E! News Sep 6, 2022 A team of lawyers take on the heads of Argentina’s bloody military dictatorship during the 1980s in a battle against odds. Watch “Argentina, 1985” on Prime Video and in select theaters September 29, 2022.
Category Archives: Politics
North Carolina motto: “To be rather than to seem.”
- Google AI Overview
North Carolina’s state motto is Esse Quam Videri, a Latin phrase that translates to “To be, rather than to seem.” Adopted in 1893, it reflects a commitment to genuine character and integrity over outward appearances. [1, 2, 3]
The motto was adopted by the General Assembly, making North Carolina the last of the original 13 colonies to select one. It was adapted from the Roman philosopher Cicero’s essay on friendship (De Amicitia). [1, 2, 3]
You can find the official text and laws regarding its use on the North Carolina General Assembly Statutes webpage. For more historical context on how it was chosen, visit the NCpedia entry hosted by the State of North Carolina. [1]
Government website names David Pakman and Amy Goodman
- Google AI Overview
The Official White House Website features a “Media Offenders” / media bias portal that catalogs independent commentators and journalists, including political podcaster David Pakman, criticizing their coverage. (Note: While Amy Goodman and her show Democracy Now! are frequently discussed in relation to independent media landscapes and retrospectives like the documentary Steal This Story, Please!, she is distinct from the specific digital creators highlighted on this registry). [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
White House Media Oversight Portal
- The List: Published on White House Media Bias Reporter, targeting prominent progressive digital influencers and commentators.
- The Purpose: The administration characterizes the database as accountability and a response to alleged media bias or misleading claims.
- The Reaction: Critics, free-press advocates, and named commentators have called the government-hosted list an escalation and an unacceptable pressure campaign against independent press. [1, 2, 3]
Johnson says Pentagon needs more money for ‘fighting communism on our own shores’
Posted in Politics and Movements: US
Trump has threatened to deploy the military against the “enemy within” and has recently promoted the idea that “democratic socialism must be criminalized.”
by Stephen Prager July 15, 2026 (therealnews.com)
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., attends a news conference at the Republican National Committee after a meeting of the House Republican Conference on Tuesday, July 14, 2026. Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on July 14, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
As he pushed for Congress to approve $350 billion in new spending requested by the Pentagon, House Speaker Mike Johnson suggested Tuesday that some of the funds were needed for “fighting communism on our own shores,” an ominous notion in light of President Donald Trump’s threats to deploy the US military against his domestic enemies.
In addition to the already record-breaking $1.1 trillion military spending bill that was approved last month by the House Appropriations Committee, the Pentagon has requested a separate $350 billion package to be passed through a separate GOP-led spending bill known as “Reconciliation 3.0,” which can pass without Democratic support.
Johnson (La.) has faced pushback from some GOP senators, including Sens. Susan Collins (Maine) and the hospitalized Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.), as he’s sought additional spending. During a press conference on Tuesday, Johnson made his case for Republicans to back the reconciliation proposal.
The speaker argued that the package included “transformational funding that will help us change the dynamic of the Department of War and make it more efficient and effective,” including Trump’s request to “effectively double the funding for national defense.”
“Look, we live in dangerous times,” Johnson said. “We’re fighting communism on our own shores, and we’re fighting evil terrorists and tyrants around the world, and we have to be able to protect our national security.”
In the weeks following a series of Democratic primary victories by progressive and democratic socialist candidates in New York, Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, Texas, and elsewhere, Trump and his allies in the GOP have relentlessly hammered on the idea that the nation was under siege by “godless Communists” who want to “completely destroy the traditional American way of life,” rhetoric that echoed McCarthy era red-baiting to many critics.
In just two weeks since those primaries on June 23, Reuters found that Trump had invoked “communism” at least 81 times to demonize candidates and officials like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and others, who have promoted policies like Medicare for All, higher taxes on the wealthy, the expansion of public utilities, the abolition of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, cutting off aid to Israel, and other policies supported by large numbers of Democratic voters.
Trump’s recent rhetoric has indicated that opposing “communism” goes beyond simply voting to keep these candidates out of power. He’s referred to the so-called communists as “animals,” as a “cancer” that needs to be “cut out fast.”
He said during a July 3 speech outside Mount Rushmore that “communists” cannot be “loyal” to America and he will “send them into exile… send them quickly away.”
On Sunday, Trump reposted a video from the right-wing radio host Michael Savage with the title “DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM MUST BE CRIMINALIZED; LEADERS DEPORTED.”
Johnson echoed Trump’s rhetoric on Tuesday, continuing to describe passing the military spending proposal as part of the existential fight against internal communist enemies.
“THE BARBARIANS ARE INSIDE THE GATE!” Johnson posted to social media alongside a video of himself promoting the bill.
“We are fighting right now in Congress over whether we’re going to maintain our status as a constitutional republic OR trade that in, dismantle the foundations and GO DOWN THIS DARK ROAD OF DEATH TO COMMUNISM,” he continued. “THAT is the question.”
With these comments, Johnson was explicitly tying increased military funding to Trump’s fight against communism, though it’s unclear which aspect of the budget proposal would be directed toward those ends.
Federal troops are generally barred from domestic law enforcement, though the president can deploy them in cases of domestic insurrection and violence that ordinary law enforcement cannot handle.
Trump has deployed active duty Marines to US cities like Los Angeles and ordered the National Guard to deploy to many others, including Portland, Memphis, and Chicago, which courts have said violated the law.
He has also suggested using armed forces to target his ideological enemies. During a speech to generals last year, he said cities should be used as “training grounds for our military” as they fight an “enemy within,” which has included immigrants, the “radical left” and protest movements that have mobilized in opposition to his administration.
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Mr Nobody Against Putin
Madman Films Nov 6, 2025 Pavel “Pasha” Talankin loves his job as a teacher in the small Russian town of Karabash – until his country invades Ukraine. He is outraged by the new government propaganda in the curriculum, not to mention the school’s being used as a military recruitment ground. In class, Pasha finds ways to playfully protest the regime; more crucially, he becomes a whistleblower, secretly filming the alarming shifts under the guise of his work as school videographer. He risks his life to send the footage overseas to filmmaker David Borenstein – while also planning his own escape. Winner of Sundance’s World Cinema Documentary Special Jury Prize, this hugely daring and noble collaboration is one of the strongest docs of the year. Our Website: http://www.madmanfilms.com.au
Democracy Now! Mar 16, 2026 Latest Shows Support our work: https://democracynow.org/donate/sm-de… “Mr Nobody Against Putin” won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature on Sunday. Democracy Now! recently spoke with co-director David Borenstein and the subject of the film, the Russian teacher Pavel “Pasha” Talankin, who personally documented Russia’s use of wartime propaganda. “I need for as many people as possible to see what is happening inside of Russian schools,” says Talankin. “Putin is forcing propaganda into their schools, and [the children are] absorbing all of this.” Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET. Subscribe to our Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe
ChatGPT: Is Trump a trickster?
ChatGPT:
The idea of Donald Trump as a trickster has become a common theme in psychology, mythology, and political commentary. Whether one sees it as illuminating or misleading depends on how the archetype is understood.
From a Jungian perspective, the trickster is not simply a liar or a prankster. The trickster is an archetypal figure who disrupts established order. He exposes hypocrisy, breaks taboos, overturns conventions, and often creates chaos. The trickster can be both creative and destructive.
Carl Jung regarded archetypes as recurring patterns in the collective psyche. The trickster appears in many cultures:
- Loki
- Hermes
- Coyote
- Anansi
These figures often expose hidden truths, but they also create disorder. Their actions can force transformation, though not always in ways people welcome.
Some commentators have argued that Trump resembles the trickster because he:
- breaks political conventions,
- disrupts institutions,
- disregards established norms of communication,
- forces opponents and supporters alike to confront assumptions they may not have questioned,
- and elicits unusually strong emotional reactions.
Others reject that framing because they believe it romanticizes or mythologizes the actions of a real political leader whose decisions should be evaluated concretely rather than symbolically.
From the perspective of the Translation work we’ve been doing together, I think there’s another interesting way to approach it.
Rather than asking:
“Is Trump the Trickster?”
one might ask:
“What is the trickster revealing in me?”
That shifts the inquiry from the external figure to consciousness itself.
A Prosperos-style Translation might begin with the sense testimony:
“Trump is dangerous because he is a trickster.”
Translation would then ask:
- What assumptions are hidden in the word dangerous?
- What assumptions are hidden in trickster?
- Have I attributed ultimate authority to an external figure?
- Or does Truth remain the authority regardless of who occupies political office?
The first step would remain unchanged:
Truth is all that is.
Truth is One.
My being is Truth being.
From there, the question becomes:
Can any political figure, however influential, define the Reality Self?
The answer within your framework would be no.
That doesn’t mean political leaders are unimportant. Their decisions can have profound effects on people’s lives. But those effects do not determine the ultimate nature of Being.
One more thought, connecting to our conversation about the coyote.
In many Native American traditions, Coyote is the quintessential trickster. Coyote is disruptive, deceptive, inventive, foolish, and unexpectedly wise. Coyote breaks old patterns—not necessarily because Coyote is morally good, but because disruption reveals what had been hidden.
Whether one sees Trump through that archetypal lens or not, the deeper philosophical question is less about Trump himself than about what happens to a society when the trickster archetype becomes active. Such periods often reveal hidden assumptions, loyalties, fears, and contradictions that had been present all along but were easier to ignore.
From the standpoint of your Translation method, the challenge is not merely to interpret the trickster but to remain grounded in the first step. If Truth alone has authority, then even the most disruptive public figure cannot alter the beingness and consciousness that arise from Truth. The trickster may shake appearances, but the Translation asks whether appearances have ever possessed ultimate authority in the first place.
‘Heavily intoxicated’: Woman says Senate nominee raped her in 2021
“Jake Tapper, now an anchor at CNN, wrote a 4,200-word essay in the Washington City Paper headlined I DATED MONICA LEWINSKY. (‘I’ll get with her because I figured that behind her initial aggressiveness lurked on easy, perhaps winning, bit of no-frills hookup.’)
–Brooke Nevils, “Unspeakable Things: Silence, Shame, and the Stories We Choose to Believe”
CNN Jul 6, 2026 A woman said Monday that Graham Platner, the Democratic nominee for US Senate in Maine, entered her home without permission and raped her while he was heavily intoxicated nearly five years ago when they were in a casual dating relationship – an allegation Platner denies. 0:00 Jenny Racicot describes meeting Platner in 2021 2:23 Does she have political motivations for making these claims? 4:35 Jenny describes what she saw in his eyes as the alleged assault occurred 7:24 Platner seemed aware that what he was doing was wrong at times 9:11 What happened after the alleged assault Watch 24/7 live news with CNN Headlines: https://bit.ly/4eIvlTr
Bad politicians
AMERICA’S 250th: Are we happy?
Marianne Williamson Jul 3, 2026 This year should be a mindful, not a mindless celebration Subscribe to Marianne’s Substack: MarianneWilliamson.Susbtack.com
2 cities defy Gov. Ron DeSantis’ anti-rainbow orders by creatively displaying their Pride colors
“The fact we got to see it at the beginning of Pride Month was chef’s kiss.”
Daniel Villarreal (he/him) June 22, 2026 (lgbtqnation.com)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) | YouTube screenshot
Two Florida cities are standing up to Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ removal of their rainbow crosswalks by painting rainbow colors on two other highly visible public places.
At the start of Pride month, St. Petersburg painted the steps of its city hall in the colors of the Progress Pride flag.
Related
City forced to scrap Rainbow Arch project due to Ron DeSantis’s anti-DEI law
“Losing the crosswalk was a huge hit to us, so making sure that we pop up more visual signs of inclusion was right in alignment,” said Dr. Byron Green-Calisch, president of the board of directors with St. Pete Pride, according to Bay News 9. “So, the fact we got to see it at the beginning of Pride Month was chef’s kiss.”
City Mayor Ken Welch said, “The Pride steps at City Hall are more than paint on concrete. They are a reflection of St. Petersburg’s values and a reminder that our city is strongest when everyone feels welcome, respected, and seen.”
Last July 1, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy wrote in a letter directing the nation’s governors to keep all non-freeway intersections and crosswalks “free from distractions.” In a subsequent X post, he said, “Taxpayers expect their dollars to fund safe streets, not rainbow crosswalks.”
In response, DeSantis signed a law directing the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) “to ensure compliance with FDOT’s uniform system for traffic control devices,” according to a July statement from a department spokesperson. The law effectively bans all pavement art and murals like rainbow crosswalks, regardless of their political message.
The city of Fort Lauderdale also recently installed a rainbow-colored “circle of love” at the Selene condominiums near Sebastian Street Beach, a popular LGBTQ+ beach. The city had been fighting DeSantis’ order in court to keep its rainbow street art, but it relented after his administration threatened to withhold local transportation funding. Because the new rainbow circle is located on private business property, current state law cannot force the business to remove it, WPEC reported.
“We are here today to not only say that we are going to never be erased, but we’re going to find a way to still be able to appreciate and embrace the diversity of our community,” Mayor Dean Trantalis said during the circle’s unveiling earlier this month. “Because if there’s anything that Fort Lauderdale represents, it’s diversity. People from all walks of life should be able to come here.”
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL), who also attended the unveiling, said, “This expression in the circle of love, with the city working with a developer in the city to make sure that there continues to be a very public display of support for equality and the LGBTQ+ community, is remarkable and I’m so proud of them.”
St. Petersburg previously responded to DeSantis’ order by installing rainbow-colored bike racks and blasting a 60-mile-long rainbow laser across its night sky.
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Daniel Villarreal is a longtime, award-winning journalist and editor who has written for NBC News, Newsweek, Vox, Slate, Vice News, The Seattle Stranger, The Dallas Voice and numerous other LGBTQ+ publications. He has spoken at SXSW, Creating Change, Netroots Nation, GaymerX, and is a graduate of GLAAD’s Voices of Color program and of the Poynter Institute’s 2024 Power of Diverse Voices seminar. He is also the founder of QueerBomb Dallas, an annual non-corporate Pride event; CinéWilde, the nation’s longest running monthly LGBTQ film series. He is available for interviews and educational talks.