad, France's European Affairs minister, said it was not too late to reverse the decision. Yaroslav Zheleznyak, from Ukraine's opposition Holos party, said that he and several other lawmakers would propose a bill "to overturn this big shame that was adopted and signed", and also challenge the law in the Constitutional Court. EUROPEAN DREAM The law was passed a day after Kyiv's SBU domestic security agency one NABU official on suspicion of spying for Moscow and another suspected of illegal Russian business ties. It also conducted sweeping searches and arrests of a number of agency employees on other grounds, including traffic accidents. NABU said that even if Russian infiltration was a problem, the crackdown had gone too far, making it impossible to carry out its mission. Corruption is consistently cited by investors and the general public as one of the key challenges facing Ukraine. Fighting it is a condition attached to billions in Western financial aid. Ukrainian political analysts said the legislation risked undermining society's trust in Zelenskiy during a critical stage of the war against Russia. Fierce fighting rages along more than 1,000 kilometres of the frontline. Russian troops continue their grinding advance in the east and have stepped up near daily attacks on Ukrainian cities with hundreds of drones. The public's aspiration for a European future is vital to sustaining the war effort, said Valerii Pekar, a Kyiv-based analyst: "Only democracy and the European choice give us a chance to win," he posted on Facebook. (Reporting by Olena HarmashEditing by Peter Graff)


Chicago Tribune
15 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Groups that support LGBTQ+ individuals brace for funding cuts that could affect HIV care, prevention
Chicago-area groups that support LGBTQ+ individuals are navigating an uncertain landscape while bracing for federal funding cuts that could affect HIV care and prevention. Cuts outlined in President Donald Trump's proposed 2026 budget mean some groups stand to lose federal funds that support medical services like testing and HIV treatment, as well as nonmedical patient supports such as housing and food subsidies. Research money that goes toward drug development is also on the chopping block. Advocates say that because the virus disproportionately affects transgender, Black and Latino individuals — and prevention efforts have been focused on those communities — HIV funding has taken a hit as diversity, equity and inclusion programs are rolled back. 'When we allocate funds to prioritize the needs of this community, it's a community that has been impacted by health disparities since before we've been counted by the census,' said Terra Campbell, associate director of community relations at LGBTQ+ health care provider Howard Brown Health. 'It's not special treatment. It's investment in the needs of your neighbor and the community.' The Midwest AIDS Training and Education Center's funding will be cut completely in the current budget proposal for fiscal year 2026. It provides training and support for health care professionals working in HIV prevention, care and treatment. Shanett Jones, Illinois program director, estimates the center trains more than 4,000 providers every year. The center receives funding under the Ryan White HIV/AIDS program, the largest federal program for HIV in America. The 2026 budget proposal eliminates the part of the Ryan White program that establishes and funds all AIDS education and training centers across the United States. 'If we do lose this funding, we risk having a less prepared workforce, which leads to delayed diagnosis of people living with HIV,' Jones said. 'This is an infrastructure that, once it's dismantled, it does not come back easily — you can't win the race by slashing the engine.' AIDS Foundation Chicago gets more than 80% of its funding from federal sources. Alongside advocacy work, the foundation provides support services for people living with HIV, including testing and prevention resources, education, housing and health insurance. In 2024, the foundation served more than 8,000 people in the Chicago area. Timothy Jackson, senior director of policy, said the foundation is currently planning for a projected loss of 40% of those funds in the president's 2026 budget request. AIDS Foundation Chicago is partially funded by both Ryan White and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. According to KFF, a nonprofit health policy research organization, the proposed budget cuts all of the CDC's HIV prevention funds. The foundation also receives funding through the Housing Opportunities for Persons with AIDS program, which will also be eliminated in the proposed 2026 budget. These nonmedical services are essential for reducing HIV in Chicago, Jackson said. 'We have to look at all of the other things that make HIV possible, or make the transmission of HIV possible. So that's when we talk about housing, that's when we talk about harm reduction. That's why we talk about transportation and food access and all of these other different things,' he said. AIDS Foundation Chicago filed a lawsuit in February along with two other nonprofits challenging executive orders that sought to end 'diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility' programs and equity-related grants and contracts. 'Our mission is rooted in ending HIV and homelessness in the communities that are most impacted. And it is very difficult to do that when you are not leading with equity,' Jackson said. These organizations' work has already been affected by the National Institutes of Health funding pause earlier this year, and will continue to be affected by cuts to research funding in the planned budget. Jackson said the recent success of the twice-annual HIV prevention shot, lenacapavir, would not have been possible without NIH and CDC funding. 'This administration does not value science. We see that play out over the huge cuts at the CDC, the National Institutes of Health, which all impact HIV and the work around new HIV treatment and prevention modalities,' Jackson said. Even groups that are not largely reliant on federal funding are experiencing the strain of an uncertain economic future. Chris Balthazar, executive director of TaskForce Prevention and Community Services, a health and wellness group serving LGBTQ+ youth in Chicago, says many of his organization's partners are only signing contracts for quarterly periods, instead of their usual 12-month periods, in case funding disappears. These partners are how TaskForce provides many of its services, which include legal and housing aid, HIV and other STD testing, and connecting patients to medical care. 'Imagine what the impact of that is on the ground. How do you sustain a job on a grant that you don't even have a full 12-month contract for?' he said. Additionally, Balthazar explained that while state funding is not being cut as explicitly as federal funding, it is still expected to decline. The federal government partially funds the Illinois and Chicago Departments of Public Health, which then give grants to groups like TaskForce. Since the health departments don't know what sort of funding to expect in the next year, they aren't able to commit to the same grants they have in years previous. 'So much of the state budget comes from the federal budget. And I think that it's scary that, unfortunately, if this continues and nothing is undone, we're going to see major cuts, and we're going to see more and more people who are on the margins of the margins be even more drastically devastated by this,' he said. Both Jackson and Jones said that the most important thing anyone can do for HIV care and prevention in Chicago right now is to call their representatives and express support for continued HIV funding. 'It's reassuring that we have people who are still engaged, who are still advocating, who are still hoping. And when I go and I talk to community groups, I tell them, we can't go back to the '80s,' Jackson said. 'We're going to do what we have always done in 40-plus years of the epidemic: rely on community to get us through.'