"But now workers have another problem to contend with: peeling paint. On Thursday, a sheet of the pool’s surface – painted in “American Flag Blue,” a color selected by the president – was seen floating in the water on the north side of the pool. It undulated in the water as curious tourists gathered, some of whom had come to see the green algae.

At 5:35 p.m. on Thursday, a worker came to remove the sheet of pool surface, telling a Washington Post photographer not to photograph it, despite being on public land."

#totalitarian

https://wapo.st/3S981Xn

Definitely the midterm is under threat from top-down insurrection.

This crew really cannot afford to lose and will go down in flames, in more or less company (ours).

#totalitarian

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/11/us/politics/usps-mail-voting-democratic-resistance.html?unlocked_article_code=1.pVA.9DCk.0_GLRqC2N2f1&smid=nytcore-android-share

"Five leading scientists were ousted from the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in New Orleans on Friday. Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on April 29, sharply criticizing the Trump administration’s ongoing attacks on scientific research.

Those ousted were Steven Kahn, professor of medicine at the University of Washington and editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, who co-authored the published editorial; former ADA president Desmond Schatz of the University of Florida, Gainesville; Aaron Kelly, pediatrics processor at the University of Minnesota; Justin Ryder of Northwestern University; and Irl Hirsch, also of the University of Washington. The five were handing out reprints of the editorial outside a room where NIH director Jay Bhattacharya had been scheduled to speak. Bhattacharya cancelled and another NIH official spoke in his stead."

#totalitarian

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/scientists-ejected-from-diabetes-conference-for-distributing-journal-reprints/

Peer review Russell.

#totalitarian

https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/05/the-office-of-management-and-budget-tries-again-to-cripple-us-science/

"Most Americans claim to support freedom of speech, including President Donald Trump who has portrayed himself as an ardent defender of this constitutional right. However, in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Trump and members of his administration began to explicitly call for speech restrictions. This largely unprecedented rhetoric from a sitting president and his allies provides an opportunity to examine competing theories of public opinion: the influence of partisan elites versus the public’s purported commitment to free speech. In a preregistered survey experiment, we found that exposure to such unusually explicit antispeech rhetoric increased Trump voters’ support for government censorship of outparty media and individuals but prompted backlash among non-Trump voters, increasing their support for protecting outparty speech. While prior research has established that partisans favor censorship of outparty members, we demonstrate that partisans differentially shifted their censorship attitudes in response to the Trump administration’s new rhetoric, whether or not the source was attributed to Trump and his allies. These findings highlight the influence of elite rhetoric on public support for even the most foundational—and popular—democratic norm, raising concerns about the resilience of American democracy in the face of explicitly illiberal elites."

#totalitarian

https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2532084123?af=R

"A faculty member at Indiana University (IU) Bloomington who has sharply criticized the government’s recent prosecution of several Chinese scientists accused of smuggling biological materials into the United States has been locked out of his laboratory by the school in response to a request by one of his federal funders."

#totalitarian

https://www.science.org/content/article/after-usda-request-indiana-plant-biologist-locked-out-lab-school

What's called sending a message. It _sounds_ incompetent but isn't.

"When federal agents came to the home of David Morens on Monday with an arrest warrant for allegedly concealing federal records related to the debate about the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic, they behaved as if the 78-year-old retired scientist was a violent criminal.

Science has learned that Morens, an influenza researcher who worked at the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) until 2022 and was an aide to its former director, Anthony Fauci, was having his morning coffee at his Chester, Maryland, home when he heard loud pounding on the door. He opened it to find a half-dozen federal agents carrying guns and wearing tactical gear, including bulletproof vests, according to two sources who spoke with him but asked not to be identified. Another team of officers stood in the distance and observed, as did neighbors.

The agents did not harm Morens, but took off his pants and shirt, handcuffed him, and drove him 65 kilometers to the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, where he was fingerprinted, photographed, and jailed. He was released on his own recognizance later in the day, but was asked to return to Greenbelt and surrender his passport, which he did."

#totalitarian
#pandering
#C19

https://www.science.org/content/article/guns-and-bulletproof-vests-how-federal-agents-arrested-fauci-aide

A quotation from Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975) German-American philosopher, political theorist
Origins of Totalitarianism, Part 3, ch. 10 “A Classless Society,” sec. 1 (1951)

More about this quote: wist.info/arendt-hannah/41599/

#quote #quotes #quotation #qotd #hannaharendt #authoritarian #dictator #ideology #mutualrespect #respect #strongman #totalitarian #trust #tyrant