Intro
Welcome to the Newsletter. Each week, Cameron Lee Cowan wraps up the headlines with commentary that will make you sound smart to your friends and family. This week we’re talking about Trump’s mixed legal week, the right-wing cultural victory, and the latest from Adam Schiff.
The World is Hard, This is Not
Each week I send out the latest headlines, the latest videos from The Cameron Journal and commentary about the week’s events. If you’re new here, my name is Cameron Lee Cowan M.A. MFA, and I’m the Creative Director here at The Cameron Journal. You can learn more about me on the about page. I do research and commentary on politics, culture, and the world around us.
Remember, The World is Hard, This is Not.
Update from Cameron
Ah, a cooler week here in New England. I’m completely fine with that. I’m not a huge fan of the heat, even with air conditioning. I’m crashing into the weekend this week. I had too many meetings. There are some exciting things happening here at The Cameron Journal, but it is all a bit busy, isn’t it?
I am excited to be speaking at the Unleash AI for Business Summit in mid-September. However, it is a pre-taped presentation and I need to get it recorded right away. There’s too much email, too much happening with SOOP, the podcast network and I have a book coming out on September 12th (details below). It’s a busy time. As I was writing this and doing all of this, I was reminded of the beginning of my career. 20 years ago, I dreamed of having these problems. I suppose that is an achievement of sorts, isn’t it?
I’m not going to go on much longer so we will dig right into the headlines. Before you scroll, take a look at this story from the NY Times about the starvation conditions in Gaza. Most of the population is at starvation or nearing it, and Israel continues to block outside humanitarian aid. If the goal of Tel Aviv is to starve them all out, it is certainly working. The UN and other international organizations continue their calls for relief to prevent this “entirely man made” famine.
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America’s Lost Generation
My next book will be out soon, and I’m taking new pre-orders now. America’s Lost Generation catalogs the story of Millennials and what went wrong for America’s largest and most educated generation. They did everything right, and they have been net losers in today’s America. So what happened? I discuss that and more in my new book.
The Headlines
Don’t forget to join me on Monday for The Cameron Journal Newshour to catch on everything happening in the world!
The Right May Have Won the Culture War….Finally
In this segment, I have two stories that I think illustrate a greater point. As we know, President Trump is evaluating Smithsonian exhibits for bias and to make sure they align with his view of history and science. This comes on the heels of cancelling the funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, too. It is the classic move of a dictator. Amid that, I have two stories that reveal that culture is changing in some deep and profound ways that I don’t think we fully understand yet.
In The Dispatch, a Yale professor proposes a radical solution to higher education in the United States: divorcing the hard sciences from the humanities. Then there’s this anecdote about how ESPN has canceled the Colin Kaepernick documentary from Spike Lee. In the X (formerly known as Twitter) thread about the ESPN documentary, the caption is perfect, “We’re not talking enough about how every major institution is caving to the political climate.”
In both of these stories, large institutions are trying to distance themselves from anything that could cause controversy, but not public controversy, controversy with one particular person: Trump.
In the first story, the Yale professor wants to ditch the humanities from schools because Trump funding cuts have hamstrung research even though the hard sciences never participated in the “gender ideology” conversations or the conversations that were had around racial issues and diversity. His argument is that they make new technology and work on things that are politically neutral. The best option to keep the federal dollars flowing is to get rid of the departments responsible for causing problems. So much for solidarity across departments and within the University. Ditching the Humanities would be a disaster for any institution that tried it (engineers need to learn to write too) but as someone who has spent my life in the humanities, I’m hurt that our STEM colleagues don’t get that this is about them too. It just manifests differently. It manifests around vaccines and AI. If they think that merely getting rid of some loud brown people will solve their problems, I would tell them that is short-sighted and to read a history book before the history department is canceled.
In the second story, ESPN quietly kills off this documentary because Disney, who just bought NFL red zone, is looking to stay in the good graces of the Trump administration and their core fan base. No need for another controversial race-based documentary about kneeling and racism in the NFL right now.
What does this all mean? I think what we have learned from all of this is that the Right has done something that has been dreamed about since the 1960s: they are back controlling culture. The conquest is not yet complete. The NFL just debuted male cheerleaders in 12 squads this season.
But it is obvious that the Right has gotten a significant cultural victory and that much of the culture we have become used to and its intrinsic left-wing bias that has become obvious over the past 10 years is under fire and is slowly being pulled back. No more work and DEI. It’s back to old days before 2011 when we didn’t talk about such things. We solved racism, remember? Oh, and the gays are fine, but the trans people should be quiet and stay out of the way.
The Right got a cultural victory, and they are going to ride it as far as they can go. It will have a profound impact on how we talk about things and how we think about things moving forward. I think the worst part is that hardly anyone will notice.
A Mixed Legal Week for Trump
It was a mixed week for the Trump administration in Court. Alligator Alcatraz has been ordered shut but a judge, but they did get permission to cut NIH funding.
Down in Florida, a judge shut down the migrant detainment facility because both the state and federal officials did not consider environmental regulations. The judge has allowed the government 60 days to move the current detainees, remove the camp, and has banned anyone else from being sent there. The State of Florida plans to appeal. On The Cameron Journal Newshour last week (video below), I covered a woman from the area who reported that disease had broken out at the camp. We already know that they have had major water and flooding issues, which has made things very difficult at the first state-run detention camp from illegal immigrants.
Meanwhile, in better news from the Trump Administration, the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 decision has allowed the Trump administration to cancel $780 million in grants from the National Institutes of Health that had been intended to research diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; “gender ideology”; and vaccine hesitancy. One guy on Twitter said, “SCOTUS affirms that the President is in charge of the Executive Branch.” He’s right but for the wrong reason. The job of the president is not to decide which laws will or will not get enforced (although that does happen) it is the job of the President to implement the laws passed by Congress. This has been controversial before, especially in the 00s when the Obama administration quit defending the “Defense of Marriage Act” which affirmed marriage was between a man and a woman only.
The reality here is that Congress allocated money and President Trump has decided that it does not align with his ideology and has canceled it, and the Supreme Court is letting him get away with essentially vetoing a law from Congress in action but not deed. The question we should all be asking is what other laws or policies will Trump decide to cancel without Congressional consent? Ultimately, this is yet another way in which Trump is consolidating power around him and the White House.
Shifty Schiff Under Scrutiny
One of the news stories that has slipped through the cracks is the accusation that Senator Adam Schiff (D- California) leaked classified information to the media in 2017 that would “hurt Trump” and help keep up the Russiagate scandal. Schiff has denied doing any such thing, but this isn’t the first time that this accusation has floated around him. When he was in the House, he was one of the most vocal critics of Trump in his first term and led the first impeachment hearings. He attracted a lot of attention at the time, and Trump swore he’d get his revenge. It appears that time is here.
I’m not surprised this is coming out. Kash Patel seems to make a business of opening up files and revealing all the dirty laundry. Trump took personal issue with Adam Schiff back then, and it should be no surprise that Trump would be coming after him now. On top of that, this has been part of Trump’s efforts to distract from the lack of Epstein files released to the public. Just today, they released transcripts of the interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, but so much was redacted that it wasn’t of much use and, of course, she denied Trump did anything or got a “massage.” But that’s not the point!
Pulling out from all of this, many in MAGA world seem to be rather vengeful about Trump’s legal battles and all the ways in which Trump found himself under scrutiny and afoul of the law. It is a universal principle that at a certain level of fame and notoriety, all one’s past misdeeds tend to come flooding out, especially from anyone with an axe to grind or who wants to make some money. Trump could have spent the rest of his lift grifting along but decided to run for President. MAGA world thinks that all his legal issues are just obstruction to stop Trump from “saving the country.” Some even liken it to the persecution of Christ or Christians in the Bible.
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