Profiles in Courage. Profiles in Un-courage.
I have some good news and some bad news.
“THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” ―Thomas Paine, The Crisis
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It’s not always the ones you expect, is it?
Big Law firms — known for their bluster — grin and truckle to the throne; while young associates take principled stands that may cost them their careers. Billionaires who launch penis rockets into space cower before threats; but ordinary men and women stand up at townhall meetings to speak truth to the gelded power of Congress.
Perhaps most surprising of all: University presidents — best known for their ability to raise money from rich donors over canapes and cheapish Bordeaux — band together in a full-throated cry of resistance, even as the most storied and prestigious news organizations snivel their way into the queue of surrender.
And it all feels like a BFD.
Happy Wednesday.
The Universities (Finally) Stand Up
For a while, Wesleyan President Michael Roth was a lonely voice in the academic wilderness. Stand up, he told his colleagues. Fight. Stand on principle. When he appeared on my podcast back in March he was doing something that so many other leaders of business, politics, and education were afraid to do: pushing back against Donald Trump. He has emerged as one of the most forceful and eloquent defenders of liberal education and academic freedom at a time when both were under siege.
He’s not alone anymore.
Trump ineptly targeted Harvard. Harvard punched back.
“The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights,” Harvard President Alan Garber wrote in a message to the community. He added: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
Over the weekend, the university filed a lawsuit against the Administration. You can read it here.
And yesterday, more than 200 university presidents and other leading academics signed a letter protesting what they called the “unprecedented government overreach and political interference” of the Trump Administration.
“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses,” the letter, released by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, stated.
In contrast…
CBS trashes its legacy
On Tuesday, Bill Owens, the longtime executive producer of “60 Minutes” resigned, saying it has "become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it."
Attention needs to be paid, because this feels like a watershed moment in the ongoing capitulation of corporate media. Oliver Darcy provides the background:
The meeting and timing of Owens' announcement came against a backdrop that has loomed over CBS News for months. Paramount Global, the network’s parent company, is trying to finalize a high-stakes merger with David Ellison’s Skydance Media—a deal that’s been slowed, if not outright stalled, by a baseless lawsuit Donald Trump filed against “60 Minutes.”
Shari Redstone, who controls Paramount, has made it clear she wants the case resolved. In recent days, lawyers for Trump and Paramount have entered mediation to explore how that might happen.
Owens and other CBS news execs have fiercely opposed any surrender. CNN’s Jake tapper reports that a source who works for 60 Minutes told him: "The lawsuit was baseless. He” — Bill — “wouldn't apologize. He wouldn't bend. He fought for the broadcast and for independent journalism and that cost him his job. It's shameful."
Darcy notes that pressure on the journalists has been intense, not only from the inveterbrate corporate suits, but from the Trumpified federal government.
Brendan Carr, Trump's Federal Communications Commission chair, has used a related complaint against CBS News to torment Paramount. Carr's approval is required for the Paramount-Skydance merger to close and it has been quite clear that a greenlight likely won't be given until Trump’s lawsuit is resolved.
So it is hard to overstate the stakes or what this will mean to CBS’s legacy.
If Redstone agrees to settle Trump’s lawsuit in order to push her merger through, it won’t just be a capitulation, it will be a stain on the legacy of the show, and on her own. The house of Walter Cronkite will have bowed before Trump on the world stage. It will forever be known that when CBS News was tested, it folded.
I’m sorry, I need to put that in bigger print:
If Redstone agrees to settle Trump’s lawsuit in order to push her merger through, it won’t just be a capitulation, it will be a stain on the legacy of the show, and on her own. The house of Walter Cronkite will have bowed before Trump on the world stage. It will forever be known that when CBS News was tested, it folded.
Exit take: If she caves (as now seems likely) Shari Redstone should be forever remembered as the Quisling of the First Amendment. That’s it. That’s her fuqqing legacy.
Politico’s weird flex
The hypocrisy. It burns.
Even as the press faces an historic assault on its independence and free speech, one of DC’s most prominent media outlets is apparently trying to tell of one its former reporters to shut up.
And it has called in the lawyers to threaten him to stop writing certain things.
FFS.
Ryan Lizza, who recently left Politico for Substack (where else), tells this disturbing story. On Monday night — after publishing a piece about the media’s difficulties in covering Trump — he received a phone call, followed by a threatening letter.
It was from a lawyer at Politico, where I worked for six years as the Chief Washington Correspondent. The subject line was scary: “Notice of Violation of non-disparagement clause.”
The lawyer alleged that I had disparaged the billion-dollar company and demanded that I delete, in its entirety, an 1800-word article I wrote yesterday announcing the launch of this publication, Telos.
“You are required to cease making any such statements and take down your blog post immediately,” they wrote. “We reserve all rights.”
Lizza’s response? He basically told Politico to take its gag order and shove it.
There is a lot to unpack about this episode, but what first struck me about this demand is that I wasn’t just being asked to censor critical reporting about Politico, I was being asked to censor critical reporting about Trump.
Because the article was not about Politico. It was about the Trump administration’s unprecedented attack on the media and what we as journalists should do to cover the crisis in Washington more responsibly.
In other words, with this letter, Politico, regrettably, was doing the bidding of the Trump administration by using a legal threat to assist the White House in stifling criticism of the president. Frankly, that is much more concerning than anything I wrote yesterday about Politico, which I only mentioned three times….
“It would be an extraordinary act of censorship for a news organization to attempt to ban a former employee from commenting on it in perpetuity,”
You can read the whole thing here.
Exit take: The bad news is that a media outlet — which claims it is all about the free press — tried to kill a critical piece by one of its former stars. The good news is that Lizza blew the whistle and told them to fuq off.
The lawyers take a stand
We’ve written extensively about the decision by the firm of Grovel, Cower and Smirk, LLC to pay off the Trump Administration. Rather than stand on principle, some of the nation’s biggest, fattest, and richest law firms have chosen to surrender to their masters in the White House. (Fuck you, and all your contumacious works, you cowardly brood of white-shoed lickspittles. But I repeat myself.)
Here’s the good news.
Via NBC: Three more prosecutors on Eric Adams case resign after suspensions, saying they did nothing wrong
Three federal prosecutors have chosen to resign instead of admitting wrongdoing following suspensions over their handling of the now-dropped federal corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, saying it is the Trump administration's handling of the case that was wrong, according to a letter seen by NBC News.
Celia Cohen, Andrew Rohrbach and Derek Wikstrom were assistant U.S. attorneys who were suspended after they refused to take part in the Department of Justice's move to drop the prosecution against Adams.
Please take a moment to remember those names. Brave patriots all.
In their letter, the three lawyers who resigned continued: "Serving in the Southern District of New York has been an honor. There is no greater privilege than to work for an institution whose mandate is to do the right thing, the right way, for the right reasons. We will not abandon this principle to keep our jobs. We resign."
The lawyers said they "will not confess wrongdoing when there was none," and said the Justice Department "has decided that obedience supersedes all else, requiring us to abdicate our legal and ethical obligations in favor of directions from Washington."
Bravo. And a reminder that courage is, indeed, contagious.
Broken Brains? An Answer.
In yesterday’s newsletter (and subsequent short video), I pondered the enshittification of Senator Ron Johnson’s brain.
And I made a modest request:
"Someday, I hope that someone will take a serious, deep dive into the question of how many brains have been broken during the Trump era. I'm not talking about the embrace of looney or extreme ideas; I want to understand the process by which our reality-bending world has actually melted the brains of so many people in and out of government.
“Is it the constant flood of bullshit? The constant need to defend the indefensible? ....Does sealing yourself off from rationality in alternative reality silos deprive both the psyche and the brain of the oxygen needed to function?
“Is the pressure to be an asshole so intense that it just breaks people?"
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As it happens, the brilliant Renee DiResta has already written a book touching on this question: Invisible Rulers: The People Who Turn Lies Into Reality.
Yesterday, she emailed me:
This is what happens when perverse incentives create a feedback loop and weak-willed politicians decide to succumb rather than lead. We're seeing influencer culture ported to the political realm.
There's a term we have for following your audience down a rabbit hole when we're talking about influencers: audience capture. The influencer understands that their ability to grab attention and shape the discourse is dependent on both keeping their crowd of followers loyal, and being provocative enough to keep algorithms curating their content (pushing it out to the public).
Politicians behave like influencers now -- political propaganda, and even content coming from the White House official account, looks like popular memes.
Look at Kristi Noem, she's a great example...she even extended the influencer style of video content to a "collab" where she took Libs of TikTok on a ride-along, piggybacking on the large LOTT audience for amplification. Catering to conspiracy theorists is another effective way to grab attention, because on X in particular those groups are often very engaged.
Do the politicians who spread these theories sincerely believe them? Some probably do. Some seem more like opportunists, though, who realize that their audiences are talking about these topics...and they are very responsive to their audiences in a way that the left simply is not.
All true. But I am really sorry about Ronjon. Just saying.
Wednesday dogs
Young Auggie and Moses.
The first purpose of journalism is to hold public officials accountable. Oligarchs have a self serving agenda. They should not own Press platforms. Trump World controls the Executive and Legislative branches. And seeks control over the Judicial and 4th Estate. Totalitarian dictatorship.
The CBS "eye" is blinking.