May 20, 2025

Tuesday, May 20, 2025. Annette’s Roundup for Democracy.

Joe’s Prostate Cancer.

Trumpian responses to Joe’s cancer.

The response we know Trump didn’t write.

The response we know Trump Jr. did.

How ignorant can one man be? “Dr.” Biden? Stage five? OY.

Well, yesterday, his Dad said one more thing - “Biden has stage 9 cancer.” He said it several times.

Trump on Biden's cancer diagnosis: "I'm surprised that the public wasn't notified a long time ago, because to get to stage 9, that's a long time ... I did a very complete physical, including cognitive tests. I'm proud to announced I aced it."

The apple doesn’t fall far.

One nice thing.

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Good News, reported by the Wall Street Journal.

Also, a reminder to wake up each morning to fight.

Make it stick! Make it stick! Make it stick!

The Coalition That Powered Trump to Victory in 2024 Is Starting to Fray

President Trump’s victory in 2024 not only put a Republican in the White House but gave the party hope that its appeal was attracting new groups of voters. Trump drew unexpectedly large shares of young voters and Black and Latino voters—groups that had largely resisted the GOP.

After broadening the Republican coalition, Trump is at risk of shrinking it. Trump came close to winning young voters—those under age 30—in 2024, a sharp reversal from his 25-point loss among young voters in 2020. He also made gains among Black, Hispanic and other minority groups, losing by a far smaller margin than in 2020. And he improved his showing among seniors.

Now that he is back in the White House, these groups have grown increasingly unhappy with his job performance.

White working-class voters

Since taking office, Trump’s job-approval rating has fallen across all segments of the public—even among his most ardent supporters. Now he draws positive job ratings from only a few major voter groups. One is the group that has backed Trump since he became a national political figure: white, working-class voters without a four-year degree.

Even among white, working-class voters, Trump now draws equivocal or even negative job ratings among women. His support remains strong, by contrast, among white men who don’t have a four-year degree.

Young and nonwhite voters

Trump’s improvement among young voters, those under age 30, was one of the noteworthy developments in the election. He lost among such voters by only 4 percentage points, a large survey of the electorate called AP VoteCast found. Now, disapproval outweighs approval by 10 points and even more than 20 points among young people.

Similarly, voters who are Black or Latino, and those from minority groups overall, give increasingly negative assessments of the president’s performance.

White voters

White voters account for at least 70% of the electorate, and Trump won them by 14 percentage points in 2024, AP VoteCast found. They initially held a positive view of Trump’s job performance. Now, some polls find his rating to be more negative than positive.

The economy

For many Americans Trump has always been an unacceptable choice for president. But among other voters, analysts say, the polls reflect an initial impression of his presidency, not a final conclusion.

“ It’s still early in his term, and there’s a group of people who have a ‘wait and see’ attitude,” said John Anzalone, a Democratic pollster who has worked for former President Joe Biden and now co-directs Wall Street Journal political polls. Views could change as voters learn whether Trump’s tariffs produce a manufacturing resurgence, as promised, or lead to higher prices, as many Americans have feared. In late March, about one-third of voters said that inflation wasn’t a problem for them now, but that it could be a problem in the future.

Still, sinking approval ratings give the president the challenging assignment of persuading people to change their minds, said David Winston, a Republican strategist and pollster.

“Once people form an initial impression, you have to do things to change it. That’s not easy to do,” he said. “But it’s an initial position, not a final conclusion, like where people were with Biden” in judging the former president harshly by the end of his term.

One important factor will be how the public comes to view Trump’s handling of the economy.

During Trump’s first term, voters often saw Trump as a strong steward of the economy, even when they didn’t approve of his overall job performance. Today, Trump’s image as a good manager of the economy is being tarnished.

That has led to a reversal in public opinion: For the first time, Trump is drawing lower marks for his handling of the economy than he is for his overall management of the presidency.

Elections are about making choices among candidates—a different process than assessing a president’s job performance. Many people with negative views of the president today still wouldn’t back his 2024 Democratic opponent if they could vote again, and they might not back a Democrat in next year’s midterms.

Trump retains strong support among his 2024 voters, with job approval topping 80% in many polls and positive assessments outweighing negative ones by 70 points or more.

A challenge for Republicans is to make sure that Trump supporters vote in the midterms. Turnout always falls in a midterm year. Trump won’t be on the ballot then, and so some of his supporters might see little reason to vote.

Sources: Economist/YouGov polls of 1,785 adults conducted April 25–28; margin of error: +/–3.2 percentage points. CNN polls of 1,678 adults conducted April 17–24; margin of error: +/–2.9 pct. pts. Fox News polls of 1,104 registered voters conducted April 18–21; margin of error: +/–3 pct. pts. Washington Post polls, most recently a Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll of 2,464 adults conducted April 18–22; margin of error: +/–2 pct. pts. NPR/PBS/Marist polls of 1,439 adults conducted April 21–23; margin of error: +/–3.3 pct. pts. (WSJ)

Head of CBS News to Depart Amid Tensions With Trump.

Wendy McMahon, the president of CBS News and Stations, had allied herself with Bill Owens, the “60 Minutes” executive producer who recently resigned.

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No recording in the Supreme Court but the news got out about what Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett did to the Chief Justice John Roberts.

One more thing.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court allowed Trump to remove temporary protected status of more than 300,000 immigrants from Venezuela. The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the justices rule on emergency applications. No vote count was listed, although Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson noted that she would deny the administration’s request. (Source. New York Times)

Clearly, Justice Roberts didn’t learn much from his encounter with the Congresswoman.

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Pope Leo’s inaugural Mass.

Trump? Well, he is crazy. And dangerous.

Trump Preps for Putin Call With Another Meltdown Over Bruce Springsteen.

President Donald Trump has demanded an investigation into Bruce Springsteen and other artists who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, after the singer has repeatedly told crowds at his concerts that the president is an “unfit” man running “a rogue government.”

The president — who is scheduled to hold a high-stakes phone call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin today — wrote on Truth Social early the same morning that he was “going to call for a major investigation” into what compensation Springsteen received from the 2024 Harris campaign.

“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION?” Trump wrote.

The president, who had previously used Springsteen’s music at his rallies despite objections from the artist, went on to accuse the Harris campaign of paying for endorsements from artists like Springsteen, Beyoncé, and Bono, under the guise of providing entertainment at her rallies. “IT’S NOT LEGAL! For these unpatriotic ‘entertainers,’ this was just a CORRUPT & UNLAWFUL way to capitalize on a broken system. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!”

Artists like Beyoncé, Eminem, Oprah, and others have denied right-wing claims that they were offered millions to endorse Harris.

Trump has been locked in a public back and forth with Springsteen over the artist’s criticism of his regime. After the “Born in the USA” rocker told concertgoers in Europe that the United States is currently in the hands of a “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration,” Trump responded last week with a bizarre warning for Springsteen: “This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT until he gets back into the Country, that’s just ‘standard fare.’ Then we’ll all see how it goes for him!”

Springsteen, unfettered, responded to the thinly veiled threats by telling fans in Manchester, England, over the weekend: “In America, my home, they’re persecuting people for their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. That’s happening now.”

It’s apparently happening to Springsteen, who now might be placed under investigation for the transgression of supporting the political candidate of his choice and exercising his constitutionally protected right to criticize his government. (Rolling Stone)

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The Racism and Xenophobia at the center of Trump’s fight against “antisemitism.”

Anti-Islamic bigotry is at the core of Right-Wing thinking in this Administration.

Trump 2’s declared fight against antisemitism is just the flip side of Trump 1’s anti-Muslim ban, with his embrace of white Christian nationalism, though in reality, for Trump himself, whiteness is primary and Christianity is nominal.

Trump’s fight against higher education, heightened by whatever sick goal of revenge propels him, is one fallout of this worldview.

But of course, boys of all stripes found communality over love of maleness and wealth in Saudi Arabia and UAE this past week.

How quickly shallow Trump abandons white Christian ideology to meet the needs of his greedy appetites.

The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement.

Even before President Trump was re-elected, the Heritage Foundation, best known for Project 2025, set out to destroy pro-Palestinian activism in the United States.

The Heritage Foundation’s office in Washington, D.C.

In late April, the Heritage Foundation dispatched a team to Israel to meet with power players in Israeli politics, including the country’s foreign and defense secretaries and the U.S. ambassador, Mike Huckabee.

The conservative Washington-based think tank is best known for spearheading Project 2025, a proposed blueprint for President Trump’s second term that called for reshaping the federal government and an extreme expansion of presidential power.

Now the Heritage contingent was in Israel, in part, to discuss another contentious policy paper: Project Esther, the foundation’s proposal to rapidly dismantle the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States, along with its support at schools and universities, at progressive organizations and in Congress.

Drafted in the wake of Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023 and the mounting protests against the war in Gaza, Project Esther outlined an ambitious plan to fight antisemitism by branding a broad range of critics of Israel as “effectively a terrorist support network,” so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized and otherwise excluded from what it considered “open society.”

Project Esther’s architects envisioned outcomes that at the time might have seemed far-fetched. Curriculum it believed to be sympathetic to a “Hamas support” narrative would be taken out of schools and universities, and “supporting faculty” would be removed. Social media would be purged of content deemed to be antisemitic. Institutions would lose public funding. Foreign students who pushed for Palestinian rights would have their visas revoked, or be deported.

Once a sympathetic presidential administration was in place, the plan said, “We will organize rapidly, take immediate action to ‘stop the bleeding,’ and achieve all objectives within two years.”

Now, four months after Mr. Trump took office, Heritage Foundation leaders are taking an early victory lap.

Since the inauguration, the White House and other Republicans have called for actions that appear to mirror more than half of Project Esther’s proposals, a New York Times analysis shows, including threats to withhold billions in federal funding at universities and attempts to deport legal residents.

In interviews with The Times — the Heritage Foundation’s first public comments since Mr. Trump took office about its blueprint for shaping U.S. public opinion on Israel — Project Esther’s architects said there were clear parallels between their plan and recent actions against universities and pro-Palestinian demonstrators on both a state and a federal level.

Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser and the vice president at the Heritage Foundation who oversees Project Esther.

“The phase we’re in now is starting to execute some of the lines of effort in terms of legislative, legal and financial penalties for what we consider to be material support for terrorism,” said Victoria Coates, a former deputy national security adviser to Mr. Trump and the vice president at Heritage who oversees Project Esther.

Heritage officials said they did not know whether the White House, which has its own antisemitism task force, had used Project Esther as a guide. Administration officials declined to discuss it. But Robert Greenway, a Heritage national security director who coauthored Project Esther, said it was “no coincidence that we called for a series of actions to take place privately and publicly, and they are now happening.”

Until now, key details about Project Esther, including the identities of its authors, had not been widely disclosed. The Times reviewed confidential records preceding Project Esther’s release and interviewed Heritage employees, members of the task force that inspired the blueprint and others associated with the initiative to present a clearer understanding of Project Esther’s genesis, aims and impact.

Republican and Democratic administrations alike have long supported and funded Israel as a crucial ally. And there have been bipartisan efforts to counter criticism of Israel by labeling a range of speech and organizing in support of Palestinian rights as support for terrorism. But Project Esther aims to go further, equating actions such as participating in pro-Palestinian campus protests with providing “material support” for terrorism, a broad legal construct that can lead to prison time, deportations, civil penalties and other serious consequences.

“Project Esther changed the paradigm by associating anyone who opposes Israeli policies with the ‘Hamas Support Network,’” said Jonathan Jacoby, the national director of the Nexus Project, a watchdog group that works to combat antisemitism and protect open debate. “It’s no longer about ideology or politics; it’s about terrorism and threats to American national security.”

Heritage describes Project Esther as a “groundbreaking” national strategy to fight antisemitism that aims not to censor opinions but to hold people it deems to be supporters of Hamas, a designated terrorist group, responsible for their actions. But critics such as Mr. Jacoby say the think tank is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to advance its broader agenda of radically reshaping higher education and crushing progressive movements more generally.

Project Esther exclusively focuses on antisemitism on the left, ignoring antisemitic harassment and violence from the right. It has drawn criticism from many Jewish organizations amid increasing calls for them to push back against the Trump administration.

“Trump is pulling straight from the authoritarian playbook, using tools of repression first against those organizing for Palestinian rights,” said Stefanie Fox, the executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. “And in so doing, sharpening those tools for use against anyone and everyone who challenges his fascist agenda.”

Her group is one of those described by Project Esther as a “Hamas Support Organization,” or an H.S.O. — a label Ms. Fox strongly rejected.

An open letter from three dozen former leaders of major Jewish establishment groups, including a former national chair of the Anti-Defamation League, recently warned that “a range of actors are using a purported concern about Jewish safety as a cudgel to weaken higher education, due process, checks and balances, freedom of speech and the press.” It called on Jewish leaders and institutions “to resist the exploitation of Jewish fears and publicly join with other organizations that are battling to preserve the guardrails of democracy.”

‘The Gloves Will Come Off Very Quickly’

The months following the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, saw college campuses descend into a state of chaotic division and turmoil, with endless protests and counterprotests. Pro-Palestinian advocates called for an end to the Israeli occupation and its retaliatory war campaign, while supporters of Israel defended the country’s right to self-defense and said they were harassed by their classmates and didn’t feel safe on campuses.

Soon after, four well-connected, conservative supporters of Israel met virtually to address these events.

Only one was Jewish: Ellie Cohanim, Mr. Trump’s former antisemitism envoy. She said she was grateful when the three men reached out to her and affectionately called them her “Christian friends.” Two were leaders of Christian Zionist groups: Luke Moon, executive director of the Philos Project, and Mario Bramnick, the president of the Latino Coalition for Israel and an evangelical adviser to Mr. Trump. The fourth was James Carafano, senior counselor to the president at the Heritage Foundation.

Some evangelical Christians have increasingly aligned themselves with conservative political forces in Israel, supporting their claims of biblical dominion over contested Palestinian territories. Many feel a kinship with Israel because of shared religious heritage. But some also believe that supporting Israel will hasten biblical end times, or advance Christianity’s global influence.

The think tank, which has influenced Republican presidential administrations since the Reagan era, has long supported Israel.

In recent years, this support took on a new dimension, as the foundation blamed the diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that gained prominence after George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, along with other progressive movements, for rising reports of antisemitism on campuses.

The Biden administration had already released what it called the first national strategy to combat antisemitism, vowing to address the issue. (The A.D.L. counted over 9,000 antisemitic incidents across the United States in 2024, the highest number on record since it began tracking them 46 years ago.)

But the group decided to begin their own national task force and released a statement of purpose that affirmed a definition of antisemitism that is hotly debated because it considers some broad criticisms of Israel to be antisemitic.

Statement of Purpose

Antisemitism: We recognize any attempt to delegitimize, boycott, divest, or sanction the modern [state] of Israel or bar Jews from participating in academic or communal associations must be condemned. 

We recognize that anti-Zionism and antisemitism are the different manifestations of the same hatred against Jewish people.

Dozens of groups joined the task force, but an “overwhelming number” had something in common, Mr. Carafano said during a January 2024 meeting: They weren’t Jewish. A short list of initial members that Heritage posted online consisted mainly of conservative and Christian organizations.

Heritage built on the task force’s recommendations to write Project Esther, which is named in honor of the biblical queen who is celebrated for saving the Jewish people.

By summer 2024, Heritage had finalized a national strategy that aimed to convince the public to perceive the pro-Palestinian movement in the United States as part of a global “Hamas Support Network” that “poses a threat not simply to American Jewry, but to America itself.”

It singled out anti-Zionist groups that had organized pro-Palestinian protests, such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Students for Justice in Palestine, but the intended targets stretched much further. In pitch materials for potential donors, Heritage presented an illustration of a pyramid topped by “progressive ‘elites’ leading the way,” which included Jewish billionaires such as the philanthropist George Soros and Governor JB Pritzker of Illinois.

It asserted that philanthropic organizations such as the Tides Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund were backing the antisemitism “ecosystem.” Later, the Heritage Foundation added the names of what it called “aligned” politicians such as Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

The pitch materials, which were first reported on by The Forward, included goals such as reforming academia (defunding institutions, denying certain pro-Palestinian groups access to campuses and removing faculty) and lawfare (filing civil lawsuits, identifying foreigners vulnerable to deportation). Other initiatives included plans to enlist support from state and local law enforcement and to “generate uncomfortable conditions” so that groups could not conduct protests.

Esther’s Architects

Ms. Coates said that her colleagues Mr. Greenway and Daniel Flesch were the co-authors of Project Esther.

Mr. Greenway, a former senior National Security Council official, previously ran the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a nonprofit founded by Jared Kushner that sought to normalize relations between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries.

Mr. Flesch is a policy analyst at the foundation who has written about his experience as an American Jew who served in the Israeli Defense Forces.

Project Esther also benefited from a private advisory committee that included unnamed former National Security Council members from the first Trump administration, Ms. Coates said. Their expertise “created a more compelling product” and gave the plan “a lot more grip and substance than we would have had otherwise,” she said.

Ms. Coates holds three degrees in Italian Renaissance art history, and planned on being a professional academic until she grew uncomfortable with what she has described as a “very noxious anti-Western worldview” at her alma mater, the University of Pennsylvania.

Blogging about missile defense led to a job for former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and then roles with other Republican politicians before she joined Mr. Trump’s transition team and held various national security roles in his first administration.

Two months before Oct. 7, Ms. Coates became the vice president of a division of Heritage that focuses on foreign policy and national security. But her interest in Israel, and in fighting antisemitism, long predated that role, she said. She traces it back to her grandfather, who fought in the D-Day invasion during World War II. “I come from a line of Nazi hunters,” she said.

In her recently published book, “The Battle for the Jewish State,” Ms. Coates, who described herself as “a Christian and a religious person,” wrote that “the biblical values on which our civilization rests have always promoted an alliance between Christians and Jews.” But she said her views on Israel were based on an “America-first” approach that recognizes Israel’s role in bolstering America’s security interests in the Middle East. She has visited Israel so often that she has “no idea” how many times she’s been there, she has said. Her office features a collection of Israeli prime minister figurines.

In December, a little-known nonprofit that promotes foreign policy discourse on college campuses hosted Ms. Coates to speak about her new book. She revealed her own perspective on how the tactic of slashing federal funding to universities could be used to help bring them to heel.

“As a former academic, I can tell you the one thing they care more about than parking spaces is federal funding,” she said. “The viciousness with which the other elements of the faculty will turn on the law schools and the Middle East Studies folk,” she added. “The gloves will come off very quickly.”

The next month, Mr. Trump was inaugurated. His administration unfurled a series of directives, some of which closely resembled some of the actionable steps outlined in Project Esther.

Administration officials moved to revoke student visas and deport activists who had criticized Israel.

Necessary Conditions

HSO members in violation of student visa requirements.

They began monitoring immigrants’ and visa applicants’ social media.

Desired Effects

Social media no longer allow the spread of antisemitic content.

They sought to withhold billions of dollars in grants to some of the country’s most prestigious research universities.

Necessary Conditions

HSOs not eligible for public funds.

They ordered an investigation of student protesters at Columbia University and reportedly planned to share that information with immigration agents.

Necessary Conditions

Evidence of HSOs’ criminal activity gathered.

Despite acknowledging Heritage’s regular meetings with the administration and members of Congress, employees at the foundation said they didn’t know if White House officials had acted on their recommendations or had just come to the same conclusions about what needed to be done.

“I don’t think it’s a great leap to look at the changing landscape since Esther came out, and to look at the actions that Esther calls for and to look at them taking place,” Mr. Greenway said. “But it’s not our place, and not really our purpose, to take credit for the actions that others are taking.”

In line with Project Esther’s calls for state-level actions and “public-private” partnerships, a wider campaign is also underway. Heritage Action, the think tank’s grass roots advocacy arm, is helping states pass legislation that penalizes those who support boycotts against Israel. It has encouraged civil litigation as law firms have filed suits accusing various people and organizations of collaborating with Hamas.

And Ms. Coates pointed to Heritage’s increased presence in Israel, a country which, Ms. Coates said when she was there recently, “deserves a peace prize for what they’ve done over the course of the last year.”

Foundation employees were in Israel primarily to discuss Heritage’s new U.S.-Israel strategy, a copy of which, she said, they personally handed to Ron Dermer, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs.

But they also discussed Project Esther and concern over a decline in Israel’s public image among younger Americans, a trend that has accelerated since Oct. 7. It is reassuring for Israelis to hear that the largest conservative think tank in the United States is on the case, Ms. Coates said.

Leading by Example

Project Esther accuses “America’s Jewish community” of “complacency.” “There are multiple Jewish nonprofits that are dedicated to fighting antisemitism, and yet here we are today,” said Ms. Cohanim, the task force’s sole Jewish co-chair.

Not everyone who Heritage hoped would join the cause felt comfortable doing so, including prominent Jewish and Christian Zionist organizations that members at the foundation assumed would be allies. Three people from such groups told The Times they did not want to associate with the plan because they found its failure to consider right-wing acts of antisemitism too partisan.

Ms. Coates acknowledged that antisemitism was also a problem on the right and said that was why it was important for the Heritage Foundation to “lead by example” with Project Esther.

“Our goal is to eradicate — or not eradicate, but to confront — what we consider a very noxious bigotry,” she said.

But she and others at the Heritage Foundation also contend that the progressive groups that Project Esther charges with supporting Hamas pose a threat not just to Jewish people or Israel but, as the plan warns, to “the foundations of the United States and the fabric of our society.”

“This isn’t just a battle for the Jewish state,” Ms. Coates told her audience in December. “It is also a battle for the United States.” (New York Times).

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Romanians vote for Freedom and against the Right.

As Harvard and other colleges struggle in the fight against Trump, Sesame Street finds a solution.

Touch to watch Cookie Monster make the announcement. 👇

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