Gone Fishin'

Newsmakers is off on a short summer breather, but here are some summer reading and viewing tips for local news and pro-democracy content until we get back.

Jul 05, 2025

Only 1,221 days left until the Nov. 7, 2028 presidential election.

The passage of the nation’s 249th birthday into the rearview mirror means that we’ve collectively survived the first 166 days of the Trump Regime — 11 percent of his four-year term, for those keeping score at home.

Many bad things already have happened under Trump. Knowing the fanatical ferocity of the gang of right-wing extremists at the controls behind the front-man’s relentless babbling, many more are yet to come.

Since we started Newsmakers 10 years ago, our first and foremost focus has been analyzing, breaking and commenting on local news, and our commitment to covering the delightful civic soap opera that is public life in Santa Barbara remains unchanged.

Since Inauguration Day, however, we’ve also made a major adjustment in the journalism we offer subscribers to the Newsmakers newsletter, supplementing our local menu with a regular diet of national and statewide offerings, curated from a host of reporters, editors and writers we follow, drawn to their clear and plain chronicling of what Trump and his henchmen are trying to do to California — and America.

The animating idea behind this editorial pivot is simple: This Is Not Normal.

In examining authoritarian movements around the world, scholars, journalists and opposition leaders alike warn that one of the greatest dangers to liberal democracies is the attempt by demagogues and would-be autocrats to normalize their very abnormal ideas and actions.

One nearby example: It’s been nearly a month since Trump federalized California’s National Guard and sent thousands of troops to Los Angeles to take up arms against local citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to protest the brutality and un-American methods by which U.S. law enforcement agents are rounding up and snatching alleged immigrants off the streets.

These weren’t “riots” by any stretch of imagination, and Trump dispatched the troops — along with hundreds of Marines — over the objections of Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass, who are still in court challenging his executive order.

Legal issues in that matter aside (along with the question of whether a couple knuckleheads burning a few driverless Waymo taxis constitutes a “riot”) the crucial point is that there still are federalized troops deployed on the streets of Los Angeles.

Why? To normalize the once-implausible concept that any President would militarize, as a matter of routine, official response to local civil disorders in U.S. cities.

A few days after the Guard was sent, Kristi Noem, the repulsive head of Trump’s Department of Homeland Security, said the quiet part out loud, saying this at a press conference where U.S. Senator Alex Padilla was manhandled and handcuffed (also now normalized: Trump thugs roughing up and arresting Democratic politicians).

“We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”

“Liberate the city?” Sit with that one a minute.

In the United States of America in 2025, the head of an federal agency (whose budget is likely to double under the scandalous tax bill being rammed through by congressional Republicans) stands before cameras and declares that she has arrived to “liberate” the people of an American city and state from its duly-elected leaders.

This…Is…Not…Normal.

As we head off for a short summer sojourn, Newsmakers offers a reading list, drawn from our matchless archive, that drills down on some of the highest constitutional and legal stakes at risk from Trump’s authoritarian project. Below you’ll also find a complete linked list for 2025 of our Santa Barbara local news shows and podcasts.

Stay safe.

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Gone Fishin'

Newsmakers is off on a short summer breather, but here are some summer reading and viewing tips for local news and pro-democracy content until we get back.

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