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Los Angeles Times
7 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Cane sugar Coke? Bringing back the Redskins? Trump's little gripes serve a larger purpose
With the Jeffrey Epstein controversy still dogging him, President Trump has embraced his favorite distraction: the culture wars. It began when he announced that Coca-Cola was switching to cane sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup. Coke responded with a statement that basically boiled down to: 'Wait, what?' — before announcing the company would release a Trump-approved version of the famous cola. Now, you might think decisions like these should be left up to the companies. After all, it's none of the government's business, and Republicans supposedly believe in free markets. But no! Trump followed up by threatening to block a new stadium for Washington's NFL team unless it changed its name back to the Redskins. He also demanded that Cleveland's baseball team go back to being called the Indians. At first glance, this seems like a ridiculous ploy to distract us from Epstein. And sure, that's part of the story. But here's what Trump understands: A lot of Americans feel like somebody came along and stole all their cool stuff — iconic team names, high-hold hair spray, military bases named after Confederate generals — and replaced them with soulless, modern stuff. 'Guardians,' 'low-flow shower heads,' 'Fort Liberty.' We might laugh at his trivial Coke crusade, but sports teams evoke more primal emotions. You can drink a Coke today and a Pepsi tomorrow. But you can't root for the Indians on Monday and the Detroit Tigers on Tuesday. Not unless you're a psychopath — or someone who wants to get punched in a bar. Team loyalty matters. Trump gets this. When I was a kid, the Redskins won three Super Bowls. There were songs like 'Hail to the Redskins,' team heroes (like John Riggins, Doug Williams and coach Joe Gibbs), and all manner of burgundy and gold merch. It wasn't just a team. It was part of our identity — as well as an excuse to spend time together (even as decades passed without another Super Bowl run). Then one day: poof. Goodbye Redskins. Now imagine that same sense of loss in an already deracinated place like the Rust Belt, where the ball club is a big part of the city's identity, and where they already closed Dad's factory and then had the gall to take his boyhood team's name too. This isn't really about names. It's about nostalgia. Tradition. Identity. It's about trying to keep a tenuous grip on a world you can still recognize, while everything else dissolves into a place where even choosing a bathroom is a political statement. Now, is the name Redskins offensive? Sure. Even though a 2016 Washington Post poll found that 9 out of 10 Native Americans weren't offended, you'd be hard-pressed to defend it on the merits. But the Indians? Come on. Just lose the Chief Wahoo cartoon. This isn't rocket science. So is Trump onto something when it comes to the real-world backlash to overwrought political correctness? Yes. But he's also profiting politically off of people pining for a world that never really existed. I thought about this last fall when Trump worked the fry station and drive-through window at a McDonald's in Pennsylvania. At first, it seemed like just another stunt to troll Kamala Harris (who said she once worked for McDonald's). But then I saw him in that red apron with the yellow piping — still wearing his red tie, of course — and thought: This is Rockwell. This image evokes a time when a white guy of a certain age could sling burgers, go home to his wife and kids, mow his middle-class lawn, crack open a Coca-Cola, and watch the Redskins and the Cowboys. Whether Trump consciously appreciates the power of this imagery, I don't know. But he clearly understands that there is power in yearning, that culture is more primordial than American politics and that refusing to exploit these forces (out of some sense of propriety) would be a sucker's move. To some degree, he's been playing this game for years — think energy efficient lightbulbs, paper straws and his criticism over Apple's decision to get rid of the iPhone home button. If something new comes along, Trump is already up there stoking cultural outrage, blaming the 'woke' left and demanding somebody bring him a Diet Coke. It's what he does. But here's why this actually matters: These little skirmishes don't just distract from the bigger, more dangerous stuff — they enable it. Even as he accuses former President Obama of treason (which is absurd and dangerous), Trump's bond with his supporters is reinforced by these small, almost laughable grievances. He makes them feel seen, defended and nostalgic for a world that (to them, at least) made more sense. That emotional connection with his base is what allows Trump to tell bigger lies and launch bolder attacks without losing them. Coke and the Redskins may seem trivial. But they're the sugar that helps the poison go down. Matt K. Lewis is the author of 'Filthy Rich Politicians' and 'Too Dumb to Fail.'
USA Today
14-07-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Extreme heat is a threat to families. Trump's budget makes it harder to escape.
Eliminating LIHEAP would drive energy poverty to new heights. More families would fall behind. More households would be disconnected. Each summer, millions of low-income Americans suffer in stifling homes, unable to afford the electricity needed to run an air conditioner. And as heat waves become more extreme across the country, we are also seeing record high overnight temperatures – meaning that families who rely on cooler nighttime temperatures for relief from the heat are unable to get cool at all. Each summer, prolonged exposure to extreme heat leads to a rising number of hospitalizations for high blood pressure, cardiovascular strain, dangerous dehydration – and worse. At the same time, the cost of electricity to run air conditioning this summer is rising faster than the overall rate of inflation and is now at the highest level in at least 12 years. Many families simply cannot afford the cost of home energy. In fact, 1 in 6 households are now behind on their utility bills – collectively owing these companies about $24 billion. For these families, falling behind means choosing between electricity and food, between staying cool and buying medicine. This crisis is not confined to the East Coast or the Sunbelt, either. Record-breaking temperatures have reached the Pacific Northwest, Midwest and New England alike. In 2024, we experienced the hottest year on record, and the 10 warmest years have occurred in the most recent decade. These deaths are not front-page tragedies. They happen behind closed doors, in stifling brick walk-ups, in neighborhoods where trees are scarce and concrete radiates heat through the night. Opinion: Extreme heat is killing American workers. What will Trump do about it? A crucial utility aid to poor families is now on the chopping block The Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is the only federal program providing grants to poor families to help them pay their energy bills. Yet President Donald Trump's 2026 budget proposal would eliminate LIHEAP. In 2024 alone, LIHEAP helped nearly 6 million households, many of whom are elderly, disabled or raising young children who would be left vulnerable in homes that are increasingly uninhabitable in the summer heat. And many of these families will be even less able to pay their home energy bills now that Congress has passed the Trump-approved One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which includes significant cuts to food stamps and Medicaid. Eliminating LIHEAP would drive energy poverty to new heights. More families would fall behind. More households would be disconnected. And during the hottest months, those disconnections would lead to prolonged, potentially fatal exposure to extreme temperatures. In the winter, most states that face freezing temperatures have policies to prevent utilities from shutting off customers due to nonpayment, protecting them when temperatures fall to unsafe levels. In the summer, only 19 states and Washington, DC, protect families from unsafe temperatures, and many of those protections are inadequate. At the very least, every state should implement potentially lifesaving shutoff moratoria during the hottest months of the year. Opinion: What is the right temperature to set your AC in the summer? Take our poll. US is too wealthy to permit these tragedies In a country as wealthy as ours, no family should have to choose between cooling their home and putting food on the table. No older person should die quietly in a sweltering apartment. No parent should have to decide between electricity and a prescription. Yet that's exactly what the president's budget proposal would force upon millions of Americans. Congress must reject that proposal to cut LIHEAP: Extreme heat may be a silent killer, but our failure to act would speak volumes. Eliminating LIHEAP would condemn millions of vulnerable families to real and measurable harm – at a moment when the need for support has never been greater. Mark Wolfe is an energy economist and serves as the executive director of the National Energy Assistance Directors Association, representing the state directors of the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, and codirector of the Center on Climate, Energy and Poverty. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the GW University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy.
Balkan Insight
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Balkan Insight
Damian Kocur: 'I don't have the moral right to show the war as it is because I am not Ukrainian'
June 30, 2025 - James Low - Books and Reviews Interviews Promotional poster for Under the Volcano. The sun has set on a Tenerife hotel, and a poolside conga column formed by some of its guests shuffles merrily into frame. In the foreground sit the Kovalenko family. They do not partake in the festivities. The father, Roman, instead, reads aloud the latest accounts of Russia's bombardment of their home country. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began just a few nights ago, on what was supposed to be the last night of the Kovalenkos' holiday. With no flights home available, they are confined to the island, to passivity, until further notice. While the conga image could easily be an allegory for a very current, Trump-approved indifference to Ukrainian suffering, it in fact comes from a film that is almost a year old. Under the Volcano (2024), the prescient sophomore effort from the young Polish director Damian Kocur, was Poland's submission for Best International Feature at this year's Oscars. It continues to play the festival circuit to much acclaim. Kocur, who also co-wrote the script, spoke with me via video link about this startling film's commitment to a faithful portrayal of displacement, its unconventional casting, and what it notably chooses to omit. The beginning of Russia's invasion sets the scene for the film, yet we never see its events directly. Aside from grainy news footage of an apartment block on fire, the unfolding horror shows itself exclusively through the dazed reactions of the Kovalenko family – comprising Roman (Roman Lutskyi), his wife Anastasiia (Anastasiia Karpenko), and his two children from a previous marriage, Sofiia (Sofiia Berezovska) and Fedir (Fedir Pugachov). They desperately receive updates on their phones, call friends and relatives to establish their safety and, powerless to do much else, continue their leisure activities. 'I was thinking that it would be a good idea to speak about the war without showing the physical affects,' Kocur tells me, referring to his thoughts upon reading a real-life newspaper story that then inspired the Kovalenkos' predicament in the film. This is 'because most of the victims [of war] will be purely mental victims, not the physical victims of rockets, bombings, you know, most people suffer in a different way.' As an outside observer of the conflict, Kocur felt obliged to maintain some distance: 'I don't feel I have the moral right to show the war as it is because I am not Ukrainian,' he stresses at several points in our discussion. 'I was trying to combine my own safe position – because I was in Poland at the time, like how my protagonists are not in Ukraine […] with this feeling of guiltiness and helplessness.' The mass-proliferation of violent images online, Kocur contests, has only strengthened the case against a more explicit approach. 'I think nowadays it's easy to get those images of pain, suffering and war. On YouTube, just by clicking a link, you can see dead bodies in Gaza or in Ukraine. I don't think film has the need to do that, to show it. [Film] is more about hiding now, talking about things not in such a direct way. Just like photography took away from painting the need to depict the world realistically, social media has now taken this need away from cinema.' But this is not to say that the film reduces the war to an abstraction. Kocur, aided by the observational, 'slow cinema'-style camerawork of cinematographer Nikita Kuzmenko, ensures that the Kovalenkos' every interaction – with each other or those they meet on the island – bears some of that 'guiltiness and helplessness'. Otherwise banal incidents are tied up in the larger calamity. When Anastasiia pushes an unamused Sofiia into the sea to encourage her to loosen up, it could simply read as a misstep in the already prickly relationship between a stepmother and stepdaughter. Or when Roman beeps at a British tourist blocking a road, the violent reaction that follows is typical 'Brits abroad' fare. But what really frustrates Sofiia is that her phone – her sole means of contacting friends in Ukraine – is in her hand as she falls. And the emasculating image of Roman sat behind the wheel while a stranger assaults the family vehicle comes on the heels of his wife having already probed his willingness to join up to the far less trivial fight that awaits them at home. Kocur acknowledges parallels with Ruben Östlund's Force Majeure (2014), which sees a parent's poor conduct during a controlled avalanche turn a family ski holiday into an existential bind for all involved. He says the films share 'this feeling of, 'we are trying to live normal life in circumstances that don't really allow us to,' because inside there is this kind of dark energy'. For Kocur, this translates to 'old patterns and old conflicts going up like lava in a volcano', hence the film's title (Tenerife's Mount Teide features throughout). But he issues a caveat to the Östlund comparison: 'the situation of my protagonists is even worse. One of their relatives can still die, so the threat is real.' Fittingly, there are moments when a figurative eruption appears inevitable. The presence of Russian holidaymakers at the resort is painful. Sofiia films a Russian woman at the pool before following her to the door of her hotel room. The teenager, reckoning with her sexuality, is given to filming young women on the island, but this moment carries more menace. Anastasiia, for her part, lambasts that woman's family when their cheerfulness at breakfast becomes too much to bear: 'Having a great time?' she asks in disbelief. Kocur derived such exchanges from real accounts of Ukrainians crossing paths with Russians abroad: 'one guy told me that he was sitting on the beach, and he looked at this Russian guy and he thought maybe he should kill him, before the Russian guy [does the same to him] on the front in a couple of months.' This kind of painstaking authenticity is important to Kocur. As with his debut, Bread and Salt , all the roles are filled by non-professional actors (aside from the central married couple). These are 'real people and real emotions', as the director puts it. I learn, somewhat disconcertingly, that when Sofiia breaks down upon hearing carnival fireworks, it is in fact a genuine trauma response based on the actress's experiences in Ukraine: '[Berezovska's reaction] was so strong that I thought to myself, 'we have to keep it in the movie, we have to use it.'' Roman Lutskyi, though an established Ukrainian actor, also draws on his real past during a charming moment of respite where his character tells Sofiia about the romance (and rap battles) that coloured his youth. The film, with its 'slow cinema' pacing and lack of true plot beats aside from the outbreak of war, nonetheless maintains real urgency thanks to these moments of stark naturalism. No less bold is the attention this Polish-Ukrainian collaboration pays to Tenerife's West African refugees. 'My aim wasn't just to make a film about the war in Ukraine, it was more about saying something about displacement,' Kocur says. 'Making a film about displacement without showing those who landed on the same island as my protagonists would just not be right.' Kocur draws parallels between the Kovalenkos and 'maybe the only ones who can really understand their situation, because they lost their homes too'. In doing so, he had in mind the moral implications of his native Poland accepting large numbers of Ukrainian refugees while 'there are so many people from the Middle East and African countries that we don't want to let in'. That even those apparently favoured Ukrainians have since become a target of growing disdain in Poland has perhaps vindicated Kocur's refusal to discriminate. Out of that refusal comes a moving pairing. Sofiia meets a boy named Mike, and the pair sit on the quayside as he recounts the boat crossing that resulted in the death of his best friend, presumably a real story from another non-professional. The equivalence between the groups is not a facile one; Kocur admits that their circumstances are 'maybe not comparable at all'. Indeed, the pair's meeting cannot be called a dialogue in the true sense of the word – Sofiia does not remark on Mike's story, and, amusingly, they cannot agree on who played the male lead in Titanic ('Brad Pitt', Mike insists). But it is a movingly human moment of togetherness. This approach allows the film to transcend the specifics of the events of February 2022. Its concern with human displacement on a more universal level is what shines through in the end. But this is not a cheap or easy move. Kocur's eye for precise, naturalistic detail argues that universality is no barrier to complexity. Tellingly, the otherwise heartening scene where Roman recalls his youth ends on a note of irresolution: 'To victory,' toasts Roman, beer in hand. 'Over what?' asks Sofiia. An easier question, given the circumstances, would be 'over whom?' But this is not a film that poses easy questions. On casting Sofiia, the film's most complex character, Kocur says that 'it's much easier working with teenagers, they don't cheat as much as we do.' Neither does the director cheat his audience, for that matter, and Under the Volcano is all the richer for it. James Low is a freelance writer and recent Cambridge graduate in Slavonic Studies writing about Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. New Eastern Europe is a reader supported publication. Please support us and help us reach our goal of $10,000! We are nearly there. Donate by clicking on the button below. Film, Polish culture, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine at war, Ukrainian diaspora, Ukrainian refugees
Mint
06-06-2025
- Business
- Mint
Paul Weiss Loses Ex-US Attorney Williams After Trump Deal
A former federal prosecutor who joined Paul Weiss in the month leading up to President Trump's second term left for Jenner & Block. New York-based partner Damian Williams will co-chair Jenner's litigation department and investigations, compliance and defense practice, according to the firm's announcement on Friday. He leaves a firm that struck a controversial deal with the Trump administration to avoid punitive sanctions to a firm that sued Trump to block a similar attack. Williams' departure comes only months after he re-joined Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison. Paul Weiss announced Williams' arrival in January, and said he began his legal career as a Paul Weiss associate in 2009. 'Damian led the Southern District with excellence and integrity, and we are excited to welcome him to Jenner as part of our firm's long tradition of hiring former public servants who are zealous and effective advocates,' said Jenner's chair Tom Perrelli, former Associate US Attorney General. A representative for Paul Weiss thanked Williams for his contributions to the firm and wished him well. Paul Weiss roused controversy within the legal community as the first of nine firms to pledge a collective $940 million in free legal services to Trump-approved causes in exchange for avoiding punitive White House sanctions. The firm drew Trump's anger as the former professional home to Mark Pomerantz, who left the firm in 2021 to assist with the Manhattan District Attorney's investigation into Trump's finances. Along with other Trump-targeted firms Perkins Coie, WilmerHale and Susman Godfrey, Jenner sued the Trump administration to reclaim security clearances and access to federal buildings that were threatened by a Trump executive order. Williams served as the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 2021 to 2024, when he left to join Paul Weiss. He oversaw the high-profile prosecutions of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and US Senator Bob Menendez. He was the first Black US Attorney in the history of the New York Southern District. Jenner's announcement said Williams will be a 'driving force' in the firm's litigation and white-collar work. 'Jenner & Block fearlessly advocates for its clients and provides outstanding strategic counsel through their most difficult challenges,' Williams said. 'I've seen firsthand how this firm expertly tackles the toughest cases and lives its values. I'm excited to join a team with an extraordinary depth of legal talent that doesn't shy away from hard fights—and delivers results that matter.' Paul Weiss has sustained a string of partner exits in the wake of the announcement of its deal with the Trump administration. Litigation department co-chair Karen Dunn, an outside counsel to Google and former campaign adviser to Kamala Harris, left with three partners last month to start a new litigation boutique. Dunn and colleagues have represented Apple Inc. and Facebook. Their exits followed Jeh Johnson, Homeland Security Secretary under President Barack Obama, and Steve Banks, who oversaw the firm's pro bono practice. Trump issued an executive order against the firm March 14, which he rescinded within a week when firm chairman Brad Karp said the firm would devote $40 million in free legal services to mutually-agreed upon causes during Trump's presidency. Karp's pledge was expanded upon by Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom's March 28 deal with the president, which saw the firm promise $100 million in free legal services. Within a month, seven other firms, including Kirkland & Ellis and Latham & Watkins, made similar pledges, some as high as $125 million. The firms, as part of their deals, also promised not to engage in 'illegal DEI' activities and commit to 'merit-based' hiring. Skadden also faced departures in the wake of its deal with Trump, one being Kathleen Rubenstein, executive director of the Skadden Foundation, resigning from the public interest law group. To contact the reporter on this story: Justin Henry in Washington DC at jhenry@ To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chris Opfer at copfer@ John Hughes at jhughes@ Alessandra Rafferty at arafferty@ This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
New York Post
02-06-2025
- Business
- New York Post
Trump's art of the steel deal, Don's sensible national-park cuts and other commentary
From the right: Trump's Art of the Steel Deal 'Nippon Steel is buying US Steel for $15 billion and has agreed to let the American company remain American-operated' in a Trump-approved deal that 'addressed concerns about national security while securing economic gains for the nation,' cheers the Washington Examiner's editorial board. 'Local unions have overwhelmingly backed the deal,' which lets Nippon Steel become 'the world's second-largest steel producer, allowing it to compete with China's Baowu Steel Group, and gaining access to the American market, one of the world's largest.' Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.) called the bargain a ' 'BFD' that he supports enthusiastically.' Advertisement Wow: 'How often do the terms of a corporate merger unite Republicans, Democrats, and union leaders, while creating tens of thousands of jobs and reducing the market dominance of the nation's greatest geopolitical foe?' Libertarian: Don's Sensible National-Park Cuts 'Why should the National Park Service be funding so many sites,' including some that aren't national parks? 'And what would happen if some of those properties were transferred to state or tribal management?' asks Reason's Liz Wolfe. 'The Trump administration is asking those sensible questions, and is proposing to cut $1.2 billion from the agency's budget' by turning over some niche sites to local management. Advertisement 'It's always been unclear to me why we expect taxpayers across the country to pay for the upkeep and management of' sites 'they will never visit and have never heard of.' Some may end up closing without federal funding, 'but if there's no political will within the state to fund these sites, maybe that's a sign . . . that they shouldn't continue to be publicly operated.' Get opinions and commentary from our columnists Subscribe to our daily Post Opinion newsletter! Thanks for signing up! Enter your email address Please provide a valid email address. By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Never miss a story. Check out more newsletters Labor beat: Cali's $30 Minimum-Wage Oops Los Angeles is 'on track' to miss out on hosting the 2028 Summer Olympics, thanks to 'a new $30 minimum wage for hotel and airport workers passed at the behest of the city's hospitality unions,' laments Michael Saltsman at The Wall Street Journal. Advertisement LA's Olympic bid promised 'enough hotel rooms for athletes, spectators and officials' at given rates, but eight hotels have now pulled out, 'citing the unworkable economics,' and a development that would create 395 rooms was canned. All of which means less tax revenue for Los Angeles. Meanwhile, California wants $40 billion from Uncle Sam to help LA recover from the wildfires. Congress should condition aid 'on a moratorium on any mandates, including the $30 minimum wage, that would put recovery and taxpayer dollars at risk.' From the left: Ignoring the Media's 'Original Sin' The Jake Tapper-Alex Thompson book 'Original Sin' details how President Biden's team 'concealed his cognitive and physical decline,' but 'shifts blame to Democrats, ignoring how the media aided the cover-up,' grumbles Nolan Higdon at The Hill. Advertisement 'Credibility in journalism — hard to earn, easy to lose — once demanded rigorous objectivity.' No doubt, the media's 'abandonment of objectivity accelerated with Donald Trump's rise.' Despite Tapper's own efforts to portray 'himself as deceived' and 'positioning his book as a reckoning,' it 'evades the real question: did this cover-up begin before the election?' 'The answer is yes — and Tapper was part of it.' The public won't buy journalists' supposed return to 'objectivity' because the media's lost credibility 'isn't easily reclaimed.' Conservative: RIP, Monetary Hero Stanley Fischer Commentary's Seth Mandel celebrates the 'great warrior of monetary policy,' Stanley Fischer, dead at 81, who 'saved Israel's economy twice.' First his advice helped end the Jewish State's mid-1980s inflationary spiral with a bipartisan plan that 'cut government, negotiated limits with the uber-powerful Histadrut labor union, and reined in Israel's money-printing habits.' And, as 'the governor of the Bank of Israel' when 'the global financial crisis hit,' he deftly manipulated the value of the shekel 'to stabilize investment' without putting 'stress on Israel's exports.' He was so impressive 'that several Arab states backed him in an unsuccessful bid to lead the IMF in 2011,' though 'he was an Israeli citizen and Israel's top financial figure at the time.' — Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
