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U.S. President Donald Trump at the U.S. Capitol on June 24, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Donald Trump’s racist, misogynist, xenophobic view of the world has undermined the USA’s global standing. He has surrounded himself with cabinet officials who believe that competence is determined not by expertise, training, education and experience but with factors perceived to be far more important like, whether they are white, male and retain a feudal sense of subservience, other criteria he values include girth, facial hair and his very subjective perception of attractiveness.
Trump’s attack on wokeness and diversity, equity and inclusion mean that his administration is left without a diversity of knowledge , cultural understanding and empathy which means his negotiators for the Iran War cannot appreciate the history of the region, the cultural nuances, the languages, the political tensions, the emotional impact of their actions or the thinking of the current leadership. Being woke means understanding a variety of perspectives and having empathy for others, something this administration sorely lacks. They represent the total opposite of Kissinger, Brzezinski, Albright and Rice who were lifelong experts on their diplomatic counterparts.
In February Donald Trump accused the leaders of the Iranian regime of being a “vicious group of very hard terrible people” . In June he showered compliments on the Iranian leadership. In addition, his about face, and the President’s assurances that the Iranian leaders can be trusted, come after he has killed several family members of the current Supreme Leader.
Had the President not fired the Middle East experts in the State Department, he would have known that Iran is, like much of Central Asia, comprised of people who have survived a variety of empires ranging through several millennia, including but not limited to the Achaemenid/Persian, Ottoman & Mongolian empires. While Trump diverts the 250th anniversary of U.S. Independence from England, to a personal partisan event, MAGA pretends that 250 years is a long time, while they seeks to eradicate the 40,000 years of Native American history. In other words, suggesting that the President thinks in terms of 250-year increments is gratuitous, it is more appropriate to suggest that he thinks, as far ahead as the next campaign season and more likely he barely thinks beyond tomorrow’s news cycle.
I was once working with a lawyer from a neighboring country to Iran and she suggested that “you American lawyers want to get from A to B and you want to get there as fast as possible. I am Byzantine,” she said…”I do not think that way.” The point is, that Iranian leadership does not think the same way the president does. In my opinion they are not interested in money to the same extent that the president is. They do not need to respond to a Congress or an electorate. They have the luxury to think in terms of 2500 years. Their memories are long and while Donald Trump has most likely not given a second thought to the death of the Supreme Leader’s family, the Supreme Leader is unlikely to ever forget or for that matter forgive, nor are the Iranian people likely to forget the massacre of children at the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School.
It is within this context that Donald Trump an inveterate liar suggests that the Iranian leadership is now trustworthy and that he has achieved significant progress with a gentlemen’s agreement. Iranians are less likely to bestow such trust on the USA or its leadership. Trump’s so-called MOU is woefully unspecific. Any diplomat will tell you that strategic ambiguity may be essential to closing a multilateral agreement, but where there is ambiguity, the diplomat must presume that the gaps will be aggressively interpreted against their interests.
The JCPOA was a major achievement because it was not bi-lateral it was multilateral. It included China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and was endorsed by the UN Security Council. The inclusion of Russia, and China meant that two of Iran’s leading potential allies were bound to the agreement. Such action would forbid Iran’s allies from assisting Iran to undermine or violate the agreement in any material way. The endorsement of France, Germany the United Kingdom and the UN provided gravitas to the agreement which meant that failure to adhere would bring condemnation on the world stage.
The JCPOA was a 159-page document which outlined explicit terms addressing the limits on Iran’s use of Uranium, its enrichment, stockpiling, research and development, reactor facilities with extensive monitoring and verification by international bodies for up to 25 years. It also outlined a considered approach to sanctions by the UN, the EU and the US.
The current MOU addresses none of these issues. The Israeli’s (who to my understanding are not at the table) have rejected the proposal and regardless of what one thinks of President Netanyahu, it is hard to imagine Israel waiving its right to defend itself. Donald Trump has alienated NATO, and wholly unnecessarily, leaders of the UK , France, Germany & Italy.
In addition to exposing US Allies of Oman, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar, the failure of the administration to clearly secure a victory against Iran has exposed weaknesses in the military capabilities of the USA. Since World War II the goal of the US Military has been to fight under a two-theatre war model. In essence it was intended to be capable of engaging in two major conflicts, essentially one in Europe or the Middle East and one in Asia at the same time.
The Trump administration has demonstrated that there is a serious argument that the US is neither competent nor capable of mounting such efforts. The feeble military action in Iran has provided credible evidence that with the failure to cooperate with NATO and the allocation of resources to the Middle East, that the US’s ability to defend against China for the purposes of fulfilling its historical commitments to Taiwan or against a Putin expansion into Europe have been seriously compromised.
The president has complained that the US has lost respect on a global stage, but he alone has overseen the country’s greatest deconstruction of military, diplomatic and intelligence capabilities since prior to WWI and the utter destruction of the respect and reputation of the USA amongst allies and enemies alike.
Walter H. White, Jr is a director of Lawyers Defending American Democracy and served as a director & chair of the Central Asian American Enterprise Fund during the Clinton & Bush administrations.
Jalen Brunson #11 of the New York Knicks celebrates with the Larry O'Brien Championship Trophy during the New York Knicks Championship ticker tape parade and victory rally celebrating winning the 2026 NBA Finals on June 18, 2026 in New York City.
I didn’t grow up anywhere near Madison Square Garden. My childhood unfolded in the Midwest, far from New York’s tangled boroughs and yellow cabs. My father brought the city with him, tucked in the vowels of his accent and the teams he rooted for. He was a Jersey boy at first. Then, a reluctant Midwesterner. Geography, though, never truly loosened its grip. In our house, sports allegiance wasn’t a choice. It was inherited—an expectation passed like a family recipe. Or a story retold until it blurs into fact.
For my father, and then for me, the Knicks were never just a team. They were a test of endurance. Before I could distinguish a pick-and-roll from a triangle offense, I understood Knicks loyalty: you waited. You hoped in public, persisted when heartbreak was routine. Knicks fandom was boot camp for disappointment. The main skill was getting up after being knocked down.
Fifty-three years. That’s how long Knicks fans practiced this peculiar discipline. Over those decades, legendary moments served as signposts on the journey. Willis Reed’s limp into legend in 1970 became more than a highlight—it was mythology. Patrick Ewing was both promise and heartbreak, sometimes in the same play. John Starks—forever loved, even after Game 7. Generations calibrated their emotional weather to a franchise that specialized in not quite.
Which is why, when the Knicks finally clinched that 94–90 win over the Spurs—after half a century of waiting—it didn’t feel like just the end of a basketball season. Instead, it felt like a family secret suddenly remembered. At that moment, the city exhaled, and something old and communal surged back to the surface.
Even the win matched the usual script: comeback, deficit erased, probability bent. Analysts will dissect the X’s and O’s. Jalen Brunson’s name is entering the canon. Documentaries, oral histories, and jerseys will follow. But what lingered wasn’t tactical—it was the sound.
The frequency of collective release is its own kind of music. It ricocheted off apartment bricks in Manhattan. It spilled out of Queens bars. It crackled through FaceTime calls and group chats. Videos surfaced from London pubs. They surfaced from military bases. Meanwhile, people in neighborhoods where eye contact is usually avoided instead found themselves locked in spontaneous embrace. The celebrations looked unmistakably New York. Yet we’re used to seeing cities revealed by disaster. New York and New Jersey neighbors have shown resilience in the face of tragedy: the September 11th attacks. Hurricane Sandy. The first suffocating wave of COVID. In those moments, the city improvises solidarity. But celebration reveals a community’s scaffolding, too. Joy tests what binds us when fear is absent. Who are we when we don’t have to be afraid?
That’s what made the Knicks’ championship aftermath so moving. For a few hours, New Yorkers were neighbors. The city’s fractures remained—New York was still expensive, impatient, and divided by money, race, and politics. But for one night, delight rewrote the social contract. No one checked who’d voted for whom. No one asked about background or beliefs before giving high-fives. The lines stayed, but mattered less.
It’s a rare thing now, this kind of encounter. Our institutions—churches, civic groups, local papers—are thinning. Neighborhood associations are fading. Algorithms nudge us deeper into curated silos, where everyone else is a stranger, or worse, a threat. We’re specialists in avoiding one another. Sports resist that tendency. You can’t curate Knicks fandom to your liking; you inherit it, or you choose it. From that moment, your anxiety is indistinguishable from that of the Dominican grandfather in the nosebleeds or the twenty-something who knows the Knicks mostly by meme and misery. The hedge fund manager and the public-school teacher ride the same emotional roller coaster in the final minutes.
For a few hours, everyone joins something raw and unrehearsed. Sociologist Émile Durkheim called it “collective effervescence.” It’s a rare moment: individuals, swept up by ritual, become part of something larger. In America, sports may be our last secular sanctuary for that feeling. Dismissing fandom as trivial always misses the mark. No one thinks basketball fixes injustice. No parade will pass rent control. The Knicks can’t legislate fairness. But at their best, they remind us of what civic life neglects. We suffer together, yet do not grow callous. We invest in strangers. Our stories expand inside a much larger one. Someone else’s joy enlarges us.
This Knicks team embodied that lesson. Comeback was their language. No deficit felt permanent. Games once lost are revived. They refused inevitability. It’s tempting to draw big conclusions from sports, and usually, wisdom lies in restraint. Even so, it’s hard to ignore the resonance of millions. In an age of cynicism, people choose belief. Not naïveté, but the quiet knowledge that history doesn’t always prevail.
Fifty-three years is time enough for disappointment to calcify into identity. To pass down resignation. To forget about the surprise. Then, suddenly, the Knicks won. Confetti fell. Fathers called sons. Kids watched adults cry over things they couldn’t yet name. People poured into the streets, carrying pieces of themselves they’d misplaced somewhere between deadlines, elections, rent hikes, and the daily fatigue of being alive in America. The score will live in the record books. The parade will end. The merch will fade. But maybe, just maybe, another memory will outlast them all.
For one night, New York remembered that “us” is not an abstraction. It’s a practice. A chant. A hand offered to a stranger. A city letting itself be amazed. The Knicks had finally won. And so, too—briefly and brilliantly, had the possibility of belonging.
Rev. Dr. F. Willis Johnson is a spiritual entrepreneur, author, scholar-practioner whose leadership and strategies around social and racial justice issues are nationally recognized and applied.
People and rescuers search for victims amid debris of demolished buildings as rescue efforts continue after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck Venezuela and other regions in the Caribbean on June 25, 2026 in La Guaira, Venezuela.
Venezuela is reeling after a series of catastrophic earthquakes that collapsed buildings, triggered landslides, and overwhelmed emergency responders across multiple states. The strongest quake, a 7.3‑magnitude event, sent residents fleeing into the streets as aftershocks rippled through Caracas, Sucre, Miranda, and Bolívar. Entire neighborhoods have reported severe structural damage, blocked roads, and hospitals struggling to treat the injured as rescue teams work to reach communities cut off by debris and power outages.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and Venezuela’s National Seismology Foundation confirm the scale of destruction and warn that more aftershocks are likely. International humanitarian organizations, including the Red Cross and the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), say the disaster has intensified an already dire humanitarian crisis marked by food shortages, failing infrastructure, and mass migration.
As images of devastation spread, the Hispanic Federation issued a statement mourning the lives lost and urging the Trump administration to immediately redesignate Venezuela for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which would allow Venezuelans already in the United States to remain legally due to unsafe conditions in their home country.
Frankie Miranda, President and CEO of Hispanic Federation, said the earthquakes strike a nation already destabilized by years of political turmoil, economic collapse, and state‑sponsored oppression — conditions that alone justify TPS. He said the new destruction has deepened an ongoing humanitarian emergency and makes returning Venezuelans unsafe.
Miranda criticized the previous termination of TPS for Venezuela, arguing it removed vital protections from hundreds of thousands who fled the country’s collapse. He emphasized that TPS exists for precisely these situations, when war, environmental disaster, or extraordinary crises make return dangerous. Venezuela, he said, meets all these criteria, and the United States has both the legal authority and a moral responsibility to act.
“Hispanic Federation urgently calls on Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin to redesignate Venezuela for TPS. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have built lives in the United States, working and contributing to local economies, and now they face expiring protections,” Miranda said. “Requiring their return to a country during a humanitarian catastrophe would be contrary to the spirit and intent of the law, to our values as a nation, and would put thousands of lives at risk.”
Even before the earthquakes, Venezuela was experiencing one of the largest mass displacements in the world, with more than 7.7 million people having fled due to economic collapse, political repression, and deteriorating living conditions, according to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR). The earthquakes have now worsened infrastructure failures, caused widespread power outages, created shortages of clean water and medical supplies, and displaced tens of thousands more. Humanitarian groups warn that the country’s weakened emergency response system — already strained by years of underfunding — cannot meet the scale of the disaster.
The debate over TPS redesignation comes as the U.S. Supreme Court recently allowed the Trump administration to end TPS protections for thousands of Haitian and Syrian immigrants. The Court declined to hear challenges to the administration’s termination of TPS for Haiti and Syria, effectively permitting the policy to move forward and leaving many long‑settled immigrants at risk of deportation. Advocates say the ruling underscores the urgency of swift executive action for Venezuela, especially in the wake of the earthquakes.
Immigration and human rights organizations across the U.S. have echoed Hispanic Federation’s call, arguing that returning Venezuelans to a country facing both political turmoil and natural disaster would be unsafe and inhumane. Under U.S. law, TPS can be granted when a country is experiencing ongoing armed conflict, environmental disaster, or extraordinary and temporary conditions — criteria advocates say Venezuela clearly meets.
The Department of Homeland Security has not yet announced whether it will redesignate TPS for Venezuela. Meanwhile, rescue operations continue across the country as aftershocks complicate recovery efforts. International aid groups warn that without rapid global assistance, the death toll could rise and long‑term displacement could worsen.
Deadly Venezuela Quakes Spark Renewed Calls for U.S. to Restore Temporary Protected Status was first published on Latino News Network and republished with permission.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
People gather over a giant Declaration of Independence
As America approaches the 250th anniversary of its independence, I am more in the mood to protest than to celebrate. Does that make me unpatriotic? The answer depends on how we understand “patriotism.” For a nation that is founded in revolution, let’s affirm a deeper and more profound love of country, a civic patriotism celebrative of our larger ideals including pluralism, dissent, and a commitment to social change.
Two Types of Patriotism
Patriotism is often understood as demanding complete loyalty with no sign of dissent or critique, as in the saying, “America, right or wrong.” This commonly reflects a nationalistic or absolutist understanding of patriotism. At the other extreme, a person might feel so ashamed of America’s actions that democracy is perceived as being beyond repair. This could be called “democracy pessimism.” Despite some different perspectives, both reactions assume patriotism is incompatible with recognizing a nation’s flaws.
At its essence, patriotism means love of country. Absolutist patriotism is just one particular approach to patriotism. Within the nationalist paradigm, love is equated with unquestioning support and obedience, while dissent is equated with hatred. Critically, this absolutist understanding of patriotism extends far beyond the nation’s core ideals and traditions to include all of its actions, past or present. But love of country can take many forms beyond nationalistic patriotism.
Another type of patriotism is both possible and urgently needed. Rather than blind obedience, we can express love of country through commitment to social change and difficult conversations about the nation’s past. This patriotism equally affirms love of country, but in a way that includes and necessitates critique, dissent, protest, and even civil disobedience. In our personal relationships, we can support our friends and family members unconditionally while acknowledging their mistakes and holding them accountable for their actions. We can have very different moral, religious, and political beliefs. The strongest relationships are the ones that survive conflicts and mistakes. Nations are no different. They are not held together by blind obedience but by civic bonds that run across diverse viewpoints and identities.
When Dissent Is Patriotic
A common tactic in the authoritarian playbook is to weaponize patriotism and portray dissent as a form of hatred of country. This has been a frequent theme in President Trump’s description of his political opponents, such as when he described the left as “the enemy from within . . . more dangerous than China, Russia, all these countries.” Following last fall’s No Kings protests, President Trump said, “I looked at the people—they’re not representative of the country . . . I guess it was paid for by [George] Soros and other radical left lunatics.” The implication is that Americanness is determined by support for the president, protestors are less American than the president’s supporters, and dissent is a threat to America itself.
Dissent is built into America’s national DNA. July 4th commemorates the American spirit of rebellion against monarchy and independence from an imperial power. America has become stronger and more inclusive through successive periods of dissent and social change. The right to freedom of expression is enshrined in the First Amendment. Dissenting from a party in power or even from the majority opinion should not be confused with dissent from the idea of America itself. The exercise of such a fundamental right cannot possibly be anti-American when it is in fact central to America. As James Baldwin has written, “I love America more than any other country in the world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.”
In the tradition of patriotic dissent, Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech refers to America’s founding documents as “promissory notes” that have yet to be cashed. His call is for civil disobedience on behalf of American democratic ideals, not for their betrayal. Indeed, according to King, the Jim Crow South represents the perversion of America, while the movement for civil rights more truly represents the nation’s core values and ideals as stated in its founding documents. Avoiding the trap of pessimism, King expresses righteous indignation at America’s crimes and injustices but also great pride in its ideals and cautious hope for its future.
Pessimism, Patriotism, and History
The nationalist understanding of patriotism is perhaps most evident in debates around race and US history, including the teaching of the nation’s past in public schools and universities and the holdings of public libraries. Beginning in 2021, right-wing media exploded with constant mentions of “critical race theory.” An NBC article on the topic asked, “Can critical race theory and patriotism coexist in classrooms?” In all of these debates, the idea of patriotism is being weaponized to pressure public institutions from teaching or providing information regarding the nation’s past, as if recognizing structural racial inequality and the centrality of race in US history is incompatible with loving one’s country.
Focusing exclusively on the nation’s wrongs can produce an equally totalizing democratic pessimism, as if America is defined only by its historical crimes and injustices. From the point of view of excluded and marginalized groups, such pessimism is completely understandable. According to the 2025 Kettering-Gallup Democracy for All Project annual survey, only 15% of Black Americans believe American democracy is performing well (the lowest of any group), compared to 26% of White Americans (the highest of any group). How can groups experiencing discrimination and colonization have faith in an egalitarian, multiracial democracy that works for all when they have been under-served and disappointed at every turn throughout American history?
Critical patriotism can celebrate the nation’s ideals while acknowledging and reckoning with its crimes and injustices. In his 1852 speech “What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July,” Frederick Douglass charges America with being a “sham” due to the practice of slavery, a deep indictment of the hypocrisy and injustice of slavery. However, his issue is not with American principles in themselves, but the failure to apply them fully for everyone: “Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?” He further praises the Constitution as a “glorious freedom document” and predicts the end of slavery. The speech by Douglass is simultaneously a brilliant affirmation of America’s founding ideals and a harsh indictment of its practice. When we acknowledge the failings of our loved ones, or insist on accountability for their mistakes, our unconditional love for them does not change. Similarly, far from being less American or patriotic, Douglass expresses his patriotism as complex and authentic, and that’s what makes it compelling.
Patriotism, then, depends not only on affection for the nation but also on how the nation is understood. The nationalist view assumes that America is the sum of its actions, so anything it does must be affirmed, even injustice and hypocrisy. But if America is its ideals and principles, then patriots are those who have fought and sacrificed for the faithful application of freedom, equality, and the rule of law. In that spirit, as Nikole Hannah-Jones argued in a discussion of patriotism on The Context podcast, Black Americans have been, “the greatest democratizing force in the United States.” Patriotism is standing for America’s ideals, whether the threat is the British Empire, Nazi Germany, or American slavery, segregation, and structural inequality. And those who would weaponize the symbols and language of American democracy in the suppression of dissent are not patriots but the opposite.
As we approach the nation’s historic milestone, I am struck that Douglass, Baldwin, King, and pro-democracy dissenters today exemplify faith in America’s core democratic principles, even as they contest the harsh reality that many Americans experience. True patriotism like theirs embraces complexity and imperfection, while strengthening democracy in the process. America’s milestone is an occasion to reclaim patriotism as a force for democracy and inclusion.
This article was originally published as part of From Many, We, a Charles F. Kettering Foundation blog series that highlights the insights of thought leaders dedicated to the idea of inclusive democracy.
Derek W. M. Barker is senior program officer for research initiatives at the Charles F. Kettering Foundation, a political theorist, and the lead editor of the foundation’s blog series From Many, We.
