“Retired General Martin France, himself an Air Force Academy graduate and former chair of the academy’s department of astronautics and engineering, views this military campus crackdown, which includes complementary work by other federal bodies, as a myopic effort to eliminate courses that encourage independence, an instinct echoed by many of the more than 20 current and former civilian and military faculty I spoke with, many of whom were granted anonymity to freely discuss the conditions of the crackdown.
“Our officers should be sentient beings who understand just war theory, the laws around conflict, the orders that they are morally obligated to disobey,” France said, arguing that the Trump administration, by contrast, wants to breed compliance rather than teach nuance. This, in turn, France alleged, forms an officer class of “flesh-and-bone drones.”
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Due to the Air Force’s highly technical mission, its service academy has an especially rich STEM program, one that rears future fighter pilots, astronauts and nuclear missile operators. As such, many of the departing civilian professors taught engineering courses. “They think that our graduates should be more comfortable with crawling through the dirt and carrying a rifle,” vented one current military professor. “We’re the Air Force, we don’t do that. We don’t fire rifles. We operate multi-billion-dollar systems and multi-billion-dollar bomber aircraft.”
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Amid this exodus of civilians, some military professors are leaving, too. The long-time military professor described a pervasive sense that the overall academic environment has been fatally compromised, dynamics he explained with a baseball metaphor: “When there’s a team with pitchers but no catchers, you can’t play ball.”
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I understood the worries of the professor in black. They were echoed throughout my interviews for this story. Still, I wondered if maybe his anonymous get-up was a bit of an overreaction.
My mind changed six days later, when it became apparent that I myself had been monitored. That morning, a Secret Service agent showed up to my parents’ door, explaining that West Point had reported me for acting suspiciously. Specifically, they alleged that I’d been asking people to speak with the president. This wasn’t true, and the service declined to discuss the intelligence undergirding the allegation. But it felt like a poetic charge in light of my reportorial focus on the military’s stifling of academic inquiry. Certainly, any reporter, as with any pupil, must be allowed, encouraged even, to ask probing questions.”
“Almost all of the AI models showed a preference to escalate aggressively, use firepower indiscriminately and turn crises into shooting wars — even to the point of launching nuclear weapons. “The AI is always playing Curtis LeMay,” says Schneider, referring to the notoriously nuke-happy Air Force general of the Cold War. “It’s almost like the AI understands escalation, but not de-escalation. We don’t really know why that is.””
““JD “I don’t give a shit” Vance says killing people he accuses of a crime is the “highest and best use of the military.” Did he ever read To Kill a Mockingbird?” Paul wrote on X on Saturday night. “Did he ever wonder what might happen if the accused were immediately executed without trial or representation??”
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They are looking for answers as to why the administration elected to fire on the cartel, rather than rounding them up, and some are wary the strike could expand the president’s authority to call upon his war powers. There have also been questions about details of the attack and desire for proof that the boat itself was actually what the administration says it was.
“What a despicable and thoughtless sentiment it is to glorify killing someone without a trial,” Paul said of Vance’s Saturday post.”
“When Trump took control of the California National Guard last June, he relied on 10 USC 12406, a previously obscure statute that authorizes the president to “call into Federal service members and units of the National Guard of any State” in three circumstances: 1) when the United States “is invaded or is in danger of invasion by a foreign nation,” 2) when “there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” or 3) when “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” The government’s lawyers argued that Los Angeles’ protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown created both of the latter two conditions.”
Trump ran on mass deportation. Mass deportation inherently requires removing a lot of hard working good people against their will because they crossed a geographic line they weren’t supposed to. If you voted for him thinking he would only remove criminals, then you didn’t pay enough objective attention.
But, Trump is doing more than that. He is violating due process–a basic right to all people. He is forcing a mass of people into detention centers where it is difficult for their family and lawyers to reach them, and where conditions are sometimes abysmal. Trump is using troops and law enforcement to do demonstrations to strike fear.
The militarization of criminal justice can lead to the end of democracy and basic rights.
The administration is actively making it more difficult for those accused of immigration violations to get a lawyer. They are sending police to lawyers’ houses apparently to intimidate them. They are making student loan repayment more difficult for lawyers who defend immigrants.
Masked men who don’t identify themselves and force you into custody is not how democracies do law enforcement.
Trump has purged parts of the military and replaced them with unqualified sycophants. Instead of lawyers telling Trump that what he wants to do is illegal so he can’t do it, this term he has people finding excuses for him to do undemocratic things.