Melania Trump will preside over the United Nations Security Council next week — a decision igniting backlash before it begins.

“First Lady Melania Trump is set to make history at the United Nations, taking the gavel as the United States assumes the Security Council Presidency to emphasize education’s role in advancing tolerance and world peace,” a press release from the Office of the First Lady reads.

“Mrs. Trump’s leadership will mark the first time a sitting U.S. First Lady presides over the Security Council as members consider education, technology, peace, and security.”

An opinion piece at The New Republic says, “While the first lady has shown an interest in children’s welfare, particularly in Russia’s war on Ukraine, it’s hard to imagine her address as any more than a symbolic gesture that will look good in a social media post.”

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U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Mike Waltz, wrote: We are thrilled to have @Flotus gavel in the US Presidency of the Security Council.”

Critics online are blasting the decision.

“Just when you thought they couldn’t disrespect professional, career U.S. diplomats, American diplomacy or international organizations more- they produce this grotesque theatre of the absurd,” wrote former U.S. Ambassador to Jamaica, Luis Moreno.

Associate professor of History Thomas Småberg commented, “I’m a social network scholar with a focus on the Middle Ages and Trump’s uses of family, friends and followers is straight out of medieval aristocracy. It’s so interesting to [see] his abuse of presidential power and his disregard for republicans.”

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President Donald Trump, who has insisted on federalizing voting and who issued an executive order last March to pressure states to require proof of citizenship to register voters, is reportedly now being urged to declare an emergency over voting.

“Pro-Trump activists who say they are in coordination with the White House are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that claims China interfered in the 2020 election as a basis to declare a national emergency that would unlock extraordinary presidential power over voting,” The Washington Post reported in an exclusive.

“President Donald Trump has repeatedly previewed a plan to mandate voter ID and ban mail ballots in November’s midterm elections, and the activists expect their draft will figure into Trump’s promised executive order on the issue.”

According to Florida lawyer Peter Ticktin, who is advocating for a presidential order on voting, “we have a situation where the president is aware that there are foreign interests that are interfering in our election processes.”

“That causes a national emergency where the president has to be able to deal with it,” Ticktin told the Post.

Claiming there is an emergency would allow the president to ban voting by mail and voting machines “as the vectors of foreign interference, Ticktin argued.”

Trump has repeatedly urged Republicans to pass the SAVE Act, which critics say could disenfranchise millions of American citizens who do not currently have a passport or access to their birth certificates. It could also disenfranchise people who have married and changed their names but did not do so on all their legal documents.

“Trump has said that if the bill fails, he will act unilaterally to impose the changes for the midterms,” the Post reported.

Image via Reuters

Controversial Florida legislation is raising alarms over issues including free speech, political persecution, surveillance, and viewpoint discrimination. But the bill’s sponsor says opponents should trust him to alter what critics charge is broad language that could be used to target alleged subversives based on their opinions.

The bill, which advanced in committee on Tuesday, “would allow secretive government surveillance and arrests of Floridians based on views, opinions or actions,” according to the Florida Trident.

The “primary mission” of what would be a new Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) unit “would include the detection, identification, and neutralization of ‘adversary intelligence entities,’ which include a ‘person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat of are inimical to the interests of the this state and the United States of America.'”

The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Danny Alvarez, “told the committee Tuesday that an amendment was in the works addressing concerns that he said had arisen in recent days over dangers the bill posed to free speech and risks of political persecution.”

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Rep. Alvarez says he is “very aware” of the concerns surrounding First Amendment rights. “But just understand, this is going after terrorists, nation state bad actors, not political speech.” He defended the need for the new legislation, citing the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.

“People are looking for boogeymen here,” Alvarez said of the bill’s critics, according to The Intercept.

“There’s no boogeyman. I’m going to strip everything that makes you question it. You just have to trust me to get to the next committee,” he said. “But while you look for boogeymen, I need to be looking for terrorists. I need to prevent the next bomb.”

Alvarez disputed critics’ concerns, telling The Intercept that his bill “does not authorize investigations based solely on speech.”

“Any action must be tied to demonstrable conduct and constitutional standards. The First Amendment remains fully intact, and the unit operates under strong statutory safeguards and oversight.”

But critics see a “civil liberties nightmare in the making that could be used to target Muslims and alleged subversives based solely on their views or opinions, much like the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO program,” The Intercept noted.

Adversary Intelligence Entities

“According to the bill,” The Intercept reports, “adversary intelligence entities” are entities that “include but are not limited to ‘any national, foreign, multinational, friendly, competitor, opponent, adversary, or recognized enemy government or nongovernmental organization, company, business, corporation, consortium, group, agency, cell, terrorist, insurgent, guerrilla entity, or person whose demonstrated actions, views, or opinions are a threat or are inimical to the interests of this state and the United States of America.”

Bobby Block, the executive director of the Florida First Amendment Foundation, “said the bill’s sweeping language leaves open the possibility that the new unit could target people simply based on their views, citing the language about actors who hold views deemed ‘inimical’ to Florida,” meaning harmful or hostile.

“What does that mean? If I’m not a white Christian nationalist, does that mean my views are inimical to the values? It begs a lot of questions,” Block said.

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Image: Official Florida House photo