Another day, another horror, another grim step in Trump's war on humanity itself

It seems appropriate right now to try to clarify one of the most basic questions America is (or should be) struggling with: What does it mean to be a human being?

The confusion is mounting.

Three illustrations:

1. Corporations

Corporations are not human beings. That should be self-evident.

But in 2010, the Supreme Court ruled (in its Citizens Unitedcase) that corporations are the equivalent of “people” under the First Amendment to the Constitution, with rights to free speech.

This ruling has made it nearly impossible for the government to restrict the flow of money from giant corporations into politics. As a result, the political voices — and First Amendment rights — of most real human beings in America are being effectively drowned out.

But in coming years, states will have an opportunity to circumvent Citizens United by redefining what a “corporation” is in the first place.

Absent state charters that empower them to become “corporations,” business organizations are nothing more than collections of contracts — between investors and managers, managers and employees, and consumers and sellers.

In the 1819 Supreme Court case Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, Chief Justice John Marshall established that:

“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible [that] possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it …. The objects for which a corporation is created are universally such as the government wishes to promote.”

Montana is now readying a proposition for its 2026 ballot that would empower organizations that sought to be corporations there to do many things — except to fund elections. (I’ve written more on this, here.)

2. Artificial Intelligence

AI is not human, although it’s becoming increasingly difficult for many real people to tell the difference between “artificial general intelligence” and a real person.

As a result, some real people have lost touch with reality — becoming emotionally attached to AI chat boxes, or fooled into believing that AI “deepfake” videos are real, or attributing higher credibility to AI than is justified — sometimes with tragic results.

In his typically ass-backward pro-billionaire way, Donald Trump has issued an executive order aimed at stopping states from regulating AI. But some governors — most interestingly, Florida’s Ron DeSantis — have decided to establish guardrails nonetheless.

DeSantis is calling on Florida’s lawmakers to require tech companies to notify consumers when they are interacting with AI, not to use AI for therapy or mental health counseling, and to give parents more controls over how their children use AI. DeSantis also wants to restrict the growth of AI data centers by eliminating state subsidies to tech companies for such centers and preventing such facilities from drying up local water resources.

In a recent speech, DeSantis said:

“We as individual human beings are the ones that were endowed by God with certain inalienable rights. That’s what our country was founded upon — they did not endow machines or these computers for this.”

I never thought I’d be agreeing with Ron DeSantis, but on this one he’s right.

Corporations are legal fictions. Human AI is a technological fiction. Neither has human rights. Both should be regulated for the benefit of human beings.

3. Non-Americans and suspected enemies

The third illustration of our current confusion over what is a human being is endemic in Trump’s policies toward immigrants and many inhabitants of other nations, now especially in and around Venezuela.

On Wednesday, a federal agent shot and killed a 37-year-old woman during an immigration raid in Minneapolis. Despite what Trump and Kristi Noem say, a video at the scene makes clear that the shooting was not in self-defense.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz said: “We have been warning for weeks that the Trump administration’s dangerous, sensationalized operations are a threat to our public safety,” adding that it cost a person her life.

ICE agents are arresting and detaining people on mere suspicion that they are not in the United States legally — sometimes deporting them to foreign nations where they’re brutalized — without any independent findings of fact (a minimum of “due process”).

Meanwhile, Trump and Stephen Miller, his assistant for bigotry and nativism, are busy dehumanizing immigrants. For example, Trump describes Somalian-Americans as “garbage.”

Last weekend, the U.S. killed an estimated 75 people in its attack on Venezuela, as it abducted President Nicolás Maduro and his wife. The U.S. has been bombing and killing sailors on small vessels in the Caribbean and off the coast of Venezuela on the suspicion they’re smuggling drugs into the United States — on the vague pretext that they’re “enemy combatants,” although Congress has not declared war.

Trump’s justification for all such killings has shifted from preventing drug smuggling to “regaining control” over oil reserves that Venezuela nationalized 50 years ago.

In all these cases, the Trump regime is violating fundamental universal human rights considered essential to human dignity.

Corporations and AI are not human beings, but people who come to the United States seeking asylum indubitably are human. So too are undocumented people who arrived in the United States when they were small children and have been here ever since. As are our neighbors and friends who, although undocumented, are valued members of our communities.

As are the Venezuelans who have been murdered by the Trump regime.

So, what does it mean to be a human being?

It means the right to be protected from the big-money depredations of giant corporations, and from the emotional lure of AI disguised as a human.

And it means to be treated respectfully — as a member of the human race possessing inherent, inalienable rights.

These are moral imperatives. But America is doing exactly the reverse.

• Robert Reich is a emeritus professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
• Robert Reich's new memoir,Coming Up Short, can be found wherever you buy books. You can also support local bookstores nationally by ordering the book at bookshop.org