Latest news with #Trump-approved
New York Post
3 days ago
- 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
The Herald Scotland
5 days ago
- Politics
- The Herald Scotland
Can young Democrats really threaten Pelosi's old guard?
His message: "People are fed up with the old guard." More: Elon Musk's rise and fall: From Trump's chainsaw-wielding sidekick to a swift exit Pelosi's not sweating But the old guard is unimpressed. Pelosi told USA TODAY she doesn't view Chakrabarti's challenge as serious. "Not at all. Not even slightly," she said. Chakrabarti, a tech millionaire, is making gerontocracy - rule by the aged - a big part of his campaign. He says he's building an insurgent base through Zoom calls with voters and regular TV appearances. Amid a storm of Trump-induced crises, Chakrabarti says, "The Democratic party has an inability-to-change problem." While political scientists say it will be tough to beat seasoned pols like Pelosi, the bids expose a growing divide as Chakrabarti and others seek a more publicly assertive party. In Georgia, 33-year-old Everton Blair is running to unseat twelve-term incumbent Rep. David Scott, 79. And Jake Ravok, 37, who was eight when his former boss, California Rep. Brad Sherman, 70, was first elected to Congress in 1996, launched a primary challenge in April. It's been a bumpy uprising. Related: Too old or very wise: U.S. leaders are among the world's oldest. Is it a problem? On April 16, Democratic National Committee Vice Chair David Hogg, 25, announced his support for young progressives challenging "out of touch, ineffective" incumbents, earning a rebuke from Democratic brass. "This is probably the best opportunity for younger Democrats to run for Congress since the Watergate Babies overran the House in 1974," said David Niven, associate professor of politics at the University of Cincinnati. "For a lot of Democrats, new voices represent hope." "Traditional voices represent defeat," Niven said. A new generational tide Chakrabarti got his political start with Bernie Sanders in 2016 and was chief of staff to New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 35. He launched his uphill campaign against Pelosi in February, arguing Democrats "are not recognizing this political moment for what it is." Progressives were furious in March when Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, 74, voted to advance a Trump-approved spending bill. Some progressives were appalled as Democrats joined Republicans in voting for a transgender sports ban and the Laken Riley Act, which requires officials to detain undocumented immigrants accused of certain crimes. Rakov said his campaign is driven by the generational divide. "I think not everything has to be a fight to the death, but there absolutely does need to be some fight in our leaders, and I think the voters are wanting to see that," he said. This old House There are currently 13 House members between 80 and 89, according to a January Pew Research Center survey, and 68 between 70 and 79. One Senator is older than 90, five are between 80 and 89, and 27 are between ages 70 and 79. Trump turns 79 on June 14. Joe Biden was 82 when he left office. Blair, who was chair of the Gwinnett County Board of Education in Georgia, said Democrats are missing opportunities to reach voters on Twitch, TikTok, gaming platforms and podcasts. "I think we just keep it real. People don't necessarily want to hear the wonky principles of your policy agenda," he said. "They kind of want to hear that you feel the pain that they feel, and that you have a plan for it." Running on a record Senior Democrats brushed off age concerns. Pelosi, a Bay Area powerhouse, is now serving her 20th term. She made history in 2007 as the first female House speaker - and frequently sparred with Trump during his first term. Sherman, who represents parts of Los Angeles County, typically gets at three to six primary challengers every year; some in their 30's like Rakov. "If I'm ever beat, it's going to be somebody with a long record of active involvement in the community organizations of my district," he said. "But it's not going to be by somebody who just shows up in the district and says, 'I worked for Sherman back in 2017,'" he said of Rakov. Rakov said he lived in Texas, New York and Connecticut before moving to California earlier this year. But the insurgents cling to hope, recalling Ocasio-Cortez's 2018 upset over Rep. Joseph Crowley, a top House Democrat. Ocasio-Cortez, then 28, ousted Crowley by more than 10 percentage points. "Know your community. It's important to have the right message. It's important to have the right values," Ocasio-Cortez told USA TODAY when asked how young Democrats can win. Age not an issue The old guard isn't worried. "No matter how old you are, you still got to run on your you want to dance, you got to pay the fiddler," said Connecticut Democrat Rep. John Larson, 76. Larson was in the spotlight after freezing on the House floor in February due to a "complex partial seizure" and suffering a brief pause at a press conference in April. He's been in Congress since 1999. Other elder Democracts include Maryland Rep. Steny Hoyer, 85, California Rep. Maxine Waters, 86 and Illinois Rep. Danny Davis, 83. Hogg announced in April that his group, Leaders We Deserve, would spend $20 million on young challengers in safe blue districts. But DNC chairman Ken Martin urged committee officers to stay neutral in primaries, giving Hogg an ultimatum: Resign from the committee or end his role in primary challenges. The DNC credentials committee later voted in favor of a May 12 resolution that recommended voiding Hogg's election as vice chair. Fighters vs folders Some have argued the biggest divide in the Democratic party isn't over age, but who's willing to pick a fight. "It's about fighters versus folders," said Texas Rep. Greg Casar, 35, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. "You know, Lloyd been in Congress for 30 years. He is a fighter," Casar said of his fellow Lone Star Democrat. "Nobody accuses him of being a folder. Bernie got more energy than half the chamber combined." People "know we're not going to win every fight, but they need to see us taking every single fight on because Trump's rhetoric is hitting different," said Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley, who scored a major upset against a ten-term Democratic incumbent in 2018. "We have to move differently. We have to match their energy. I'm not 25 and I feel that way," Pressley, 51, said.
The Star
25-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Star
Are certain styles of dressing tied to Donald Trump and his family?
There is a very specific look associated with women who subscribe to the Trump worldview. Pictured here is Lara Trump at the Republican National Convention last year. Photo: The New York Times There is a very specific look associated with women who subscribe to the Trump worldview, one that is sort of a cross between a Fox newscaster and Miss Universe. It generally involves flowing tresses that are at least shoulder length, false eyelashes, plumped-up cheeks and lips, high heels and – a sheath dress. The effect underscores an almost cartoonish femininity that speaks to a relatively old-fashioned gender stereotype; the counterpart to this woman is the square-jawed, besuited guy with a side part. Simply consider the women of the Trump family, who embody the standard: Melania, Ivanka, Lara and Tiffany; as well as Don Jr's new girlfriend, Bettina Anderson; and his former fiancee, Kimberly Guilfoyle. Also Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, and former Trump defense lawyer Alina Habba. Indeed, one reason people are so fascinated by Usha Vance is perhaps that, with her willingness to let her hair go gray and her seeming aversion to makeup, she has become the exception that proves the rule. In any case, the Trump-approved lady look has stayed so consistent that it has effectively infiltrated everyone's cerebellum, and we now have an almost Pavlovian reaction to seeing anyone with flowing hair and false eyelashes and lip plumper in a sheath dress. Read more: Want to learn how to dress like Donald Trump? Then you need to watch this film But here's the thing – of all the visual cues on that list, the sheath dress is the least important. The look of Trump world is increasingly about the beauty choices, more than the clothes. You can see this with Attorney General Pam Bondi, who favours pantsuits, and White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who seems to vacillate between suits and sheath dresses. No matter what they wear, however, they are never anything but a Trump woman, even before they get to policy. There is actually a name for how they look: 'Mar-a-Lago face', after the Trump golf club in Florida that is home to so many of those sporting the look – which also involves 'conservative girl makeup'. And that is good news for anybody who doesn't want to wear their politics on their sleeve. If you favour a sheath dress but want to avoid its political associations, just think of it as a base layer and consider how you accessorise it. Part of the essential appeal of the sheath dress – the reason it is such a wardrobe basic – is its very simplicity. A sheath dress is easy to wear and can take you from work to cocktails exactly because it is plain enough to … well, fit in many different situations. Read more: 'Of steely, precise armour': Melania Trump's fashion once again under scrutiny First, think about colour. Red, white and blue have become the palette of the current administration, with pink and other classically 'girlie' shades as a fallback. Instead, opt for black or other tones that suggest different associations (goth, minimalist, intellectual, rebel). Keep your hair natural or messy. Keep your makeup minimal and your heels low. Maybe wear boots or even flats or sneakers instead of pumps; if you want height, go blocky or platform rather than stiletto. The point is to look like an individual, complete with idiosyncrasies and attitude, rather than an artificial intelligence-generated member of a crowd. – ©2025 The New York Times Company This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
New York Times
15-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Stephen A. Smith's Relentless, Preposterous, Probably Inevitable Road to Political Clout
Stephen A. Smith has had something on his mind for a while now. 'Let me switch to a subject near and dear to my heart,' he said on his podcast recently. 'Me.' Mr. Smith, 57, is the terminally expressive face of sports media, ESPN's $100 million opinion-haver. Each day, and on many nights, he is beamed into living rooms, bars and airport lounges to sling hours of sports-debate chum, whether or not there are hours' worth of viable material. And for the industry's most inescapable voice, its high priest of the big fat adjective — ludicrous officiating, preposterous coaching, blasphemous choke-jobs — 'Stephen A. Smith' is perhaps the sole matter on which all parties can agree that Stephen A. Smith is an expert. He is a first-person thinker ('When I think about me. …' he said, twice, on the podcast, 'The Stephen A. Smith Show'), third-person talker ('Stephen A. Smith is in the news') and occasional simultaneous first-and-third-person thinker-talker. 'Calling things like I see them,' he wrote in his memoir, 'is who Stephen A. Smith has been my entire life.' So it has been striking lately, friends allowed, to find Mr. Smith lamenting the chaos of federal tariff policy ('utterly ridiculous!') and floating a flat-tax plan. He has applied the signature cadence once reserved for segments on LeBron James and the Dallas Cowboys — the hushed windup, the all-caps name-dropping, the yada-yada of certain details — to geopolitical discussions for which he prepares diligently. 'You asked me to read about the Yalta Conference — you didn't ask me a damn thing about it,' he complained in March to the former Fox News host Bill O'Reilly, whom he had joined at a Long Island concert venue to talk politics with Chris Cuomo before a paying crowd of hundreds. 'So, in 1945, if I remember correctly, you got CHUR-chill, you got F.D.R., you got STA-lin. …' Mr. Smith — and it feels preposterous to call him that; he is 'Stephen A.' to millions — is campaigning for something. By 2028, he has teased, it may well be the White House, though some in his life have their doubts. But what he is seeking already, without ambiguity, is what he has long held in higher esteem than any single job anyway: a crossover American media ubiquity and influence that few have known. He does not want to be President A. Smith. He wants to be Joe Rogan — while remaining Stephen A. Smith, the most famous sports-talker sports-talking. And if he happens to alter the course of the nation's politics incidentally, well, is that so ludicrous in the scheme of current events? 'I resonate,' Mr. Smith said in a 50-minute interview, repeatedly citing Mr. Rogan and his Trump-approved mega-podcast as a model, at least in its political clout. 'I've been climbing, scratching and clawing all of these years. But it's been primarily in an effort to say: 'Will you take a look at what I can do? Would you stop looking at me and assuming that I'm this one-dimensional individual?'' For years, Mr. Smith has seemed almost agnostic about how and where he expands his footprint. He has guest-hosted Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show, charmed the women of 'The View,' made recurring cameos on 'General Hospital' as a mob surveillance expert named Brick. Yet Mr. Smith's political thrill-seeking, and its wide embrace across the political industrial complex, says as much about the overlapping worlds of news and entertainment as it says about him. It says more still about a Democratic Party so desperate to reach red-blooded, sports-minded, lecture-averse (and male) voters that attention has turned to a former Philadelphia newspaper columnist and unrepentant Democrat-basher renowned for his bench-the-scrub brevity. The typical dynamic looks something like this: 'There's a dream in this land with its back against the wall,' Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey said on Mr. Smith's podcast in April, shortly after his 25-hour Senate speech, invoking Langston Hughes. 'To save the dream for one we must save it for all.' 'Well, let me interject,' Mr. Smith said eventually, 'because I'm talking about winning.' Despite such flourishes — or maybe because of them, given the Democratic capacity for self-flagellation — 'The Stephen A. Smith Show' has become an unlikely hub for the party rebuild. With more than a million subscribers on YouTube (and no affiliation with ESPN), the podcast has hosted boldface Democrats including Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland; Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania; and Hakeem Jeffries, the House minority leader. Mr. Smith, a self-described independent, has also welcomed MAGA luminaries like Steve Bannon and Candace Owens, noting with interest that right-wingers yield bigger audiences. 'People should pay attention to what he's talking about,' Mr. Moore said of Mr. Smith in an interview. 'He has a remarkable ability to put his finger on the pulse of where people are.' Mr. Smith, peerless at the performance of reluctance, has said he has 'no choice' but to consider a 2028 run, claiming that politicos, strangers and his pastor have encouraged him. Nameless billionaires, he said, have approached him about 'exploratory committees and things of that nature.' He has also called himself 'woefully unqualified.' The not-ruling-anything-out routine has invited pushback from inside and outside his orbit. 'Calm down, Stephen A.,' Charles Barkley, a friend and fellow basketball broadcaster, told Sports Illustrated. ('Even when he insults me,' Mr. Smith said, 'he insults me out of love.') 'Cable news people with delusions,' Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host, said in a text message. 'I've known many.' But like President Trump before he took office, Mr. Smith understands the power of television as a legitimizing force. Like Mr. Trump throughout his life, he recognizes the value of foils — of accruing attention, even negative attention, on one's own terms. During a viewer question-and-answer session on a recent podcast, Mr. Smith aired a video message from a belligerent follower. 'Why do I just have to see you everywhere, man?' the listener asked. 'You're not a journalist. You're just an influencer. Your political career is laughable.' Mr. Smith smirked. 'I guess my answer to the question would be a question,' he said. 'Why the hell do you know I'm everywhere?' 'How You Build an Audience' Some years ago, a friend of Mr. Smith's who was starting a radio show was curious about growing her modest Twitter following. 'He was teaching me, 'Here's what you need to do,'' the friend, Karen Hunter, recalled. ''You throw something out and you get in fights with people. And you have your people get in fights with the people who are fighting with you. And you just sit back.'' Ms. Hunter resisted. 'But that's how you build an audience,' Mr. Smith said. It is largely, though not entirely, how he built his. For a time, Mr. Smith hoped to be the kind of athlete other people would be paid to talk about. Raised in Hollis, Queens, Mr. Smith revered the broadcasters on his television — Howard Cosell, Bryant Gumbel, Ed Bradley — but found the basketball court outside to be his refuge from an often difficult youth: The son of Caribbean immigrants and the youngest of six siblings, he struggled in school with undiagnosed dyslexia and learned around age 10 that his father had a second family nearby. With 'completely unfounded' professional basketball aspirations, in his telling, Mr. Smith played for the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan before transferring to Winston-Salem State University, a historically Black college in North Carolina. When an injury sidelined him, Mr. Smith found his way to writing, once authoring a school newspaper column — while still on the basketball roster — urging his coach to retire for health reasons. Eager but swaggering, Mr. Smith was a young reporter in a hurry, peers said, whirring through newsrooms in his suit and tie amid legions of white men in khakis. 'He still had that face, that dead-serious face,' said Dave Kaplan, a former editor at the New York Daily News, remembering a meeting in which Mr. Smith, a couple of months into the job, wondered when he could finally ditch the high school sports beat. 'It was something to the point of, 'How do I elevate myself? How do I get to the next level?'' The answer, in part, was 'The Answer,' as the man was known: Allen Iverson, the brilliant and volatile basketball star. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mr. Smith covered Mr. Iverson's Sixers for The Philadelphia Inquirer, gaining trust and access and becoming a local celebrity in parallel. 'No other writer would approach players on the court when they were out there warming up,' said Billy King, the team's general manager at the time. 'I would say, 'Why are you doing that?' He said, 'Why not? There's no rule.' And he was right.' Mr. Smith became a general sports columnist and television commentator, the sort of journalist whose face was plastered across city bus stops. Colleagues recalled him as the first writer they knew who filed articles by BlackBerry — and it showed, some said, in the hasty prose. But on the page, equivocation was weakness, anyway. Mr. Smith would let others hedge and strain. 'With Stevie, it's 'He can't dribble,'' said Garry D. Howard, a mentor who helped bring him to The Inquirer. 'He hits you right where it's going to hurt the most. It's an art form.' That skill set is precisely what ESPN was looking for in its nascent debate-show era: big personalities, little subtlety. In one internal meeting in 2003, an executive, Mark Shapiro, polled the room on hiring Mr. Smith. No one wanted him, Mr. Shapiro said. 'Which is when I knew, exactly, we had to bring him on,' he said, 'and that he would cut through.' (Mr. Shapiro, now the president and managing partner of WME Group, later became Mr. Smith's agent.) As a consciously polarizing figure — 'Screamin' A.' to hate-watchers — Mr. Smith often trafficked in conspicuous binaries. A player was an all-world talent or a 'bona fide scrub.' ('No disrespect!') An opinion could be delivered loudly or very loudly. Mr. Smith did demonstrate some range, at least in subject matter. When ESPN gave him a talk show, 'Quite Frankly with Stephen A. Smith,' in 2005, guests included Senator John McCain and Mr. Trump, who walked out to the theme from 'The Apprentice.' ('Quite Frankly' was canceled in 2007. ESPN let Mr. Smith go in 2009 and rehired him in 2011.) Mr. Smith positioned himself as a jack of all opinions, appearing on 'Hardball' on MSNBC during the 2008 presidential primaries to reflect on 'the war on terrorism and things of that nature' and to call Rudy Giuliani 'a dictator.' Ed Rendell, then the governor of Pennsylvania, often encountered Mr. Smith at a Philadelphia television studio where both filmed remote interviews. 'The studio got paid by the hit,' Mr. Rendell said, claiming that, as the space's top earner, he had a plaque above the men's room in his honor, prompting Mr. Smith's jealousy. 'When my plaque went up, he complained and wanted his own plaque.' But Mr. Smith's on-camera magnetism left an impression. One day, Mr. Rendell said, he asked if Mr. Smith would ever consider a Senate run. Mr. Smith answered with a question: 'Why would I want to be one of 100?' 'Stephen A. Swift' On March 6, Mr. Smith was seated courtside at a Lakers game, beside Larry David and the Hollywood executive Ari Emanuel, celebrating a new ESPN contract reportedly paying him roughly $20 million annually. But during a timeout, an aggrieved ESPN-watcher in a (very authentic) Lakers uniform stalked over to unburden himself. LeBron James wanted a word. The weeks that followed became a study in both Mr. Smith's reach and the modern sports-media-entertainment lines he has helped blur. It was Real Housewives for Hoops Heads and decisive evidence for his organizing theory of clout-building. Mr. Smith had previously been on Mr. James's case about his son Bronny, a Lakers rookie, pleading with the superstar 'as a father' to recognize that the youngster was overmatched. (Mr. Smith, who splits time among the Miami, Los Angeles and New York areas, has two daughters and has never been married.) After Mr. James confronted Mr. Smith at the game, the exchange was immediately everywhere. As such, Mr. Smith said solemnly afterward, he had no choice but to address it publicly, which left Mr. James no choice, apparently, but to readdress it — and to mock Mr. Smith's implausible reticence. 'He's on, like, a Taylor Swift tour run right now,' Mr. James told another ESPN personality, Pat McAfee. LeBron-iacs of the internet debuted a taunting nickname: 'Stephen A. Swift.' Mr. James imagined Mr. Smith cuddled with ice cream 'in his tighty-whities on the couch,' gleeful that the spat was continuing. But the conflict had by then migrated to Mr. Smith's home court: the small screen. He cleared up some details ('I don't wear tighty-whities — let you figure out why that is'), flubbed others (he wrongly accused Mr. James of skipping Kobe Bryant's memorial in 2020) and speculated that the hubbub probably stemmed partly from Mr. Smith's longstanding insistence that Mr. James was no Michael Jordan. He led a Zapruder-style film breakdown of the original encounter. He said he would have 'swung on' Mr. James (and been roundly beaten) if the Laker had laid hands on him. (Mr. James later posted a less-than-menacing old clip of Mr. Smith boxing, appending 14 laughter emojis.) A student of audience metrics, Mr. Smith has long been candid about the incentives of his business. 'We capitalize,' he wrote in his book, 'on the kind of polarization people supposedly abhor.' That week on 'First Take,' the ESPN morning debate show he headlines, Mr. Smith seemed to remind viewers of the bargain. 'There's an audience out there that wants the drama,' he said. Bomani Jones, a former ESPN colleague, was in Vietnam when the Smith-James beef escalated. Only two stories penetrated his travel bubble, he said: the Trump administration's Signal chat scandal and whatever this was. 'He is more famous than 98 percent of the people that he covers,' Mr. Jones said. 'When you work at ESPN, men in this country know who you are.' The 'First Take' cameras remain trained on Mr. Smith's highly gif-able face even in silence — like a cable news feed of a rally stage awaiting its speaker, crossed with a series of Greek theater masks: Stephen A. aghast, Stephen A. delighted, Stephen A. ruminating. Time has softened his public persona some. 'The 20-years-ago version of Stephen A. Smith was a lot bolder, a lot brasher, and I think even he would acknowledge a bit more insufferable,' Mr. Jones said, recalling a bygone Mr. Smith wearing sunglasses indoors. 'The game beat him down.' Mr. Smith said he was simply better understood these days. 'For the longest time, I was perceived as this angry Black man,' Mr. Smith said. 'I'm like, 'Angry about what? Are you looking at my life?'' And what is the chief currency in his latest pursuit? 'American politics is a television contest,' Mr. Jones said. 'Nobody's got more reps at this.' Not Not Running for President Both political parties have convinced themselves, rightly or not, that Mr. Smith's new platform matters — an ascendant venue where the president's border czar and his chief antagonists may each feel compelled to spend their time. Less certain is precisely what kind of audience Mr. Smith is talking to. There is a campaign maxim that the greatest divide is not between left and right; it is between those who follow politics closely and everyone else. Mr. Smith can feel like a member of the first group who speaks to the second. His high regard for Mr. Rogan — whose hold on younger, male and often apolitical listeners was central to the Trump 2024 strategy — flows from a two-word judgment: 'He resonates.' 'I have a strong, strong aspiration to be in Joe Rogan's — not literally his seat, but a similar seat,' Mr. Smith said, adding that the two had met only in passing. 'His impact is undeniable.' Like Mr. Rogan, Mr. Smith can sound most comfortable hammering Democrats, whose failings are a bipartisan fixation. But his personal politics are a kind of bespoke centrism: Mr. Smith says he has generally voted for Democrats but praises elements of the Trump immigration agenda. He sees a 'white backlash' to the Obama presidency but jokes that fellow Black Americans cannot abide his friendship with Sean Hannity of Fox News. Some Democratic lawmakers have discussed inviting Mr. Smith to address the party's Capitol ranks as a blunt-force communications czar. 'I'm not going to be kind!' he pledged. His firmest conviction may be that the party needs someone with 'sizzle' in 2028, someone who sounds quite a bit like him. 'I don't think he wants to be POTUS,' Mark Cuban, a friend of Mr. Smith's, said in an email, 'but I know he is loving the discussion.' Mr. Smith has said he would like to see Mr. Moore, Maryland's Democratic governor, as president; Representative Byron Donalds, a Trump acolyte, as governor of Florida; and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo or Mayor Eric Adams leading New York City. All have recorded his podcast. As with sports, Mr. Smith is happy to dissect even hostile stories about himself. 'James Carville Rips Stephen A. for Talking Politics,' read one recent chyron, quoting Mr. Carville, the Democratic strategist, appraising Mr. Smith: 'He don't know his ass from a hole in the ground.' When the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro likewise called Mr. Smith 'a jackass,' Mr. Smith invited him on. 'Am I still a jackass?' Mr. Smith asked. 'Now you're the best,' Mr. Shapiro said, as both laughed. 'That's how this works.' Mr. Smith's most potent exercise of political power to date might have come in 2023, when his friend, former Gov. Chris Christie, was working to qualify for a Republican presidential debate. A social media plea from Mr. Smith helped jump-start Mr. Christie's efforts to amass the small donations required to make the stage, according to Maria Comella, a top campaign adviser. More often, Mr. Smith has framed his political expeditions as insurance against audience restlessness. 'There are days when people are just not interested in sports because something is going on with Trump or whatever,' he said. Mr. Smith needed to be ready for those days. He has said that he prioritized his non-ESPN independence in his new contract, mindful that the network has often hoped to keep its talent away from politics. (Mr. Smith's production company, Straight Shooter Media, has a first-look deal with Disney, ESPN's corporate parent, to produce original series, he added.) Asked about appearing recently on the Disney brand's Sunday political flagship, 'This Week' on ABC, Mr. Smith said his employer was simply following the buzz. 'I was in the news everywhere else,' he said. 'I'm quite sure that in their perfect world they would love for me to just do sports.' Some friends would prefer that, too. Ms. Hunter, the radio host and a former Daily News colleague, said she could not bring herself to watch his political interviews or bless the 'game show' of Mr. Smith entertaining a campaign, though she said she understood the logic. 'With the president we have now,' Ms. Hunter said, 'why wouldn't he think he could be president?' And the president we have now sees a path for Mr. Smith. During a live phone interview with NewsNation in April, conducted by a panel that included Mr. Smith, Mr. Trump seemed amused to hear a familiar voice: 'I remember you from a long time ago, Stephen,' he said. When Bill O'Reilly, another interviewer, asked if Mr. Trump had any advice for the would-be candidate, Mr. Smith buried his face in his right palm with a half smile. 'He's got great entertainment skills, which is very important,' Mr. Trump said, encouraging a run. 'People watch him.' A few minutes later, once Mr. Trump was gone, another figure from Mr. Smith's cinematic universe joined the program: Mr. Carville, on hand to talk politics beside the man he had deemed politically clueless. In an interview afterward, Mr. Carville had not exactly changed his mind. But he conceded that Mr. Smith grasped 'the one rule for a public figure in America,' applicable in his old discipline and his newer one. 'People don't care if you're wrong,' Mr. Carville said. 'They care if you're boring.'
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump's Bumbling, Bullying Anti-DEI Crusade
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION'S CRUSADE against 'woke' and 'DEI' (diversity, equity, and inclusion) may have reached an absurd nadir last week with the big oops that followed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's announcement that he had 'proudly ENDED' his department's Women, Peace, and Security program, a 'woke divisive/social justice/Biden initiative' loved only by feminists and libs. A comical face-saving scramble ensued because it was revealed almost immediately that WPS was a bipartisan congressional initiative cosponsored in 2017 by then-Senator Marco Rubio and then-House member Kristi Noem (both current cabinet members), signed into law by Donald Trump, and often held up as proof of the first Trump administration's female-friendly bona fides. Hegseth's unconvincing attempts to explain that he really just meant to end 'the Biden administration's woke WPS initiatives' (whatever they were) and bring back the good, Trump-approved WPS were roundly mocked. This isn't the first time the Department of Defense under Hegseth's leadership had to do an embarrassing walkback on woke. Following Trump's blitz of anti-DEI executive orders upon taking office, videos on pioneering black and female pilots in the U.S. armed forces during World War II, the Tuskegee Airmen and the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASPs), were removed from the Air Force training curriculum. After a flurry of bad publicity, Republicans such as Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) started claiming that the deletions were the result of someone deliberately subverting Hegseth's (and Trump's) orders to cause a backlash—so-called 'malicious compliance.' Hegseth declared that 'this will not stand,' and the videos were restored. Of course, there wasn't a shred of evidence that they were removed with malicious intent: It's far more likely that the decision was made because no one knew exactly what was forbidden under the anti-DEI edicts. Indeed, Hegseth himself was simultaneously crusading for a maximalist interpretation of DEI: On January 31, just five days after the flap over the videos, he issued instructions that 'identity months' were from now on 'dead at DoD.' His edict banned any use of official resources for 'celebrations or events' related to 'cultural awareness months'—including Black History Month, which was just about to start, Women's History Month, National Hispanic Heritage Month, and so forth. Service members and DoD employees were allowed to attend such events only 'in an unofficial capacity outside of duty hours.' All celebrations of military heroes, Hegseth wrote, had to 'focus on the character of their service' rather than identity, which served to 'put one group ahead of another' and 'erode camaraderie.' Hegseth's own boss clearly didn't get the memo: The very same day as Hegseth's guidance declaring identity months dead, Trump issued a proclamation recognizing Black History Month and urging public officials and others to join in observing it. In March, Trump did the same for Women's History Month; he also appeared at a White House Women's History Month event where he endorsed the creation of a 'big, beautiful' American Women's History Museum on the National Mall. That's whole a lot of woke DEI.1 These contradictions illustrate Trump world's blatant hypocrisy about racial and gender diversity, which can be opportunistically weaponized either as a bogeyman or as an asset. During last year's campaign, when right-wingers mocked Vice President Kamala Harris as a 'DEI hire,' Trump refused to disavow the sleazy claim. Yet Trump can also hail his aide Susie Wiles as 'the first-ever female [White House] Chief of Staff in United States history' and his Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer as 'one of the first Latinas' and 'the first Republican woman elected to Congress from the state of Oregon.' This apparent hypocrisy also illustrates the rampant confusion over what 'DEI' is. Does it mean requiring college faculty or corporate employees to endorse a particular set of progressive ideas about racism and sexism? Promotions and hiring based primarily on race, gender, and other identities? Or does the label also extend to any focus on the experience of population groups that have their own unique history and that, in many cases, have been denied both equal opportunity and fair recognition for much of this country's existence? If it's the latter, even Trump-era Republicans generally haven't expressed a problem with it. But because all these things are lumped together under the same term, public opinion data about DEI are often contradictory or outright useless. Get a stronger handle on what's important in the news cycle without losing your grip on your sanity by signing up to receive our independent political journalism in your inbox. THE ADMINISTRATION'S ANTI-WOKE PUSH takes a jackhammer to these complex issues—and the people conducting it apparently don't learn from experience. Nearly two months after the controversy over the Air Force training videos, the Arlington National Cemetery website, run by the Army, faced a similar embarrassment over the scrubbing of content focusing on black, female, and Hispanic service members and on civil rights-related history. (Some materials vanished completely while others simply stopped being accessible from the main pages.) Once again, the bad press was followed by backpedaling—but this time, only a partial one. The 'walking tours' section of the website has gotten back the tours focusing on black military heroes and African-American history, as well as women in the military. However, those topics have not been restored to the main 'education' page, and the 'Notable Graves' menu is still missing the old sections on African-Americans, Hispanic Americans, and women—though other categories such as foreign nationals, artists, and athletes remain. Whether this is intentional or incompetence, temporary or permanent, remains unclear. And then there's the purge (apparently ordered personally by Hegseth) of nearly 400 books, judged to be too woke, from the Naval Academy's library—notably including Maya Angelou's classic autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Some of the banished books are recent texts associated with critical race theory or identity-focused social justice, such as Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility and Ibram X. Kendi's How to Be an Anti-Racist. (Surely one can strongly disagree with them and still think that a college library should carry notable books highly relevant to current cultural controversies.) But a lot of other volumes seem to have been proscribed simply because their listed topics include race, racism, or white supremacism. That includes a 2002 volume by political scientist Carol Swain, a prominent black conservative and current Trump supporter, whose title—The New White Nationalism in America—must have triggered Hegseth's apparatchiks. Meanwhile, the witch-hunt against suspected 'gender ideology' netted not only books on transgender identities but thirty-year-old texts on the psychology of sex and gender, scholarly works on gender roles and sexuality in Victorian or Renaissance literature, and even critiques of feminist views that downplay innate sex differences. But the DoD is not the only offender. A Washington Post investigation last month found that the National Park Service (part of the Department of the Interior) had made drastic changes to its 'What is the Underground Railroad?' webpage. The new version drastically shortened the introduction, removing from it all but one mention of slavery as well as references to 'self-emancipation' and 'resistance to enslavement'; the revised introduction stressed that the network 'bridged the divides of race' and embodied 'the American ideals of liberty and freedom expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.' Meanwhile, the large photo of Harriet Tubman was gone from the page, replaced with commemorative stamps that featured Tubman along with four other Underground Railroad activists, two black and two white. The original text, far from being 'divisive,' had noted that 'people of all races' were involved in assisting the fugitives; the new one seemed to suggest that the Underground Railroad was, at its core, a black/white bridge-building initiative. The reports on the changes to the site were, yet again, followed by a restoration—and a claim that the alterations did not have approval from the top leadership. Two Park Service employees who spoke to the Post on condition of anonymity shed some light on the process that led to these alterations. 'Political appointees' at Interior instructed 'senior career officials' to flag content that might violate Trump's anti-DEI directives; these instructions were passed on, with 'only vague guidance,' to lower-level staffers—who, fearful for their jobs amid the massive layoffs of federal workers, preferred to err on the side of ditching anything too 'woke.' According to the Post, the scrubbed content on various Park Service sites included mentions of slaveholding by historical figures, a passage about the lack of recognition for black soldiers who fought for American independence, and references to 'the struggle for freedom and equality' in discussions of civil rights history. Share NONE OF THIS BODES WELL for the Trump administration's continuing aggressive campaign to erase wokeness from a wide range of institutions from museums and arts centers to federal workplaces to universities. Constructive conversations about DEI can be difficult for many reasons—from fuzzy and conflicting definitions of the term to political polarization, from the refusal of some on the left to admit any problems on their side to the bad faith of right-wing culture warriors like Christopher Rufo. Nonetheless, toxic and divisive DEI programs and materials really do exist. A minor but interesting example: The just-released report of Harvard's Presidential Task Force on Combating Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias discusses a 'Pyramid of White Supremacy' graphic used in some sections of a required course at the Harvard Graduate School in Education. In principle, this could be a useful way to examine the subtle foundations of overt racism; in practice, such materials tend to become a sweeping indictment of a wide range of ill-defined behaviors and ideas. This version is especially shoddy: the pyramid is filled in with an almost random mix of brainstormed words, all labeled as more or less racist. The bottom level includes 'Wall Street,' 'neo-liberalism,' and 'Free Trade'—while 'colorblindness,' 'community policing,' and opposition to affirmative action and to anti-Israel boycotts are listed as forms of 'covert' and 'coded' white supremacy. The category of 'coded' white supremacy also includes the Anti-Defamation League and the nonprofit Life After Hate, which helps people disengage from far-right hate groups. The Harvard report rightly describes this image as 'conceptually incoherent' and full of 'dubious comparisons'; it also recounts that the slide was displayed 'for an extended period' with no critical discussion and that one student's objections that the image is antisemitic were treated dismissively. Such practices are a cause for concern (though, again, it's worth remembering that this is one image used in just four out of twenty-eight classrooms in which this required class was taught, and the instructor had already agreed to stop using it by the time the report came out). These dysfunctional, often abusive forms of progressivism and DEI have also received considerable pushback in recent years. Now, the Trump administration's toxic anti-wokeness—and its combination of zealotry, bullying, and bumbling incompetence—is likely not only to harm the institutions it targets but to make it harder to criticize toxic DEI. In the past decade, progressives alienated a lot of moderates with hypersensitive speech policing and self-righteous witch-hunts. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and the anti-DEI police are the baddies—and defenders of true liberalism and free speech need to focus most of their effort on curbing the empowered authoritarian right. Share this article with a friend or family member or post it to social media: Share 1 Trump being Trump, his remarks included some creepy weirdness about being 'the fertilization president' because of his support for infertility treatments. Then, just a few days later, the team at the CDC that collected and published data from fertility clinics—including data relating to success rates—was abruptly axed.
