Naval Academy cancels speech by podcaster amid cultural turmoil
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(ANNAPOLIS, Md.) — The Navy said it canceled a speaking engagement at its academy in Annapolis, Maryland, with popular podcaster and author Ryan Holiday because it wanted to steer clear of what it saw as political content aimed at young naval officers.
Holiday, who speaks frequently about the value of stoicism and has written several books, including “The Obstacle is the Way,” said he had planned to speak to the midshipmen about the “pursuit of wisdom.”
Holiday said he shared his briefing slides in advance with the Navy, which included a reference to the New York Times’ story about the U.S. Naval Academy’s recent decision to pull some 381 books from its library. The Navy asked him to omit the reference, and Holiday said he refused.
“The idea that there are topics that are off limits or that they can’t handle is absurd on its face,” Holiday told ABC News.
When asked why Holiday’s speech was canceled, the Navy said it opted to make a “schedule change that aligns with its mission of preparing midshipmen for careers of service to our country.”
“The Naval Academy is an apolitical institution,” it added. “It is focused on developing midshipmen morally, mentally and physically in order to cultivate honorable leaders, create a culture of excellence and prepare future officers for military service.”
Holiday said the Navy hadn’t given him guidance in advance of the speech and that he didn’t see his presentation as overtly political because he wasn’t telling the midshipmen how to vote. He said it shouldn’t have been a surprise to the Navy that he’d want to discuss current events.
“I assumed we had the basic … standards of academic independence,” Holiday said.
The Navy pulled the books after President Donald Trump ordered the military to stop “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories.”
Included in the list of books removed from the academy library is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou and “How to be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi.
A separate visit to the academy by filmmaker Ken Burns also was canceled recently, although the cancelation does not appear to be tied to a dispute over content. A spokesperson for Burns said the award-winning documentarian had planned to meet privately with faculty and staff later this month and now hopes to visit the school in October instead.
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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department’s division tasked with enforcing the nation’s federal civil rights laws has recently seen a mass exodus of “over 100” attorneys, the newly confirmed official leading the division said in an interview this week.
“What we have made very clear last week in memos to each of the 11 sections in the Civil Rights Division is that our priorities under President Trump are going to be somewhat different than they were under President Biden,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said in an interview with conservative host Glenn Beck. “And then we tell them, these are the President’s priorities, this is what we will be focusing on — you know, govern yourself accordingly. And en masse, dozens and now over 100 attorneys decided that they’d rather not do what their job requires them to do.”
The resignations come as Dhillon and Attorney General Pam Bondi have made clear the priorities of the division — which was established in the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s — would shift away from priorities like enforcing voting rights laws and cracking down on unconstitutional policing to culture war issues touted by President Trump in his 2024 campaign.
In recent weeks, the department has said it would pursue legal action against states that permit transgender athletes to participate in girls’ and women’s sports, withdrawn from a Biden-era lawsuit against Georgia’s voting laws and convened a task force to investigate incidents of “anti-Christian bias.”
Of the recent resignations, Dhillon said in the interview that she thinks it’s “fine” the attorneys opted to leave.
“We don’t want people in the federal government who feel like it’s their pet project to go persecute, you know, police departments based on statistical evidence or persecute people praying outside abortion facilities instead of doing violence,” Dhillon said. “That’s not the job here. The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology.”
At the same time, Dhillon said in the interview she was seeking to staff up the division so they could pursue issues like the administration’s actions targeting Harvard University.
“You need more lawyers, investigators and commitment to do the work, and you need the people in the United States identifying these things for us,” Dhillon said. “We’re going to run out of attorneys to work on these things at some point.”
Several top Democrats sent a letter to Bondi, Dhillon and DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz Monday raising concerns over what they described as the “politicization” of the DOJ’s civil rights division.
(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s unilateral effort to reshape election processes is an attempt to “short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order,” a federal judge in Washington, D.C. wrote Thursday afternoon.
In a 120-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly blocked the Trump administration from requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote and ordering that election officials “assess” the citizenship of anyone who receives public assistance before allowing them to register. She also barred the Election Assistance Commission from withholding federal funding from states that did not comply with the order.
“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States—not the President—with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”
After Trump issued an executive order last month “preserving and protecting the integrity of American elections,” three separate lawsuits were filed in the D.C. federal court to challenge the policy, including lawsuits filed by the Democratic National Committee (with New York Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries), the League of United Latin American Citizens and National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.
“These consolidated cases are about the separation of powers,” Judge Kollar-Kotelly wrote.
She concluded that Trump’s unilateral effort to reshape elections exceeds his own authority, noting that the Department of Justice “offered almost no defense of the President’s order.”
If Trump wishes to reform election processes, she wrote, Congress would be the appropriate branch to do so, adding Congress is “currently debating legislation that would effect many of the changes the President purports to order.”
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois has announced his bid to run for Senate in 2026, confirming speculations that he would join the quickly expanding field of primary competitors looking to win the safe Democratic seat left open by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who is retiring at the end of his term.
In an interview with ABC News, the five-term congressman said he’s running on a record of confronting “bullies” like Donald Trump and is keenly focused on opposing agencies such as the Department of Government Efficiency, led by Elon Musk.
“I have a track record of standing up to Donald Trump in Congress. I voted for impeaching him twice, but I also … played a big role in the first impeachment hearings on Capitol Hill,” said Krishnamoorthi, who entered the House in 2016, now serves as the top Democrat on the House’s China select committee on the Chinese Communist Party and is a senior member of the Intelligence and Oversight committees.
“But I have a track record of standing up to lots of bullies, whether it’s the e-cigarette companies that prey on our youth and try to hook them on vapes or it’s Purdue pharmaceuticals that try to hook a generation to Oxycontin. I’ve gone after all of them. They put a target on my back, but I got results, and now we need results with Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE,” he added.
Krishnamoorthi added that he is running to fight for the economic prosperity of Illinoisans who are “suffering under the economic chaos unleashed by Donald Trump, Elon Musk and DOGE.”
“We need to focus like a laser on their economic problems right now, even at the same time that we’re standing up to Donald Trump,” he told ABC News.
Krishnamoorthi’s bid will kick off with three campaign stops on Friday as he “vows to ‘stand up and fight back’ against Trump’s agenda. The congressman, who represents much of Chicago’s northwestern suburbs, will make stops in his hometown of Peoria, Illinois, and in Schaumburg, Illinois, where he currently lives.
“My roots are in Peoria. I represent the suburbs. I’ve worked in the city for many years. So I want to try to trace that journey that I’ve had in Illinois but also speak to as many people as possible across Illinois,” he told ABC News.
In an announcement video released on Wednesday, Krishnamoorthi called the actions occurring within the White House “insanity” and suggested that he is a Democrat who can “fight back” against the Trump administration. The Democratic Party is grappling with questions over its political direction following the startling loss of all three branches of government during the 2024 elections.
“People want to know, at this moment, in this time, where is the power to fight back? What does it look like?” Krishnamoorthi said in the video. “Well, I’ll tell you: It looks like you and you and you, all of us ready to stand up and fight back. I spent my life standing up to bullies, fighting for everyday people. So I’ll never be quiet while billionaires like Elon Musk and a convicted felon deny the dreams of the next generation for their own egos and personal profit. That’s why I’m running for the United States Senate.”
The Harvard University-educated lawyer who received his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering from Princeton University was born in central Illinois to Indian immigrants.
Ahead of his election to Congress, Krishnamoorthi served in a number of state roles and as a policy director in the Obama administration. In his announcement video released on Wednesday, the congressman referred to himself as “Raja” and referenced the fact that former President Barack Obama, too, had an ethnically ambiguous sounding name, saying, “I worked on a friend’s campaign who showed that Illinois will give you a shot even if you have a funny name. And inspired by Barack’s example, I was elected to Congress.”
“Yes, I know the name is long, so like always, just call me Raja,” he concluded the video.
Krishnamoorthi, one of the front-runners in the already hotly contested race, has amassed over a $19 million war chest ahead of his launch, with a stunning $3 million raised in just the first three months of 2025.
His bid comes after Durbin announced in April that he would not seek a sixth term. Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton jumped in the race less than 48 hours after Durbin’s announcement and quickly earned the endorsements of billionaire Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Illinois’ other senator, Tammy Duckworth.
“At the end of the day, the most important thing is I get the endorsement from the people of Illinois,” Krishnamoorthi told ABC News when asked about his posture among the already crowded primary field.
“They need to have their say. … We need to make sure that the process plays out, unfolds, that they are able to kick the tires and assess who they want to hire to represent them in the U.S. Senate, and I’m going to do everything in my power to earn their support,” he added.
Krishnamoorthi’s announcement also comes just a day after his colleague, Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., declared her own bid for the seat. In an announcement video posted on Tuesday, Kelly brought up how in Congress, she does not stand up during moments of silence to mark mass shootings because, she said, “moments of silence in Congress just aren’t going to cut it anymore.”
Kelly is also the former Illinois Democratic Party chairwoman and a member of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ leadership team. It’s reported that Rep. Lauren Underwood, who is also a member of Jeffries’ leadership circle, is still exploring a run for the seat.
Krishnamoorthi told ABC News that his record, paired with his ability to “stand up” to Trump distinctly, makes him uniquely positioned for the role.
“I think that your track record matters. I think that the diversity of your experiences, plus … where you come from, I think that matters,” he said. “I think that most of all, who is going to be the most effective at standing up to Donald Trump but also delivering for constituents?”
Durbin said he doesn’t plan on endorsing any particular candidate but is not ruling out the possibility in an “extreme case.”
“I hope I do not have to,” Durbin said.
Still, Krishnamoorthi linked himself to Durbin as he launched his bid for Senate on Wednesday, lauding him as a “titan” who was a “fellow son of downstate.”
“Senator Dick Durbin is a titan who will go down as one of the most effective and dedicated public servants in Illinois history. I am deeply humbled by the encouragement I have received from friends, family members, and community leaders encouraging me, a fellow son of downstate, to run for the U.S. Senate,” Krishnamoorthi said in a statement announcing his candidacy.
