"The Trump administration’s push earlier this year to arrest and deport international students for their pro-Palestinian activism was illegal, a federal judge ruled Tuesday..."

"... calling the crackdown a 'truly scandalous and unconstitutional suppression of free speech.' In a sweeping rebuke, U.S. District Judge William Young in Boston said that the Department of Homeland Security and the State Department sought to target non-citizens 'for speaking out' with the 'goal of tamping down pro-Palestinian student protests and terrorizing similarly situated' students. Young [a Reagan appointee] decried the administration’s conduct in striking terms, quoting President Ronald Reagan’s declaration that freedom must 'be fought for and defended constantly by each generation.”

From "Trump administration illegally targeted pro-Palestinian protesters, judge rules/The efforts to detain and deport noncitizen activists earlier this year represented an unconstitutional infringement on the First Amendment, the ruling says" (WaPo)(gift link).

"We were just kind of living in some turbulent times.... It’s almost turned to a rebellious act to have those right-leaning views."

"And I thought, you know, owning a T-shirt like the 'Reagan Bush ’84' one was kind of a cool way to join the movement of the antiestablishment younger generation of conservatives... [It's less confrontational than] wearing the red MAGA hat around, triggering the libs, so to speak. It’s kind of a peaceful, respectful way to say that, you know what, it’s okay to have a different opinion than you and disagree. I’m going to wear my Reagan shirt — it’s a more respectful way to voice my opinion.... I’ve been even criticized from the right for wearing the Reagan stuff...."

Says Kieran Laffey, George Washington University college student, quoted in "Why Gen Z conservatives love the ‘Reagan Bush ’84’ tee/They weren’t alive in the ’80s, but to them, 'Reagan is still a vibe'" (WaPo).

The article notes that you can easily buy these shirts on line. They just look vintage. We're told it's "the conservative take on a band shirt or the once-ubiquitous Che Guevara tee."

ADDED: Why not get ahead of the trend? Here, on Amazon (commission earned!):

"Alcohol abuse is also under sharp scrutiny. That fella probably scrutinized it."

Lost in time is a moment most never saw or never heard of.

It was 1992: President Ronald Reagan’s glass award shattered by a “protestor”. pic.twitter.com/a9vaVeVCYl

— Brian Roemmele (@BrianRoemmele) March 29, 2025

"If it takes a bloodbath, let’s get it over with, no more appeasement."

Said Ronald Reagan, in 1970, talking about dealing with unrest on college campuses, quoted at the time in "Ronald Reagan Is Giving ‘Em Heck" (NYT)(free access link).

Later he said the remark was a "figure of speech" and that anyone who took it seriously was "neurotic." Within a few days, four students were shot at Kent State.

I ran across that because I'd noticed that the NYT was spelling "bloodbath" as 2 words — "Trump defends his warning of a ‘blood bath for the country" — in its current reporting. I had 2 theories about why:

1. A compound word takes a long time to become standard. When we see "bloodbath" as one word, it feels more like a stock term. Trite. By spacing it out as 2 words, you might get people to think that Trump put it together in his own fervid brain. But maybe...

2. The NYT has a style guide, and it decided long ago that "blood bath" was the correct configuration, and people at the Times are meticulous about writing it the same way every time.

To narrow my 2 ideas about twoness and oneness down to one, I searched the NYT archive for the 1-word form. I found many examples of "bloodbath," including Reagan's crazy idea of sticking it to the students. There was also Russell Baker making jokes about Richard Nixon's "bloodbath" theory of Vietnam (in 1970, deploying a fictional character he called "Dandy"):

"I believe that scripture, the Bible is very clear that God is the one that raises up those in authority."

Said Mike Johnson, orating just before taking the oath as Speaker of the House:

Transcript. 

Excerpt:

"In unguarded moments over a 33-month tenure, he suggested that liberals were un-American and that the popular Beach Boys rock band was unwholesome."

"He likened his critics to Nazis and Bolsheviks, and insulted Black people, women, Jews and handicapped people.... 'I never use the words Democrats and Republicans,' he said in a favorite line. 'It’s liberals and Americans.'... He banned women’s pantsuits in his department, but the edict was flagrantly violated. Heralding divisiveness, he reversed the bison on the department logo from left-facing to right-facing. 'If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or the ballot box,' he quipped, 'perhaps the cartridge box should be used.' He accused his critics of using sham environmental concerns to achieve 'centralized planning and control of the society.' He told Business Week: 'Look what happened to Germany in the 1930s. The dignity of man was subordinated to the powers of Nazism. The dignity of man was subordinated in Russia. Those are the forces that this thing can evolve into.'"

From "James G. Watt, Interior Secretary Under Reagan, Dies at 85/Mr. Watt once declared that Interior Department policies over years had swung too far toward conservation under the influence of 'environmental extremists'" (NYT).

Watt resigned on October 9, 1983, after his attack on The Beach Boys and that remark about "two Jews and a cripple":

"Declaring this week that defending Ukraine against Russia’s invasion was not a vital interest for the United States, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida cemented a Republican shift..."

"... away from hawkish foreign policy that has played out over the past decade and accelerated with Donald J. Trump’s political rise. Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis — whose combined support makes up more than 75 percent of Republican primary voters in the nascent 2024 presidential contest — are now largely aligned on Ukraine, signaling a sharp break from the interventionist approach that drove former President George W. Bush’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan."

From "DeSantis, Backing Away From Ukraine, Angers G.O.P. Hawks/The Florida governor, who joined Donald Trump in declaring that defending Ukraine from Russia was not a vital interest, drew swift condemnations from establishment Republicans" (NYT).

DeSantis called the Ukraine/Russia war a “territorial dispute,” and thus, in the words of the NYT, "dismissed the argument that Mr. Putin’s aggression threatened the postwar international order" and "unequivocally rejected the idea that the conflict is a war to defend 'freedom.'"

"During the early stages of my father’s Alzheimer’s, when he still had lucid moments, I apologized to him for writing an autobiography many years earlier..."

"... in which I flung open the gates of our troubled family life. He was already talking less at that point, but his eyes told me he understood. I thought of that moment when I read that Prince Harry, in his new memoir, wrote about his father, King Charles, getting between his battling sons and saying, 'Please, boys, don’t make my final years a misery.'... My justification in writing a book I now wish I hadn’t written... was very similar to what I understand to be Harry’s reasoning. I wanted to tell the truth, I wanted to set the record straight. Naïvely, I thought if I put my own feelings and my own truth out there for the world to read, my family might also come to understand me better.... There isn’t just one truth, our truth — the other people who inhabit our story have their truths as well.... Years ago, someone asked me what I would say to my younger self if I could. Without hesitating I answered: 'That’s easy. I’d have said, "Be quiet."'"

Writes President Reagan's daughter Patti Davis, in "Prince Harry and the Value of Silence" (NYT).

"Putin, having been shaped by a Cold War-era K.G.B. that specialized in manipulating U.S. racial tensions, was almost certainly aware ..."

"... that a perception that [Brittney] Griner might receive insufficient attention could be used to his advantage. The activism that resulted from that perception no doubt helped push the Biden Administration to make a deal rather than to risk repeating the miscalculations of the Reagan Administration. Still, the Griner affair may yet reiterate a crucial lesson of December, 1983—that inequality, or even the appearance of inequality, is not only a liability at home but an impediment in foreign affairs. The irony is that Putin, in the most cynical way possible, has demonstrated that Black lives really do matter, by highlighting just how much you can achieve by placing one in jeopardy."

Writes Jelani Cobb in "Brittney Griner and the Role of Race in Diplomacy/Griner’s release recalls the lessons of the effort to free Robert Goodman, an African American Navy navigator, from Syria" (The New Yorker).

Cat-napping — taking advantage of the little spaces — is a super-power, not a weakness.

But you said nothing when Trump did similar. https://t.co/Ggv2IZH0w3

— V Daniels (@funkapunk) October 22, 2022

Here's a 2021 column in The Guardian: "From Aristotle to Einstein: a brief history of power nappers/Churchill took naps for at least an hour, Da Vinci for 20 minutes and Dalí for just a second" by Caroline Davies."

Salvador Dalí, in his 50 Secrets of Magic Craftsmanship for aspiring painters, outlined tips for the one-second micro-nap, including sitting upright, key in hand and upturned plate beneath. Once asleep, the key will drop and the ensuing clang ensures instant revival. Albert Einstein deployed a similar technique, using a spoon or pencil instead of a key.

"In 1967, California became one of three states to authorize abortion when, among other indications, a pregnancy seriously endangered a woman’s physical or mental health."

"After then-governor Ronald Reagan signed California’s 1967 abortion act, his daughter said, he began to regret it when he learned that 'psychiatrists were diagnosing unwed mothers-to-be with suicidal tendencies after five-minute assessments so that they could get abortions.' Thirty years ago, shortly after the Supreme Court reaffirmed Roe’s central holding by a single vote in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the psychiatrist Paul S. Appelbaum speculated that returning to restrictive abortion laws 'will confront psychiatrists with dilemmas from which there is no clear escape.' Recently I asked Dr. Appelbaum to update his prediction. 'Given understandable sympathy for a woman who does not want, and may not be able to care for, a baby, and lacks other options, psychiatrists will be under intense pressure to make such judgments,' he told me. Mental health exceptions will be one of the only ways of gaining access to abortion in some states. This means that my profession will surely assume the troubled role of gatekeeper once more, feeling pressured by a woman’s circumstances, and often by their own conscience, to label her as disturbed when in reality she is sane."

 From "The ‘Open Secret’ on Getting a Safe Abortion Before Roe v. Wade" by psychiatry professor Sally L. Satel (NYT).

That is, it's rather clear that if the state makes psychiatrists into abortion gatekeepers, they will not exercise their power according to professional ethics. That offers a strong foundation to lawmakers who oppose a mental health exception. It's also a good foundation for those who want to permit access to abortion without any need to pass through gates that are only a restriction for those who restrict themselves to honesty.

"I believe that nothing living can avoid the political today. The refusal is also politics; one thereby advances the politics of the evil cause."

Wrote Thomas Mann (to Hermann Hesse) in 1945, quoted in "Thomas Mann’s Brush with Darkness/How the German novelist’s tormented conservative manifesto led to his later modernist masterpieces" (The New Yorker). 

The author of the article, Alex Ross, continues:

If artists lose themselves in fantasies of independence, they become the tool of malefactors, who prefer to keep art apart from politics so that the work of oppression can continue undisturbed. So Mann wrote in an afterword to a 1937 book about the Spanish Civil War, adding that the poet who forswears politics is a “spiritually lost man.”... 

[During] the time that the novelist spent at [Princeton U]niversity between 1938 and 1941... Mann called for “social self-discipline under the ideal of freedom”—a political philosophy that doubles as a personal one. He also said, “Let me tell you the whole truth: if ever Fascism should come to America, it will come in the name of ‘freedom.’ ”

That's a great quote — "if ever Fascism should come to America, it will come in the name of 'freedom'" — and I googled it to see if today's anti-freedom leftists had used it against conservatives. 

Looking for Mann, I got Ronald Reagan: "If fascism ever comes to America, it will come in the name of liberalism." 

But it would be a mistake to think Reagan nicked it from Mann and that Mann was the originator of the "if fascism comes to America" clause. In the 1935 Sinclair Lewis book, “It Can’t Happen Here,” there's: “When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying the cross.” 

You get the picture. There's a lot of If fascism ever comes to America, it will look like my opponents.

The "conservative manifesto" referred to in the New Yorker article title is "Reflections of a Nonpolitical Man." That book was recently reissued — here — and Ross is displeased by the new introduction, which he says "trivializes" Mann, putting him at "the level of an op-ed columnist":

"American men face a desperate situation and don't even know it. There are large numbers of men wandering lost, in some personal wasteland..."

"... of jobs with little meaning, personal lives with little passion, and massive confusion about the reasons why. There's a lot of hurtin' cowboys out there." 

Said Ed Honnold, "the mild-mannered federal lawyer and founder of the Men's Council of Greater Washington, one of six such local groups salving men's deep inner pain through communal rituals of dancing and roaring, hugging and weeping," quoted in "MEN'S MOVEMENT STALKS THE WILD SIDE," a WaPo column by Phil McCombs, published on February 3, 1991 — 30 years ago. 

I'm reading that this morning because the news about Trump at the Atlanta baseball game doing the tomahawk chop — blogged here — jogged my thinking about gestures and chants that mimic the real or imagined traditions of indigenous people and I thought, remember drum circles?

Here's the part about drum circles from that 1991 article:

"The difference between is that Carter was a bumbling fool. Biden is destroying this country on purpose."

That's the most-responded-to comment at a WaPo column by Marc A. Thiessen called "It’s the 1970s all over again, and Joe Biden is the new Jimmy Carter." 

That commenter says: "The headline for this piece is all wrong. Biden is nothing like Carter. He is much much worse. He is trying to make this country into a socialist communist place." 

From the column: 

Soulcraft.

I don't remember ever noticing the word "soulcraft" before today, when I saw it in a David Brooks column. Writing about "the cultural transformation" that could be achieved through the Democrats' $4 trillion in spending, he declared: "Statecraft is soulcraft." I blogged that — with disapproval — here. 

But what is "soulcraft"? If "statecraft" makes sense, it must mean the work of the state, so shouldn't "soulcraft" mean the work of the soul? But, in context, it seems to mean the state's work is to work on the soul. I think he's saying that the state ought to engage in massive spending with the aim of shaping the soul of the people who live under the power of the state, and the lack of parallelism in the use of the ending "-craft" is disturbing.

I try to think of other "-craft" words. "Witchcraft" is the work of witches, not the shaping of witches. It's done by witches, not to witches. It fits with "statecraft," not "soulcraft."

In the comments to my post, Lloyd W. Robertson and Peter Spieker independently bring up George Will, and Quaestor writes: 

"If he hadn't tried to kill the president, he would have been unconditionally released a long, long, long time ago. But everybody is comfortable now after all of the studies, all of the analysis and all of the interviews and all of the experience with Mr. Hinckley."

Said U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman, quoted in "John Hinckley, who shot Reagan, to be freed from oversight/A federal judge says the man who tried to assassinate President Ronald Reagan four decades ago can be released unconditionally from the restrictions he's been living under next year if he remains mentally stable" (ABC News).