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President Donald Trump’s efforts to take over cultural institutions and attack diversity, equity and inclusion programs has centered on the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the venerable arts institution in Washington, D.C. The Kennedy Center was established by Congress and has been run by a bipartisan board since it opened in 1971, but Trump upended that in February when he moved to install his loyalists in key positions and make himself chair. Last week, the Kennedy Center’s new leadership fired at least seven members of its social impact team that worked to reach more diverse audiences and artists, including the vice president and artistic director of Social Impact, Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The acclaimed artist and playwright joins Democracy Now! to discuss Trump’s changes at the Kennedy Center, which he criticizes for destroying a “sanctuary for freedom of thought and freedom of creative expression.” Joseph notes that while the Kennedy Center has not yet made drastic programming changes, the rhetoric from Trump and others “severely restricts and almost criminalizes demographic realities outside of white, straight, male Christianity.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, as we turn to the Trump administration’s intensifying attacks on cultural institutions and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, including the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

In February, President Trump ousted the center’s longtime chair, David Rubenstein, made himself chair of the board. Trump also fired longtime President Deborah Rutter. Last week, the Kennedy Center fired at least seven members of its Social Impact initiative, including its vice president, artistic director, the renowned artist Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The team aimed to expand the art center’s reach to diverse audiences, to commission new works by Black composers. The job terminations come weeks after President Trump took over the Kennedy Center and also appointed his allies, including his chief of staff, Susie Wiles, to the board, and her mother and second lady Usha Vance and two hosts on Fox News, Laura Ingraham and Maria Bartiromo.

Marc Bamuthi Joseph recorded this video from his office just after he was fired.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Well, I am sitting in my office at the Kennedy Center one last time. It’s funny. I’m taking things down, like this red, black and green American flag and this extraordinary piece of artwork that my man Greg made that honors Stevie Wonder and this poster from BAM and a commemorative album that was organized by Swizz Beatz. Basically, I’m taking down everything Black in my office, just as the new leadership of the Kennedy Center is doing its best to disavow much of the literal color that has made this place special. I am grieving and angry and also ready to be rid of the moral injury that has come with being in this place. It’s hard to say goodbye, but it isn’t hard to say goodbye to an oppressive situation. So, may liberation be my liturgy. I’m proud of what we made here. We will always have an impact.

AMY GOODMAN: Marc Bamuthi Joseph, speaking after he was fired as vice president and artistic director of Social Impact at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the last time he was in his office. And this is a portion from Marc Bamuthi Joseph’s spoken word performance Friday, when he went back to Oakland for a timely production with the Oakland Symphony titled “The Forgiveness Suite,” accompanied by musician Daniel Bernard Roumain.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Steps to grace. Face the hurt. Unthread the truth. Choose mercy. Engage your transgressors. Say I leave this pain with you. Grace requires a loosening of other people’s stuff for American-socialized Black girls who considered shame reflexively when self-love wasn’t enough. Grace is never enough when the forgiveness isn’t deserved. But here you are, facing the truth, reconciling the pain by extending grace.

AMY GOODMAN: You’ve been listening to Marc Bamuthi Joseph. He joins us right now from Virginia.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Bamuthi. Talk about what happened last week. Talk about what’s happening to the Kennedy Center.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Peace, Amy. Good morning to you, and good morning to everyone listening and watching.

I feel so privileged to be the child of immigrants and having lived in the state of California for a long time. Moving to D.C. infused me with a different sense of patriotism and connection to the American promise, to the plurality that makes this country truly great.

There has been, as you’ve distilled, an infusion of a kind of binary political discourse into what’s supposed to be a sanctuary for freedom of thought and freedom of creative expression. The Kennedy Center, it should be said, has not officially canceled any performances or explicitly contractually removed themselves from relationship to any artists. But as you’ve been describing so diligently and so bravely over the course of your entire career, we create atmosphere through rhetoric. The stated agenda as institutionalized in spaces like the National Endowment for the Arts, let’s say, severely restricts and almost criminalizes demographic realities outside of white, straight, male Christianity. The specific attack on gay, trans and drag performers has narrowed the cultural radius at the Kennedy Center significantly, so that artists feel like they can’t in good conscience come to the Kennedy Center. So you’re seeing artists like Issa Rae or the producers of Hamilton or the artist Rhiannon Giddens remove themselves from their relationship to the Kennedy Center.

And that, in turn, trickles down to the brave staff, who are arts professionals who care about cultural providence and have to do their very best to make it possible for artists to continue to be at their best. But against the backdrop of this oppressive regime and this politically narrow board of directors, that’s extraordinarily difficult to do.

AMY GOODMAN: I mean, you have this unbelievable moment that we just played, Jon Batiste playing “Star-Spangled Banner.” President Trump is saluting —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — at the Super Bowl, and he had just fired him from the board of trustees of the Kennedy Center —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — along with many others. And then John F. Kennedy, you’ve got the portrait there in the John F. Kennedy Performing Arts Center.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And when he came for his board meeting, President Trump as chair, what he put up, new portraits, himself, his wife, Usha Vance and Vice President Vance.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yeah, you know, what you’re seeing all over government are folks who aren’t necessarily experienced in the lines or departments or vectors of action that they’re supposed to lead. And there is no formal experience in either nonprofits, arts management or the art of curation that is now present at the top of the organizational chart, beginning with the board chair. So, you know, the desire to satisfy one’s ego or the desire to be vengeful, apparently, has superseded the desire to serve this nation in terms of making a safe space for artists, particularly artists from historically marginalized communities or historically minoritized communities to thrive.

The work that we did in Social Impact — and I’m so proud of my team, my staff and all of my colleagues who supported us — you know, that work was meant to focus on the historically marginalized, but also it connected to this idea of the constitutionality of inspiration. Our belief is that you cannot be — you cannot have access to the franchise, to the American franchise, if you don’t have access to the impulse of creativity, that just like you have access to the ballot box or equal protection under the law under the 14th Amendment, you also have access and protection to inspiration. How can you be an American if you cannot hope? And who authors hope more than artists? So, this diminishment of creativity, of ideas, the diminishment of folks’ access to high-level inspired works of art is among the more un-American things, I think, that a leader would do.

AMY GOODMAN: During your time there, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, you helped launch the Culture Caucus, which offered two-year residencies with groups —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — that work with queer and trans youth, formerly incarcerated people —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — the disabled community.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: You also established a national partnership —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — called Conflux, which worked with the National Arab Orchestra —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — the First Nations community and World Pride.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Your audience, mainly wealthy and white.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you talk about the direction that Trump is now taking the performing arts center in? We heard from, what, Steve Bannon, one of his allies, that he had spoken to Ric Grenell, the new head of the Kennedy Center, that they’re going to be bringing, what, in one of the first performances, the January 6th Choir to perform there to usher —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — in a new era of culture in the new Kennedy Center.

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yeah, I won’t speak to the president’s curatorial tastes. They speak for themselves. I think maybe what I would point to is the list of maybe more than 200 musicians who didn’t want their music played at his rallies. That speaks to a broader environment, I think, and disconnect between the arts community and the political direction of the president of the United States.

All the work that you cited, that’s the work that we stand on and that we’re proud of. You know, your listeners and your viewers know, going out to have a date night or a family night is increasingly expensive — parking and food, and, you know, not to mention the cost of the tickets themselves, child care. A lot of the work that we did was we lowered the barrier to entry from a financial standpoint, but also from a social standpoint. You know, my folks always want to know who all gonna be there, right? Well, what we did in Social Impact was we helped usher in a culture of invitation. The Kennedy Center, historically, at its best, produces more than 2,000 events a year.

So, maybe less than focus on what happens curatorially, I think we all have to ask ourselves: How many artists are willing to come into a space with such a narrow field of cultural vision? What is the scale of the Kennedy Center going to be like six months from now or a year from now?

What happens inside the building is only as powerful as the people and the artists within it. So, you know, God bless all the curators at the Kennedy Center, but maybe more importantly, God bless the artists, who now have perhaps one less venue to share their work with the world. And then, God bless the audiences, because audiences or, you know, American citizens, folks who have less access to inspiration erode the democracy from the point of a lack of sight onto the creative horizon.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to also ask you, Bamuthi, about Trump’s executive order —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — signed last week, appointing the vice president, JD Vance, to eliminate, quote, “divisive, race-centered ideology,” unquote, from Smithsonian museums, research centers and the National Zoo. The order, called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” aims to remove exhibits and programs that portray U.S. history and values as “inherently harmful and oppressive,” unquote. It cites in particular the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which opened in 2016. The Smithsonian operates independently, since it was established as a public-private partnership by Congress in 1846, but roughly receives 60% of its funding from the federal government. You know, you’re an Oakland guy, but you’ve moved to Washington —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: — for your job, that you were just fired from, and I’m sure you’ve spent time at the African American museum. The significance of —

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Absolutely.

AMY GOODMAN: — putting Vance in charge of deciding what exhibits are appropriate or not, what is American or not?

MARC BAMUTHI JOSEPH: Yeah. Yeah. It is chilling. It is a harbinger. It is a signifier in the most ominous of terms.

I think about the words of John F. Kennedy inscribed on the wall at the Kennedy Center. Kennedy spoke of an America that was unafraid of grace and beauty. I think about the writers and the teachers who made me, everyone from Dr. Daniel Omotosho Black at Clark Atlanta University to the author Toni Morrison, the poet Nikki Giovanni. I think about how they all authored the story of our overcoming.

America is actually built on struggle. And, you know, it’s obviously impossible to decouple American history from a genocidal, hyper-patriarchal, hyper-capitalist frame and origin story. But the idea of democracy itself is a radical idea. The Constitution itself is a critical theory. It describes a way, a populist way, that requires participation in order to actually make the country thrive. In order to be — in order to fully participate in the democracy, you have to sublimate or suppress your apathy.

My partners at SOZO Artists and I think about the idea that the way to turn apathy into empathy is to infuse inspiration as a conversion element. These museums, these Smithsonian museums, inspire folks because they distill the story of our overcoming. You enter — even if you entered one of the Smithsonian institutions apathetic as to the idea of struggle or overcoming, you are inspired inside of that institution, and you leave a more compassionate and more empathetic human being. So, you know, this description of what the Smithsonian institutions do, particularly what we call the “Blacksonian” here locally, that description is severely un-American and disconnected from the American promise. But maybe more critically, it minimizes the opportunity to generate empathy among not only the citizens of this country, but visitors from all over the world.

AMY GOODMAN: Marc Bamuthi Joseph, I want to thank you so much for being with us, renowned artist and playwright, fired from his role as vice president and artistic director of the Kennedy Center’s Social Impact initiative.

Jason Stanley, a Yale University professor and author known for his expertise on the history of fascism, recently made a bombshell announcement: He is leaving the United States and moving to Canada.

Stanley, author of the 2018 book, "How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them," accepted a job offer at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. And he is being candid about his reasons for leaving the country: Stanley believes the U.S. is moving in an increasingly authoritarian direction during Donald Trump's second presidency.

The Yale scholar told the Daily Nous he wants "to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship."

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Stanley isn't the only well-known American who is making such a move. Actress Rosie O'Donnell, a liberal Trump critic, is now living in the Republic of Ireland — where she says she is "sleeping better."

Stanley discussed his move to Canada during a Monday morning, March 31 appearance on MSNBC, stressing that leaving the U.S. was not a decision he made lightly.

When MSNBC host Ana Cabrera asked Stanley why he doesn't stay in the U.S. and be part of the "pushback" against Trump policies he opposes, the Yale scholar/author responded, "I will continue to throw punches against fascism and bullies from Canada, don't worry. I have two Black and Jewish kids. I think my kids actually are more important to me than anything else…. And I want to send a political message, as I've been doing with my work."

Stanley added, "This comes at great personal cost…. I'm taking a huge salary cut. I'm not a super wealthy person. I'll still be well- paid, but I'm taking like a 25 percent salary cut and moving myself from my homeland that I love."

READ MORE:'Game over': Yale fascism expert moving to Canada because US is becoming a 'dictatorship'

Stanley defended Yale during the interview, pointing out that his decision to leave the U.S. has nothing to with the Connecticut university. And he warned that Trump's threat to cut off Columbia's funding is historically dangerous.

"Yale has, to this extent, protected its scholars — unlike Columbia (University), who forced, for example, Katharine Frank, a prominent law professor, into early retirement," Stanley told Cabrera. "So, it has nothing to do with me. It has everything to do with my children and my desire to send a warning to Americans that is consonant with the work I've been doing…. Never before has the federal government intervened to put a department into receivership, much less an excellent department like the Department of Middle Eastern Studies at Columbia University…. Needless to say, this crackdown, Columbia's capitulation to this, is a grave sign about the future of academic freedom in addition to, say, hauling people off the street and sending them to Louisiana prisons like they did at Tufts University for co-authoring op-eds in the student newspaper."

Stanley added that the Trump Administration will only escalate its tactics in the months ahead.

Stanley told Cabrera, "Right now, they're targeting non-citizens for writing in student newspapers. I suspect they'll start pulling people's passports, targeting U.S. citizens for various reasons, and exploiting Americans' ignorance generally…. They're trying to, and I fear they will succeed, in destroying America's higher education system — which is by far the best in the world.

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Watch the full video below or at this link.

In 2025, a variety of special elections — including two congressional races in Florida — will be viewed as a referendum on Donald Trump's second presidency. Democratic and GOP strategists are also paying close attention to a Wisconsin Supreme Court race, which finds Trump ally Elon Musk spending millions of dollars in the hope of getting conservative candidate Brad Schimel past the finish line. Democrats, meanwhile, are aggressively supporting liberal candidate Susan Crawford in that race, which is technically nonpartisan.

During a Saturday morning, March 29 panel discussion, MSNBC host Michael Steele argued that it will bad news for Trump if GOP candidates perform badly in 2025's special elections. And Steele — a Never Trump conservative who formerly served as chairman of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and lieutenant governor of Maryland — warned that Republicans will ramp up their voter suppression efforts if they see these elections as a threat.

On March 25, Trump signed an executive order calling for proof of citizenship for voter registration.

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The MSNBC panel also included Steele's "The Weekend" colleagues Alicia Menendez and Symone D. Sanders-Townsend, who were joined by former Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pennsylvania) and Media Matters' Angelo Carusone.

Steele told the panel, "This next domino is getting set up to fall around elections, where they will begin to say, 'Hey, in order for you to vote in federal elections, you have to have an ID. Sorry, full stop, you can't vote otherwise.' And to limit the capacity and the access that individuals have, that is the ultimate end game. If you're going to really make this authoritarian model work, you can't allow people to vote on the issue you're doing."

Dent, another Never Trumper, interjected that Trump's executive order will be "challenged legally" because "elections are conducted by state and local governments" — not by the federal government.

Dent told Steele and the other panelists, "I support voter ID. I've always thought: as long as it's reasonable. But if you're going to have a national voter ID requirement, you might need an actual national ID — which we don't have. I mean, we have passports, but most people don't have passports."

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Dent argued that the Florida special elections may be a warning sign for Trump.

"You know, I think the Republican candidate is really struggling down there," the former GOP congressman told the others. "I'm not going to say he's going to lose, but it's a low-single-digit race. It's within the margin of error; that scares him."

READ MORE: 'Tide’s turning' for Dems in Florida as special election reveals 'buyer’s remorse' among Trump voters

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Elon Musk, the de facto head of the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency, was berated anew Friday after insidiously tarring millions of Social Security recipients as "fraudsters"—a tactic critics called part of an orchestrated Republican scheme to destroy the vital earned benefits program.

Musk and seven DOGE staffers—all of them men—appeared on Fox News Thursday, where the world's richest person called the Trump administration's crusade to eviscerate the federal government under pretext of improving efficiency "the biggest revolution in the government since the original revolution" in 1776.

The DOGE staffers repeated unfounded claims that Social Security is riddled with fraud; that in some cases, 40% of calls to the Social Security Administration phone center are fraudulent; and that millions of people aged 120 and older are registered with SSA.

Acknowledging that DOGE's wrecking-ball approach to government reform is getting "a lot of complaints along the way," Musk said: "You know who complains the loudest, and with the most amount of fake righteous indignation? The fraudsters."

Musk's comments echoed those of billionaire U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who suggested on a podcast last week that only a "fraudster" would complain about a missed Social Security check.

Responding to what she called Musk's "absurd claim," Nancy Altman, president of the advocacy group Social Security Works (SSW), said Friday that "the truth is that Social Security has a fraud rate of 0.00625%, far lower than private sector retirement programs."

"It is Musk and DOGE who are inviting in fraudsters," she continued. "Scammers are already rushing in to take advantage of the confusion created by DOGE's service cuts."

Critics have denounced the Trump administration for sowing chaos at SSA and other federal agencies by planning to lay off thousands of workers, slashing spending, and implement other disruptive policies. Cuts in SSA phone services were reportedly carried out in response to a direct request from the White House, which claimed it is simply working to eliminate "waste, fraud, and abuse."

"The truth is that Social Security has a fraud rate of 0.00625%, far lower than private sector retirement programs."

This "DOGE-manufactured chaos," as Altman calls it, has already led to the SSA website crashing several times in recent weeks and hold times of as long as 4-5 hours for those calling the agency.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) on Thursday noted that while it would be clearly illegal for President Donald Trump and DOGE to cut Social Security benefits without congressional authorization, there are other ways for the administration to hamstring the agency.

Referencing a new in-person verification rule that was delayed and partly rolled back this week, Warren said:

Say a 66-year-old man qualifies for Social Security. Say he calls the helpline to apply, but he's told about a new DOGE rule, so he has to go online or in person. He can't drive. He has trouble with the website, so he waits until his niece can get a day off to take him to the local office, but DOGE closed that office, so they have to drive two hours to get to the next closest office. When they get there, there are only two people staffing a 50-person line, so he doesn't even make it to the front of the line before the office closes and he has to come back. Let's assume it takes him three months to straighten this out, and he misses a total of $5,000 in benefits checks, which, by law, he will never get back.

"This scenario is a backdoor way Musk and Trump could cut Social Security," the senator added. "That's what I'm fighting to prevent."

Democratic lawmakers and others argue that the Trump administration's approach is "a prelude to privatizing Social Security and handing it over to private equity," as Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said earlier this week.

"Improving Social Security doesn't start with shuttering the offices that handle modernization, anti-fraud activities, and civil rights violations," the senator asserted. "It doesn't start with indiscriminately firing or buying out thousands of workers, and it doesn't start with restricting customer service over the phone and drawing up plans to close field and regional offices."

These and other moves, including the nomination of financial services executive Frank Bisignano as SSA commissioner, belie Trump's claim that he is "not touching" Social Security, upon which 70 million Americans—including nearly 9 in 10 people aged 65 or older—rely for their earned benefits.

So do Trump and Musk's own words. The president has called Social Security a "scam" and Musk recently referred to it as "the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time."

"No one who thinks Social Security is a criminal Ponzi scheme should be anywhere near our earned Social Security benefits or the sensitive data we provide the Social Security Administration," said SSW's Altman.

Watch the Fox News interview below or at this link:

In Wood County, West Virginia, Donald Trump won more than 70 percent of the vote in the United States' 2024 presidential election. According to CNN's John Berman, the fact that Trump campaigned on cutting government waste worked to his advantage in Wood County.

But in a segment broadcast on Friday morning, March 28, Berman and his colleagues took a look at Wood County voters who favored Trump in 2024 but now have "buyer's remorse."

One of them is Jennifer Piggott, who told CNN that she was a "MAGA junkie" in 2024 and proudly displayed a Trump flag in front of her house. But now, Piggott regrets her vote after losing her job with the U.S. Treasury Department as a result of the mass layoffs of federal workers being carried out by the Trump Administration with the help of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

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Piggott told CNN, "I cried. It's scary. You know, it's a really scary thing. And I was embarrassed."

When Piggott and others who worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in Parkersburg, West Virginia were "abruptly" laid off, CNN reports, "poor performance" was cited as a reason.

But Piggott told CNN, "I had my last review on the 31st of January, and I had the highest rating that you can get on a review — less than 21 days before I was terminated for my performance."

When CNN asked Piggott if she regretted voting for Trump in 2024, she replied, "Yes, I do. To cut the knees of working-class Americans just doesn't make sense to me…. I expected more from President Donald Trump."

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According to CNN, Piggott received death threats after publicly criticizing Trump.

CNN also interviewed another West Virginia woman who retired from the Treasury Department's Bureau of Fiscal Service because she feared losing her health insurance if she was fired. Asked if she would have voted for Trump if she knew she would lose her job, the woman — who requested anonymity for fear of retribution from Trump supporters — responded, "I'm not sure that I would have."

Another interviewee, Ronda Bragg — a former government employee now on administrative leave — was asked to comment on Trump voters who have lost their jobs.

Bragg told CNN, "You know, at first I wanted to say: when all this happens, you deserved it. At the same time, they're in the same spot that I am. And I honestly don't think any of us deserved it. It's not even $50,000 a year. You know, it's not that much money. I'm blue collar just like the rest of them in this valley."

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On Tuesday, March 25, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing focused on national security matters. And senators questioned CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard.

The hearing came a day after a bombshell revelation from The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who was wrongly given access to a Signal group chat describing plans for a military operation against Houthis in Yemen.

After the hearing, CNN's Brianna Keilar interviewed Rep. Brian Mast (R-Florida), the Donald Trump ally who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

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The exchange became testy at times when Keilar pressed Mast on national security concerns — including whether or not Signal is appropriate for discussing classified information.

Keilar asked Mast, "Would you talk about upcoming military operations, weapons that will be used, targets that are going to be hit? Excuse me, including people attacked, sequencing that is going to take place, on Signal?"

The GOP congressman responded, "Yeah, I may. I don't really use Signal much for myself. But again, going back in time to if I was doing planning operations as a part of the military. Yes, there's a very specific difference about, is it classified or is it sensitive? And if I need to speak to somebody in a different environment where they're not co-located with me — and I want to have a conversation — I might be using Signal. Why? Because it's authorized."

Keilar, however, doubled down on her line of questioning, asking Mast if "members of the military should feel comfortable about pre-strike details on Signal?"

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Mast told Keilar, "It depends on what you're talking about….. It depends on: Are you creating an operational liability?" And Keilar reminded him that the group chat Goldberg described in The Atlantic "did create an operational liability" by "talking about strikes that are going to be happening in two hours."

During the interview, Mast tried to deflect attention from Hegseth by noting the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal of 2016. But Keilar wouldn't let Mast be evasive, saying, "I'm not here to defend Hillary Clinton's e-mails…. Why not have an investigation of what has happened here? Because there are many questions that have not been answered."

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Paula White, President Donald Trump's White House faith advisor, is a major proponent of a controversial evangelical doctrine known as "prosperity gospel" or "prosperity theology" — which claims that God blesses the rich with affluence for making moral decisions and that poverty is God's way of punishing immorality.

Critics of the doctrine, both Catholic and Protestant, argue that it is totally unbiblical — as Jesus said that " it is easier for a camel to walk through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God" (Matthew 19:24).

White's critics often take issue with her not only for promoting the "prosperity gospel," but also for her frequent requests for financial contributions. Now, White is asking her followers to send her $1000 before Easter in receive "seven supernatural blessings." And they include God assigning an angel to you, God giving you prosperity, God being an enemy to your enemies, and God curing illnesses.

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Mediaite's Sarah Rumpf reports, "This Easter donation solicitation is not the first time she has asked people to send money in exchange for 'supernatural protections.' In March 2020, White was scheduled to be the featured speaker at a religious conference in Phoenix, Arizona that was selling nonrefundable tickets and promised attendees 'Supernatural Protection from the CoronaVirus Now,' along with 'the cure for every virus and plague!' After backlash, White withdrew from the conference."

White's "seven supernational blessings" offer was flagged by People For the American Way's Right Wing Watch, which monitors the Religious Right.

Right Wing Watch tweeted video of White saying, "I believe that when you honor God on Passover, starting on April 12 at sundown…. You can receive these seven supernatural blessings…. According to Exodus 23, God will assign an angel to you. He'll be an enemy to your enemies. He'll give you prosperity. He'll take sickness away from you. He will give you long life."

In the video, a narrator says, "For your special Passover offering of $1,000 or more, as the Holy Spirit leads, you will also receive the beautiful 10-inch Waterford crystal cross. Don’t miss your moment to release seven supernatural blessings and provision into your life!"

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Watch the video below or at this:

On Tuesday, March 25, national security officials — including CIA Director John Ratcliffe, FBI Director Kash Patel and National Intelligence Director Tulsi Gabbard — appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee to answer questions about threats the United States is facing.

The hearing came a day after the Trump Administration was rocked by a bombshell article from The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, who reported that he had been wrongly given access to a group chat describing plans for a military operation against Houthis in Yemen.

The group, communicating via the messaging app Signal, included Gabbard as well as Vice President JD Vance, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and others. And critics of the Trump Administration are arguing that Goldberg's access to the group was a major blunder from a national security standpoint.

READ MORE: 'Clawback cruelty': How Trump is already destroying Social Security

Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Georgia) was among the senators who forcefully grilled Ratcliffe during the March 25 hearing, reminding the CIA director how egregious the blunder was.

Ossoff wasn't shy about asking tough questions, telling Ratcliffe, "Director, this was a huge mistake, correct?"

When Ratcliffe responded, "No," Ossoff told him, "hold on. A national political reporter was made privy to sensitive information about the Yemen military information against a foreign terrorist organization — and that wasn't a huge mistake?.... This is an embarrassment. This is utterly unprofessional. There's been no apology. There has been no recognition of the gravity of this error."

Ossoff added, "And by the way, we will get the full transcript of this chain, and your testimony will be measured carefully against its content."

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The right-wing legal movement and the Federalist Society have made considerable progress in recent years, with GOP appointees now having a 6-3 supermajority on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Some conservative and libertarian judges can be protective of civil liberties; former Justice Anthony Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, played a key role in pro-gay rulings like Lawrence v. Texas (2003) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). But the High Court is now dominated by extreme social conservatives, who overturned Roe v. Wade with their 2022 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. And many civil libertarians fear that during President Donald Trump's second term, everything from same-sex marriage to access to contraception will be endangered by a Christian nationalist legal agenda.

During a Monday morning, March 24 appearance on MSNBC, progressive attorney/author Elie Mystal stressed that from a legal standpoint, liberals and progressives are at a disadvantage because they are reactive rather than proactive.

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Mystal told "Morning Joe" hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski and their MSNBC colleague, the Rev. Al Sharpton, "I am saying that many of the laws that we have in this country are absolute trash…. Somebody on my side of the aisle has to start writing Project 2029, right? Somebody has to start writing a positive agenda for the Democratic Party."

The attorney noted that when he wrote his new book, "Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America," he didn't want to simply "write another Orange-Man-Bad book" — the "Orange Man" being President Donald Trump.

"Obviously, the Orange Man is very bad and very dangerous to all of us," Mystal told Scarborough, Brzezinski and Sharpton. "But the Orange Man represents an aggressive Republican policy agenda. And so, what I'm trying to do is point out what an aggressive Democratic policy agenda looks like…. I think one of the problems that many people in the (Democratic) base have is that the Democrats always seem to be in a fetal position."

Mystal continued, "The Democrats always seem to be in a defensive posture; we're always running around trying to pick up after Republicans after Republicans smash anything. Well, let's go out there and talk about the positive Democratic agenda. Let's talk about the things that we can do on the front foot."

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When Brzezinski asked Mystal for some examples, the attorney responded, "Well, we could eliminate all voter registration laws. See, when Democrats get in charge, we try to protect voting rights. We don't make voting easier. Now, I'm all for voter eligibility requirements. We might disagree about what those requirements should be…. Why do you have to pre-register? Why is that even a thing?"

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