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Participants of a demonstration protest against the war and the Russian invasion of Ukraine in front of the Federal Chancellery on February 25, 2022 in Berlin, Germany. One hand holds a sign with the inscription "No War." (Photo: Kay Nietfeld/picture alliance via Getty Images)
The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine is already causing enormous suffering.
Our first concern must be for civilians across the country, now facing violence and displacement. And our first call must be for an immediate ceasefire, a pull-back of Russian troops from Ukraine, and international support for the humanitarian challenges already underway in the region.
The jockeying over Ukraine today, and the risk of war expanding far beyond Ukraine's borders, poses one of the biggest challenges in a generation for peace advocates around the world.
As for resolving the conflict, that requires understanding its causes--which has everything to do with when we start the clock.
If we start the clock in February 2022, the main problem is Russia's attack on Ukraine. If we start the clock in 1997, however, the main problem is Washington pushing NATO--the Cold War-era military alliance that includes the United States and most of Europe--to expand east, breaking an assurance the U.S. made to Russia after the Cold War.
Many foreign policy experts and peace advocates have called for ending the anachronistic alliance ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But NATO remains and has only encroached toward Russia further, resulting in new NATO countries--bristling with NATO arms systems--right on Russia's borders.
Russia sees that expansion--and its integration of neighboring countries into U.S.-led military partnerships--as a continuing threat. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. But in the past the U.S. and other NATO members have urged its acceptance, and Russia regards Ukraine's drift toward the West as a precursor to membership.
None of that makes Russia's invasion of Ukraine legal, legitimate, or necessary. President Biden was right when he called Russia's war "unjustified." But he was wrong when he said it was "unprovoked." It's not condoning Putin's invasion to observe there certainly was provocation--not so much by Ukraine, but by the United States.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration made important moves towards diplomacy. But it undermined those crucial efforts by increasing threats, escalating sanctions, deploying thousands of U.S. troops to neighboring countries, and sending tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine--all while continuing to build a huge new U.S. military base in Poland just 100 miles from the Russian border.
Don't Punish the Russian People--Or Reward the Arms Industry
We know, not least from our own government's many failed and devastating wars, that military force will not solve this crisis.
President Biden deserves credit for refusing any troop deployments to Ukraine itself. But that should be expanded to prohibit all U.S. military engagement there, whether through airstrikes or drones or missiles or other weapons. Only the global arms industry stands to benefit from a war like that.
We also know, again from too many of our own government's actions, that imposing broad economic sanctions--the kind that target whole populations--doesn't work. They aren't an alternative to war. They're a weapon of war that hurts ordinary people, while leaders and their powerful cohorts thrive.
Too many in Washington--in the administration, in Congress, in the press--are calling for sanctions on Russia that will "cripple their economy." Russian people, who have little influence over their authoritarian leader, will pay a huge price. But we can be sure Putin and his oligarchs will do fine.
In fact, brave Russian anti-war protesters who went out into the streets in the first hours of Putin's invasion are already being detained by the government. Broad-based sanctions that harm ordinary Russians will lead to more protests, bringing further repression and risking marginalizing dissent in Russia.
As Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said: "I don't think the sanctions will stop this short-term. It is diplomatic initiatives that could stop this short-term." He's right.
Right now we need an immediate ceasefire and serious negotiations on broader issues. That means urgent diplomacy--not more military force--to end this war. Every war eventually ends with diplomacy. The question is how long the fighting, killing, and displacing of people goes on until the diplomats can stop it.
Diplomacy Could Lead to a Deeper Peace
So what would diplomacy look like?
First, an immediate ceasefire--an end to the fighting. That will require Russia to immediately pull back its troops and weapons out of Ukraine.
But negotiations mean that both sides need to give something. So NATO and the U.S. should agree to pull back heavy weapons and missiles away from the Russian border and recognize in public what NATO has long acknowledged privately: that Ukraine will not be joining the military alliance in any foreseeable future.
New negotiations, organized by combinations of the United Nations and the broad Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (which includes Russia, Ukraine, most European countries, and the United States) could move further towards renewing lapsed European arms control treaties and eventually towards full nuclear disarmament across Europe.
That would include removing the U.S. nuclear weapons held in Europe as part of NATO's "nuclear-sharing" operations. The threat of an accident involving any of Ukraine's 15 nuclear power stations (including Chernobyl), or the escalation--accidental or otherwise--of the war to a conflict between the world's biggest nuclear weapons powers, seriously raises the urgency of an immediate end to this war. There is no conceivable "national interest" worth risking even the tiniest possibility of such an outcome.
Crucially, diplomacy must be rooted in international law--not the ambiguous "rules-based order" that U.S. officials like to talk about, but real international law that exists in the UN Charter, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arms control agreements, and so much more.
Ukraine is a border nation, caught in a longstanding power struggle between stronger countries and blocs. The jockeying over Ukraine today, and the risk of war expanding far beyond Ukraine's borders, poses one of the biggest challenges in a generation for peace advocates around the world.
It's up to us to make sure that "Diplomacy Not War" becomes more than just a slogan to end this crisis.
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The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine is already causing enormous suffering.
Our first concern must be for civilians across the country, now facing violence and displacement. And our first call must be for an immediate ceasefire, a pull-back of Russian troops from Ukraine, and international support for the humanitarian challenges already underway in the region.
The jockeying over Ukraine today, and the risk of war expanding far beyond Ukraine's borders, poses one of the biggest challenges in a generation for peace advocates around the world.
As for resolving the conflict, that requires understanding its causes--which has everything to do with when we start the clock.
If we start the clock in February 2022, the main problem is Russia's attack on Ukraine. If we start the clock in 1997, however, the main problem is Washington pushing NATO--the Cold War-era military alliance that includes the United States and most of Europe--to expand east, breaking an assurance the U.S. made to Russia after the Cold War.
Many foreign policy experts and peace advocates have called for ending the anachronistic alliance ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But NATO remains and has only encroached toward Russia further, resulting in new NATO countries--bristling with NATO arms systems--right on Russia's borders.
Russia sees that expansion--and its integration of neighboring countries into U.S.-led military partnerships--as a continuing threat. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. But in the past the U.S. and other NATO members have urged its acceptance, and Russia regards Ukraine's drift toward the West as a precursor to membership.
None of that makes Russia's invasion of Ukraine legal, legitimate, or necessary. President Biden was right when he called Russia's war "unjustified." But he was wrong when he said it was "unprovoked." It's not condoning Putin's invasion to observe there certainly was provocation--not so much by Ukraine, but by the United States.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration made important moves towards diplomacy. But it undermined those crucial efforts by increasing threats, escalating sanctions, deploying thousands of U.S. troops to neighboring countries, and sending tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine--all while continuing to build a huge new U.S. military base in Poland just 100 miles from the Russian border.
Don't Punish the Russian People--Or Reward the Arms Industry
We know, not least from our own government's many failed and devastating wars, that military force will not solve this crisis.
President Biden deserves credit for refusing any troop deployments to Ukraine itself. But that should be expanded to prohibit all U.S. military engagement there, whether through airstrikes or drones or missiles or other weapons. Only the global arms industry stands to benefit from a war like that.
We also know, again from too many of our own government's actions, that imposing broad economic sanctions--the kind that target whole populations--doesn't work. They aren't an alternative to war. They're a weapon of war that hurts ordinary people, while leaders and their powerful cohorts thrive.
Too many in Washington--in the administration, in Congress, in the press--are calling for sanctions on Russia that will "cripple their economy." Russian people, who have little influence over their authoritarian leader, will pay a huge price. But we can be sure Putin and his oligarchs will do fine.
In fact, brave Russian anti-war protesters who went out into the streets in the first hours of Putin's invasion are already being detained by the government. Broad-based sanctions that harm ordinary Russians will lead to more protests, bringing further repression and risking marginalizing dissent in Russia.
As Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said: "I don't think the sanctions will stop this short-term. It is diplomatic initiatives that could stop this short-term." He's right.
Right now we need an immediate ceasefire and serious negotiations on broader issues. That means urgent diplomacy--not more military force--to end this war. Every war eventually ends with diplomacy. The question is how long the fighting, killing, and displacing of people goes on until the diplomats can stop it.
Diplomacy Could Lead to a Deeper Peace
So what would diplomacy look like?
First, an immediate ceasefire--an end to the fighting. That will require Russia to immediately pull back its troops and weapons out of Ukraine.
But negotiations mean that both sides need to give something. So NATO and the U.S. should agree to pull back heavy weapons and missiles away from the Russian border and recognize in public what NATO has long acknowledged privately: that Ukraine will not be joining the military alliance in any foreseeable future.
New negotiations, organized by combinations of the United Nations and the broad Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (which includes Russia, Ukraine, most European countries, and the United States) could move further towards renewing lapsed European arms control treaties and eventually towards full nuclear disarmament across Europe.
That would include removing the U.S. nuclear weapons held in Europe as part of NATO's "nuclear-sharing" operations. The threat of an accident involving any of Ukraine's 15 nuclear power stations (including Chernobyl), or the escalation--accidental or otherwise--of the war to a conflict between the world's biggest nuclear weapons powers, seriously raises the urgency of an immediate end to this war. There is no conceivable "national interest" worth risking even the tiniest possibility of such an outcome.
Crucially, diplomacy must be rooted in international law--not the ambiguous "rules-based order" that U.S. officials like to talk about, but real international law that exists in the UN Charter, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arms control agreements, and so much more.
Ukraine is a border nation, caught in a longstanding power struggle between stronger countries and blocs. The jockeying over Ukraine today, and the risk of war expanding far beyond Ukraine's borders, poses one of the biggest challenges in a generation for peace advocates around the world.
It's up to us to make sure that "Diplomacy Not War" becomes more than just a slogan to end this crisis.
The illegal Russian invasion of Ukraine is already causing enormous suffering.
Our first concern must be for civilians across the country, now facing violence and displacement. And our first call must be for an immediate ceasefire, a pull-back of Russian troops from Ukraine, and international support for the humanitarian challenges already underway in the region.
The jockeying over Ukraine today, and the risk of war expanding far beyond Ukraine's borders, poses one of the biggest challenges in a generation for peace advocates around the world.
As for resolving the conflict, that requires understanding its causes--which has everything to do with when we start the clock.
If we start the clock in February 2022, the main problem is Russia's attack on Ukraine. If we start the clock in 1997, however, the main problem is Washington pushing NATO--the Cold War-era military alliance that includes the United States and most of Europe--to expand east, breaking an assurance the U.S. made to Russia after the Cold War.
Many foreign policy experts and peace advocates have called for ending the anachronistic alliance ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But NATO remains and has only encroached toward Russia further, resulting in new NATO countries--bristling with NATO arms systems--right on Russia's borders.
Russia sees that expansion--and its integration of neighboring countries into U.S.-led military partnerships--as a continuing threat. Ukraine is not a member of NATO. But in the past the U.S. and other NATO members have urged its acceptance, and Russia regards Ukraine's drift toward the West as a precursor to membership.
None of that makes Russia's invasion of Ukraine legal, legitimate, or necessary. President Biden was right when he called Russia's war "unjustified." But he was wrong when he said it was "unprovoked." It's not condoning Putin's invasion to observe there certainly was provocation--not so much by Ukraine, but by the United States.
In recent weeks, the Biden administration made important moves towards diplomacy. But it undermined those crucial efforts by increasing threats, escalating sanctions, deploying thousands of U.S. troops to neighboring countries, and sending tens of millions of dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine--all while continuing to build a huge new U.S. military base in Poland just 100 miles from the Russian border.
Don't Punish the Russian People--Or Reward the Arms Industry
We know, not least from our own government's many failed and devastating wars, that military force will not solve this crisis.
President Biden deserves credit for refusing any troop deployments to Ukraine itself. But that should be expanded to prohibit all U.S. military engagement there, whether through airstrikes or drones or missiles or other weapons. Only the global arms industry stands to benefit from a war like that.
We also know, again from too many of our own government's actions, that imposing broad economic sanctions--the kind that target whole populations--doesn't work. They aren't an alternative to war. They're a weapon of war that hurts ordinary people, while leaders and their powerful cohorts thrive.
Too many in Washington--in the administration, in Congress, in the press--are calling for sanctions on Russia that will "cripple their economy." Russian people, who have little influence over their authoritarian leader, will pay a huge price. But we can be sure Putin and his oligarchs will do fine.
In fact, brave Russian anti-war protesters who went out into the streets in the first hours of Putin's invasion are already being detained by the government. Broad-based sanctions that harm ordinary Russians will lead to more protests, bringing further repression and risking marginalizing dissent in Russia.
As Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, said: "I don't think the sanctions will stop this short-term. It is diplomatic initiatives that could stop this short-term." He's right.
Right now we need an immediate ceasefire and serious negotiations on broader issues. That means urgent diplomacy--not more military force--to end this war. Every war eventually ends with diplomacy. The question is how long the fighting, killing, and displacing of people goes on until the diplomats can stop it.
Diplomacy Could Lead to a Deeper Peace
So what would diplomacy look like?
First, an immediate ceasefire--an end to the fighting. That will require Russia to immediately pull back its troops and weapons out of Ukraine.
But negotiations mean that both sides need to give something. So NATO and the U.S. should agree to pull back heavy weapons and missiles away from the Russian border and recognize in public what NATO has long acknowledged privately: that Ukraine will not be joining the military alliance in any foreseeable future.
New negotiations, organized by combinations of the United Nations and the broad Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (which includes Russia, Ukraine, most European countries, and the United States) could move further towards renewing lapsed European arms control treaties and eventually towards full nuclear disarmament across Europe.
That would include removing the U.S. nuclear weapons held in Europe as part of NATO's "nuclear-sharing" operations. The threat of an accident involving any of Ukraine's 15 nuclear power stations (including Chernobyl), or the escalation--accidental or otherwise--of the war to a conflict between the world's biggest nuclear weapons powers, seriously raises the urgency of an immediate end to this war. There is no conceivable "national interest" worth risking even the tiniest possibility of such an outcome.
Crucially, diplomacy must be rooted in international law--not the ambiguous "rules-based order" that U.S. officials like to talk about, but real international law that exists in the UN Charter, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, arms control agreements, and so much more.
Ukraine is a border nation, caught in a longstanding power struggle between stronger countries and blocs. The jockeying over Ukraine today, and the risk of war expanding far beyond Ukraine's borders, poses one of the biggest challenges in a generation for peace advocates around the world.
It's up to us to make sure that "Diplomacy Not War" becomes more than just a slogan to end this crisis.
"What angers Greenblatt is that Mamdani isn't courting HIM," said one advocate. "By winning the bulk of the young Jewish vote while condemning Israel, Mamdani is exposing how out of touch Greenblatt is."
The largest Muslim civil rights group in the U.S. on Tuesday was among those condemning the latest attacks from the Anti-Defamation League on New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, whom ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt this week accused of not reaching out to the city's Jewish population.
On CNBC Monday, Greenblatt claimed Mamdani, a Democratic state assembly member who stunned former Gov. Andrew Cuomo by winning the primary in June by nearly eight points, has not visited "a single synagogue... one Jewish neighborhood" or "any of the mainstream Jewish institutions."
A number of observers pointed to several instances in which Mamdani has visited Jewish centers and places of worship during his campaign, including attending Shabbat services in Brooklyn in February, taking part in a town hall with the Jewish Community Relations Council in May with United Jewish Appeal Federation, and attending candidate forums at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in June.
Greenblatt later published a post about the interview on the social media platform X, saying this time that Mamdani had not visited Jewish synagogues or other communities since the primary in June—but Peter Beinart, editor-at-large of Jewish Currents, suggested the head of the ADL attacks Mamdani not for things he has or hasn't done, but because many Jewish people have embraced him as their candidate of choice.
"Of course Mamdani has visited synagogues and Jewish communities," said Beinart. "What angers Greenblatt is that Mamdani isn't courting HIM. By winning the bulk of the young Jewish vote while condemning Israel, Mamdani is exposing how out of touch Greenblatt is with many of the people he claims to represent. That's what makes Mamdani a threat."
As Common Dreams reported last month, Mamdani led Cuomo—who is running in the general election as an independent following his primary loss—by five points in a poll by Zenith Research. More than two-thirds of likely Jewish voters between the ages of 18 and 44 said they planned to vote for Mamdani, who has condemned Israel's apartheid policies and its US-backed bombardment and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
Beinart added that while Greenblatt may be "unaware" of Mamdani's relationship with Jewish voters, "his unawareness says nothing about reality. It says a lot about him."
In the interview, Greenblatt also doubled down on attacks that began in June regarding Mamdani's refusal to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," which pro-Israel groups have claimed denotes support for violent attacks by militants against Israel—but which the mayoral candidate pointed out in a podcast interview is to many people "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights."
"Why won't he condemn 'globalize the intifada?' Because he believes it?" said Greenblatt, adding that the phrase suggests support for attacks by Palestinian militants who have "killed people simply because they were Jewish."
The Arabic word "intifada" means "struggle" or "uprising" and is associated by Palestinian rights advocates with Palestinians' fight for self-determination and freedom from Israel's occupation—which took the form of numerous non-violent protests including boycotts, labor strikes, and marches, as well as armed resistance, during the First and Second Intifadas.
Jasmine El-Gamal, a foreign policy analyst and host of the podcast "The View From Here," noted that "not one of the presenters corrected Greenblatt when he lied and said the intifada was a violent uprising that 'killed people simply because they were Jewish.'"
"The intifada was an uprising against an occupation," said El-Gamal. "Whether or not you agree with the concept of violent resistance, the fact is, Greenblatt blatantly lied and no one batted an eyelash."
Mamdani has never publicly used the phrase "globalize the intifada," and has said he would "discourage" others from doing so.
At the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), national deputy executive director Edward Ahmed Mitchell said Greenblatt's "dishonest and bigoted attacks on Assemblymember Mamdani represent the latest sign that the ADL director is an increasingly unhinged anti-Muslim bigot masquerading as a civil rights leader."
Referring to Greenblatt's refusal to condemn an apparent Nazi salute by former Trump administration adviser Elon Musk in January, Mitchell said Greenblatt "will bend over backwards to give real antisemites a pass so long as they support Israel's genocide while he goes out of the way to lie about and smear Muslim public officials if they dare to oppose Israel's genocide."
"Mr. Greenblatt's top priority is protecting the Israeli government from criticism," said Mitchell, "and no one should take his claim about American Muslim leaders seriously."
Basim Elkarra, executive director of CAIR-Action, said Greenblatt's comments "are not only misleading—they risk stoking division at a time when New Yorkers need unity."
"Subjecting Muslim elected officials to such bigotry is dishonest, dangerous, and diverts attention from substantive policy issues," said Elkarra. "We urge all public figures to condemn Jonathan Greenblatt and others who attempt to inflame bigotry against American Muslims engaged in politics."
"This MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage," said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten.
Teachers from California and New York seeking work in Oklahoma will be required to pass an "America First Test" designed to weed out applicants espousing "radical leftist ideology," the state's public schools chief affirmed Monday.
Oklahoma—which has a severe teacher shortage, persistently high turnover, and some of the nation's worst educational outcomes—will compel prospective public school educators from the nation's two largest "blue" states to submit to the exam in a bid to combat what Superintendent for Public Instruction Ryan Walters calls "woke indoctrination."
"As long as I am superintendent, Oklahoma classrooms will be safeguarded from the radical leftist ideology fostered in places like California and New York," Walters said in a statement Monday.
Walters told USA Today that the test is necessary to vet teachers from states where educators "are teaching things that are antithetical to our standards" and ensure they "are not coming into our classrooms and indoctrinating kids."
However, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten warned in a statement Monday that "this MAGA loyalty test will be yet another turnoff for teachers in a state already struggling with a huge shortage."
The exam will be administered by Prager University—also known as PragerU—a right-wing nonprofit group which, despite its name, is not an academic institution and does not confer degrees.
While all of the test's 50 questions have not been made public, the ones that have been published run the gamut from insultingly basic—such as, "What are the two parts of the U.S. Congress?"—to ideologically fraught queries regarding the "biological differences between females and males."
PragerU's "educational" materials are rife with false or misleading information regarding slavery, racism, immigration, the history of fascism, and the climate emergency. Critics note that the nonprofit has received millions of dollars in funding from fossil fuel billionaires.
PragerU materials also promote creation mythology over scientific evolution and attack LGBTQ+ people, especially transgender individuals, calling lifesaving gender-affirming healthcare "barbaric" while likening its proponents to "monsters."
In one animated PragerU video, two children travel back in time to ask the genocidal explorer Christopher Columbus why he is so hated today. Columbus replies by asserting the superiority of Europeans over Indigenous "cannibals" and attempting to justify the enslavement of Native Americans by arguing that "being taken as a slave is better than being killed."
Closer to home, PragerU's curriculum aligns with so-called "white discomfort" legislation passed in Oklahoma and other Republican-controlled states that critics say prevents honest lessons on slavery, the Jim Crow and civil rights eras, and enduring systemic racism.
The law has had a chilling effect on teachers' lessons on historical topics including the 1921 Tulsa massacre, in which a white supremacist mob backed armed by city officials destroyed more than 35 city blocks of Greenwood, the "Black Wall Street," murdering hundreds of Black men, women, and children in what the US Justice Department this year called a "coordinated, military-style attack."
Responding to Oklahoma's new policy, University of Pennsylvania history professor Jonathan Zimmerman told The Associated Press that "instead of Prager simply being a resource that you can draw in an optional way, Prager has become institutionalized as part of the state system."
"There's no other way to describe it," he said, adding, "I think what we're now seeing in Oklahoma is something different, which is actually empowering Prager as a kind of gatekeeper for future teachers."
Oklahoma is not the only state incorporating PragerU materials into its curriculum. Florida, Montana, New Hampshire, and Texas have also done so to varying degrees.
Weingarten noted Walters' previous push to revise Oklahoma's curriculum standards to include baseless conspiracy theories pushed by President Donald Trump that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election. Walters also ordered all public schools to teach the Bible, a directive temporarily blocked by the Oklahoma Supreme Court in March. The court also recently ruled against the establishment of the nation's first taxpayer-funded religious charter school.
"His priority should be educating students, but instead, it's getting Donald Trump and other MAGA politicians to notice him," Weingrarten said in her statement.
Cari Elledge, president of the Oklahoma Education Association, called the new testing requirement "a political stunt to grab attention" and a distraction "from real issues in Oklahoma."
"When political ideology plays into whether or not you can teach in any place, that might be a deterrent to quality educators attempting to get a job," she added. "We think it's intentional to make educators fearful and confused."
California Teachers' Association president David Goldberg told USA Today that "this almost seems like satire and so far removed from my research around what Oklahoma educators need and deserve."
"I can't see how this isn't some kind of hyper-political grandstanding that doesn't serve any of those needs," he added.
"Stephen Miller was a loser in college, and now we all must pay for it," remarked one critic.
Stephen Miller, the hardline immigrant-trashing adviser to US President Donald Trump, drew scorn and ridicule on Wednesday after he dismissed people protesting against the National Guard deployment in Washington, DC as elderly and ignorant "hippies."
During a visit to Union Station along with Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Miller took a shot at local residents who in recent days have demonstrated against Trump's takeover of their city's law enforcement.
"All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been," Miller claimed. "We're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over 90 years old."
Stephen Miller: "All these demonstrators that you've seen out here in recent days, all these elderly white hippies, they're not part of the city and never have been ... we're gonna ignore these stupid white hippies that all need to go home and take a nap because they're all over… pic.twitter.com/v7Bj4pfEPW
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 20, 2025
Hundreds of people over this past weekend took part in a "Free DC" protest against the presence of the National Guard and assorted federal agents patrolling the city, and many other spontaneous protests have erupted as local residents have regularly gathered to jeer federal officials carrying out operations in their neighborhoods.
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, shared a photo on Bluesky of an event that took place in the city on Tuesday, and he pointed out that people of different ages and colors can be seen protesting against the presence of the National Guard in their city.
"I don't see one 'elderly white hippie' there," he remarked. "I do see a wide variety of ages, genders, and races; DC residents united in disgust at what Miller is cheering on."
Princeton historian Kevin Kruse also slammed Miller for failing to notice the diversity of the crowds protesting against Trump's DC initiative.
"Stephen Miller is apparently so racist he can’t even *see* nonwhite people on the streets of DC protesting his goons," he commented on Bluesky. "Wait, is *that* what they meant by 'colorblind conservatism?'"
Pam Fessler, author and former correspondent for NPR, gave Miller a swift fact check in a post on X.
"Besides Miller's nastiness, he's wrong," she explained. "Guess what? A majority of DC residents, regardless of race, oppose Trump's unnecessary just-for-show federal takeover."
A poll released by The Washington Post on Wednesday backs up this point, as it found that 79% of DC residents are opposed to Trump's takeover, including 69% who register as "strongly" opposed.
Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University College of Law, speculated on Bluesky that Miller is lashing out at "hippies" to make up for his own past inadequacies.
"Stephen Miller was a loser in college, and now we all must pay for it... sincerely, someone who remembers him from school," said Kreis, who attended University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill at the same time Miller was attending nearby Duke University.
Podcaster Bob Cesca, meanwhile, warned Miller to be careful in antagonizing Washington, DC residents.
"I take comfort in the idea that, for the rest of his miserable life, he'll wonder how much phlegm and/or feces has been added to his restaurant meals," he joked on X.