(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: What you know depends on what you hear [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-06-16
Charlie Warzel/The Atlantic:
I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is (Again) The L.A. distortion effect All of these dynamics are familiar in the post-Ferguson era of protest. What you are witnessing is a news event distributed and consumed through a constellation of different still images and video clips, all filmed from different perspectives and presented by individuals and organizations with different agendas. It is a buffet of violence, celebration, confusion, and sensationalism. Consumed in aggregate, it might provide an accurate representation of the proceedings: a tense, potentially dangerous, but still contained response by a community to a brutal federal immigration crackdown. Unfortunately, very few people consume media this way. And so the protests follow the choose-your-own-adventure quality of a fractured media ecosystem, where, depending on the prism one chooses, what’s happening in L.A. varies considerably.
x "Birthright citizenship should be ended"
No: 52%
Yes: 24%
Ipsos / June 12, 2025 — Polling USA (@USA_Polling) June 15, 2025
G Elliott Morris/Strength in Numbers:
"No Kings Day" protests turn out millions, rebuking Trump Our unofficial estimate is that around 4-6 million people attended a protest event yesterday. Anti-Trump resistance is outpacing 2017. The “No Kings Day” nationwide rallies against Donald Trump/for democracy on Saturday turned out millions of people. That’s per a collective crowdsourcing effort led by Strength In Numbers, and involving many members of the independent data journalism community. We systematized reports from official sources, accounts from the media, and self-reported attendance from thousands of social media posts into a single spreadsheet. (Researchers, please take our data!) As of midnight on Sunday, June 15, we have data from about 40% of No Kings Day events held yesterday, accounting for over 2.6m attendees. According to our back-of-the-envelope math, that puts total attendance somewhere in the 4-6 million people range. That means roughly 1.2-1.8% of the U.S. population attended a No Kings Day event somewhere in the country yesterday. Organizers say 5m turned out, but don’t release public event-by-event numbers.
x It’s looking like the DOGE team organized this parade. — Mike Madrid (@madrid_mike) June 15, 2025
Doug Landry/X via Threadreader:
I just got back from the Trump parade and I have to say it was legitimately the worst executed mass attendance event I’ve ever seen One overarching thought: how do you spend $80 million and fumble the basics?
Many more thoughts — First - I’m not just saying this as a hater (although I am a hater) - I’ve also planned an event on the Mall that was larger than this (and it was fourteen days notice and a tiny fraction of the budget, but who’s counting)
Lot of pictures to illustrate the above thread.
x I now have attended enough West Point parades to know the US Army can parade with the best of them. What we are seeing here is not an inability to do this with precision but a decision not to. Which is more interesting.
https://t.co/712Z7Pacgn — Michael Shurkin (@MichaelShurkin) June 15, 2025
Max Boot/Washington Post:
I was worried about Trump’s Army parade — until I saw it For the army, this was mission accomplished. My worry was that Trump would turn the Army parade into just another political pageant. Those concerns only grew when I saw how many of the spectators were wearing MAGA hats or shirts. ... Rolling Stone headlined its story about the day: “Trump’s military birthday was a gross failure.” I think that’s right, but the flip side is that the Army’s military parade was an absolute success. In other words, Trump did not hijack the event. For the Army, this was mission accomplished. With night falling on Washington and the skies clearing up, I’m sure that the generals left the festivities with as much relief as I did.
x Compilation of massive 'NO KINGS!' protests today ✊ #NoKings — StrictlyChristo 🦋🇺🇦🌻❌👑 (@strictlychristo.bsky.social) 2025-06-15T00:06:10.381Z
Jamelle Bouie/New York Times:
The Polls Are In. Trump Is Not Winning in Los Angeles. What these numbers tell me is that with a more measured approach, Trump might have been able to win this confrontation and bring Americans around to his position. As it stands, a draconian use of force against largely peaceful protesters — in service of a brutal campaign of deportations — has turned the public against him, even as it dislikes the protests themselves. And I expect that the manhandling and handcuffing of Senator Alex Padilla of California during a news conference held by Kristi Noem, secretary of homeland security — a stunning abuse of power — will worsen the president’s position with most Americans. Today, in cities and towns across the country, some number of Americans — maybe even you — will be protesting against the administration and in opposition to the White House’s monarchical pretensions. As I am writing this, there is no way to know the scale of these demonstrations. But something tells me that the events of this week have activated many Americans in a way that will prove detrimental to the president’s authoritarian goals.
Brian Klaas/The Atlantic:
In Minnesota, America’s Luck Ran Out The United States is a fraying society, torn apart by polarization, intense disagreement, and ratcheting extremism. In September 2023, shortly after Donald Trump yet again encouraged direct political violence against his opponents, I wrote this: “As a political scientist who studies political violence across the globe, I would chalk up the lack of high-profile assassinations in the United States during the Trump and post-Trump era to dumb luck … Eventually, all luck runs out.” That luck has now run out, in an idyllic Minneapolis suburb. Although details are still emerging, law-enforcement officials are searching for a former appointee of Democratic Governor Tim Walz in connection with the killings, which Walz called “politically motivated.” The gunman reportedly had a manifesto and a list of targets that included the names of other Minnesota politicians as well as abortion providers in the state. Law-enforcement authorities intercepted but were not able to arrest the alleged shooter shortly after Hortman was assassinated. Had they not, it’s possible that he would have made his way to the homes of other Minnesota officials, trying to murder them too.
x This 102-year-old man is a HERO!! 🫡🇺🇸
LOVE THIS!!! pic.twitter.com/1XTYbFukic — BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) June 15, 2025
Ruth Ben-Ghiat/New York Times:
Trump Wants You to Get Used to This The scale of the mobilization in Los Angeles throws the Trump administration’s strategies into stark relief. The Los Angeles Police Department, the third largest force in the country, clearly stated it could handle the protests. A localized response by the L.A.P.D. would generate only a spate of familiar images, however; it could never capture the drama of a foreign invasion, or the history-making moment when Los Angeles became “occupied territory,” as the White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller wrote on X after protests began. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, a former Fox weekend host, also depicted the L.A. protests as a collusion between an external enemy and the “violent mob” of protesters supporting this “dangerous invasion.” To show the public that order was being restored, Mr. Hegseth turned to a Marine infantry division that served in Iraq and Afghanistan, rendering Los Angeles into an open-air studio for the production of a show of force. The Trump administration is now using the second-largest city in the country as a backdrop for its efforts to create the perception of a national crisis. Doing so could allow it to justify measures that would empower the government to act against its own citizens.
Phillips P O’Brien/Phillip’s Newsletter:
Air "Supremacy" Seems To Have Been Achieved--Its Results Could Be Dramatic The Israel-Iran Air War Could Go A Number Of Different Ways As many of you know, I started my career as an air and sea power historian. Writing about air power has always been one of my specialties and its something that I think gets unfairly pigeon-holed and misunderstood (Strategic Airpower is a Failure!; You Need Boots on the Ground!). There are more misconceptions and false aphorisms about airpower than arguably any other facet of warfare (though space power might be catching up). Anyway, I thought it would be worth writing for subscribers a short precis of what we are seeing in the Israeli-Iran air war—which looks to be an “air” war almost exclusively and, moreover, is shaping up as an example of what one power might/can do if it has air “supremacy”. Other than the USA, air “supremacy” has rarely been achieved, and even for the USA its been more of a rarity than one thinks. In World War II, for instance, only at the very end did the USA achieve supremacy in the air—but by that point the war was basically over. That is not the case here at all. As such, I thought I would try to present what are the key air power issues that we are seeing.
x More than 98% of families in this country choose to vaccinate their young children. But now, vaccine policy is being shaped by the small, extreme minority that doesn’t. This decision doesn’t reflect, protect or support families. pic.twitter.com/Ns6NloWTaF — American Academy of Pediatrics (@AmerAcadPeds) June 13, 2025
Cliff Schecter and David Shuster on Trump and the No King marches:
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2025/6/16/2328258/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-What-you-know-depends-on-what-you-hear?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
