Army plans for a potential parade on Trump’s birthday call for 6,600 soldiers, AP learns

https://apnews.com/article/army-parade-trump-birthday-96bb9c8e9af1ef285c56fdc3d1ba4b35

By LOLITA C. BALDOR

Updated 11:49 PM EDT, May 1, 2025

Detailed Army plans for a potential military parade on President Donald Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple thousand civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The planning documents, obtained by the AP, are dated April 29 and 30 and have not been publicly released. They represent the Army’s most recent blueprint for its long-planned 250th anniversary festival on the National Mall and the newly added element — a large military parade that Trump has long wanted but is still being discussed.

The Army anniversary just happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday on June 14.

While the slides do not include any price estimates, it would likely cost tens of millions of dollars to put on a parade of that size. Costs would include the movement of military vehicles, equipment, aircraft and troops from across the country to Washington and the need to feed and house thousands of service members.

High costs halted Trump’s push for a parade in his first term, and the tanks and other heavy vehicles that are part of the Army’s latest plans have raised concerns from city officials about damage to roads.

Asked about plans for a parade, Army spokesman Steve Warren said Thursday that no final decisions have been made.

Col. Dave Butler, another Army spokesman, added that the Army is excited about the plans for its anniversary.

“We want to make it into an event that the entire nation can celebrate with us,” said Butler. “We want Americans to know their Army and their soldiers. A parade might become part of that, and we think that will be an excellent addition to what we already have planned.”

Others familiar with the documents, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans have not been finalized, said they represent the Army’s plans as it prepares for any White House approval of the parade. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

There has been no formal approval yet. Changes to the plans have been made in recent weeks and more are likely.

In a Truth Social post Thursday night that did not mention the June 14 plans, Trump wrote, “We are going to start celebrating our victories again!” He vowed to rename May 8, now known as Victory in Europe Day, as “Victory Day for World War II,” and to change November 11, Veterans Day, to “Victory Day for World War I.”

What would go into the potential Army parade

Much of the equipment would have to be brought in by train or flown in.

Some equipment and troops were already going to be included in the Army’s birthday celebration, which has been in the works for more than a year. The festival was set to involve an array of activities and displays on the National Mall, including a fitness competition, climbing wall, armored vehicles, Humvees, helicopters and other equipment.

A parade, however, would increase the equipment and troops involved. According to the plans, as many as 6,300 of the service members would be marching in the parade, while the remainder would be responsible for other tasks and support.

The Army’s early festival plans did not include a parade, but officials confirmed last month that the Army had started discussions about adding one.

The plans say the parade would showcase the Army’s 250 years of service and foresee bringing in soldiers from at least 11 corps and divisions nationwide. Those could include a Stryker battalion with two companies of Stryker vehicles, a tank battalion and two companies of tanks, an infantry battalion with Bradley vehicles, Paladin artillery vehicles, Howitzers and infantry vehicles.

There would be seven Army bands and a parachute jump by the Golden Knights. And documents suggest that civilian participants would include historical vehicles and aircraft and two bands, along with people from veterans groups, military colleges and reenactor organizations.

According to the plan, the parade would be classified as a national special security event, and that request has been submitted by the National Park Service and is under review.

And it is expected that the evening parade would be followed by a concert and fireworks.

One of the documents raises concerns about some limitations, which include where troops would be housed and “significant concerns regarding security requirements” as equipment flows into the city. It says the biggest unknown so far is which units would be participating.

Trump has long wanted a big military parade

In his first term, Trump proposed having a parade after seeing one in France on Bastille Day in 2017. Trump said that after watching the two-hour procession along the famed Champs-Elysees that he wanted an even grander one on Pennsylvania Avenue.

That plan was ultimately dumped due to the huge costs — with one estimate of a $92 million price tag — and other logistical issues. Among those were objections from city officials who said including tanks and other heavy armored vehicles would tear up the roads.

Trump said in a social media post in 2018 that he was canceling the event over the costs and accused local politicians of price gouging.

This year, as plans progressed for the Army to host its birthday festival in Washington, talk about a parade began anew.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser acknowledged in April that the administration reached out to the city about holding a parade on June 14 that would stretch from Arlington, Virginia, where the Pentagon and Arlington National Cemetery are located, across the Potomac River and into Washington.

Bowser at the time said she didn’t know if the event was being “characterized as a military parade” but added that tanks rolling through the city’s streets “would not be good.”

“If military tanks were used, they should be accompanied with many millions of dollars to repair the roads,” she said.

In 2018, the Pentagon appeared to agree. A memo from the defense secretary’s staff said plans for the parade — at that time — would include only wheeled vehicles and no tanks to minimize damage to local infrastructure.

LOLITA C. BALDOR

Baldor has covered the Pentagon and national security issues for The Associated Press since 2005. She has reported from all over the world including warzones in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria.

New Oklahoma curriculum includes pro-Trump conspiracy theories

Judd Legum

,

Rebecca Crosby

, and

Noel Sims

May 01, 2025

Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (Screenshot/YouTube)

Beginning in the 2025-26 school year, thousands of high school students in Oklahoma will be required to learn about President Trump’s debunked claims that the 2020 election was tainted by fraud. The lesson will not be part of a course on conspiracy theories, but an official component of the new social studies curriculum created by Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R).

The new curriculum includes a section that requires students to “analyze contemporary turning points of 21st-century American society.” That requirement includes the following:

Identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results by looking at graphs and other information, including the sudden halting of ballot-counting in select cities in key battleground states, the security risks of mail-in balloting, sudden batch dumps, an unforeseen record number of voters, and the unprecedented contradiction of “bellwether county” trends.

In March, Walters said the purpose of this section was to teach “students to think for themselves” and “not be spoon-fed left-wing propaganda.” According to Walters, there are “legitimate concerns” about the integrity of the 2020 election that were “raised by millions of Americans in 2020.”

Walters is wrong. There are no “discrepancies” in the 2020 election results that validate the claims of Trump and his allies that the results were fraudulent. The new curriculum is simply an amalgamation of unsupported claims.

There was no “sudden halting” of ballot counting in key states. The counting took an extended period in some states because election officials were legally prohibited from counting early ballots in advance. Mail-in balloting is safe and secure. Large increases in vote totals (“batch dumps”) happen in every election, impact both parties, and are not a sign of fraud. Record turnout in 2020 was not “unforeseen” — it was due to increased engagement related to the pandemic and other factors. And traditional “bellwether” counties are now more conservative than the nation as a whole.

The new curriculum will cost Oklahoma taxpayers at least $33 million.

Oklahoma’s legislature had an opportunity to block the new curriculum. The chairman of the Oklahoma Senate Education Committee, Adam Pugh (R), filed a resolution that would have sent the curriculum back to the Oklahoma State Board of Education for further review. But ultimately, the resolution did not receive a vote.

Moms for Liberty, a far-right activist organization, sent a letter to Republican members of the legislature, praising the new curriculum as “truth-filled, anti-woke, and unapologetically conservative.” They also delivered a warning: “In the last few election cycles, grassroots conservative organizations have flipped seats across Oklahoma by holding weak Republicans accountable. If you choose to side with the liberal media and make backroom deals with Democrats to block conservative reform, you will be next.”

How Walters jammed his new standards through the State Board of Education

Walters’ new social studies standards were approved by the Oklahoma State Board of Education in February. But many members have since said that Walters used deceptive tactics in order to pass new last-minute changes.

Walters did not send the new standards with his additions to the members of the board until 4 p.m. the day before the board’s 9:30 a.m. meeting. This did not give members enough time to read the new standards, which are around 400 pages long. Some of the members said later that they did not even realize that the new standards were different from the earlier version that they had previously reviewed.

The email sent the day before the meeting “subtly indicate[d]” that updates had been made, but did “not provide any specifics,” 2 News Oklahoma reported. In the meeting, Walters did not mention the specific changes. In an April 24 meeting, one of the board members, Chris VanDenhende, asked Walters to provide documents that noted the changes made, but Walters called the request “irrelevant.”

At the February meeting, Ryan Deatherage, a board member, asked to delay the vote so they had time to read the full standards, but Walters “pressure[d] the board to vote that day, indicating a legislative time crunch,” according to 2 News, which attended the meeting. In reality, they had until April to approve the standards. After the February meeting, multiple members of the board stated that they wanted another chance to review the standards, calling Walters’ tactics a “breach of trust,” the Oklahoman reported.

Walters claimed that the last-minute additions to the standards were based on public input. But there is no evidence of this. During a press conference, “a reporter who reviewed an open records request said there were no public comments that suggested adding a standard about election discrepancies,” KGOU reported. Walters responded by arguing that there were “focus groups” and “a lot of discussions that were going on.” But Walters also acknowledged that he was the one who decided to change the content. “Ultimately, it was up to me to make the final decisions of what are we going to put in,” he stated.

Walters also included right-wing activists on the committee that reviewed the social studies standards. The committee would normally involve educators and other experts, but Walters’ committee included Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation; Dennis Prager, the co-founder of PragerU; and right-wing media personalities Steve Deace and David Barton. Only three out of the 10 people on the committee have lived in Oklahoma, according to the Oklahoma Voice.

The Oklahoma Council for Social Studies (OCSS) opposes Walters’ new standards: “OCSS cannot fully support the standards in their current form. Many of the late additions include historically inaccurate content and do not align with the inclusive, evidence-based approach that is essential to high-quality social studies instruction.” The statement also argued that “the manner in which these changes were introduced raises serious concerns, casting doubt on the transparency and integrity of the standards development process.”

More Bible, less Biden

Among the curriculum changes that will soon go into effect is the removal of part of a unit in which students will learn about former President Joe Biden’s administration. The original lesson plan taught students about the “challenges and accomplishments” of Biden’s term, but the new version focuses on challenges and leaves out accomplishments.

The original version said that students should be able to describe economic recovery after the COVID-19 pandemic and bipartisan infrastructure legislation. The new version only asks students to describe “the United States-Mexico border crisis” and “America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, responses to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the Gaza-Israel conflict.”

While Biden’s accomplishments are de-emphasized in the new curriculum, the amount of time Oklahoma students spend learning about Christianity and the Bible will be increased. In December, Walters proudly announced that his new curriculum will increase the number of mentions of the Bible from two to nearly 50 for students starting in first grade. The Bible lessons primarily focus on the influence of Christian values on the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

Students as young as six years old will learn the stories of the Ten Commandments and David and Goliath. By the end of middle school, students will have gone through several lessons on how the Bible’s principles served as inspiration for the American independence movement. In high school, they will be able to take an entire course about early Christians and the history of Christianity.

Despite the new emphasis on the relationship between the Bible and America’s founding, the curriculum does not reference the separation of church and state. Walters and many of the Christian nationalist figures who helped him craft the curriculum have said that the separation of church and state is unconstitutional or a myth.

Shocking Moments You Missed In The Oval Office! | Christopher Titus Bonus Armageddon Update

1st Broadcast of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” Fire Hoses in Birmingham, and More in Peace & Justice History for 5/3

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may3

it is the same … so get over it.

#trans from Liberals Are Cool

Some more news items I want to share. These are only small quotes there is much more to each story if you follow the links

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

The billionaire helped fund an effort to gin up fraud claims against the Democratic donation platform.

Trump’s claim that he can order the Justice Department to investigate a fundraising platform used by his political foes based on vague allegations is part of his ongoing effort to use the government’s powers to target political enemies. It’s not a particularly realistic accusation—the fact sheet claims it’s targeting “straw donor” schemes, in which one person donates on behalf of another. Given the fairly strict limitations on campaign contributions, any straw donor scheme that wants to inject any noticeable amount of money into an electoral system that had $15.5 billion run through it is a great deal of tedious, high-risk work for a scammer.

On the other hand, in the post-Citizens United era, there are plenty of ways to inject unaccounted-for money—even, theoretically, foreign money—into the election. Super-PACs can accept unlimited donations from fairly easy-to-obscure sources, for instance, which makes the idea of anyone using a small-dollar conduit like ActBlue (or the GOP equivalent WinRed) fairly silly.

And notably, the funding for some of Trump’s “data” on an alleged ActBlue “fraud” seems to have come from just such a source: a super-PAC bankrolled by Elon Musk.

Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July Federal Election Commission report did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous-sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors that their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded—accurately or not—by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution.

More at the link above

Israel carrying out ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza, Amnesty says

Amnesty accuses US President Donald Trump of committing a ‘multiplicity of assaults’ on human rights.

Israel is perpetrating a “live-streamed genocide” in Gaza, committing illegal acts with the “specific intent” of wiping out Palestinians, Amnesty International has said.

Israeli forces in Gaza have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention with acts that include “causing serious bodily or mental harm to civilians” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”, the human rights organisation said in its annual report released on Monday.

Israeli air strikes have also frequently hit civilians who were following evacuation orders, while its forces continued to “arbitrarily detain and, in some cases, forcibly disappear Palestinians”, the rights group said.

DOGE has made a big impact on Washington. But government spending is up.

Elon Musk and his shadowy “tech support” team have ripped through Washington, reshaping the government and culling the federal workforce with astonishing speed and scope.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/29/doge-impact-washington-spending-100days-00316587

Nearly a quarter of a million workers have or are expected to leave their federal jobs. That includes more than 112,000 federal workers who have opted into the deferred resignation program, according to a POLITICO analysis of previous reporting and conversations with administration officials. It also includes some 121,000 workers across agencies who have been fired, according to a CNN analysis.

DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants. It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data.

DOGE, after promising $2 trillion in savings, now says it has saved the government $160 billion. But even these reported savings, so far, have not led to any meaningful decline in total government spending this year, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which tracks weekly Treasury data.

In fact, the government has actually been spending more compared to this time last year, the model found.

Total spending rose by 6.3 percent, or $156 billion since Trump took office, compared to the first four months of 2024, said Kent Smetters, a Wharton professor who directs the model. Even when accounting for inflation, the federal government has still added $81.2 billion more spending to its books compared to the same period last year, he added.

AAP Statement on HHS Report Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria

https://www.aap.org/en/news-room/news-releases/aap/2025/aap-statement-on-hhs-report-treatment-for-pediatric-gender-dysphoria/

By: Susan J. Kressly, MD, FAAP, president, American Academy of Pediatrics

“The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is deeply alarmed by the report released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) today on medical care for transgender and gender-diverse individuals and the process that informed its development. For such an analysis to carry credibility, it must consider the totality of available data and the full spectrum of clinical outcomes rather than relying on select perspectives and a narrow set of data.

This report misrepresents the current medical consensus and fails to reflect the realities of pediatric care.

As we have seen with immunizations, bypassing medical expertise and scientific evidence has real consequences for the health of America’s children. AAP was not consulted in the development of this report, yet our policy and intentions behind our recommendations were cited throughout in inaccurate and misleading ways. The report prioritizes opinions over dispassionate reviews of evidence.

Patients, their families, and their physicians—not politicians or government officials —should be the ones to make decisions together about what care is best for them based on evidence-based, age-appropriate care.

We urge government officials and policymakers to approach these conversations with care, humility, and a commitment to considering the full breadth of peer-reviewed research. The AAP remains focused on supporting pediatricians in delivering the best possible care to every child, informed by science and the lived experiences of patients and families. We will continue to support the well-being of all children and access to high-quality care that meets their needs.”

Just No.

What Fresh Hell Is This?

May Day, Original Memorial Day, Emancipation Day, “Mission Accomplished” Day, and Much More, all 5/1 in Peace & Justice History

My annual May Day musical offering. Enjoy!

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistorymay.htm#may1

Two From Werd.io: About An EV, And More

The $20,000 American-made electric pickup with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen

[Tim Stevens at The Verge]

It’s rare these days that I see a new product and think, this is really cool, but seriously, this is really cool:

“Meet the Slate Truck, a sub-$20,000 (after federal incentives) electric vehicle that enters production next year. It only seats two yet has a bed big enough to hold a sheet of plywood. It only does 150 miles on a charge, only comes in gray, and the only way to listen to music while driving is if you bring along your phone and a Bluetooth speaker. It is the bare minimum of what a modern car can be, and yet it’s taken three years of development to get to this point.”

So far, so bland, but it’s designed to be customized. So while it doesn’t itself come with a screen, or, you know, paint, you can add one yourself, wrap it in whatever color you want, and pick from a bunch of aftermarket devices to soup it up. It’s the IBM PC approach to electric vehicles instead of the highly-curated Apple approach. I’m into it, with one caveat: I want to hear more about how safe it is.

It sounds like that might be okay:

“Slate’s head of engineering, Eric Keipper, says they’re targeting a 5-Star Safety Rating from the federal government’s New Car Assessment Program. Slate is also aiming for a Top Safety Pick from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.”

I want more of this. EVs are often twice the price or more, keeping them out of reach of regular people. I’ve driven one for several years, and they’re genuinely better cars: more performant, easier to maintain, with a smaller environmental footprint. Bringing the price down while increasing the number of options feels like an exciting way to shake up the market, and exactly the kind of thing I’d want to buy into.

Of course, the proof of the pudding is in the eating – so let’s see what happens when it hits the road next year.

#Technology

[Link]

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Trump ‘Alarmists’ Were Right. We Should Say So.

[Toby Buckle at LiberalCurrents]

This resonates for me too.

About the Tea Party, the direction the Republican Party took during the Obama administration, and then of Trump first riding down the escalator to announce his candidacy:

“If you saw in any of this a threat to liberal democracy writ large, much less one that could actually succeed, you were looked at with the kind of caution usually reserved for the guy screaming about aliens on the subway.”

And yet, of course, it got a lot worse.

The proposal here is simple:

“I propose we promote a simple rule for these uncertain times: Those who saw the danger coming should be listened to, those who dismissed us should be dismissed. Which is to say that those of us who were right should actively highlight that fact as part of our argument for our perspective. People just starting to pay attention now will not have the bandwidth to parse a dozen frameworks, or work backwards through a decade of bitter tit-for-tat arguments. What they might ask—what would be very sensible and reasonable of them to ask—is who saw this coming?”

Because you could see it coming, and it was even easy to see, if you shook yourself out of a complacent view that America’s institutions were impermeable, that its ideals were real and enduring, and that there was no way to overcome the norms, checks, and balances that had been in place for generations.

What this piece doesn’t quite mention but is also worth talking about: there are communities for whom those norms, checks, and balances have never worked, and they were sounding the alarm more clearly than anyone else. They could see it. Of course they could see it. So it’s not just about listening to leftists and activists and people who have been considered to be on the political fringe, but also people of color, queer communities, and the historically oppressed. They know this all rather well.

#Democracy

[Link]