SaturTabs

Photo by SLT

“As I’ve said, senator,” Hegseth began, “I don’t believe district courts should determine national security policy, but if the Supreme Court rules on a topic, we will abide by that.”

On the occasion of Juneteenth, a day that commemorates the end of slavery, President Trump took a moment to complain that the national holiday even exists.

“Too many non-working holidays in America,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media, just hours after his press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made a point of noting that White House staff had shown up to work.

The president’s decision to snub Juneteenth — a day that has been cherished by generations of Black Americans before it was named a federal holiday in 2021 — is part of a pattern of words and actions by Mr. Trump that minimize, ignore or even erase some of the experiences and history of Black people in the United States. Since taking office in January, he has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history or at times denying that it happened.

[…]

In the past week alone, he’d issued proclamations commemorating Father’s Day, Flag Day and National Flag Week, and the 250th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill — none of which are among the 11 annual federal holidays.

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Steven L. Taylor
About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog). Follow Steven on Twitter and/or BlueSky.

Comments

  1. Eusebio says:

    From the CNET article on the trump phone:

    The Trump Mobile site launched with a map showing its coverage area, but that map… used the name Gulf of Mexico

    Reuters reviewed the website code and noted that the site seemed to be using T-Mobile’s network data for the coverage map, and that company uses the Gulf of Mexico name.

    Looking at T-Mobile’s online coverage map now, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans are labeled, as well as the Caribbean Sea and the Sargasso Sea. The Bay of Campeche is even labeled, but wtf, the gulf of which it’s a part is nameless. Looks like T-Mobile has half complied.

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  2. Michael Cain says:

    @Eusebio:

    …but wtf, the gulf of which it’s a part is nameless. Looks like T-Mobile has half complied.

    I’ve mentioned before that “Gulf of Mexico” is a name used in a variety of treaties and other international rules/regulations. Which likely includes T-Mobile’s licenses for where it can operate offshore.

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  3. de stijl says:

    That cat on the thumbnail rocks!

    It’s more than inquisitive. It’s pensive. Circumspect. Deeply so.

    Knows more than you do, anyway.

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  4. JohnSF says:

    “I don’t believe district courts should determine national security policy, but if the Supreme Court rules on a topic, we will abide by that.”

    Or, the rule of law only applies once it gets all the way up to the Supreme Court?
    It’s very difficult to operate a lawful state on the basis that only one court, at the apex of the appeals chain, has effect.

    Modern European and American states have usually worked on the basis of laws that are enforced by the courts, at whatever level.
    And that has applied even to rather “absolutist” systems such as France under Louis XIV, or the Hohezollerns.

    There simply cannot be an orderly and predictable system of rule if law is subject to executive whim. Even “absolute monarchs” saw that known rules were necesary to effectively rule
    Even if they reserved the right to change those rules.
    And this should surely apply even more to republican and democratic systems, such as the United States of America.

    (It cerainly has done in the historically undemocratic parliamentary monarchy of England, where the courts periodically, post-Henry VIII, told the excecutive to go shove it.)

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