Welcome to the ‘Authoritarian Madness’

“Don’t kid yourself they know they are absolutely getting cooked politically with their terrible bill and rising prices, and they want to create a violent spectacle to feed their content machine. It’s time for the mainstream media to describe this authoritarian madness accurately.”

— Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), reacting on X to President Trump sending National Guard troops to Los Angeles.

Stephen Miller’s Love of Hyperbole on Display

“The BBB will increase by orders of magnitude the scope, scale and speed of removing illegal and criminal aliens from the United States. For that reason alone, it’s the most essential piece of legislation currently under consideration in the entire Western World, in generations.”

— Trump aide Stephen Miller, on X, defending the Republican budget bill after Elon Musk called it a “disgusting abomination.”

Welcome to the Next Dark Ages

“The warlords who sacked Rome did not intend to doom Western Europe to centuries of ignorance. It was not a foreseeable consequence of their actions. … The same cannot be said of the sweeping attack on human knowledge and progress that the Trump administration is now undertaking—a deliberate destruction of education, science, and history, conducted with a fanaticism that recalls the Dark Ages that followed Rome’s fall.”

— Adam Serwer

Finally, A Good Commencement Address

“Why attack universities? Why attack journalism? Because ignorance works for power. First, make the truth seekers live in fear. Sue the journalists. For nothing. Then send masked agents to abduct a college student, a writer of her college paper who wrote an editorial supporting Palestinian rights, and send her to a prison in Louisiana and charge her with nothing. Then, move to destroy law firms that stand up for the rights of others. … With that done, power can rewrite history. With grotesque, false narratives, they can make heroes criminals and criminals heroes. And they can change the definition of the words we use to describe reality. ‘Diversity’ is now described as ‘illegal.’ ‘Equity’ is to be shunned. ‘Inclusion’ is a dirty word. This is an old playbook, my friends ….”

— Scott Pelley, in a commencement address at Wake Forest.

Trump’s Typical Memorial Day Message

“Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds, who allowed 21,000,000 million people to illegally enter our country, many of them being criminals and the mentally insane, through an open border that only an incompetent president would approve, and through judges who are on a mission to keep murderers, drug dealers, rapists, gang members, and released prisoners from all over the world in our country so they can rob, murder, and rape again — all protected by these USA-hating judges who suffer from an ideology that is sick and very dangerous for our country.”

— President Trump’s typically uplifting Memorial Day message, delivered on Truth Social.

Too Bad It’s Rand Paul Who’s Speaking Out

“I support spending cuts. I think the cuts currently in the bill are wimpy and anemic, but I still would support the bill, even with wimpy and anemic cuts, if they weren’t going to explode the debt. The problem is the math doesn’t add up. They’re going to explode the debt. … Somebody has to stand up and yell, ‘the emperor has no clothes.’ Everybody is falling in lockstep on this, ‘Pass the big, beautiful bill. Don’t question anything.’ Well, conservatives do need to stand up and have their voices heard.”

— Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), on Fox News Sunday.