A historian of fascism is asked whether this was week was a turning point
Do you remember that day in March 2020 — five years and several eternities ago — when Tom Hanks tested positive for COVID-19, the NBA announced they were suspending their season and profound upheaval suddenly seemed inevitable?
I've felt echoes of that feeling the past few days, as downtown businesses boarded up their windows and the facts on the ground grew ever more fantastical.
Are we at the edge of some irreparable rupture in American democracy? Or is this just another strange and absurd chapter in a long series of them?
On Sunday, the president sent federalized National Guard troops into a city against the will of the state's governor for the first time in 60 years. On Thursday, California's senior senator was tackled to the ground by federal agents and handcuffed at a news conference.
Hundreds of active duty Marines were sent into the Los Angeles area, where for days they appeared to be performing heavily armed training exercises on what looked like a high school sports field. (A looming scoreboard, palm trees and jacaranda blooms were all visible behind their riot shields, according to a social media post from the U.S. Northern Command.)
The president and the governor are having a momentous fight about constitutional rights in the courts, and flaming each other with insults and photoshopped memes on Truth Social and X.
The ICE raids have thrown some Angelenos into a state of fear and virtual hiding. But for many others, ordinary life continues apace.
Mayor Karen Bass has repeatedly cautioned that L.A. is being treated like 'a grand experiment' — a testing ground for President Trump to see if he can usurp the authority of Democratic mayors or governors in other states.
Warning signs of democratic breakdown have been pointed out by scholars and Trump's critics since he took office for his first term in 2017 — so much so that many have grown numb to them. Has this week been any different?
I called Federico Finchelstein, a historian of fascism and dictatorships who chairs the history department at the New School for Social Research in New York, to ask whether he saw this week as a turning point for the country.
Finchelstein characterized Trump's federalizing of the California National Guard as a clear turn toward authoritarianism. He cited the move, along with attacks on the press and the judiciary and the manhandling of Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday, as assaults on democratic norms that 'create the conditions for a further erosion of democracy.'
But he hesitated about categorizing recent events as a turning point.
It's hard while living in the middle of history to know precisely where you stand, he explained.
'It's very difficult to know what is the exact outcome of this sort of militarization of politics,' Finchelstein said. 'What we know is that democracy is at the other end, and this path is towards either disabling, denigrating or even destroying democracy. It's hard to know where it ends.'
The outcome would also depend on more than Trump's next move, according to the historian.
History has shown that when anti-democratic attempts are met with institutional and public resistance, they are less likely to succeed, Finchelstein said.
'In other words, this is not the end of the story,' he told me.
A selection of the very best reads from The Times' 143-year archive.
Have a great weekend, from the Essential California team
Julia Wick, staff writerKevinisha Walker, multiplatform editor
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'What a waste:' US scientists decry Trump's 47% cuts to NASA science budget
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Since January, when President Donald Trump took office for the second time, the White House has been asking U.S. government organizations to implement some pretty radical changes. Things have been tense, to say the least. Thousands of federal workers have been laid off with little explanation, programs that improve diversity in the workplace have been eliminated, research grants have been cancelled in large sweeps, and international college students find themselves at risk of losing their legal status. One government organization that could be hit the hardest is NASA. The agency has faced a particularly extensive amount of pressure from the Trump administration: surveillance, goal restructuring, website purging and more. Other federal science organizations haven't been spared, either — places like the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) have been targeted as well. The ground of U.S. science seems to be quaking for political reasons rather than scientific ones, leaving scientists disheartened by their government and anxious about what's next. "I don't think it is an overstatement to say that morale among U.S.-based scientists is at an all-time low," Sarah Horst, an associate professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at The Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, told "People are afraid for their jobs, their students, the projects they've often spent decades working on, and they are afraid for the future of the United States." And things only got worse on May 30, when the Trump administration's fiscal year 2026 budget request for NASA came out. It proposes cutting the agency's science funding by 47%, and the agency's workforce by about one-third — from 17,391 to 11,853. This budget has to be officially passed by Congress to take effect, but if it indeed does, the effects could be brutal. "That would represent the smallest NASA workforce since mid-1960, before the first American had launched into space," Casey Dreier, chief of space policy at The Planetary Society, a nonprofit exploration and advocacy organization, told "If this budget is made real, I am most concerned about people," John O'Meara, chief scientist at the Keck Observatory, told "Missions deliver data and are essential, but the data is meaningless without the people there to interpret it, test theories and share discoveries with the world." Perhaps the most striking aspect of the White House's 2026 NASA budget proposal is the sheer amount of missions it would cancel altogether: 41 projects, as the Planetary Society said in a statement denouncing the report. "This is the extinction-level event we were warning people about," Dreier said. Some specifics: The sharply reduced budget would cancel the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, which was meant to bring samples of the Red Planet's surface to Earth — samples that NASA's Perseverance rover has been dutifully collecting over the last few years, and which scientists have long stressed must be analyzed in a lab to reach their full potential. MSR has experienced its own share of complications since its genesis, to be fair, including a huge price tag and what some believe is an overcomplicated mechanism of sample retrieval. However, cancelling the project outright instead of coming up with a solution would waste much of Perseverance's work on the Red Planet. The OSIRIS-APEX mission (you may remember it by its previous moniker, OSIRIS-REx) would also be cut off. This mission successfully sent a spacecraft on a multi-billion-mile expedition to an asteroid named Bennu, then had it grab a few pieces of the asteroid before traveling all the way back to Earth and safely dropping the samples to the ground. This same probe is now on round two, headed to examine the infamous asteroid Apophis — but if the FY26 NASA budget is confirmed, it won't complete its trip. "I'm personally mostly concerned for in-flight missions that already have a significant investment in both taxpayer dollars and peoples' lives/careers (including my own)," Kevin McGill, an employee at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the agency's lead center for robotic planetary exploration, told "Luckily, my work on [the Curiosity Mars rover] and Mars2020 [Perseverance] are mostly safe, but a lot of other stuff isn't." The budget also suggests ceasing operations for the Jupiter-orbiting Juno spacecraft, which has been circling our solar system's gas giant since 2016 while regularly delivering rich information about the world and its moons. Juno is responsible for all those swirly blue images of Jupiter the astronomy community holds high; it took five years for this spacecraft to get to where it is, and many more for it to be built in the first place. "The operating missions cancellations alone represent over $12 billion of invested taxpayer value — and once they're gone, they're gone. It would take years and many millions more to replace them," Dreier said. NASA would also need to pull out of its collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) on the Rosalind Franklin rover — for the second time, no less — which is a robotic life-hunting explorer set to launch toward Mars in 2028. NASA had to pull out in 2012 because of budget cuts as well but re-entered the rover program after ESA cut ties with its other partner, the Russian space agency Roscosmos, once Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. "This makes the U.S. an untrustworthy partner and our allies hesitate the next time we ask them for help," Dreier said. Two operational Mars orbiters — Mars Odyssey and MAVEN — would be cancelled as well, as would the New Horizons spacecraft currently studying the outer reaches of the solar system and the DaVinci and VERITAS missions, which would explore Venus. The Lunar Gateway, which NASA envisioned as a sort of International Space Station around the moon, would also be cancelled. "What was surprising was the level of cuts within parts of each of the agencies. An example is astrophysics, where the cut was nearly 2/3 of the astrophysics budget," O'Meara said. According to the Planetary Society's analysis of the budget, that huge astrophysics reduction could mean eight spacecraft dedicated to studying extreme events in the universe (think, the Chandra X-ray Observatory) would be terminated. This analysis also suggests 10 missions constructed to study the region around Earth and the sun would be cancelled, as well as about a dozen Earth-specific missions that help scientists forecast natural disasters such as hurricanes and track global warming. The latter is especially concerning, given the speed with which Earth is heating up due to human activities that lead to greenhouse gas emissions — activities the Trump administration favors, such as burning coal for cheap power. Per the budget proposal, the White House also wants NASA to eliminate its "green aviation" spending, dedicated to making airplanes better for the environment, and instead work on "protecting the development of technologies with air traffic control and defense applications." It is also worth considering that other Trump-mandated moves have heavily impacted climate initiatives as well: more than 800 NOAA workers were laid off, for example, and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which houses climate change records dating back to the 1800s, was closed down — leading members of NASA's largest union to speak out in solidarity with their coworkers. Hundreds of scientists working on the National Climate Assessment, a huge report that details the dangers of climate change for policymakers to lean on, were also dismissed. (That represented all of the authors of this report). "This budget request, and its implications, has been highly disruptive to the entire field," O'Meara said. "We are forced to focus on 'what-if' planning that changes in scope rapidly. That takes the time away from what we do best: doing science and sharing it with the world." Furthermore, the White House's FY26 NASA budget proposal centers around a shift toward human missions to the Red Planet; this was a rare area that saw a budget boost in the President's request. For example, one slide in the budget summary says NASA should invest "more than $1 billion in new technology investments to enable a crewed mission to Mars." Another says the agency should allocate "$200M for Commercial Mars Payload Services (CMPS) to start launching robotic precursor missions to the Martian surface, and $80M to start deploying communications relay capabilities for Mars." "It just bothers me that they are changing almost the entirety of NASA's mission to this pipe dream of a human mission to Mars in any reasonable time frame and cost," McGill said. reached out to NASA for comment on the possible impact of these budget cuts, and was directed to acting administrator Janet Petro's statement in the proposal's Technical Supplement. This statement is supportive of the budget request overall, mentioning items such as a renewed push for human spaceflight to the moon and Mars. "The President's Fiscal Year 2026 Budget Request for NASA reflects the Trump-Vance Administration's commitment to strengthening America's leadership in space exploration while exercising fiscal responsibility. With this budget, we aim to shape a Golden Age of innovation and exploration," it reads. This shift toward Mars crewed missions is perhaps predictable, given Trump's affiliation with SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk. (Former affiliation, maybe, given the heated feud currently unfolding on social media between the two.) Musk was a prominent backer of Trump's campaign and worked very closely with him over the past four months. For example, the SpaceX chief ran the Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE), which was responsible for the bulk of government funding cuts in the name of saving "wasted taxpayer money." Independently, Musk has earned a reputation as maybe the most outspoken advocate of settling Mars, even going so far as to say he wishes to "die on Mars." SpaceX, as well as its fans, are extremely focused on achieving that goal. "In isolation, a serious humans to Mars campaign should be exciting — Mars exploration is a worthy goal, and The Planetary Society has advocated for that for years," Dreier said. "But the cost here is too high." Another concern Dreier has is that the White House expects to achieve this major goal while simultaneously reducing NASA's workforce at an unprecedented rate. "This isn't just poor policy," he added. "It's fundamentally wasteful and inefficient, exactly what this administration is saying it does not want." And the layoffs could be even more far-reaching than anticipated. McGill says morale at JPL had already been very low after sweeping layoffs took place last year, but also that the energy was further damaged by the agency's recent return-to-office order. For context, nearly 5,500 JPL employees who have been working remotely since the thick of the COVID-19 pandemic were told they must return to in-person work. The deadlines for that return were Aug. 25 for general employees within California and Oct. 27 for teleworkers living outside the state. "Employees who do not return by their required date will be considered to have resigned," JPL officials said in a workforce-wide email that was obtained by "It's clear that it's a silent layoff of the over 1,000 remote employees who they don't want to pay severance to," a NASA employee at JPL not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency previously told McGill says the order "threatens to decimate the workforce and a lot of critical institutional knowledge." "I love JPL and its mission, but it's been a rough time as of late," he said. According to Dreier, there's good news and bad news concerning whether the budget proposal will go through. The good news is that, as he explains, there seems to be bipartisan dislike for the proposal. "We've heard directly from multiple congressional offices — Republican and Democrat — that this budget is 'dead on arrival,'" he said. Of note, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation released his legislative directives for Senate Republicans' budget reconciliation bill on Friday (June 6). The senator proposes dedicating $10 billion more to NASA's science programs — and, though most of it is indeed in line with the FY26 budget request's Mars endeavors, some of that funding would be used for other things, like NASA Space Launch System (SLS) rocket meant for moon exploration and Lunar Gateway. This united aversion to the budget proposal is unsurprising. The bipartisan U.S. Planetary Science Caucus, for instance, previously released a statement in response to early blueprints of the proposal that suggested the huge cuts we're seeing presented now. "We are extremely alarmed by reports of a preliminary White House budget that proposes cutting NASA Science funding by almost half and terminating dozens of programs already well underway, like the Mars Sample Return mission and the Roman Space Telescope," co-chairs Rep. Judy Chu (D-California) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) wrote. Such agreement across the aisle makes sense when we consider how long it takes for space missions to reach fruition. Collaboration isn't just key — it's unavoidable. "Spaceflight, and human spaceflight in particular, requires hand-off from one administration to another," Dreier said. "The timelines are just too long for any one presidential administration." The bad news, however, is the White House may have a workaround. Related Stories: — 'This is an attack on NASA.' Space agency's largest union speaks out as DOGE cuts shutter science institute located above 'Seinfeld' diner in NYC — Saving Gateway, SLS and Orion? Sen. Ted Cruz proposes $10 billion more for NASA's moon and Mars efforts — 'Their loss diminishes us all': Scientists emphasize how Trump's mass NOAA layoffs endanger the world "Even if Congress ultimately rejects this budget, the slow pace of legislation and gridlock we've seen in recent years make it unlikely that appropriations will be in place by October 1st of this year," Dreier said. "If there's another continuing resolution, the White House budget office will throttle spending to match the lowest of all possible budget scenarios: theirs. So, we face the possibility of these cuts going into effect by default. Given the breadth and depth of these cuts, that could be very hard to recover from." "This budget proposal threatens to tear down that carefully constructed coalition in favor of a narrow vision that lacks the political durability necessary for long-term success," he added. "What a waste."
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"I don't think I should defend myself anymore, I'm done with that in my life" - Allen Iverson on why he's had enough trying to defend his public image
"I don't think I should defend myself anymore, I'm done with that in my life" - Allen Iverson on why he's had enough trying to defend his public image originally appeared on Basketball Network. During his career, Allen Iverson was always the subject of primetime debates, panel discussions and newspaper editorials. Not because he lacked greatness — his Hall of Fame career is etched with MVP seasons, 11 NBA All-Star nods, and a lifetime average of 26.7 points per game — but because he insisted on being himself in a league still struggling with how to receive that. From the moment he stepped onto an NBA court in 1996 as the No. 1 pick, Iverson was not only contending with defenders on the floor but with coded language off it, fighting a decades-long battle against image politics that always seemed stacked against him. Just over a decade and a half after his last professional game, Iverson has made one thing clear: he's no longer interested in fighting a battle that never seemed to care about the truth anyway. "At the age of 40, I don't think I should defend myself anymore," Iverson said in 2015. "I'm done with that in my life. I'm done with defending myself. I'm a villain to people that don't rock with me. I'm a superhero to the people that love me." Iverson isn't a man searching for closure. He's already lived it. The journey from a teen imprisoned for a bowling alley brawl in Hampton, Virginia, and later pardoned to one of the NBA's most electrifying stars was paved with both myth and misunderstanding. Even at his athletic peak, Iverson often found himself typecast. He was a cultural disturbance. That persona never sat easily with him, though he wore it anyway. Now, at middle-age, the burden of justification no longer seems worth lifting. In the years following his retirement, Iverson has mostly remained out of the spotlight, making select appearances at NBA events, tributes, and cultural panels, often greeted with a reverence that once eluded him during his prime. This post-career embrace wasn't always inevitable. In 2010, just months after his final NBA game with the Philadelphia 76ers, Iverson faced rumors of financial distress, alcoholism, and alienation. None of these were ever confirmed outright, but the public frenzy spoke volumes about the appetite for sensationalism when it came to him. There was never any doubt about Iverson's impact on the court. The Sixers legend played through pain, carried underwhelming rosters, and dragged Philadelphia to the NBA Finals in 2001, claiming the league MVP that same year. That season alone — 31.1 points, 4.6 assists, and 2.5 steals per game — told a truth far more honest than any back-page headline ever did. His image has always been at the center of discussion, not for lack of talent, but because he challenged the NBA's comfort zone. From his braids to his sleeve tattoos to the hip-hop beats that accompanied his walk to the locker room, Iverson carried himself like the neighborhoods he came from. "It's just a stereotype," he said. "And then with my hair and the cornrows, people talk about it being a thug thing … I guess it's just [an] Allen Iverson thing, not agreeing with the fact that I wasn't going to try to look like somebody else instead of looking like myself." In 2005, the NBA implemented a dress code, widely interpreted as a veiled response to Iverson's influence on player fashion and identity. The league, concerned with its public image, required players to wear "business casual" attire when representing teams. Though not named directly, Iverson's name always hovered behind the press releases. What he was expressing wasn't rebellion; it was representation. His refusal to bend didn't stem from arrogance but from the understanding that, for kids who looked like him, saw themselves in him, and came from where he did, the power of authenticity meant everything. Today's NBA is filled with players whose fashion choices are praised as bold and whose ink and hairstyles are just as visible as their skill. The culture Iverson brought into the league now thrives unapologetically and is often celebrated. That evolution owes a debt to his stubbornness, to his resistance, to his refusal to story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Jun 14, 2025, where it first appeared.
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European Space Agency reveals 3 key space missions threatened by Trump's NASA budget cuts
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. The European Space Agency (ESA) has revealed that three of the 19 missions it is planning or operating in collaboration with NASA are at risk as a result of President Trump's proposed budget cuts, which could slash finances available to the U.S space agency by 24%. During a press conference held on Thursday (June 12), ESA Director of Science Carole Mundell revealed that the space-based gravitational wave observatory LISA, the Venus orbiter EnVision, and the largest X-ray observatory ever planned, NewAthena, could be threatened if the proposed NASA budget cuts in Trump's FY26 budget go ahead. ESA thinks that at this initial stage, the impact can be mitigated on the other 16 missions in collaboration with NASA, but the remaining three missions may require a rethink if they happen at all. "We're looking at three potential missions that, should the budget proposal come to pass as written, would require recovery actions. That's LISA, EnVision, the NewAthena," Mundell said. ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher added: "This is an ongoing negotiation in the United States. It is not for us as ESA to comment on these negotiations or to interfere, but we are impacted in quite a number of domains that are, at least at the moment, proposed for cancellations or reductions. "This will require that some of the activities may be frozen. No decisions or cancellations have yet been made because the decisions on the side of the U.S. are not yet finalized. We need to wait for the final decisions from the U.S." Mundell continued by underlining how deeply ESA values the collaboration between Europe and NASA, but added that Europe does have or could acquire the technical capabilities to reduce to reproduce missing elements. "That's something that we're now working through," she number of missions that could be threatened if ESA is forced to repurpose funds extends beyond the three missions mentioned above. Though the Nov. 16, 2025 launch of the sea-level rise monitoring Sentinel-6B spacecraft will go ahead as planned, its sibling mission, Sentinel-6C, could also be impacted by the proposed budget cuts if they are passed successfully. "It was my proposal when I was director of Earth observation, to rename a satellite Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich [after former director of the Earth Science Division in the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters from 2006 to 2019]," Aschbacher added. "It would be a pity if Sentinel-6C were not funded or supported, as it is a successor of the mission Michael Freilich, which is still in space. We offered our satellite to be named after a NASA Administrator as a very visible sign of the of the deepness of the cooperation between NASA and ESA." Proposed U.S. budget cuts could also impact the planned Mars rover Rosalind Franklin, previously known as the ExoMars rover. That is because the robotic explorer named after the esteemed British chemist was set to feature several components supplied by NASA. ESA may now seek to develop on its own the technologies for the three main elements of the rover set to be provided by NASA: its launcher, radio isotope heater unit, and aerobraking engine. This will take time and may impact the mission's timeline, which would have seen Rosalind Franklin head to Mars in 2028. Related Stories: — Trump administration proposes slashing NASA budget by 24% — Experts alarmed as White House proposes 'largest single-year cut to NASA in American history' — Trump's 2026 budget plan would cancel NASA's Mars Sample Return mission. Experts say that's a 'major step back' Of course, nothing is yet set in stone, with the U.S. Congress yet to have the final say on how to allocate federal dollars. A final decision on the FY 2026 Discretionary Budget is expected in Fall 2025. Meanwhile, ESA will meet in late November to finalize its own budget. This means that the space agency may have to move ahead with contingency planning and budgeting before the final outcome of proposed U.S. budget cuts is known. "The timing is expected to be maybe just before decisions are being made, and the fiscal year 26 budget will be known for sure. We need to assess on one side, how much it costs to wait, and how long we can wait," Aschbacher said. "There is a lot of analysis and options that need to be verified and need to be discussed."In brief, the main highlight, or the main point, is that we have agreed to make sure that Europe is increasing its resilience and autonomy to make sure that we have the technologies we need in the near future."
