Eyes on Trump before the midterms

Do you keep seeing posts in your feed asking why we’re not protesting like they are in France, but you’re not sure what they’re protesting about? Same, I am ashamed to say! On Sept. 17, students in a Paris suburb protested teacher shortfalls, poor facilities, declining quality of education and generally rough conditions at their underfunded high school.

Then, other students joined, with support from parents, teachers and unions. They’re no longer protesting just one school, but a broader pattern of unequal school quality, university admission decisions, and racial discrimination. This all comes after a decade of centrist rule in France, and ahead of a 2027 election where a leftist and a far-right candidate are gaining ground.

Protesters have gotten a lot of attention for the property damage they have caused. Police have used teargas, batons and stun grenades against demonstrators. Lawyers and rights groups say some of the protesters that police have injured are teenagers. Scholars have found a link between funding schools and reduced crime, and have argued that poor school conditions are a form of violence in and of themselves.

Protesters have criticized an online university admissions platform as unfair. Following those critiques and the protests, the French government committed to phasing out the platform, along with creating new educational spaces, capping some class sizes, and expanding low-interest loans to renovate schools. Protesters say other demands remain unmet and have called for future demonstrations.

President Donald Trump is suing the BBC for $10 billion but has refused to testify under oath. The federal judge in the case decided that has to change: If Trump doesn’t sit for a deposition by Dec. 11, his case could get thrown out.

The lawsuit stems from a BBC documentary aired before the 2024 election. The broadcast stitched together two remarks Trump made during his speech before insurrectionists stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. That day, Trump said: “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol.” Then, about 54 minutes later, he said, “And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not gonna have a country anymore.” Trump’s lawyers argue the edit omitted a portion where Trump urged his supporters to protest peacefully. The BBC has apologized for the edit but disputes Trump’s defamation claim.

Trump was impeached, but then acquitted, of inciting an insurrection. One full, non-spliced-together quote from his speech barely an hour before the insurrection: “Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we're going to walk down, and I'll be there with you.” Here’s a full transcript of that speech. He also reportedly watched the insurrection for hours and ignored calls to urge the rioters to stop.

In an Oct. 24 speech forcing us to create style guidance on whether “shithouse” is one word or two, Trump called Libya, Yemen, Haiti and Somalia “shithouse countries.” The president said he would rather take migrants from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. He referred back to similarly racist comments he made in his first term, when he reportedly called Haiti and African nations “shithole countries.” But he’s not just racist; he’s also petty. Trump later called Norway a shithouse country because the Oslo-based Nobel committee didn’t give him a Peace Prize.

Trump also said during this speech that Denmark gave Greenland to the U.S. This is a lie. But last month, Trump signed a deal with leaders from Greenland and Denmark that let the U.S. expand its military presence in Greenland without taking control. “You don’t read about it…you don’t read,” Trump said after seemingly misunderstanding the text of the deal he himself signed.

Trump then repeated his unproven claim that people had vandalized the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall. Federal prosecutors previously dropped charges against people accused of damaging the Reflecting Pool after investigators found that “botched” renovation work, not vandalism, caused damage to the pool. And the company that carried out these renovations that Trump ordered even reportedly owned up to those mistakes.

The president also bragged about how much money oil and gas companies are making, dismissing concerns that this is happening while Americans are paying higher gas prices. I am a passenger princess who is mostly unencumbered by higher gas prices, but one Brown University estimate says Americans have spent $143 billion more on gas and diesel than they would have if the U.S. didn’t go to war with Iran.

That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise!

Anthropic, the AI company behind chatbot and noted scab Claude, is on track to go public as soon as the week before Thanksgiving. That means it’ll sell shares on the market to investors.

The paperwork Anthropic had to file for this is, technically speaking, juicy stuff. For one thing, it lists some pros and cons of AI. Pros: It can help people write code. Cons: It can “pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity.” 

If Anthropic makes — to use another technical term — a buttload of money off of its IPO, it could grow a lot even as its own CEO has called for a slowdown on AI development.