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Boston Globe
a day ago
- Politics
- Boston Globe
In today's protest movement, more than a touch of gray
Nancy F. Goldstein Advertisement Mashpee As a gray-haired protest veteran who participated in the August 1963 March on Washington, I was delighted to read Margaret Morganroth Gullette's op-ed 'Still marching after all these years.' Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up I had noticed the prevalence of war babies and boomers at the Newton 'No Kings' protest on Flag Day and asked my wife, 'Where are the young people?' In contrast to my memory of the protests of the 1960s, there was not an appropriate proportion of young people among the thousands of Newton Centre protesters, and this was somewhat disheartening. Are they inclined toward monarchy or is it just that they can't afford to live in Newton? Harvey Weiner Newton I grew up marching to ban the bomb, for civil rights, and against the Vietnam War. My parents — progressive, secular New York Jews — had met through union organizing. (My mother dated one of the Weavers!) We were one of the relatively few families who hardly experienced a generation gap in the 1960s. Advertisement I often think about my parents today and how they would react to the corruption, authoritarianism, and racism of the Trump administration. They had fought against fascism in World War II and survived the scourges of McCarthyism in the 1950s. Would they be horrified and feel hopeless, as I often do, to watch our country go backward? Or would they see it as a moment, a setback, where the long How I yearn for their wisdom, advice, and fortitude and their reassurance that the country will emerge once again as a beacon of hope and promise. Cyrisse Jaffee Newton
USA Today
7 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump says we have 'too many non-working holidays.' He's right: Rest is for LOSERS!
Like most Americans, I cannot stand work holidays. I want to be in the office, making America great again by working tirelessly for a corporation that squeezes maximum profit out of me. If there's one thing hardworking Americans who support President Donald Trump can agree on, it's that we're not working hard enough and desperately need to eradicate radical Marxist concepts like 'days off' and 'holidays.' That's why I was so proud to read the MAGA president's social media post – which was totally coincidentally sent on Juneteenth, a federal holiday that celebrates the end of slavery – calling for a sharp reduction in rest: 'Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don't want it either! Soon we'll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' Exactly. Like most Americans, I cannot stand work holidays. I want to be in the office, making America great again by working tirelessly for a corporation that squeezes maximum profit out of me as I slowly drift apart from my family. IT'S IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS, PEOPLE! Trump treated Juneteenth like a 'DEI program' he wants to cut Now some libs out there will suggest Trump intentionally posted about getting rid of holidays on Juneteenth because he's doing everything in his power to strip the federal government of anything that suggests non-White people exist and thinks acknowledging the end of slavery is leftist DEI thinking. And some will note that Trump recently issued presidential proclamations honoring Flag Day, National Flag Week and Father's Day while completing ignoring Juneteenth and making it a regular work day at the White House. How dare liberals connect numerous dots that form a straight line and logically conclude that President Trump's actions reflect how he feels. It sounds like they have too much time on their hands, which is why we desperately need to eliminate work holidays and give people less time to think. Opinion: From massive protests to a puny parade, America really let Donald Trump down Trump knows Americans just want to work. And work and work and work. America proudly has the second-lowest number of paid vacation days and the fewest paid leave days of any nation on the planet, and I can't think of a single patriot who would welcome more time off. Opinion alerts: Get columns from your favorite columnists + expert analysis on top issues, delivered straight to your device through the USA TODAY app. Don't have the app? Download it for free from your app store. As Trump said in his post, 'The workers don't want it either!' Damn straight. If there's one person qualified to know what workers want, it's a billionaire who spends huge amounts of time selflessly golfing so that golf club employees and the people who protect him can work more. Opinion: Trump's parade didn't make him feel tough. Maybe a war with Iran will? Trump must immediately do away with ALL federal holidays Because I know President Trump doesn't have a prejudiced bone in his body, and to demonstrate that he wasn't singling out Juneteenth as an unworthy holiday, I'm sure he'll take quick action to eliminate all paid federal holidays, including the Fourth of July, Columbus Day, Christmas and Presidents Day. Because, as Trump wrote, 'It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed.' We MAGA Americans want to work, work, work, and not be burdened by the socialist concept of paid days off. So I'm sure we can all get behind this new slogan, soon to be available on red hats everywhere: 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN – WORK UNTIL DEATH!' Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
San Francisco Chronicle
7 days ago
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
S.F. shouldn't forget where it came from: U.S. Army helped shape city
Missiles are flying in the Mideast air, but I still can't get over the parade to celebrate the Army's 250th anniversary in Washington last weekend. It was Flag Day, as well as President Donald Trump's birthday. The president took the salute himself. Seven thousand troops marched, and the White House said 250,000 patriots watched. The big parade was overshadowed by events including the huge anti-Trump No Kings rallies across the country, political killings in Minnesota, a horrific air crash in India and the Israeli raids on Iran. It nearly rained on the Army's parade, the crowds were smaller than anticipated, the troops seemed dispirited, and the World War II armored vehicles looked like creaky relics. It was all 'a little underwhelming,' a reporter from the British Guardian newspaper wrote. The American social media was full of scorn. The soldiers didn't even march in step, some wrote. I read these statements with some sadness. Given the way things are going, it is possible that some of the soldiers on parade last week may soon be in a war, especially because a lot of them were from infantry units. They could be there tomorrow, or next week. So I watched the parade with a wary eye. Some of it is personal: I used to be a soldier myself, long ago. Like millions of men of my vintage, I was drafted into the Army during the Cold War. I did five years, counting some reserve duty. I disliked the Army — all of us did — but came to respect it. Then later, through one of those turns of fortune, I did two turns as a war correspondent for the Chronicle, both in the Mideast. I was with the Seventh Infantry Regiment during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and my unit was in combat. I saw what these Mideast adventures are like in real life. The city of San Francisco and the region around it has a long connection to armies — first to foreign militaries and then to our own. Soldiers of the Spanish Army were the first Europeans to see San Francisco Bay, and in 1776, a colonial expedition from Mexico led by a lieutenant colonel named Juan Bautista de Anza located the site of Mission San Francisco de Asis and what became the Presidio of San Francisco. The Presidio was a military post for the next 219 years — first Spanish, then Mexican and, finally, an American garrison in 1847. The Presidio was one of the places where this part of California began. As the city and the region grew up around it, the fort by the Golden Gate became the most important military post in the country. The was first created to defend the magnificent harbor from foreign invasion, with cannons ringing the entrance to the harbor at Fort Point and Alcatraz Island. Army troops at the Presidio rode off to the Indian wars, to the conquest of the Philippines. Massive guns in the Marin Headlands could defeat any naval attack. In World War II, the Presidio and Fort Mason were staging areas for the war in the Pacific. More than 2 million soldiers, sailors and Marines sailed out the Golden Gate during World War II, and thousands more in the Korean War. During the Cold War, dozens of Nike missile sites covered the hills around the Bay Area in the tense times when nuclear war with the Soviet Union seemed imminent. It was our last line of defense. The war never came; the Presidio and the other military bases around the bay never fired a shot in anger. The military performed one service that affects everyone in the region to this day. The Army was the steward of an immense tract of open space from the Marin coast down nearly to Santa Cruz County, including Alcatraz and Angel islands, with the Presidio of San Francisco as its crown jewel. Most of it became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, a park nearly three times the size of San Francisco. It was created by citizen activists including Amy Meyer and Edgar Wayburn, plus political leaders such as Phillip Burton and Nancy Pelosi, but it would never have happened without the stewardship of the Army. The Army fired its last cannon salute at day's end on June 23, 1995 — 30 years ago Monday. It was the day the Army turned over the Presidio to the National Park Service. A bugler played 'To the Colors,' and soldiers lowered the flag, slowly, carefully. Then, with a band playing 'The Stars and Stripes Forever' and led by 11 generals, the last U.S. Army soldiers marched from the parade ground out to the Presidio gate at Lyon and Lombard streets. A man who identified himself as John marched on the street, alongside the soldiers. He limped a little. He said a piece of shrapnel from Vietnam still bothered him. Still, he kept up. 'You never forget how to march,' he said. As far as I know, that was the last Army parade in San Francisco.
Daily Record
21-06-2025
- Sport
- Daily Record
Celtic fans' Rangers fixture conspiracy fears are all well and good except for one thing
It's just what we expected. The super computer the SPFL uses to sort out the fixtures has got it in for YOUR team. This American based AI machine clearly hates Celtic. Or Rangers. Or Aberdeen. Or maybe Falkirk. Maybe it's so biased it hates them all. Nothing is impossible in Scottish football. We've even got Hamilton Accies playing at Clyde's former Broadwood home – and Clyde setting up shop in New Douglas Park or whatever it's called these days. Releasing the fixtures into the wild tends to prompt the usual tin foil hat responses. Fans look for conspiracies, search for clues to prove league chiefs are determined to stick a spoke in their wheels. Here's a newsflash folks – everyone needs to play everyone else, the when shouldn't really matter. It does though, of course. And within minutes of the schedule coming out the grumbles started. Celtic punters are up in arms at the indignity of having Flag Day on the Sunday at half four, a full day after their old chums Rangers get up and running. It's all to give Russell Martin a leg up, of course, except Celts have only actually kicked off a title defence on a Saturday once in the last five. Meanwhile Gers supporters are already miffed they have a Saturday night job to start their season – and they have another one the following week, all in the middle of a European qualifying bid. Aberdeen, meanwhile, need to wait a full two days after being hit with a Monday night trek to Tynecastle. Fans love a gripe and the grumbles will only get worse when the penny drops that these fixtures are very much a rough draft. Depending on how our teams do in Europe there could be more shuffling than on barn dancing night at the Tannochside Miners Club. Let's be honest here, when it comes to priorities, the paying public are way down in the list. And it's been that way for a good while. Our clubs need the television revenue so broadcasters call the shots. We can't moan about not having enough games on the box and then whining when they get moved so they can be shown. Take the dough, suffer the hassle. Football clubs want supporters to pony up and get on with it. Buy the season tickets, snap up the replica shirts and scoff the pies and pipe down and pay the loyalty tax. It's exploitation of course it is, but that's the problem with unconditional love, people are powerless to resist. Despite the sinister cynicism, the opening day does still have a thrill about it. The majority of clubs will suffer mainly misery over the following nine months but right up until kick-off there's a blind optimism oozing out of every pore. This coming season will have plenty for folk to get their teeth into. How will Falkirk fare on their top flight return? There's a new gaffer at Motherwell in Jens Berthel Askou who seems interesting, let's see how Stuart Kettlewell gets on at Killie and keep an eye on Steven Pressley at Dundee, where big Elvis is either going to a soaraway success or a runaway train. Then there's Hearts, Hibs, Aberdeen and Dundee United. Very rarely do all over our non-Glasgow city clubs all get their acts together at the same time. There's a weird ying and yang with that lot that dictates one or more has to be honking if any of the others are decent. Right now they all look promising, and for once the league title might actually look like some kind of natural order, unless that's a banned phrase. As for Rangers, Martin could really do with getting off to a flier at Fir Park. Gers fans are scarred from some opening days, like Hamilton Accies in the Going for 55 nightmare under Mark Warburton, the points dropped at Aberdeen and Hearts and the loss at Kilmarnock. The last thing the new boss needs is to be playing catch up right out of the traps. As for Celtic, St Mirren almost spoiled Trophy Day and now get the chance to wreck Flag Day. The SPFL AI might not have an agenda, but it does have a wicked sense of humour.
USA Today
20-06-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Trump says we have too many non-working holidays. He's right: Rest is for LOSERS!
Like most Americans, I cannot stand work holidays. I want to be in the office, making America great again by working tirelessly for a corporation that squeezes maximum profit out of me. If there's one thing hardworking Americans who support President Donald Trump can agree on, it's that we're not working hard enough and desperately need to eradicate radical Marxist concepts like 'days off' and 'holidays.' That's why I was so proud to read the MAGA president's social-media post – which was totally coincidentally sent on Juneteenth, a day that celebrates the end of slavery – calling for a sharp reduction in rest: 'Too many non-working holidays in America. It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed. The workers don't want it either! Soon we'll end up having a holiday for every once working day of the year. It must change if we are going to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!' Exactly. Like most Americans, I cannot stand work holidays. I want to be in the office, making America great again by working tirelessly for a corporation that squeezes maximum profit out of me as I slowly drift apart from my family. IT'S IN THE BILL OF RIGHTS, PEOPLE! Trump treated Juneteenth like a 'DEI program' he wants to cut Now some libs out there will suggest Trump intentionally posted about getting rid of holidays on Juneteenth because he's doing everything in his power to strip the federal government of anything that suggests non-white people exist and thinks acknowledging the end of slavery is leftist DEI thinking. And some will note that Trump recently issued presidential proclamations honoring Flag Day, National Flag Week and Father's Day while completing ignoring Juneteenth and making it a regular work day at the White House. How dare liberals connect numerous dots that form a straight line and logically conclude that President Trump's actions reflect how he feels. It sounds like they have too much time on their hands, which is why we desperately need to eliminate work holidays and give people less time to think. Opinion: From massive protests to a puny parade, America really let Donald Trump down Trump knows Americans just want to work. And work and work and work. America proudly has the second-lowest number of paid vacation days and the fewest paid leave days of any nation on the planet, and I can't think of a single patriot who would welcome more time off. As Trump said in his post, 'The workers don't want it either!' Damn straight. If there's one person qualified to know what workers want, it's a billionaire who spends huge amounts of time selflessly golfing so that golf-club employees and the people who protect him can work more. Opinion: Trump's parade didn't make him feel tough. Maybe a war with Iran will? Trump must immediately do away with ALL federal holidays Because I know President Trump doesn't have a prejudiced bone in his body, and to demonstrate that he wasn't singling out Juneteenth as an unworthy holiday, I'm sure he'll take quick action to eliminate all paid federal holidays, including the Fourth of July, Columbus Day, Christmas and Washington's Birthday. Because, as Trump wrote, 'It is costing our Country $BILLIONS OF DOLLARS to keep all of these businesses closed.' We MAGA Americans want to work, work, work, and not be burdened by the socialist concept of paid days off. So I'm sure we can all get behind this new slogan, soon to be available on red hats everywhere: 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN – WORK UNTIL DEATH!' Follow USA TODAY columnist Rex Huppke on Bluesky at @ and on Facebook at
