Jeanine Pirro told the truth, after exhausting other options

Posted on August 3, 2026 by David S. Meyer

US Attorney Jeanine Pirro angered her benefactor, Donald Trump, by asking a federal judge to dismiss felony charges she’d filed against Olympian Davey Hearn,* a member of the International Whitewater Hall of Fame. (You can read her motion and the judge’s response here–it’s about 20 pages, and well-illustrated.)

You’ll recall that it’s just about a month ago when police arrested Hearn, who had interrupted a long bike ride to check out the damage at the reflecting pool in the middle of the day. Wearing a loud biking outfit and a helmet–hardly standard attire for a vandal–Hearn spent about 5 hours in police custody. The Trump Administration drained the pool for repairs, and Trump explained that the conspicuous erosion of the custom American flag blue liner was the result of vandalism. No surprise, Trump embellished the story, describing a slash in the pool liner that grew in successive tellings from 100-300 feet. Pirro, a longtime Trumpo loyalist, had announced that she was committed to the case against Hearn, and promised “tremendous evidence” to submit to court.

Prosecutors must demonstrate means, motive, and opportunity to secure a conviction, as we’ve all learned from police procedurals on television. But there was never a show of motive, and there was plenty of video online undermining any hint of opportunity or means: Hearn had bike shoes and a helmet–no sabre. Trump has said that he’s less concerned with securing convictions than making his enemies suffer. And I’m sure Davey Hearn had an awful–and probably costly–month.

Pirro’s motion to dismiss reports that the Interior Department misled her investigators and the Department of Justice. In investigation, she found that the liner had been visibly deteriorating long before Hearn got off his bike, the result of substandard work by an inexperienced contractor that won a generous no-bid contract based on prior work for Citizen Trump. The Justice Department, she explained, isn’t supposed to prosecute cases unless attorneys are confident of sufficient evidence to secure a conviction–and it just wasn’t there. Officers of the court aren’t supposed to lie and can be punished for doing so in court filings. Anyway, US Attorney Pirro opted to do her job and tell the truth.

At some point, the story of what happened inside the Office of the US Attorney for DC will come out. We’ll learn if Pirro was motivated by a sense of duty and/or a fear of punishment. We’ll find out whether she couldn’t find an Assistant US Attorney willing to conduct the prosecution and whether there were threats of resignation. The indictment was inexcusable, but truth and justice late is better than never. At this point, we should applaud Pirro’s truthful filing, and call for more, starting with an apology and a commitment to the law….at least.

Without citing evidence, Trump, the president of the United States, and his Secretary of the Interior, Doug Burghum, criticized Pirro for getting it wrong and “chickening out.” They’re not working as attorneys and are, apparently, free to lie without restraint save damage to their credibility. You’ll have a hard time finding evidence that Trump worries much about his reputation for integrity. He does worry–and stew–about defiance from his subordinates. In the next few days, there will doubtless be some show of discipline against Pirro; maybe she’ll leave office or maybe refile charges. Or maybe the erosion of trust within the Administration will continue just like the pool lining.

(Do you want to believe the Administration’s reports from Iran, knowing they will lie to you about peeling paint?)

*Full disclosure: I was glad to know Davey Hearn when I was a student at Hampshire College. I learned, shortly after arriving, that it hosted an extraordinarily high concentration of whitewater stars. I met Davey’s sister, Cathy, also a repeat Olympian and Whitewater Hall of Famer at a new student event. I tried to impress her with the story of my one-time participation in an open canoe race; it is astonishing that she became a friend anyway. Both Davey and Cathy displayed the drive and discipline of world-class athletes, along with the resilience, humility, and ingenuity that comes with continued excellence in a sport that operated without much money or visibility. They built boats and gear and, upon request, helped others (including me!) learn to paddle and build as well.

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What resistance looks like: telling the truth….

Posted on August 2, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Demonstrations capture the imagination–at least sometimes–but effective social movements always include much more.

The image above covers a March on the Pentagon (October 21, 1967), and demonstrations, large and small, were a critical component of the antiwar movement. The 1967 march followed years of teach-ins on American college campuses, draft counseling and draft resistance, testimony before Congress, lobbying at the national and state level, and local draft boards employing varying degrees of sensitivity to claims of conscientious objection. There were electoral efforts and organization building, journalism–including hard questions of authorities and first hand reporting.

Effective movements include diverse efforts, sometimes spilling into public spaces, but often taking place around kitchen tables and church basements and classrooms–less visible, maybe less dramatic, but no less important.

One important strategy relies on telling the truth when authorities seem to be lying. And sometimes the settings in which truth-telling takes place are smaller and far more subtle than the large demonstration.

Rejecting official mendacities is a core component of “living in truth,” a first step in changing the world. The phrase is from Czech and Czechoslovakian playwright/president/dissident Vaclav Havel in his powerful and elegant essay, “The Power of the Powerless.” Translated into English by Paul Wilson, it’s a powerful piece of writing, which recognizes a kind of heroism of small gestures–the key example in the essay is of a grocer who doesn’t display a sign in his store: “workers of the world unite.”

When I first read the piece, I saw the nobility of individual resistance–and then I read political scientist David Ost’s insightful analysis of Havel’s essay,* which recognized the cumulative power of smaller, less dramatic gestures, taking the steps that appear available and recognizing that effective resistance to authoritarian governance is contingent upon many factors outside an individual’s influence–and it often takes a very long time.

But finding a way to reject lies and resurrect the truth is a core task of effective democratic politics, and is particularly critical in the current moment.

To be sure, Donald Trump is hardly the first American president to dissemble about critical issues publicly. All presidents lie, recognizing more and less selfish motivations. But the volume, carelessness, and transparency of Trump’s lies far surpasses previous presidential deceptions, and dishonesty is redolent throughout all levels of the Administration.

Although there’s plenty of malice, Administrative incompetence and carelessness is everywhere. You may have seen the story of a State Department presentation at an international conference on AIDS in Africa, in which every country on the continent was mislabeled. (The picture below is from a story in The Guardian.)

Ulp.

In this context, injecting a bit of truth and respect for truth is critical activist and democratic work.

Checking and correcting facts doesn’t generally make for the same dramatic images as a big protest, but it’s important to put some sands of truth into slowing the mendacity machine. Examples will follow in the next few entries.

Hint: take a look at the reflecting pool.

*David Ost, “The Sham, and the Damage, of ‘Living in Truth,’” East European Politics and Societies, May 2018, 32 (2): 301-309.

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Froze and reversed the arms race: anniversary, repost.

Posted on June 12, 2026 by David S. Meyer

The June 12th nuclear freeze post, tweaked and updated….

I try to remember to repost this every June 12, a reminder about the massive nuclear freeze march, part of an important campaign in the 1980s. Of course, nuclear weapons are rarely the most salient story today, although the United States and Israel continue to wage a war against Iran allegedly focused on preventing a rogue nation from going nuclear. The Russian war against Ukraine continues, and activists across the country demonstrate against mass arrest and deportation sweeps of migrants, and a general fear about the eroding of democracy.. Just for starters.

Still, a fairly short story of the nuclear freeze offers useful lessons for all sorts of other movements. Not the least of these is that movements (sometimes) matter, and don’t get credit for their efforts unless organizers claim it. The June 12 demonstration made international news in 1982, but is generally edited out of popular histories of the Cold War or of the Reagan era. (See if you can find anniversary remembrances in your media feed today, and tell me if I’m wrong.)

The threat of nuclear war isn’t gone, and more than a few developments in the Trump era have made it more pronounced: The United States abandoned an arms control treaty with Iran that was working, and initially made a show of trying to renegotiate it. That moment passed, and the Trump administration launched a war against Iran, determined to extract concessions through punishment; at this moment, there’s no evidence that it’s working at all. And at this moment, it looks like Iran has figured out how to enhance its leverage by not losing and by imposing costs on the United States and the rest of the world. (Fill up the gas tank of your car and you’ll know what I mean.) The United States had already announced that it would no longer abide by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, negotiated in the mid-1980s, and announced that it was withdrawing from an “Open Skies” verification accord first proposed by Dwight Eisenhower, and in force for decades. At the same time, the Trump administration is working purposefully to reduce American commitments to NATO. Bilateral and multilateral negotiations on nuclear arms control have largely stalled. But the Russian invasion of Ukraine–which ceded nuclear weapons deployed on its territory to Russia in 1994 for a promise from the major powers, including Russia, to protect its territorial integrity–put nuclear weapons back on the agenda, and Russian leader Vladimir Putin periodically threatens to use nukes on the battlefield.

It’s an urgent moment.

The Federation of American Scientists, an expert group that has promoted nuclear safety and arms control since the end of the second World War, maintains a “Doomsday Clock,” signaling its perception of the nuclear danger. In 1981, when Ronald Reagan took office and the freeze campaign took off, the clock was set at 4 minutes to midnight. In 2012, when I first wrote the appreciation below, the Clock was set at 5 minutes to midnight. 

Today (2026), the Doomsday Clock is set to 90 89 85 seconds to midnight, the closest to apocalypse that it’s ever been. Had you heard of the Doomsday Clock before reading today’s post? When first created in 1947, it was a big deal, and every adjustment–usually closer to midnight–got lots of attention in mainstream media. Now that the perceived danger is worse than ever, the Clock doesn’t seem to claim much public attention.

So:

Forty-four years ago today, one million people marched in the streets of New York City to protest the nuclear arms race in general and the policies of Ronald Reagan in particular.

 Organized around a “nuclear freeze” proposal, the demonstration was a watershed event for a movement that seemed to come out of nowhere, not just in the United States, but throughout what was then called Western Europe.

Of course, movements have deeper roots. Relatively small groups of people have been protesting against nuclear weapons since the idea of nuclear bombs first appeared. On occasion, they’re able to spread their concerns beyond the few to a larger public. Such was the case in 1982, when Europeans rallied against NATO’s new intermediate range missiles planned for West Europe, and when Americans protested against the extraordinary military build-up/ spend-up of Ronald Reagan’s first term in office.

The freeze proposal, imagined by Randall Forsberg as a reasonable first step in reversing the arms race, was the core of organizing efforts in the United States, which included out-of-power arms control advocates and radical pacifists. Local governments passed resolutions supporting the freeze, while several states passed referenda. People demonstrated and held vigils, while community groups in churches and neighborhoods organized freeze groups to discuss–and advocate–on the nuclear arms race.

The freeze figured in large Democratic gains in the 1982 election, and Ronald Reagan ran for reelection as a born-again arms controller. Formerly an actor, he learned the line, “Nuclear war cannot be won and must not be fought,” and he took it on the road. Most activists didn’t buy it, but after Reagan won in a landslide, to the horror of his advisers and many of his supporters, he actually negotiated large reductions in the nuclear arsenals of the United States and what used to be called the Soviet Union. Of course, a new Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, made those agreements possible.

US/ Russia nuclear warheads

The arms control agreements created the space in the East for reforms, reforms that spun out of control and eventually unraveled the cold war and the Eastern bloc.

The world changed.

It was both less and more than what most activists imagined possible.

Do you want to call it a victory?

Update:

The nuclear freeze movement was the subject of my doctoral dissertation and my first book

The issues in it remain relevant.

The story shows the long and complicated trajectory through which social movements affect influence. That’s the topic of my most recent book.

There are a few simple lessons that merit repeating today:

  1. It’s never one event, action, demonstration, statement, or lawsuit that makes the difference; rather, it’s an accumulation of efforts.

2. All victories take forever.

3. And they’re never enough, and certainly not necessarily permanent.

4. The work is important, and it must continue in order to be effective.

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Distant issues and proximate opponents: a note on campus protests +

Posted on May 29, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Enemies help activists build movement campaigns. Aggressive or offensive antagonists personify grievances and help unify coalitions of opposition. They provide convenient targets and simplify the story.

Think about Donald Trump and advocates for climate action and anti-corruption crusaders and health care reformers or critics of corruption. Trump simplifies explanations, particularly for new activists, and provides a source of unity for people working on all sorts of different issues.

But the president is far away and hard to influence. Foreign leaders, like Benjamin Netanyahu, are even further. Student activists have long found common cause in opposing local administrators, presidents, and (gulp) professors. Graduation is a good place to see it in operation.

I’m no stranger to college graduations, having attended a couple of dozen over the years, starting with my own at the now sadly shuttered Hampshire College. There are robes and rituals, some speeches, and sometimes even bagpipers. There are happy and less happy new graduates eager to grab the tangible sign of their efforts—a diploma. And there are friends and family even more eager to celebrate their achievements—that is, an audience.

I went to a graduation a couple of weeks ago and got to see a student protest, focused, I think, on getting the school to divest its financial holdings and/or academic connections to Israel. Whenever the president or the Chair of Board of Trustees stepped to the podium, scattered students and observers yelled at them, booing vigorously. A few held signs or waved Palestinian flags. It was a little disruptive; I’m sure some near-graduates and their families were disturbed, but the ceremony went on.

And then the big event, when the new graduates walk across the stage and accept the applause of their families with their diplomas. This is all choreographed: the bestower of degrees holds the diploma in his left hand, and reaches across with his right to shake the student’s right hand. The left hand passes documents while the right congratulates.

Some grads—my wild guess is 5-10%–disrupted this choreography.  Handing off scrolls with their right hands, they skipped the ritual handshake, and grabbed the diploma with the left hand. The president passed the scroll off to a robed assistant—a minor inconvenience.  

In real life, a college president is not responsible for Israeli policies and doesn’t make decisions about targeting or selling weapons; most don’t even make investment decisions. (They may be more or less supportive of expressive student protests.) But finding a way to influence a foreign leader—or even the American politicians supporting him—is no easy matter. The distance is a challenge for activists who see and want to stop distant wrongs.  The trick of a divestment campaign is to draw lines of complicity between local targets and evils far away. Local targets are convenient, especially when Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump won’t be on stage.

Refusing the cordial greeting may be a little rude, but anyone who aspires to a college presidency should develop a thick enough skin to handle such an affront; it’s part of the job.

Hanging responsibility for additional offenses on a local target can build solidarity among the protesters—even if it offends other audiences. And it does contribute to social and political polarization.

Still, it’s hard to get too upset at young people—or even older people–who learn about distant horrors and try to stop them, even if they don’t have access or tools to make much quick impact.

A note on comity: I noticed that a couple of protesting students made a point of juggling their scroll and shaking the president’s hand, as if to say their protest wasn’t personal. And I noticed one young graduate who made a point of exchanging harsh words with the president once he had the diploma. I don’t know how much it did for the cause.

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Remembering Kent State (May 4, 1970, revised and reposted)

Posted on May 5, 2026 by David S. Meyer

This is a repost of a report on the Kent State shootings, on occasion of an anniversary. At the end, I’ve added a bit on Neil Young’s emblematic song, which helped keep the memory alive.

As I write in 2026, last year’s burst of student protest about the Gaza War and America’s role in arming Israel, is far less visible, even as the United States is now engaged in a war (with Israel) against Iran. The broader campus-based resistance that seemed to lurk on the horizon has yet to emerge–a casualty of stricter rules about campus protest or anxiety about a terrible job market. But there is a broad campaign against higher education, including the end of diversity efforts, caps on student loans, cuts to research funding of all kinds, and severe budget cuts on everything else. Effective resistance will require student engagement. Recalling Kent State raises questions about the special environment campuses are supposed to provide.

It’s the anniversary of the killing of four college students at Kent State University. Young National Guardsmen opened fire on students protesting the war on May 4, 1970, discharging more than 60 rounds in roughly 13 seconds. They killed four students: Allison Krause, 19, and Jeffrey Miller, 20, were part of a nonviolent protest that university authorities promised to ban; Sandy Scheuer, 20, and William Schroeder, 19, were walking to class. The Guardsmen also wounded nine other students, some severely.

The Kent State student actions were part of a wave of protests that swept across American college campuses on May 1, a Friday, the day after President Richard Nixon announced that he had already ordered American air forces to expand their bombing to Cambodia. (Roughly a week earlier, after operations had already commenced, Secretary of State William P. Rogers testified before Congress, explicitly denying any intention of expanding the war to Cambodia.)

In Kent, protest and disruption spread into the town that night, with bonfires set in the streets and altercations with police.  The mayor declared a state of emergency, ordered the bars closed, and asked the governor for help in getting everything back under control; the National Guard arrived at the University on Saturday. Students planned a demonstration for Monday to protest the presence of the Guard on campus.  University officials tried to cancel the demonstration, but students assembled anyway. The Guardsmen ordered the students to disperse, then used tear gas before opening fire.

It was terrible, and there is still a great deal we don’t know: why the National Guard was on campus in the first place? why the order to fire on unarmed students hundreds of feet away? Who gave the order? or, was an order even given?  There’s a lot of writing, and a lot of controversy, still.  A good start is a summary, including an annotated bibliography, by two emeritus professors at Kent State, Jerry M. Lewis (Sociology) and Thomas R. Hensley (Political Science).

The shooting of unarmed students on a public college campus fostered a sense that the country was coming apart.  It was followed by a police shooting of student protesters at Jackson State in Mississippi, killing Philip Gibbs, 21, and James Green, 17, and wounding 12 other students.

President Nixon established a commission, chaired by William Scranton (formerly governor of Pennsylvania), to report on campus unrest. Published in September, the Scranton Commission answered few of the pressing questions about Kent State or Jackson State, but observed that campus unrest seemed to decline when the war in Vietnam seemed like it was winding down, and escalated after the bombing in Cambodia started.

The war and the demonstrations continued for a while, tapering off when the draft ended the next year.  Authorities developed ways to control dissent, on campus and elsewhere, without using live ammunition against protesters involved in large demonstrations. Demonstrations generally became less threatening, less disruptive, and less dangerous.

The Kent State and Jackson State killings remain tragic exceptions to more routine protest politics. It’s a good sign that they stand out in our memories.

One reason the memory remains is a powerful and idiosyncratic protest song, recorded within just a few weeks of the event. Days after the Kent State shootings, Neil Young wrote, “Ohio,” a song mourning the deaths. Apparently, he was shocked by photos published in Life magazine. Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young released the song, which called out President Nixon and ended with the repeated line, “Four dead in Ohio”  (lyrics). The song reached the top 20 in the United States and Canada, and appeared on several albums by Young and by the group; they often performed the song in their occasional reunion tours over the past half-century.)

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May Day 2026, it’s more than labor at stake.

Posted on May 1, 2026 by David S. Meyer

This is a repost and edit of an earlier post.

As always, May Day is an international day of protest for workers rights.  Below is a picture of a march at a courthouse in Philadelphia. CBS News has posted great photographs of May Day protests around the world, where protests are about wages, pensions, jobs, and so much more.

You’ll not from the signs that May Day protests, often animated by class, address all sorts of other issues, but economic inequality is a constant, and the protesters side with the workers. Welcoming immigrants and due process have not been the go to issues for workers during most of our history.

In the United States, by design we have a different day for workers (Labor Day), and May Day always seems like an opportunity to organize and demonstrate around a somewhat related cause, with or without the support of organized labor.

Workers, organized and otherwise, have plenty of issues in the United States these days, and President Donald Trump is on the other side of most of them. Americans are losing health insurance in large numbers, the employment picture is sketchy at best–particularly for young people, and everything regular Americans buy is getting more expensive. Meanwhile, the war on Iran goes on, at exorbitant costs, while the Trump administration is demanding massive increases in military spending, paid for with more cuts in domestic policy.

Although it’s a desperate time, there are burning embers for optimism. Campaigns for raising the minimum wage at the state level met with some success in some states. Unionization campaigns succeeded at a couple of Starbucks and Amazon sites, but every subsequent site is a battle. Graduate student researchers and teaching assistants have launched unionization campaigns and strikes for better contracts with some success–including at the University of California. Here at UC-Irvine, the unions won substantial raises, and the University responded by cutting the number of graduate students admitted and teaching assistants assigned. There are no easy battles.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195339/number-of-union-members-in-the-us-since-2000/

Successful campaigns have increased the number of unionized workers in the United States, bucking the trend of the past 70 years or so, but the percentage of American workers in unions continues to decline.

The graph below charts the rate of union membership since 1983. It’s hard to miss the trend line–and it’s worse for private sector workers.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/195341/percentage-of-emplyoyees-respresented-by-unions-in-the-us-since-2000/

May Day is an obvious time to take stock. Journalists look for labor stories that are normally undercovered on May Day (and even on Labor Day), and organizers work hard to fill the space.

May Day is an opportunity to organize and say something, reminding the rest of the world that constituencies and concerns remain vital and potentially volatile, and that organized unions can’t carry the full weight of advocating for American workers.

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Academic boycott of Israel and the American Sociological Association

Posted on April 17, 2026 by David S. Meyer

I don’t usually write about professional matters here, but there are all kinds of issues about protest and organizations and influence at play here. It may be of interest to Politicsoutdoors readers.

Background: So, a group called Sociologists for Palestine circulated a petition calling for an academic boycott of Israel, a response to many crimes and conflicts that you already know something about. They want a membership vote on the resolution, in accord with Association (ASA) bylaws on membership petitions.

The (elected) president and executive director of the ASA refused to put the resolution on the membership ballot, explaining that the bylaws allow the membership to vote on petitions involving political stances, but that operational and fiduciary matters remain the responsibility of the elected leadership.

Sociologists for Palestine asked all candidates for ASA office to post their positions on the resolution itself, and on the decision to keep it off the membership ballot. As a candidate for the Association’s council, I responded:

It makes sense that voters want to know what candidates for office think about issues that are likely to come before them, and I’m glad to respond—even knowing that my answers aren’t going to please everyone in the ASA. I can appreciate connections with people who don’t agree with me.

The American Sociological Association, the practice of Sociology, and higher education more generally, are under attack in America, and we’re not doing that well in fighting back. I want the ASA to stand up for itself, our students, and our institutions. Our identity as a professional association, our connections to our students and employers, and our standing as scholars and teachers, offer some status and resources, albeit declining, for doing so. We must be forceful and strategic in picking battles, mindful of our standing, credibility, and our internal cohesion. We don’t need to agree on everything, and we don’t need to act collectively on everything we might agree on. But we may be able to have some influence on issues that are closest to us.

To the petition:

I oppose the academic boycott of Israel outlined in the petition, even as I respect Sociologists for Palestine’s intent to use every route available to make a statement in support of human rights and social justice. For me, this boycott question is less about Israel’s culpability and more about the likely effects of the described action. I don’t see the vote or a boycott as affecting politics in Israel or the United States in any way, but I do think both could hurt the ASA. The most likely outcome of a boycott is accelerating the marginalization of critical scholars in Israel. I think academic institutions are just about the last institution we want to boycott. It’s a political mistake.

Full disclosure : I recently served as a reader for an excellent dissertation from an Israeli university. Among other things, the dissertation addressed the violence of the radical right in the West Bank, violence alternately encouraged and ignored by the Israeli government. I’m not morally conflicted or embarrassed by my small connection to higher education in Israel; I was very glad to recognize and support this work, helping the dissertation writer graduate, and promoting the work within and beyond the host university. I don’t want to ban such activities.

The question of whether the membership should vote on whether to boycott is, oddly, somewhat simpler. In a reform of our bylaws in 2023, the membership voted to limit petition access to a ballot to “public policy positions of the Association,” reserving operational matters and fiduciary concerns to elected leaders.  The petition before us clearly calls for action that involves operational decisions and is likely to influence the finances and reputation of the Association. As I read it, the leadership of the ASA followed the bylaws by keeping this petition off a ballot. And the elected leadership of any body should be constrained by existing rules or bylaws, a point underscored by the last few years of our national politics.

Even so, these issues are dealt with poorly in our bylaws, which are less clear and helpful than they ought to be. I don’t recall a spirited and informed debate about the earlier reform, and we should have one.

I also think foregoing the ballot on this petition is the better decision. A referendum is a blunt instrument; any outcome is very likely to foster alienation and distrust within the Association. And a result that leaves even 10-20 percent of our membership angry and alienated is likely to be even less powerful. Our leadership says that the 2024 resolution cost the ASA in terms of reputation and membership.  Sociologists for Palestine counters that membership has been steadily declining for 15 years. Regardless of the explanation, this decline, and the abysmally low turnout in our elections, should be of concern to all of us.

Onward.

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One battle after another (not the movie!)

Posted on April 2, 2026 by David S. Meyer

War dominates our screens, our politics, and our brains. For a while, it crowds out almost everything else. And, more than virtually any other issue, war polarizes.

For these reasons and others, presidents in political trouble often turn their gaze abroad, and demand that Americans get in line behind them. After all, politics stops at the water’s edge–a debate-killing maxim.

Historically, presidents have enjoyed a bump in public support when they send troops into combat, a “rally round the flag” effect. (I first learned this from John E. Mueller’s book, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion.) The surge of support erodes over time, as the costs and horrors of war become visible.

But Donald Trump’s leap into war with Iran didn’t produce any spike in public opinion, so the anticipated decline in support is from a smaller base from the start. Maybe it’s because Trump has done an abysmal job of building support for his effort; he doesn’t even seem to be trying. This, despite his shameless capacity to dissemble even more than his most egregious predecessors. (Pick any war mongering lying president for example.) And it’s hard to ignore that this war is particularly ill-conceived and badly planned.

One challenge is how to fit this awful war in the litany of grievances animating the resistance to the Trump administration. Offenses and provocations abound: ICE abuses, a war on science and American universities, restricted access to health insurance, environmental despoilation, evisceration of the federal government–and civil service protections, and and and. The list is far too long, and it includes so many lesser offenses: renaming or destroying buildings and putting the Trump visage on coins. And recall that the attacks on policy are all larded with corruption, Constitutional offenses, incompetence, racism, bad taste, and bad manners.

Issues and activists compete for attention. Thus far, the Iran war is just another one. The Bannon/Trump strategy of “filling the zone with shit” works to blur focus on anything but the Trump persona which provides a tight focus for Trump’s defenders. The conflict about climate policy becomes a battle about Trump, just the same as a debate about health care subsidies. This is just dandy for a target with a bottomless appetite for attention, but it’s paradoxically difficult to get political traction.

Still, Trump’s demonstrated incompetence in conducting the war undermines faith and fear of his efforts on other issues. Recognition of the Trump team’s damage to the Middle East and the global economy undermines faith among his strong supporters and fear among his more tentative acolytes; it will stiffen the spines of his opponents and offer them newly attentive audiences. Some challenges are a little less daunting: It’s an odd paradox that unfolding horrors in the Persian Gulf may end up saving some of the sight lines in the nation’s capital.

In this moment, everything dovetails into Congressional elections still nine months away. As the costs of war become more clear and dramatic, organizers face the challenge of forging connections among an increasingly diverse collection of groups and individuals with a wide range of grievances and mobilizing meaningful political action. This is no easy matter. At the moment, however, Trump seems determined to help them do it.

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The last Cesar Chavez Day (2026)

Posted on March 26, 2026 by David S. Meyer

Thanks to the California state legislature, the last Cesar Chavez Day was in 2025. March 31 will mark the holiday this year, renamed Farmworkers Day. Given the revelations of the past few days, this is a necessary move. The Farmworkers’ movement and the creation of their union were always a collective effort, engaging many committed leaders. Chavez was always an imperfect stand-in for the larger movement, as any individual icon would be–and a little bit more. Below I post an edited version of my annual commemoration.

We often use individuals to stand in for broad movements and collective efforts. They’re portable symbols and far easier to depict in statues or prose. And start with the assumption that every single heroic figure has feet of clay, or problematic or difficult character traits or histories. We want to be clear about the purpose we want to use a historic figure for: Barbara Johns for leading a student strike against segregation; Thomas Jefferson for writing the Declaration of Independence; Abraham Lincoln for preserving the Union, and so on. At some point, the weight of history and evidence can outweigh any noble purposes, and statues must come down: e.g., Robert E. Lee representing Southern traditions…Thomas Jefferson owning hundreds of human beings?

The day is a chance to reflect on Chavez, the movement he led, which continues, and the issues he and that movement addressed. (It also seems to be a good opportunity to return to writing here, with the chance to repost, reconsider, and update writing from past years.) Recalling his career, organizing and mobilizing a mostly migrant Latino workforce, is particularly important now…just when the Trump administration wants to purge all the details from public notice.

There are now very credible allegations that Cesar Chavez assaulted and abused women he worked with, including raping teens, who came forward testifying to assault and damages. When Dolores Huerta, a living icon, affirmed the charges, adding that Chavez sexually assaulted her twice, public doubt disappeared. And it was all detailed in a thorough investigation published in The New York Times. Those who knew him best had seen his autocratic and self-centered behaviors as well as visionary and heroic action; they believed the women. It’s particularly disturbing that Huerta and other victims, never lacking in bravery, did not come forward because they believed–with very good reason–that opponents would use the charges and Chavez to discredit the Farmworkers movement.

Image result for edna chavez speech, stephon clark

In 2018, less than a week after Edna Chavez, the charismatic then-seventeen year old high schooler from South Los Angeles, electrified a national crowd with a demand to end gun violence, Californians celebrated the legacy of another Chavez.

On my campus, we commemorated Cesar Chavez Day on Friday, rather than Monday, March 31 (his birthday), by closing. The state established the holiday in 2000, and six other states have followed suit.  In California, the legislature calls upon public schools to develop appropriate curricula to teach about the farm labor movement in the United States, and particularly Chavez’s role in it. Now, across the United States, school districts, universities, and local governments are busily renaming buildings, schools, and programs. Raping children is a dealbreaker.

A campaign to establish a national holiday has stalled so far (The Cesar Chavez National holiday website seems to have last been updated in 2008), but at one point President Obama issued a proclamation announcing a day of commemoration, and calling upon all Americans “to observe this day with appropriate service, community, and education programs to honor Cesar Chavez’s enduring legacy.”

That feels like a long time ago.

It feels like an even longer time ago in 2026, and it’s hard to imagine anyone would want to use Chavez as a symbol of a large movement for justice.

Political figures have many reasons for creating holidays, including remembering the past; identifying heroic models for the future; recognizing and cultivating a political constituency; and providing an occasion to appreciate a set of values. Regardless of the original meaning, the holidays take on new meanings over time.  Columbus Day, for example, is celebrated as an occasion for pride in Italian Americans (e.g.), and commemorated and mourned as a symbol of genocide and empire (e.g.).

Cesar Chavez’s life and work is well worth remembering and considering, particularly now.  His career as a crusader was far longer than that of Martin Luther King discussed (here and here) and he was far more of an organizer than Fred Korematsu (discussed here). Chavez’s Medal of Freedom was awarded shortly after his death in 1993, by President Clinton, but many of his accomplishments were apparent well before then. And unseemly, unwise, and some abusive elements of his leadership were also apparent dating back to the 1970s. (See Nathan Heller’s report in The New Yorker, from 2014!) Still, after his death, a campaign to turn him into an icon for the movement developed, streamlining a long and complicated story.

As a young man, Chavez was an agricultural worker; by his mid-twenties, he became a civil rights organizer, working for the Community Service Organization in California.  With Dolores Huerta, in 1962 Chavez founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers.  Focusing on poor, mostly Mexican-American workers, Chavez’s vision for activism was right at the cornerstone of racial and economic justice.  Establishing an organization, however, is a long way from winning recognition and bargaining rights as a union.

Chavez was a tactician, a public figure, a charismatic, and something of a mystic. Modeling his efforts after Gandhi’s successful campaigns, Chavez was an emphatic practitioner of active nonviolence. He employed boycotts, strikes, long fasts, demonstrations, long marches, and religious rhetoric in the service of his cause.  He also registered voters, lobbied, and worked in political campaigns. He was a tireless and very effective organizer.

But holidays are best celebrated with an eye to the future, rather than the past.

On Cesar Chavez Day this year, we can think about the large and growing Latino community in the United States. The 2020 Census reports that Latinos now comprise 18.7% of the population nationally. This is the youngest and fastest-growing population in America today, and they are severely underrepresented in the top levels of politics, education, and the economy.  The civil rights map is at least as complicated as at any time in American history, but not less important or urgent. The future of American Latinos is very much the future of America.

And Chavez saw the civil rights struggle as a labor issue.  When Chavez and Huerta started

The Crusades of Cesar Chavez,' by Miriam Pawel - The New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/27/books/review/the-crusades-of-cesar-chavez-by-miriam-pawel.html

their campaign, nearly one third of Americans were represented by unions.  The percentage now is now less than 10 percent, and even less in the private sector. Donald Trump has issued an executive order, banning collective bargaining for many federal employees. This probably isn’t legal.

And public sector workers, even if represented by unions aren’t doing so well.  In 2018, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in Janus vs. AFSCME,that undermined the capacity of unions to organize and represent members by allowing workers to opt out of membership and paying dues.

Still, organizers and some observers find some encouragement in unionization campaigns at Amazon and Starbucks. Still, the larger picture is dark. In the moment, the Trump administration is vilifying teachers and firing other government workers

We need to remember that you can’t attack teachers, nurses, police officers, and firefighters without hurting the people they serve: us.

Or should I say, US?

We commemorate the past to help guide the future. Edna Chavez, working in an urban setting far from Cesar Chavez’s organizing, carried the legacy forward, and adds more.

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Twin Cities Redux: What a Resistance win looks like

Posted on February 12, 2026 by David S. Meyer
https://therealnews.com/minneapolis-teachers-parents-denounce-federal-agents-assault-at-roosevelt-high-demand-ice-leave

ICE is retreating from Minneapolis, but this time it’s not because of climate change. Instead, it’s a victory–albeit a very costly one–for the resistance to the Trump Administration and its migration policies.

Like virtually all social movement victories, this one is partial, one that leaves a lot of work to be done. But it’s important to recognize the influence that protest campaigns sometimes exercise–as well as the costs and limits.

Tom Homan, just recently tasked with managing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “surge” in Minneapolis, didn’t credit (or blame) resistance protesters with affecting his decision to end the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “surge” in Minneapolis, but their influence is unmistakable. Thousands of ICE agents will be leaving Minnesota as the Trump Administration looks to rework its prescence.

Of course, authorities virtually never credit protesters with influencing their best judgment or policies. Activists have to claim the credit that their opponents will always deny them. Without the protesters, things could have been even worse.

You’ll recall that the enforcement surge, featuring bands of masked federal workers roaming the streets to find people who looked foreign, was an effort to demonstrate Trump’s power in the streets. Facing overwhelming and disruptive resistance in larger cities, like Los Angeles and Chicago, the Trump Administration picked a smaller and whiter locale where ICE forces would far outnumber the local police force.

It didn’t work out so well.

Minnesotans turned out in the cold to protest, vigorously and visibly; they had the right spirit and the right clothes. Building on dense civic networks, they set up ICE patrols to keep tabs on where the beefy men in tactical vests were going. And they ran small errands (groceries, kid transport) for neighbors who felt unsafe going outdoors. (See Margaret Killjoy’s substack for details. Thanks to Pam Oliver for the reference.) They drew attention from local and national media to the city and to ICE conduct, making for publicity and pressure.

ICE forces didn’t handle the spotlight very well. To be sure, it’s harder to do a job when strangers are watching (I’m alone now as I type), recording, and maybe even chanting or cursing. But law enforcement officers are supposed to be trained to deescalate. This means that the hard work of policing includes focusing on self-control and discipline even when protesters may hold up their phones and say nasty things. ICE overreacted to modest provocation, and agents recklessly shot and killed Renee Good, and then, a couple of weeks later, Alex Pretti. Administration officials dissembled and denied the facts of each murder, but local activists and media had captured the details on cell phone videos.

When Trump loyalists grew weak-kneed at the Administration’s explanations and justifications, the White House moved to deal with the immediate public relations problem. This meant quieting, at least for a while, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and disappearing Border Patrol commander Gregory Bovino. Homan, presenting as the embodiment of the tough cop, was a clear step toward moderation.

Bolstered by the public reaction, institutional politicians issued demands: body cameras and identifying badges on ICE agents, rather than masks; changes in training and the rules of engagements; and just less. At this writing, funding for DHS remains in dispute in Congress, which means ongoing attention to provocative and unpopular policies. Democratic legislators and candidates for office are taking advantage of the moment.

Without the demonstrations and protests and without the local support for neighbors, we wouldn’t see ICE at work, and the Administration wouldn’t have had the public relations crisis to manage. Democratic spines would not be so strong, and public attention would wander…even more. This is what a protest win looks like.

But remember that this victory is partial and provisional. The Trump Administration, including Homan, has reaffirmed a commitment to mass deportations, and is constantly looking for more ways to flex power and back down opposition. For the moment, Caracas is a more congenial setting for the Administration than Minneapolis, but only as long as Americans continue to defend their rights and those of their neighbors.

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