Trail Notes
DOD's Christian nationalist / Hegseth on the warpath / Social media spying / Election hypocrisy / Pardonmania / Kristi's blanket / Porta potty jackpot / OMB's $15m man
Christian nationalist at the Pentagon
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth invited Pastor Doug Wilson to lead a worship service at the Pentagon this week. A self-described Christian nationalist, Wilson not only wants to see church and state merge but also believes women should not be allowed to vote and that slaveholders in America were on “firm scriptural ground.” He frequently mocks the pope and has said that Muslim and Hindu immigrants are coming into the country “in a parasitic way.”
Hegseth on the warpath
On Monday, Axios reported that Hegseth is threatening to blacklist a tech contractor whose AI model is the only one currently available in the Pentagon’s classified system. The defense secretary is apparently unhappy with Anthropic and Claude, its AI chatbot, because the company wants to ensure that the Pentagon doesn’t use its tools to spy on Americans or develop weapons that fire on their own without humans being involved. The ill will stemming from Anthropic’s pushback has prompted Hegseth to consider designating the contractor a “supply chain risk,” meaning that any other company that wants to do business with the U.S. military would have to break ties with it.
Hegseth also had made it known that the Pentagon, after this school year, will stop providing tuition aid to military officers taking courses at Harvard. According to the defense secretary, they were coming back too “woke.” Now, he’s threatening to add to his list other top American universities that he says are “biased” against the military and “similarly diminish critical thinking.” They include Boston College, Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, MIT, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, Southern California, Stanford, Vanderbilt and Yale.
Social media spying
It wasn’t all that long ago that Republicans in Congress and conservative talking heads were howling about the Biden administration trying to influence what could be posted on social media platforms, particularly when it came to comments about public health policies during the pandemic. The government was stepping all over the First Amendment, they charged. The Founding Fathers would have been horrified!
But that was then. The Department of Homeland Security recently issued hundreds of administrative subpoenas, which do not require a judge’s approval, to Google, Meta, Reddit and other social media companies. It wants them to turn over the names, emails and phone numbers of account holders who have revealed ICE agents’ locations or criticized their enforcement actions.
Election hypocrisy
It also wasn’t that long ago that congressional Republicans and those same talking heads were outraged about the “For the People Act,” which would have tightened campaign finance laws, eliminated partisan gerrymandering, and made it easier for people to register to vote.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz led the opposition. He decried the bill as a “massive power grab by Democrats” that would “constitute a federal takeover of elections.”
But that was then. Lately, Cruz hasn’t missed an opportunity to push the SAVE Act, which, oddly enough, would impose federal rules on elections. He calls the bill, which would require proof of citizenship before anyone is allowed to register to vote and a photo ID to vote, a “common sense approach.”
Trump’s pardonmania
Ah, remember that day when Vice President JD Vance said something sensible? It was a little more than a year ago during an interview on Fox News when he presented what he described as a “very simple” standard for which people arrested in connection with the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot should receive clemency. If you protested peacefully that day, he said, you should be pardoned. But, he added, “If you committed violence that day, obviously you shouldn’t be pardoned.”
Donald Trump obviously wasn’t listening. Just a few days later he pardoned all 1,500-plus people who’d been charged or convicted for their part in the insurrection. Somehow, millions of “Back the Blue” boosters, including those in Congress, have managed to give Trump a pass on that one. But that debacle just keeps getting uglier. So far, 33 people pardoned for their crimes that day have been rearrested or charged with other crimes. At least six cases have involved sex crimes or child abuse.
Since then, Trump’s pardon pen has often freed people convicted of two crimes Trump says he considers particularly heinous—fraud and drug dealing. For example, he pardoned a former Honduran president who helped drug traffickers move more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States and a Nevada legislator who took money out of a police memorial fund and used it for cosmetic surgery and other personal expenses.
But there’s another aspect of Trump’s “Get outta jail free” spree that’s often overlooked. It’s the enormous amount of money in fines and restitution to victims that he’s wiped away. The latest estimate calculates that figure at $1.5 billion.
Kristi’s security blanket
Now for a Trail Notes bedtime story: Homeland Security Princess Kristi Noem and her top aide and traveling “companion,” Prince Corey Lewandowski, were taking one of their many trips together to hunt down “domestic terrorist” dragons and “worst of the worst” demons. But as sometimes happens with such heroic quests, their plane had a maintenance issue, so they had to switch to another one.
Tragically, their Coast Guard pilot, behaving like a tool of the evil antifa empire, neglected to transfer the princess’s favorite blanket to the other plane. The knightly Prince Corey did the noble thing and fired the scoundrel on the spot. A few hours later, however, he had to rehire him after he found out he was the only pilot available to fly them home.
But not to worry, there is a happy ending. Princess Kristi and Prince Corey can now snuggle in her enchanted blanket once again.
Trump’s Ministry of Truth
Carrying out a Trump administration directive to ensure “accuracy, honesty and alignment with shared national values,” National Park Service staffers last month removed panels and exhibits in Philadelphia describing the local history of slavery and mentioning that George Washington enslaved nine people while living in a house there.
On Monday, a federal judge raised the specter of George Orwell when she ordered the administration to at least temporarily restore the displays.
“As if the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s ‘1984’ now existed, with its motto ‘Ignorance is Strength,’ this court is now asked to determine whether the federal government has the power it claims—to dissemble and disassemble historical truths when it has some domain over historical facts,” Judge Cynthia Rufe wrote. “It does not.”
Porta potty jackpot
Remember Alligator Alcatraz, the much-hyped immigrant detention center in the middle of Everglades? Right now, things there kinda stink. It’s been reported that the state paid $92 million to one company for porta potties. The company does have a great name—Doodie Calls—but not $92 million great. It also turns out that the lobbyist for Doodie Calls, Brian Ballard, is a fundraiser for both Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. He’s also the founder and president of Ballard Partners, the Florida lobby firm where Susie Wiles, Trump’s chief of staff, and Pam Bondi, Trump’s attorney general, used to work.
OMB’s $15 million man
The Trump administration is taking $15 million that had been allocated for foreign aid and using it to pay for a security detail providing protection for White House hatchet man Russell Vought. The primary author of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 blueprint, Vought is now director of the Office of Management and Budget and one of the most powerful bureaucrats in Washington.
White erasure?
The White House is sticking by its nomination of Jeremy Carl for a senior position in the State Department. Carl, in case you missed it, is a big believer in the notion that white culture in the United States is being erased, and that white Americans are increasingly becoming second-class citizens. The Democratic Party, Carl has charged, is waging “an all-out assault on the rights of white people.” He also said, in a podcast as recently as 2024, that “the Jews like to see themselves as oppressed,” but did, during his recent confirmation hearing, concede that some of his comments “minimizing the effect of the Holocaust were absolutely wrong.” Ironically, Carl, who converted to Christianity, grew up in a Jewish family.
Randy Rieland is a former columnist at Smithsonian magazine, website director at the Discovery Channel, and senior writer at Washingtonian magazine.
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The variety of excellent authors on your Substack is a real plus. This Rieland piece is a great read. Keep it up!