Jeff Danziger lives in New York City and Vermont. He is a long time cartoonist for The Rutland Herald and is represented by Counterpoint Syndicate. He is a recipient of the Herblock Prize and the Thomas Nast (Landau) Prize. He served in the US Army in Vietnam and was awarded the Bronze Star and the Air Medal. He has published eleven books of cartoons, a novel and a memoir. Visit him at jeffdanziger.com.
In the course of three days, six U.S.-based scientists have won Nobel Prizes. Every one of them studied or now works at America's public universities. Five were affiliated with or educated by California's system for higher education.
President Donald Trump's assault on universities, both public and private, targets the engines of American greatness. He pinned much of it on the colleges' failure to defend free speech and stop unruly student behavior, some degenerating into antisemitism. Point taken.
But it's mainly taken the form of shaking down universities. For his gentler audience, Trump frames it as "saving" taxpayer money. To quote the president: We will cut funding by X$ and thereby save Y$."
Over in the biology department, immunologists Mary Brunkow and Fred Ramsdell are sharing the Nobel Prize in medicine with Shimon Sakaguchi. Brunkow studied at the University of Washington and Princeton. Ramsdell got both his bachelor's degree and doctorate from the University of California, first at San Diego, then at Los Angeles. Sakaguchi teaches at Japan's Osaka University.
As for physics, three scientists, one British, one French and one American, shared the Nobel Prize. All three, however, are now associated with UC campuses at Berkeley or Santa Barbara. The American, John Martinis, earned all his degrees at Berkeley. They won the Nobel for having discovered — bear with me — "macroscopic quantum mechanical tunneling and energy quantization in an electric circuit."
And one of the three scientists just awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry is Omar Yaghi, who occupies a chair in chemistry at Berkeley. Born in Amman, Jordan, Yaghi obtained his undergraduate degree at the State University of New York's Albany campus. His Ph.D. came from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Our colleges and universities should be sources of American pride as well as power. They are a reason why, if California were its own country, it would have the world's fourth-largest economy. To think that Trump is threatening its public universities with layoffs, budget cuts, and loss of federal grants. He's trying to freeze about $584 million in grants at UCLA alone. That's in addition to his attempted $1 billion shakedown over unrest at the UCLA campus.
With an economy larger than Japan's, small wonder there's a move in California to take over federal funding for scientific research with its own. Specifically, state lawmakers talk about putting a $23 billion bond measure on the 2026 ballot to replace lost federal dollars. If voters passed it, that would give California the wherewithal to make grants and loans to its own universities and research companies.
California would in effect be bypassing the National Institutes of Health. The NIH is the world's biggest funder of medical research. And who did Trump put in charge of the NIH? Health Secretary Bobby Kennedy Jr., an anti-vax ignoramus (excuse me, "skeptic") who is, mentally, many cards short of a full deck.
At least 24 University of California and California State University campuses have lost NIH training grants. UC already runs six academic health centers. If California taxpayers take over that funding, universities in other states should not expect to receive a dime of it.
That said, other states share these concerns. Washington and Oregon have joined California in setting up a coalition to review scientific data and make recommendations on vaccines. An alliance with similar goals, though probably less money, is being set up on the East Coast. Harvard and Yale do have impressive endowments.
What the great universities in the Trump-voting heartland are going to do, I can't guess.
In sum, many of the smartest people in the country are being sat on by the political dunces. How dumb can America get? Trump is testing us for an answer.
Froma Harrop is an award winning journalist who covers politics, economics and culture. She has worked on the Reuters business desk, edited economics reports for The New York Times News Service and served on the Providence Journal editorial board.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
I used to be a real do-gooder. National Board of Common Cause under Archie Cox and Fred Wertheimer; chair of the Massachusetts Ballot Law Commission; professor of election law. I did these things after working in the trenches because I really believed in the possibility of cleaning up the system. Until the Supreme Court got in the way. And, of course, then we happened into a constitutional crisis.
"Gerrymandering is Wrong — No Matter Who Does it," the flyer screamed from my mailbox. Now, that would have had my name on it in 2010, when California did the good-government thing and gave line-drawing to an independent commission. I'm sure I supported it then. But now? With Texas proposing to show up for this knife fight with a sledgehammer, we're going to come with a butter knife?
Who, I wondered, cared enough about good government in the midst of a knife fight to be taking that side?
Or maybe, said the political hack in me, it was just the Republicans playing tricks?
The mailer was sent by ProtectFairElections.org. No leads there. Takes you to a clean website to join the "coalition," but no information on the other coalition members. But in small print — always look for the small print — "Paid for by Right Path California."
What is Right Path California? Its website offers as little insight as ProtectFairElections.org, but with one big difference. Somebody chose to identify herself as the President and CEO of whatever it is, and that someone is Jessica Millan Patterson — and here's the pay dirt — whose most recent job was Chair of the Republican Party of California.
And that, of course, is the problem with the flyer. It's not about good government. This is not a "Sacramento Power Grab"; California's Landmark Election Reform is not "Under Attack by Sacramento Politicians," who everybody loves to hate in the abstract.
Our government reform is under threat by Donald Trump and the states, starting with Texas, that have agreed to his plan to try to subvert the midterm elections. Does he get to change the rules mid-census, as he tried to do last time? If the states won't block him, then California has threatened to match him, or at least match Texas. If their plan doesn't go into effect, neither does Sacramento's. Who is grabbing power from whom?
Texas is poised to keep the House — wrongly — in Republican hands. Two more years like this? And California is supposed to sit silently and let it happen? I don't think so.
Voters are dissatisfied with an opposition party that can't seem to find its footing to oppose an increasingly unpopular president. Who can blame them? My mailbox is filled with deceptive flyers like the one I received, financed by Trump supporters who want to keep Congress his. According to my research, millions are being quietly spent to support the Trump position by groups you and I have never heard of. Where is the Democratic response?
I'm glad California Gov. Gavin Newsom is playing games with Trump's head, but it can't just be Newsom. The Democratic team desperately needs leadership. Right now, like it or not, the leaders are Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). What does that say about Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY)? Sorry, but they're ineffective. It's not the Sacramento politicians I'm worried about, but the ones in Washington.
Susan Estrich is a celebrated feminist legal scholar, the first female president of the Harvard Law Review, and the first woman to run a U.S. presidential campaign. She has written eight books.
Reprinted with permission from Creators.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is launching a major advertising campaign to persuade voters to support his initiative aimed at reshaping the state’s congressional districts ahead of the 2026 midterms.
The Democratic governor debuted two ads Tuesday on social media—part of at least nine spots scheduled for release this week—as the ad war over Proposition 50 begins in earnest. The measure would allow Newsom to redraw California’s congressional districts, potentially neutralizing the GOP advantage expected from Texas’ new Republican lines.
“This is a shock-and-awe approach. It’s not your grandmother’s media campaign where you do one woodworking ad and put it across all platforms. We’re living in a very different media environment,” Sean Clegg, a senior Newsom strategist, told Politico.
The ad blitz is part of a multifaceted campaign expected to cost about $100 million, according to NBC News. While the spots will run across TV and digital platforms, the initial focus is likely to be on YouTube, recognizing the changing media consumption habits and the rising costs of TV advertising in California.
The first ad, titled “Blitzkrieg,” directly attacks President Donald Trump, accusing him of “following the dictator’s playbook,” and highlighting his administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement and university crackdowns. The ad is a direct appeal to California’s largely Democratic base and frames Prop 50 as a chance for voters to stop Trump.
The second ad, “Emergency,” features Sara Sadwani, a commissioner on the state’s independent redistricting panel, and is aimed at independents. She emphasizes that the new maps are temporary.
“Trump’s scheme to rig the next election is an emergency for our democracy,” Sadwani says.
Both ads end with the tagline, “Save democracy in all 50 states.”
Newsom himself does not appear in the first two spots, but a third ad that debuted on Tuesday focuses heavily on him. According to Politico, future ads will feature other national Democratic figures, similar to the strategy used in the 2021 recall effort.
But opposition to Prop 50 is already pushing back. Protect Voters First, which is funded by GOP mega-donor Charles Munger Jr., released an ad portraying the ballot measure as a threat to California’s independent redistricting commission, which voters approved nearly 20 years ago.
Munger has already contributed more than $20 million to the campaign and plans to spend more. His group argues that a vote against Prop 50 protects the commission and preserves voter trust.
The stakes are unusually high for an off-year election. California Democrats view the initiative as a counter to GOP gerrymandering in Texas, which could result in the addition of five GOP seats in 2026, with Missouri likely to follow suit.
Clegg said that the ads are designed to resonate with Democratic base voters by highlighting threats to democracy and Trump’s overreach.
“The democracy stuff is cutting because Trump has now overreached,” he said. “It’s not theoretical anymore.”
Newsom’s campaign has raised more than $13.2 million from August 11-31. And his social media tactics—mocking Trump’s all-caps, attention-grabbing style—have received a surge in engagement, with his press account gaining 500,000 new followers and more than 480 million impressions since August 1.
With nearly $10 million already booked by opponents, the Nov. 4 special election is set to become one of the most expensive and closely watched off-year campaigns in the country.
Newsom is betting that his aggressive ad strategy and high-profile messaging can mobilize Democrats and reshape California’s congressional map—putting him at the center of a national showdown and squarely in voters’ minds.
Reprinted with permission from Dailykos.
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