Pete Hegseth’s D-day speech on immigration condemned as ‘grotesque stupidity’

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“US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was criticized for linking immigration to the D-day anniversary during a speech in France. Historians and rights campaigners condemned his remarks as “grotesque stupidity” and a desecration of the memory of soldiers who fought in Normandy. Critics argued that Hegseth’s comments were particularly inappropriate given his recent actions and the US’s own immigration policies.

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Historians and campaigners accuse US defence secretary of desecrating memory of soldiers who fell in Normandy

Ashifa Kassam

Pete Hegseth speaking at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer on Saturday.Photograph: Jeremías González/AP

The US defence secretary, Pete Hegseth, has been accused by historians and rights campaigners of “grotesque stupidity” and desecrating the memory of the soldiers who stormed the beaches of Normandy after he sought to link immigration to the D-day anniversary, saying Europe was facing a different “invasion” of its shores.

Speaking in north-west France on Saturday to mark the 82nd anniversary of the D-day landings, Hegseth seized on the moment marking the wartime liberation of Europe to reiterate the US administration’s longstanding attack on European immigration policies.

“Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies,” Hegseth told those gathered at the American military cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer.

“Beaches in Spain, Italy, Greece and Bulgaria, boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion, or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not,” he said.

“The men who fought and died here restored freedom to Europe,” added Hegseth, a former Fox News host. “That freedom must be maintained by this generation of leaders and war fighters, or what they fought for was merely temporary.”

The remarks were swiftly condemned on social media. The English historian, author and television presenter Simon Schama described them as a “special kind of loathsomeness: a blend of historical deafness, grotesque stupidity and comically ludicrous self-importance”.

Schama added: “As if the little people’s rage against immigration somehow is superior to the war against the 3rd Reich and entitles this comic book nobody to lecture the actual heroes.”

From Jerusalem, the Israeli human rights lawyer Daniel Seidemann also weighed in. “This is an obscene desecration of the memories of those who stormed the beaches of Normandy, and especially of those who fell,” he wrote.

Anders Åslund, a Swedish economist and former senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, contrasted the comments with Hegseth’s later remarks on the US standing alongside its allies. “So much nonsense,” he wrote on social media. “‘We stand by our allies!’ No you don’t. You just attacked them. Immigration policies are internal matters.”

Åslund said Hegseth’s comments were particularly “clueless” given his recent decision to skip a key Nato meeting and Donald Trump’s vows to cut the number of troops in Europe. “Doesn’t Hegseth know that the most unreliable ‘ally’ by far is the US?” he said.

Hegseth’s outsized focus on EU migration echoes comments made by other American officials, including Trump, who have consistently sought to criticise the impact of migration on the continent, despite the US having a higher proportion of foreign-born residents than the EU.

Hours before Hegseth’s speech, the US vice-president, JD Vance, also waded into the matter with a social media post that blamed immigration for the killing of Henry Nowak, an 18-year-old British student stabbed in the UK. Nowak’s killer, a British-born Sikh, was convicted of murder and jailed for life with a minimum of 21 years.

On Sunday, the UK justice secretary and deputy prime minister, David Lammy, said he had had an “agreeable” conversation in which he had sought to set the record straight with Vance. “This has got nothing to do with mass migration. This young man was a Brit,” Lammy told Sky News. “Let’s be clear about that. And I said: ‘Look, Mr Vice-president, you’re wrong about this.’”

In the days before Hegseth’s visit to France, the plans had stirred up controversy, with one residents’ association calling for the trip to be cancelled. “This individual promotes values that go against democracy, human rights and peace,” the Langrune en Commun association, which advocates for environmentalism and solidarity among the village’s residents, said in a press release last week.

Speaking to the broadcaster BFMTV, one member of the association cautioned against acting as though everything was normal. “What’s happening with the Trump administration isn’t business as usual. The fact that Pete Hegseth is challenging all the international organisations that emerged from the second world war isn’t business as usual,” said Chantal Richard.

“The words must be spoken, he must be called out for who he is, for the values he represents: colonial, warmongering, racist, far-right values,” she added. “Silence seems to us to be the worst thing we can do on these issues.”

RFK Jr. Appears Disengaged on Many Health Department Matters Beyond Vaccines

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“Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is reportedly disengaged from managing the Department of Health and Human Services, focusing instead on food and vaccine policies. Critics argue his lack of engagement, coupled with staffing vacancies and a focus on political appointees, could hinder the department’s ability to respond to public health crises. While Kennedy’s allies defend his leadership style, concerns persist about the department’s effectiveness under his tenure.

​

June 7, 2026

Mr. Kennedy, who is isolated from much of his top staff, leans on a small number of key advisers.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

Kennedy Shows Minimal Engagement With Vast Health Portfolio

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has demonstrated little interest in managing his sprawling department as he focuses on food and vaccine policies, according to colleagues.

Mr. Kennedy, who is isolated from much of his top staff, leans on a small number of key advisers.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his Make America Healthy Again movement.

Shortly after the World Health Organization declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency, a reporter asked Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. if he was worried about the virus. Six Americans had already been exposed. His response was brief: “Yeah, we’re working on it.”

In the nearly three weeks since, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed travel restrictions to keep the virus from coming to the United States, Mr. Kennedy has made no public comments about the spreading outbreak. He has received very few briefings about the virus from C.D.C. scientists, although he speaks daily to the acting director, according to people familiar with his response.

Mr. Kennedy’s approach to the crisis reflects his broader management of the Department of Health and Human Services, which affects the health of 340 million Americans and provides health care to 40 percent of the population through Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Kennedy has shown little interest in managing the details of work in his department, according to multiple colleagues. Instead, they say, he is single-mindedly focused on his top priorities, including food recommendations and pesticide exposures, and hunting for evidence to support his long-held beliefs that vaccines are harmful.

Deeply mistrustful of career civil officials, the secretary has surrounded himself with a close circle of handpicked advisers and stacked agencies with political appointees aligned with his views. While major posts have sat vacant and a wave of veteran health experts and scientists have departed, Mr. Kennedy has remained isolated from much of the department’s top staff.

He rarely engages with members of Congress, colleagues said, unless he is asked to testify. He has made just one known visit to the C.D.C., after a gunman opened fire on its headquarters and killed a police officer last August.

The World Health Organization has declared the Ebola outbreak in Africa a public health emergency. Mr. Kennedy has made little comment on the outbreak.Arlette Bashizi for The New York Times

This examination of Mr. Kennedy’s leadership style is based on the accounts of a dozen people who have had direct contact with him as secretary, as well as other health department employees, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

Mr. Kennedy and the department did not directly address questions about his leadership style.

The secretary’s detachment from much of the work of the agency, along with the administration’s deep staff cuts and his attacks on career staff, have driven down morale, they say. It’s a dynamic that could threaten the department’s ability to protect Americans in a crisis, according to public health experts and former secretaries.

Critics say one of the most urgent problems is Mr. Kennedy’s failure to act more swiftly to address a leadership vacuum. There is no surgeon general. Around half of the 27 institutes and centers at N.I.H. are run by acting directors. The acting chief of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases was recently fired, as was the nation’s top drug regulator.

The leader of the Food and Drug Administration quit last month under pressure over tobacco policy. Mr. Kennedy fired the C.D.C. director last August; it is now run on an acting basis by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who already has another huge job as director of the National Institutes of Health.

“You would never accept a major corporation operating this way,” said Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, who has advised health secretaries of both parties.

“If the C.E.O. lacked deep expertise in the company’s business and the leaders of its most important divisions were missing, investors would revolt,” Dr. Osterholm said. “Here, the stakes are much higher. The mission is protecting the health and safety of the American people, and we’re confronting serious disease threats without permanent leadership in some of our most important public health agencies.”

To address the management gaps, the White House and Mr. Kennedy initiated a shake-up in February, elevating Christopher Klomp, a department official and former health care executive, to serve as the secretary’s chief counselor and smooth out operations. In a statement, Courtney Spencer, who left the Labor Department two weeks ago to become Mr. Kennedy’s top spokeswoman, said the health department was “aggressively recruiting top talent to fill every remaining vacancy,” adding, “Nothing has slowed our ability to execute.”

Mr. Kennedy’s allies say that while his management style may be different from that of his predecessors, he is leading in other ways by taking stands on matters of importance to Americans, including healthy eating and tackling chronic disease.

“You do not come to Washington to challenge powerful interests, disrupt decades of business as usual, and demand accountability to make friends,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a close ally of Mr. Kennedy’s, said in a statement provided by the health department. “You do it to deliver results.”

Other advisers say Mr. Kennedy is also running into the realities of Washington, including a Congress that has refused to confirm some of President Trump’s nominees.

“Very predictably, you get into governing, you get into a toxic political environment, and a situation where there’s trillions of dollars of interest and you have the burden of having to do policy,” Calley Means, a close adviser to Mr. Kennedy, said at a recent forum hosted by Harvard University. “Nobody executes perfectly.”

A Remote Presence

Mr. Kennedy keeps a low profile at the health department’s headquarters, a hulking building that faces the National Mall near the U.S. Capitol.

When he is in town, he exercises at his gym before work, then usually arrives at about 10 a.m. and leaves by 4 p.m., his colleagues say. He spends much of his day in closed-door meetings, according to those who work with him, and has little direct engagement with his staff.

Every Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., the chiefs of the department’s 13 operating divisions gather in the secretary’s suite to update leadership on their activities. At the outset of his tenure, Mr. Kennedy was rarely there, either virtually or in person, according to three people familiar with his schedule. Since Mr. Klomp’s elevation, he now shows up once a month. But when he does attend, he often appears disengaged and spends the time scrolling on his phone, according to people in attendance. Several described him as “checked out.”

Once, when he arrived to the meeting 15 minutes late, Mr. Kennedy offered a self-deprecating apology, according to one person in the room: “Thank you for putting up with my dysfunctional self.”

Health department officials did not respond to a request for comment about the meeting or Mr. Kennedy’s remark.

His disinterest in matters that are not high on his priority list has meant that he has not engaged at critical moments, colleagues said.

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When measles killed two children in Texas early last year, Dr. Demetre Daskalakis, who led the response but has since left the agency, asked repeatedly to brief Mr. Kennedy but was rebuffed, he said.

Susan Monarez, who briefly served as Mr. Kennedy’s C.D.C. director before she was fired, had little direct interaction with the health secretary until she ran afoul of him on vaccine policy. She later told senators that during a series of tense meetings with the secretary, she was “directed to only work with the political appointees that he had put in place at C.D.C., and not to speak or work with the career scientists.”

In the current Ebola crisis, Mr. Kennedy has left the department’s response to Dr. Bhattacharya, a health economist with no prior experience in public health even though he is leading the C.D.C. Dr. Bhattacharya, who also led the response to a recent outbreak of hantavirus, wrote an opinion essay published in The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday saying that while the “risk to the American public remains low, Ebola is dangerous.”

A White House spokesman, Kush Desai, said the agency’s “rapid and comprehensive response” to the Ebola outbreak proved that “under Secretary Kennedy’s leadership, H.H.S. continues to safeguard the health and wellness of the American people.”

Ms. Spencer, the H.H.S. spokeswoman, said the health department had “executed an immediate and coordinated response” under Mr. Kennedy’s leadership.

But key vacancies inside the health department have made the response more challenging, people familiar with situation said.

The Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response, responsible for pandemic preparedness and for standing up field hospitals and quarantine facilities in Kenya, is currently run on an acting basis by John Knox, a former Los Angeles firefighter who founded the group Firefighters4Freedom during the pandemic to fight vaccine mandates.

As the outbreak has spread, Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a tacit rebuke of Mr. Kennedy’s move last year to withhold funding from an international vaccine alliance, suggesting the State Department was taking back management of the U.S. relationship with the alliance.

“We are going to re-engage,” Mr. Rubio told lawmakers last week. “We need to drive this to an outcome.”

A Daunting Portfolio

Under any circumstances, the Department of Health and Human Services is difficult to run. It has 13 operating divisions covering a vast array of issues, such as child welfare and pandemic preparedness. Past secretaries from both political parties say there are three main ingredients for success: understanding the work of the divisions, strong crisis communication and muscular coordination with state, local and international health leaders.

Tommy G. Thompson, who as health secretary to President George W. Bush faced complaints about his management of the 2001 anthrax crisis, spent a week at each one of the operating divisions at the outset of his tenure, and made frequent trips to Capitol Hill to advocate for the department. In an interview last year, he said he “would strongly suggest” Mr. Kennedy do the same.

“The department is so vast and so complex,” Mr. Thompson said, “and you have to be prepared.” 

Kathleen Sebelius, a former Kansas governor who resigned as President Barack Obama’s health secretary after the flawed rollout of the healthcare.gov website, said she met with the division chiefs regularly, likening them to her cabinet.

“My goal was to really be informed by the scientists, to make sure that N.I.H. was at the table, that F.D.A. was at the table, that our global health people were at the table,” Ms. Sebelius said in an interview, adding, “I was really schooled by the people who had been there before and who knew what the hell they were doing.”

Mr. Kennedy, by contrast, has delegated broad authority to Stefanie Spear, a longtime adviser who has been with him since his days as an environmental lawyer and functions as his protector and defender, according to people who know them.

Ms. Spear runs meetings for the secretary, accompanies him on official trips and keeps a list of the secretary’s policy projects on a private spreadsheet to which his policy team has no access; there are more than 50 items on the list, one person who has seen it said.

All of the requests for the secretary’s decisions and meetings go through Ms. Spear. When Mr. Kennedy is asked a question, his frequent response is “just run that by Stefanie.”

Colleagues say that her tight control has slowed down department operations.

After Mr. Kennedy promised Congress that the F.D.A. would investigate the safety of the abortion pill mifepristone, the agency proposed updating a set of sophisticated databases of electronic records it needed for the research. But the project was delayed for months by Mr. Kennedy’s office, according to two people with detailed knowledge.

When a gunman opened fire on the C.D.C. last August, Mr. Kennedy was fishing with Native American leaders in Alaska. Health department officials wanted to get a statement out to the news media. But it was held up for hours, several said, while Ms. Spear sought approval from the White House.

Frustration with Ms. Spear, who served as Mr. Kennedy’s communications director during his campaign and oversees his public comments, has fueled some key departures.

Mr. Kennedy is on his third top spokesman; the first two quit in frustration, according to people familiar with their decisions. The secretary has also run through two chiefs of staff; he fired the first one, and the second was pushed aside in favor of Mr. Klomp.

In a statement, Mr. Kennedy praised Mr. Klomp and Ms. Spear as “two of the most effective leaders in government.” He said Mr. Klomp had ”been instrumental in driving operational excellence, strengthening accountability, and ensuring H.H.S. delivers results for the American people,” and that Ms. Spear “keeps our team focused on results and ensures the president’s and my priorities get across the finish line.”

Mr. Klomp has moved quickly in the search for a new C.D.C. director, with a nominee now awaiting Senate confirmation, as well as for other top leaders for the agency. He also brought in a new team of policy advisers to the secretary and instituted daily meetings between Mr. Kennedy and the leaders of the “Big Four” agencies: F.D.A., C.D.C., N.I.H. and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, according to three people familiar with the department’s operations.

He has also sought to address low morale by starting a regular newsletter in which Mr. Kennedy addresses employees as “the dedicated professionals of H.H.S.”

The secretary, however, has been out of the loop on some key decisions. When Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the F.D.A.’s top drug regulator, was fired by F.D.A. leaders in May, the secretary did not learn of it until after it happened, according to three people familiar with the events.

There is no question that Mr. Kennedy is changing the national conversation around health in America, especially healthy eating. While his vaccine agenda has so far been stymied by court decisions, he has scored “wins,” as he likes to call them, notably by flipping the food pyramid, persuading medical schools to revamp nutrition education and convincing some food makers to abandon artificial dyes.

He travels often and makes aggressive use of his platform to promote his priorities, including on social media and “The Secretary Kennedy Podcast,”which began in April. Last week, he made stops in Wisconsin to spotlight the work of dairy farmers and faith-based groups working in addiction recovery, and New Hampshire to announce an effort to combat Lyme disease.

Colleagues say he also makes visits to Scottsdale, Ariz., where his son and daughter-in-law live, and Florida, where he stays at the Palm Beach mansion owned by Dr. Oz.

After Memorial Day, the public got a glimpse of him there. Mr. Kennedy posted video of himself, in a suit and tie, capturing two black racer snakes on Dr. Oz’s patio. One of them bit him.

Apoorva Mandavilli contributed reporting.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg is a correspondent based in Washington for The Times, covering Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and President Trump’s health agenda. “

Opinion | Escape From Trumpism - The New York Times

Escape From Trumpism

June 6, 2026, 11:04 a.m. ET

Christopher Lee for The New York Times

"You’re reading the Jamelle Bouie newsletter.  Historical context for present-day events.

I wrote this past week about the need for Democrats to construct a Project 2029 that takes the revolutionary nature of the Trump regime seriously and seeks not to restore what was, but to build something new in the wake of this conjuncture.

In it I refer, as I often do, to the Reconstruction period of American history — the roughly 10 to 15 years following the end of the Civil War — as inspiration for how Democrats might approach that task.

In particular, the Radical Republicans who spearheaded the most far-reaching attempts to reconstruct the South embraced a constitutional vision rooted in the broad authority of Article I of the Constitution. Part of this was by necessity. After Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, they had to contend with President Andrew Johnson, a vicious white supremacist who opposed Black civil rights and sought a speedy end to Reconstruction so that he might build a new political party on a Jacksonian vision of white supremacy. They also had to contend with a Supreme Court that saw itself as a bulwark for a narrow and restrictive vision of the Constitution.

The leading congressmen of the period had their own conception of the relationship between Congress, the presidency, and the courts — shaped in large part by their battles with the slave power. But Reconstruction Republicans were also determined to secure and consolidate the political settlement of the Civil War against their foes in government. Congressional supremacy then was as much about the moment as it was about a deeper political perspective.

Here I want to highlight two things about the way congressional supremacy worked.

The first is that the Reconstruction Congress rejected the Supreme Court’s authority to invalidate its legislation. It was Congress — representing the entire people — that had the right and authority to say what the Constitution meant and it was the duty of the Supreme Court to enforce that meaning on the states. To stymie the court, this Congress took steps to limit the court’s jurisdiction, to directly repudiate court rulings with its own laws, and to reshape the Supreme Court itself — including preventing President Johnson from appointing new members when old ones died or left the bench.

The second is that the Reconstruction Congress leveraged a long-dormant part of the Constitution, the Guarantee Clause, which says that all states shall be guaranteed a republican form of government. It was under the Guarantee Clause that Republicans pursued their most far-reaching efforts to reconstruct the South.

As I wrote, should Democrats have control of the White House and both branches of Congress in 2029, they will be faced with a project of reconstruction, not restoration. You could do worse in those circumstances than to ask: What would Charles Sumner do? What would Thaddeus Stevens do? What would John Bingham do?

They wouldn’t stand by and allow their project to be destroyed by the hostile forces arrayed against them. They would look to the Constitution which, for all of its flaws, gives Congress the power and authority to make its vision reality.

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What I Wrote

My column this week was on the prospect of a Project 2029, and why any effort worthy of the name must have a vision for reconstruction, not restoration.

If this is all true, and it is, then any plausible response to Project 2025 must include a larger vision for the future of the American Republic. A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not for restoration of what was.

I also joined my colleagues David French and Michelle Cottle on an episode of The Opinions.

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Now Reading

Robin D.G. Kelley on the war on Black Studies for The New York Review of Books.

Ned Resnikoff on “hyperfascism” for his personal newsletter.

Vittoria Elliott on the retribution campaign against a DOGE whistle-blower for Wired.

Harsha Walia on immigration enforcement for Boston Review.

Nancy Fraser on Israel’s war on Gaza for New Left Review.

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Photo of the Week

A Greyhound bus station in San Antonio.

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Now Eating: Palak Paneer

I have a few different recipes for palak paneer in my repertoire and of the bunch, this one from NYT Cooking is my favorite. It takes a bit of time, but it is absolutely worth it. If you are watching out for saturated fat, you can substitute extra- or super-firm tofu for the paneer. Either way, you should pan-fry or air fry the tofu or paneer before you add it to the sauce — it makes for a better final product.

Ingredients

• 2 garlic cloves, peeled

• 2 green chiles or 1 serrano chile, stemmed

• 1 (1-inch) piece fresh ginger, peeled and roughly chopped

• 2 medium plum tomatoes

• Ice, as needed

• 6 packed cups/8 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves

• 2 tablespoons ghee

• ½ teaspoon cumin seeds

• 1 small Indian bay leaf

• 1 small yellow onion, diced

• ½ teaspoon garam masala

• ½ teaspoon Kashmiri chile powder

• 1 teaspoon dried fenugreek leaves

• 8 ounces paneer, diced into 1-inch cubes

• 1 tablespoon heavy cream, plus more for serving

• Salt

Directions

Place the garlic, chiles and ginger in a food processor with 3 tablespoons of water. Purée until a paste forms, scraping down the sides of the bowl as needed. Set paste aside until ready to use.

Coarsely grate the tomatoes on a box grater set directly on your cutting board. Discard the skins and set the grated tomatoes aside until ready to use.

Fill a medium bowl with ice and cold water. Bring a medium saucepan of water to a boil. Add the spinach and cook until wilted, 1 to 2 minutes. Drain, then transfer the spinach to the bowl of ice water until cold, about 5 minutes. Drain, discarding the water and ice cubes.

Transfer the spinach to a food processor or blender along with ½ cup of water and purée until smooth. Set aside until ready to use.

Heat the ghee in a medium saucepan over medium-high. Add the cumin seeds and cook until they start to pop, about 30 seconds, then add the bay leaf and onion and cook until the onion is soft and golden, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the reserved garlic-ginger paste and cook until fragrant, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the grated tomatoes and cook until soft, 4 to 5 minutes, then stir in the garam masala and chile powder. Cook until fragrant, about 1 minute.

Stir in the reserved spinach purée, the fenugreek leaves and 1 cup water. Decrease the heat so the mixture is at slow simmer and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Add the paneer and 1 tablespoon cream and stir until the paneer has warmed through, about 3 minutes. (Take care not to heat the paneer too long in the sauce or it will become chewy.) Season with salt and remove the bay leaf. Transfer to a serving dish and drizzle with more cream. Serve with naan and rice.

Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va."

Opinion | Escape From Trumpism - The New York Times

'I Am The Son Of Immigrants': Ex-US Navy Seal-Turned-Astronaut Fiery Speech At Harvard Alumni Event - YouTube

 

'I Am The Son Of Immigrants': Ex-US Navy Seal-Turned-Astronaut Fiery Speech At Harvard Alumni Event - YouTube

Donald Trump is Getting What He Deserves

 

Rubio Grilled on Trump Sleeping; Trump's Reflecting Pool Obsession; Sex Toys in Iowa: A Closer Look

 

 

It’s No Wonder Grads Are Booing Their Commencement Speakers

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“Commencement speakers are being booed by graduates for promoting the benefits of artificial intelligence (A.I.) in a job market plagued by automation and a lack of entry-level opportunities. The article argues that A.I. is being used as an excuse for companies to slow hiring and lay off workers, leaving graduates feeling uncertain about their future. The author suggests that graduates should demand regulation of tech companies and organize against data centers to combat the negative impact of A.I. on the workforce.

​

June 5, 2026

Sam Gulliver for The New York Times

By Molly Jong-Fast

Ms. Jong-Fast is a contributing Opinion writer.

Commencement address season hasn’t been going well — for the commencement speakers.

I’m sure you’ve seen the videos on social media. The big shots who have been brought in to inspire a next generation of graduates have used their speeches as opportunities to extol the limitless possibilities that artificial intelligence will bring. They’re speaking to graduates who are entering a shaky job market and are already burdened by tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. However, companies of all stripes are using A.I. as an excuse to slow entry-level hiring and lay off workers. Tech executives have been warning (though it sometimes seems as if they are bragging) that their technologies will be job destroyers.

Gloria Caulfield, a real estate executive who spoke at the University of Central Florida’s College of Arts and Humanities, told graduates that “the rise of artificial intelligence is the next industrial revolution.” Scott Borchetta, the chief executive of the record label Big Machine, told the graduates of Middle Tennessee State University that “A.I. is rewriting production as we sit here.” In each case, the students expressed their displeasure at the speakers’ blatant A.I. boosterism the best way they could: with loud boos.

When Eric Schmidt, a former chief executive of Google, told graduates at the University of Arizona about their A.I.-shaped future, the shouting got so intense that he paused and said that graduates feared “that the future has already been written, that the machines are coming, that the jobs are evaporating, that the climate is breaking, that politics are fractured, and that you are inheriting a mess that you did not create.” Mr. Schmidt told them to make the best of it. “The question is not whether A.I. will shape the world. It will. The question is whether you will help shape artificial intelligence.”

Mr. Schmidt’s solution to world-upending technological change is … what? To pull yourself up by your bootstraps? His approach is peak billionaire brain, directed at the young people who have, for the better part of a decade, been treated as woke, lazy, avocado-toast-eating snowflakes. All these speakers just don’t get it. The problem isn’t woke; the problem is work. It’s a lack of social mobility. It’s that college may no longer elevate a graduate to the middle class. It’s that nobody even bothers to pretend that a house, a good job and the ability to start a family are at all guaranteed.

Think of this from the graduates’ perspective: Wealthy old people telling you your future is being pulped by acres and acres of electricity-sucking, water-guzzling data centers feels dystopian because it is. Companies are trying to automate your future away. No wonder you’re furious.

Young people are facing what M.I.T. Technology Review calls a “looming crisis in entry-level work,” and college, once assumed to be a prerequisite for a secure job, no longer feels worth it. The general gestalt coming from a certain sliver of affluent Americans is that college graduates are more liberal trouble than they’re worth and perhaps could be replaced by bots. Marc Andreessen, the venture capitalist and G.O.P. megadonor, mused to Joe Rogan that a bot “never gets drunk, never gets sick, never gets high” and “never files H.R. complaints.” (It never boos a smug commencement speaker, either.)

According to a recent working paper from researchers at Harvard, hiring for entry-level roles at companies that have adopted generative A.I. has dropped each quarter since 2023. What is not clear is whether A.I. is taking people’s jobs or if companies are using A.I. as an excuse for not hiring. Either way, A.I. is not exactly popular with people entering the work force for the first time.

I’ve spent the past six months obsessing about giving a commencement address to Bennington College, where I earned my M.F.A. It’s a truly bizarre moment to speak at a college, in light of the way technology is changing the work force so rapidly and the way the White House has waged war on colleges, professors and education writ large. Even in the best of times, commencement speeches are uncomfortable: The kids you’re speaking to are basically hostages; they can’t leave without their diplomas.

When I finally gave my speech on Saturday, I didn’t talk about A.I. with the Bennington graduates. I talked about the role their magical little college played in my life. Getting a master’s saved me; it gave me a bit of a foundation, perhaps a little authority in a world where I often felt like an impostor. I told the kids the truth: that I would love to give them advice about how to avoid the messiness of one’s 20s, but the messiness is the point. “That eyebrow pierce will leave a scar,” I said. “You’ll have trouble getting the barbell out and eventually someone will have to use tiny pliers to cut it out of your face.”

(I worried initially that this advice might be too specific, but looking around the tent, I could see that getting a piercing out was something at least 30 percent of the graduating class would have to grapple with sooner or later.)

If I were to tell these graduates the truth about artificial intelligence, it would be this: You are right to be worried. But none of this is as inevitable as it seems. Remember putting everything on the blockchain? Remember NFTs? Hell, some of us are old enough to remember that the world was supposed to end in the year 2000.

Right now, A.I. is in its dark hype period — great for Anthropic’s I.P.O. — but who knows how useful any of this actually will be in the end in creating efficiencies (a.k.a.: replacing the youngs with bots). It’s within young people’s power to stop. Demand regulation of tech companies. Elect people who will legislate that regulation. Organize against data centers in your hometowns.

Don’t just boo — do something.“

 

America Broke Something When It Gave Trump a Second Chance

June 3, 2026

Meghan Marin/Connected Archives

The Heritage Foundation’s “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” — popularly known as Project 2025 — was much more than a wish list of conservative policy preferences. It was much more, even, than a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Project 2025 was, above all, a statement of values and a theory of governance. Its authors did not simply want to move national policymaking to the right. They wanted to use the authority of the executive branch to impose a new regime on the United States.

“We are in the process of the second American Revolution,” declared Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation, in the summer of 2024. This revolution, he added, “will remain bloodless if the left allows it.” Russell Vought, who leads the Office of Management and Budget and was, like Roberts, a key architect of Project 2025, also spoke publicly about the need for a “radical constitutionalism” and a tribune-like president who would dismantle the New Deal state, sell the scrap and return the nation to the status quo ante of the 19th century.

Much of the disruption and destruction of the past year and change is downstream of the revolutionary orientation of Roberts, Vought and the other alumni of Project 2025 who have taken up places in and around the Trump administration. To observe the aggrandizement of power in the executive, the decimation of the federal bureaucracy, the destruction of much of the nation’s medical, scientific and public health infrastructure and the broad attack on racial and gender equality is to see the many faces of a furious effort to restructure the existing nation to match the one envisioned by these far-right ideologues.

If this is all true, and it is, then any plausible response to Project 2025 must include a larger vision for the future of the American Republic. A Project 2029 cannot be a collection of Democratic Party agenda items. It must articulate a broad new conception of the nation’s political order — one that will guide the way a future Democratic-led government might wield power. Above all, Democrats must have a plan for reconstruction — for building something new on the wreckage of what President Trump, MAGA and the Republican Party have wrought — not for restoration of what was.

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As it happens, several Democratic groups are drafting the equivalent of a Project 2029. And so far, unfortunately, it is not the reconstruction agenda the country needs. It is, instead, just another Democratic Party policy document: a grab bag of ideas stitched together with the usual slogans and gestures toward economic populism.

It is not that these policies are bad. Most of them, from what has been revealed, are good: worthwhile plans to break up utility monopolies, support child-rearing, regulate social media and artificial intelligence, and curtail corporate abuse.

But none of this reflects or represents a far-reaching or comprehensive idea of what the nation might be. There is no coherent worldview at work, nor does there seem to be any inkling or awareness of the obstacles — structural, political and institutional — that will confront, and likely stymie, all but the most threadbare and ineffectual Democratic agendas for governing.

What difference will specific policy items make if there are profound obstacles to simply governing at all? A Project 2029 that has nothing to say about either the Senate filibuster, or an ideologically captured Supreme Court, or extreme partisan gerrymandering — among other concerns — is not a Project 2029 worth the time or effort.

The same is true for a Project 2029 that fails to speak to questions of constitutional authority. Democrats need a theory of constitutional power: a sense of what the Constitution is and how it both authorizes and legitimizes the kind of government they hope to build. For Trump-aligned conservatives, the Constitution is an unlimited grant of executive authority, where sovereignty lies with a president who is more Bonapartist tribune than Madisonian chief magistrate. Their American Republic is not one led by and for self-governing individuals but one directed from above by an executive who claims to stand as the living embodiment of the national spirit. The entire country, in the words of the White House, must meet “the president’s priorities.”

By contrast, it is not clear that Democrats have any sense of what they want the American Republic to be, versus a sense of the kinds of policies they hope to institute. This is important because their constitutional vision, or lack thereof, will shape how they attempt to rebuild American democracy.

During Reconstruction, after the Civil War, Republicans worked to refound the nation as a democratic and egalitarian republic that embodied the values of the Declaration of Independence. “By the Constitution it is stipulated that ‘the United States shall guaranty to every state a republican form of government,’” said Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts in his eulogy for Abraham Lincoln, “but the meaning of this guaranty must be found in the birthday Declaration of the Republic, which is the controlling preamble of the Constitution. Beyond all question, the United States, when called to enforce the guaranty, must insist on the equality of all before the law, and the consent of the governed.” Such, he continued, “is the true idea of republican government according to American institutions.”

It was this view that led Republicans, radical and otherwise, to write their aspirations toward freedom and political equality into the Constitution through the 14th and 15th Amendments. It also shaped how they responded to President Andrew Johnson and hostile Supreme Court justices, who tried to trim and curtail their vision. They did not just override Johnson’s vetoes; they also impeached him. And they did not just criticize the court; they took steps to tie its hands, limit its power and strip its jurisdiction. The extent to which Republicans in this era operated as an imperial Congress was the closest this country has ever come to congressional supremacy, the result of their expansive conception of American democracy.

As they look ahead to 2029 and beyond, Democrats need that kind of vision. They need, in particular, a commitment to a constitutional order centered on the power and prerogatives of Congress. And they need to begin to work through the details of what this will mean in policy and in law. It is this work that will shape how Democrats approach the major concerns of the post-Trump moment: the state of the federal bureaucracy, the scope of executive power and the problem of judicial supremacy over the political system. It is ambitious, yes. But so was Project 2025.

“Broken eggs cannot be mended,” Lincoln observed in a reply to August Belmont, a leading Democratic Party organizer and financier in New York, who had forwarded to the president the comments of an angry Louisiana slaveholder who wanted restoration of the Union “as it was.” Not much later, Lincoln repurposed the quip in different form. “Broken eggs can never be mended,” he wrote in reference to the fate of slavery as the war carried on, “and the longer the breaking proceeds the more will be broken.”

Fort Sumter broke the Union and with it, slavery. Whatever the nation was or would be in the aftermath of the war, neither the nation nor its Constitution would protect, support or sanction human bondage.

You can think of this Trump administration as a similar state of affairs. The American people broke something when they gave Trump a second chance in office. And there is no going back to the Union as it was. If Democrats hope to lead the nation to any kind of recovery, much less renewal, they must understand and internalize this fact of the matter.

Broken eggs cannot be mended. To try to do so, to try to return to some notion of normality, is to court failure. Worse, it is to play a repeat of the last Democratic administration when, in pursuit of the familiar, the Democratic Party all but passed the baton back to reactionaries working toward something revolutionary.

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Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va."