Opinion
Trump's eugenic horror is about to get the green light — and that's just the beginning
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit regarding the constitutionality of President Donald Trump’s executive order to restrict the right to birthright citizenship. If the Supreme Court rules in Trump’s favor, then children born in the US would be denied citizenship if their parents are undocumented or residing in the country under temporary legal status.
Let’s not mince words here: Trump’s executive order is cruel and xenophobic. Children born of undocumented immigrants or visa holders have committed no crimes. They are not responsible for the circumstances of their birth. There is also no legitimate legal basis. The 14th Amendment is clear:
“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
None of these facts matter to Trump. His administration would readily tear families apart and see children born into a second-class status simply because their births were not to his liking.
This is only the beginning of the cruelty that his birthright ban would unleash. If the Supreme Court rules in his favor, it would pave the way for any president (or wannabe monarch) to redefine citizenship at their discretion. After all, if simply being born in the US is not enough to guarantee citizenship, then what is? Where do we draw the line?
Well, if you’re Trump, then it’s the color line. For the Trump administration, not all babies are created equal. Restricting birthright citizenship is their way of preventing “hundreds of thousands of unqualified people” from acquiring the “privilege of American citizenship.” It is about dissuading the wrong kinds of people from having the wrong kinds of babies.
Sound far-fetched? Well, consider this: Trump, the self-proclaimed “fertilization president” (gross!), has sought to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). As Trump puts it, we want “beautiful babies in this country, we want you to have your beautiful, beautiful, perfect baby. We want those babies, and we need them.”
Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, champions the future of “Trump babies.” Vice President JD Vance literally says he wants “more babies in the United States of America.” The Trump White House insists that they need “growing numbers of strong, traditional families that raise healthy children.”
But, if that’s true, then what is the purpose of Trump’s executive order? If they want more babies to be born in this country, then why push to deny babies their legitimate birthright? It’s because Trump is pro-baby so long as it’s the right kind of baby.
Beautiful, healthy, strong and perfect — those are the babies Trump wants. And those are the babies that, in his view, migrants do not have.
Trump has explicitly said that migrants have “bad genes” that cause them to commit crimes. That they are “not humans, they’re animals.” He has said that migrants from South America, Africa, and Asia are “poisoning the blood of our country” — a view that parallels Hitler’s rhetoric about “blood poisoning” and race mixing. Trump calls Somalis “garbage” and says that “I don’t want them in our country, I’ll be honest with you … their country is no good for a reason.”
He believes this about migrants, and he believes it extends to their children. This pseudoscientific eugenic drivel is at the core of his executive order.
That is the real danger of Trump’s birthright ban. As it stands, birthright citizenship provides a clear-cut metric. Aside from two niche exceptions, if you were born here, you are from here. There’s no loophole to exploit. There’s no definition to reevaluate and abuse. There’s no place for prejudice, discrimination, or bigoted understandings of what it means to be an American. There’s no ambiguity regarding who belongs. The simplicity of birthright is precisely its strength.
It’s also precisely why the Trump administration wants to undo it. Birthright citizenship is a strong barrier against the administration’s most fascist impulses to recreate “the meaning and value of American citizenship.” As he said on the campaign trail, “If I win, the American people will be the rulers of this country again. The United States is now an occupied country.” His current administration similarly claims that Europe faces “civilizational erasure” if it does not restrict migration and preserve its “Western identity.”
If Trump’s mission is, as he explicitly says, to liberate the US and protect Western values threatened by migration, then he won’t stop with the children of undocumented immigrants. Trump cannot be allowed to define who is a citizen. For the good of the nation and for future generations, we cannot let him succeed.
- Jordan Liz is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at San José State University. He specializes in issues of race, immigration and the politics of belonging.
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Two events laid bare a dire reality we face in Trump's national hell
Ten years after Donald Trump first ran for president, he stands at the helm of Titanic America. How did this happen?
No factors were more pivotal than the outlooks and actions of the Democratic Party leadership. Scrutinizing them now is vital not only for clarity about the past, it also makes possible a clear focus on ways to prevent further catastrophe.
Here’s actual history that corporate Democrats pretend didn’t happen:
- 2016: Hillary Clinton offers more of the status quo. Her allies in the Democratic Party pull out all the stops so she can win the party’s presidential nomination. With a big assist from the Democratic National Committee, she prevails over the strong primary challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) — but her campaign trail goes downhill from there. After rallying behind Sanders’s genuine progressive populism, many young people don’t trust the pseudo-populism of Clinton’s campaign. She has earned a millennial problem, and it prevents her from becoming president.
- 2017: Democratic Party leaders can hardly blame themselves or their nominee for the virtually unbelievable circumstance of the Trump presidency. A critical focus on Clinton’s coziness with Wall Street won’t do. Neither will critiquing her thinly veiled contempt for the progressive wing of the party. But blaming Trump’s victory on Russia becomes an obsessive theme.
- 2018: The Democratic leadership is mapping out a battle plan for the midterm elections in November. At the same time, a key priority is to thwart the inside threat posed by progressive forces. Establishment Democrats are keeping a watchful eye and political guns trained on Bernie Sanders.
- 2019: Democrats take control of the House, and a large cast of political characters is off and running for the party’s presidential nomination. Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) are at the left edge, while more than a dozen others jostle for media attention. For elites determined to retain undemocratic power, seeing either Sanders or Warren in the Oval Office would be the worst possible outcome.
- 2020: Early in the year, the economic populism of the Sanders campaign continues to catch fire, while many forces team up to function as fire extinguishers. The Democratic Party establishment acts to smother the grassroots blaze. After Joe Biden’s fifth-place finish in the New Hampshire primary puts his campaign on life support, rescue comes 18 days later from South Carolina, where Biden wins a landslide primary victory — and then several corporate-friendly contenders quickly drop out of the race and effusively endorse him. When Biden clinches the nomination, progressives largely close ranks behind him to defeat Trump. Biden squeaks through.
- 2021: President Biden’s first year includes backing and signing legislation with real benefits for tens of millions of Americans. But his resolve dissipates. Before the end of the year, he abandons Build Back Better legislation that would have been transformational. Notably, Biden withdraws all U.S. troops from Afghanistan in late summer — but overall he opts to fuel militarism, with ever-higher Pentagon spending instead of devoting adequate resources to meet human needs and protect nature. The president goes full speed ahead with “modernization” plans for ever more dangerous nuclear weapons that already have a pre-overrun price tag of $1.7 trillion.
- 2022: Biden relapses into his customary “moderate” political mode, while his capacity to speak coherently weakens. Party discipline, internalized by Democrats in Congress, precludes independent-minded leadership as they begin to proclaim that Biden should run for re-election. Conformity of groupthink and fear of retribution from the White House keep people quiet.
- 2023: A real-life Shakespearean tragedy unfolds as Biden throws down a gauntlet to run for re-election even while his mental frailty becomes more evident. Enablers ignore the party’s base, with polls continuing to show that most Democrats don’t want him to be the next nominee (including 94 percent of Democrats under 30). A common canard — pushed by Biden’s coterie of sycophants — contends that because he defeated Trump once, he’s the best person to do it again; the claim ignores the fact that Trump 2020 represented an unpopular status quo, and Biden 2024 would represent an even more unpopular status quo, as “right track/wrong track” polling makes crystal clear. Soon after Hamas attacks Israel on Oct. 7 and the Israeli military starts its siege of Gaza, Biden begins to further alienate many of his party’s usual voters by massively boosting U.S. military aid as the slaughter of Palestinian civilians escalates.
- 2024: Among top Democrats, denial about Biden’s evident cognitive infirmity grows along with the infirmity itself. Even after Biden’s disastrous debate performance in late June, the political reflex of dissembling prevents him from bowing out for another 28 days. That leaves 107 days for the newly installed nominee Kamala Harris to pick up the pieces before Election Day. At first it seems that she might find ways to depart from coming across as Biden’s yes-woman, but there is no such departure. Nothing epitomizes the Harris campaign’s moral collapse more than her insistence on echoing the Biden line about Gaza while the U.S. continues to arm Israel’s military as it methodically kills Palestinian civilians. In the process, Harris chooses to ignore both human decency and polls showing that far more voters would be likely to cast their ballots for her if she were to come out against sending more armaments to Israel. Electoral disaster ensues.
Last month, two events showed the huge contradiction between the potential for true progressive change and the dire reality of feckless Democratic Party leaders.
When socialist Zohran Mamdani won election as mayor of New York after running as a Democrat, he said: “If there is any way to terrify a despot, it is by dismantling the very conditions that allowed him to accumulate power. This is not only how we stop Trump; it’s how we stop the next one.”
A week later, eight members of the Senate’s Democratic caucus surrendered to Trump, betraying efforts to defend Obamacare and a health-care status quo that still leaves tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. The capitulation meant that the nation’s health-care crisis would get even worse.
Craven and conformist Democratic Party leadership — coloring inside corporate lines while enmeshed with rich backers — hardly offers a plausible way to defeat the Trump forces, much less advance a humane political agenda. Saving the country from autocracy requires recognizing and overcoming the chokehold that Democratic leaders have on the party.
The timeline above is drawn from my new book about the 10-year political descent into the current inferno, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, which is free as an e-book or PDF at BlueRoad.info.
- Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. The paperback edition of his book War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine includes an afterword about the Gaza war.
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Here's why this malignant fool is the last person to deserve a Nobel Peace Prize
Trump recently had his name engraved on the U.S. Institute of Peace — now renamed the “Donald J. Trump U.S. Institute of Peace.” Last week, the White House confirmed the renaming, calling it “a powerful reminder of what strong leadership can accomplish for global stability.”
Actually, it’s a reminder of what a strong malignant narcissist can accomplish when untethered from reality.
On Friday, Gianni Infantino, president of FIFA, the world football league, awarded Trump the first (and likely last) annual FIFA Peace Prize — along with a hagiographic video of Trump and “peace.”
What FIFA has to do with peace is anyone’s guess, but Infantino is evidently trying to curry favor with Trump. (Infantino, by the way, oversaw the 2020 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, defending and minimizing Qatar’s miserable human rights record. He also played a key role in selecting Saudi Arabia to host the 2034 FIFA World Cup, notwithstanding the Saudi murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi.)
Both Trump’s absurd renaming of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the equally absurd FIFA award are parts of Trump’s campaign to get the Nobel Peace Prize — something he has coveted since Barack Obama was awarded it in 2009 (anything Obama got credited with, Trump wants to discredit or match).
Too late for this year. The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to María Corina Machado of Venezuela, “for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” (The prize is awarded annually on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Alfred Nobel’s death, in a formal ceremony at the Oslo City Hall. Trump has his eye on the 2026 prize.)
Ironically, Trump has declared war on Venezuela, without congressional authorization — causing the death so far of at least 87 people bombed by American military jets targeting vessels allegedly carrying drugs into the United States.
Those 87 include two people who barely survived a first bombing, only to be bombed again. (Rep. Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who saw a video of the second strike in a closed-door briefing, told CBS’s Face the Nation that the two survivors “were barely alive, much less engaging in hostilities,” when the follow-up strike took place.)
Trump has designated a Venezuelan criminal group — Cartel de los Soles — as a Foreign Terrorist Organization led by Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Yet analysts have pointed out that the Cartel de los Soles is not a hierarchical group but an umbrella term used to describe corrupt Venezuelan officials who have allowed cocaine to transit through the country.
Could it be that Trump wants access to Venezuela’s vast oil reserves?
He doesn’t seem to be particularly upset about cocaine trafficking. While he’s bombing small vessels in the Caribbean allegedly for smuggling fentanyl into the United States, Trump is pardoning Honduras’ former president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of trafficking large amounts of cocaine into the United States.
Trump is also in the process of giving eastern Ukraine to Vladimir Putin. Steve Witkoff, Trump’s golf pal and itinerant diplomat, has offered Yuri Ushakov, Vladimir Putin’s top foreign policy adviser, a plan for carving up disputed territory in a way likely to appeal to Putin.
As revealed in a transcript of a recent meeting, Witkoff told Ushakov, “Now, me to you, I know what it’s going to take to get a peace deal done: Donetsk and maybe a land swap somewhere.”
Witkoff also advised Ushakov on how Putin can get the best deal for Russia — by having Putin flatter America’s narcissist-in-chief:
”Make the call and just reiterate that you congratulate the president on this achievement [in Gaza], that you supported it, that you respect that he is a man of peace and you’re just, you’re really glad to have seen it happen.”
Ushakov responded:
“Hey Steve, I agree with you that he will congratulate, he will say that Mr. Trump is a real peace man and so-and-so. That he will say.”
While Witkoff has been seeking a “peace” deal in Ukraine by giving Vladimir Putin much of what he wants, Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner have been seeking billions of dollars in business deals with Russia. It’s a brazen conflict of interest.
Witkoff spoke on the record to The Wall Street Journal, characterizing the talks with Russia over oil, gas, and rare-earth minerals as “a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”
Everyone’s thriving, that is, except Ukrainians and those conscripted into the Russian army.
Other potential beneficiaries of the deal include ExxonMobil, along with a Trump donor and college pal of Donald Trump Jr. with the improbable name Gentry Beach. Beach hopes to acquire a 9.9 percent stake in a Russian Arctic gas project.
Meanwhile, Trump has allowed Benjamin Netanyahu to continue bombing Gaza, even after declaring a ceasefire there.
Peace prize? Please.
Trump is taking credit for achieving “peace” between nations that weren’t even at war.
He’s also trying to change the name of the Department of Defense back to the Department of War.
And he’s conjuring up “enemies within” the United States as pretexts for prosecuting political opponents, attacking American universities, and attempting to stifle media criticism of himself and his administration.
According to Alfred Nobel’s will, the Peace Prize is awarded to the person who in the preceding year “shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” Nobel’s will further specified that the prize be awarded by a committee of five people chosen by the Norwegian Parliament.
Memo to the Norwegian Parliament and the Nobel committee: No president in American history deserves the Nobel Peace Prize less than does Donald J. Trump.
- Robert Reich is a 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
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Trump's thug just revealed this cowardly truth about the GOP
When I interviewed Sanho Tree, I wanted to discuss a recent CNN report. Apparently, in 2016, when Pete Hegseth was still a Fox anchor, he said military personnel should refuse to obey unlawful orders.
I wanted to talk to Tree, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, about the hypocrisy of saying one thing when the president is Barack Obama and another when the president is Donald Trump.
That’s mostly what we discussed (see below) — until the last question.
That’s when Tree characterized the September boat bombing as a much bigger deal.
“I think this policy of murdering civilians goes much deeper in this administration … This was a conspiracy to commit murder and that's how it should be investigated.”
I’m putting up front this concept of a conspiracy to commit murder, because of what the Washington Post then reported: details from a meeting in October between congressional leaders and military officials on the killing of suspected drug runners in the Caribbean near Venezuela.
Evidently, the Pentagon did not send any lawyers to explain the legal basis for the boat attacks. (There have been nearly 20 since the first on Sept. 2.) The Department of Defense could not explain the mission’s “strategy or scope.” Leading Republicans complained about receiving more transparency from the Biden administration. Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL), who is chair of the House Armed Services Committee, was critical of the Pentagon’s “secrecy.”
Yet despite the “secrecy,” Adm. Frank Bradley, who was in charge of the Sept. 2 bombing, was expected to tell lawmakers during a classified briefing “that he considered the survivors viable targets, not shipwrecked, defenseless mariners.”
What was the legal basis for his decision that could not be explained by Pentagon lawyers? What was the “strategy or scope” of the mission that could not be explained by Department of Defense officials? Are lawmakers going to accept Bradley’s view or will they demand more?
The Post went on to say that support of Hegseth by GOP congresspeople has “atrophied,” because his “ability to lead the department, some people argued, could be weakened even if Congress ends up clearing him of wrongdoing in the boat strike inquiries.”
It’s still not clear to me why Hegseth is in trouble. After all, he survived the Signal scandal. But the reason might be suggested in three ways.
One is that subsequent strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean did not “kill everybody,” as Hegseth had ordered. According to the Post, “in the strikes occurring since [Sept. 2], the US military has rescued survivors or worked with other countries to attempt doing so.” Someone somewhere decided it was a bad idea to repeat the exercise.
Two is that Hegseth asked the man in charge of military operations in that part of the world to resign. According to a Wall Street Journal report, his argument with Adm. Alvin Holsey “began days after President Trump’s inauguration in January and intensified months later when Holsey had initial concerns about the legality of lethal strikes on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean.”
Reading between the lines, Hegseth wanted Holsey to commit murder.
Holsey said no.
But Adm. Bradley said yes.
And finally, the idea of killing drug runners without due process of law had been in circulation throughout the regime since at least February. That’s when former Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, who is now a federal judge, said authorities shouldn’t bother ceasing drugs at sea anymore.
“Just sink the boats," he said, according to NPR.
“Bove's remarks, which have not previously been publicly reported, suggest at least some members of the administration were considering this policy shift as early as six months before the boat strikes began.”
Put another way: a policy shift away from due process to murder.
When six congressional Democrats with backgrounds in national security came out with a video last month reminding military personnel of their obligation to refuse illegal orders, the response by the White House was excessive even by its own hysterical standards.
Donald Trump suggested that they should be executed for sedition. Hegseth threatened to bring Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who is a retired Navy pilot, back into service in order to court martial him.
But the reaction might have been appropriate if the White House believed the six Democrats had learned about a conspiracy to commit murder and were getting ahead of news about it coming to light.
The Democrats released their video on Tuesday, Nov. 18. Every day since then has brought headlines about illegal orders, putting the Democrats, especially Kelly, in a position of righteous indignation.
The indignation promises to rise even higher. At the classified briefing last week, lawmakers saw video of the first and second strikes on Sept. 2. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, told the New Republic’s Greg Sargent: “It looks like two classically shipwrecked people.”
It is a “highly questionable decision that these two people on that obviously incapacitated vessel were still in any kind of fight,” Smith added.
I said Sanho Tree’s comment about the conspiracy to commit murder was the first thing I wanted to bring to your attention. But the rest of the interview is also important, because it suggests the disgusting belief underlying the conspiracy: that murder is OK when Republicans are the ones doing it.
That’s going to come as a shock to a lot of Americans and every single Republican in the Congress knows it. That explains why some of them are following Sen. Kelly’s lead and getting ahead of future bad news. Hegseth has survived plenty of scandal so far. Can he survive this?
JS: In 2016, Hegseth said the same thing that Mark Kelly and the other Democrats said — that military personnel should not obey illegal orders. Why is it OK when he says it but not OK when Kelly says it?
ST: Hegseth answered truthfully and now he's feigning ignorance so that his new stance comports to the whims of the Mad King. All policies in this administration cater to an audience of one. There is no sign of the old interagency process when stakeholders and agencies come to the table to give their best advice. It's all about kissing Trump's a--.
In his report, CNN's Andrew Kaczynski foregrounded the context. Hegseth made his remarks at the end of Obama's presidency. 'What's changed?' he asked. 'The president,' he said. What's your view on that?
The entire GOP has either reversed gear on their long-held beliefs to align with Trump or they've left the party to become Never Trumpers. It's certainly true in Congress. Marco Rubio is but one example.
Loyalty is at the heart of this. Under Obama, it was loyalty to the Constitution, not to the president. Under Trump, it's loyalty to the president, not the Constitution. Where is the honor in that?
Being craven is not honorable. I can see how one's views may evolve over time (and mine certainly have), but the GOP is doing so many 180-degree reversals in order to not contradict Trump that there can be no honor when it's so deeply rooted in dishonesty.
Because of the difference between what Hegseth said under Obama and what he is saying under Trump, I should point out the obvious color of law for Hegseth. White is legal, thus deserving of loyalty. Black is illegal, thus undeserving of loyalty. Any reaction to that?
Take Trump's attacks on Somalis as a response to an attack by an Afghan refugee. Those countries have nothing to do with each other. Around 90 percent of Somalis in Minnesota are citizens. Republicans call them "illegals" and attack them because they aren't white.
Trump laid out his attack against people of color when he rode down that escalator in 2015. He always links immigrants to crime, the same way Nazis linked Jews to crime. Der Stürmer had a daily column in the 1930s that highlighted crimes committed by Jews. Trump set up a similar office in the White House in January 2017 to publicize immigrant crimes. I outlined his worldview back in 2018.
If Hegseth is forced to resign, how would that affect cabinet members? How would it affect government workers who fear retribution? Seems like the floodgates would open and cabinet members would have targets on their backs? What do you think?
I think this policy of murdering civilians goes much deeper in this administration. Trump started ranting about taking Venezuela's oil in 2017. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller began asking about sinking boats in 2018. In February of this year, Emil Bove said we should “just sink the boats.” They actively sidelined critics and anyone else who raised any concerns. This was a conspiracy to commit murder and that's how it should be investigated.
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A vital struggle just exposed the breadth of this dark Trump threat
If Ukraine ends up capitulating to Russian demands to end the war, give the self-proclaimed peacemaker Donald Trump the lion’s share of the credit. Since he took office, Trump has done nothing but strengthen Russia’s hand while putting Ukraine in its weakest negotiating position.
Trump is far from an honest, impartial broker. He has been a great admirer of Russia’s murderous dictator, Vladimir Putin, for more than a decade, and in 2022 called Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “genius” and “savvy.” Trump has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — thereby putting the U.S. in league with countries including China, North Korea, Cuba, Iran, and Nicaragua.
On the other hand, Trump has treated Ukraine’s courageous president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a minor-nation inferior, someone purely to bully. In 2019, Trump withheld military support from Ukraine for 55 days while trying to extract damaging information from Zelenskyy on political rival Joe Biden. In March this year, Trump berated and humiliated Zelenskyy at the White House.
He has called him a “dictator,” and criticized him for not showing sufficient gratitude for U.S. peace efforts.
Since Trump took office, the U.S. has reversed course on support for Ukraine. Under Biden, commitment to Kyiv was unwavering. Biden harshly condemned Putin, provided essential, reliable military aid, and was a unifying force in ensuring NATO support.
The Trump administration suspended military aid to Ukraine, saying it was “pausing and reviewing” the aid to “ensure that it is contributing to a solution.” Trump has splintered the NATO alliance by going it alone, presenting a pro-Putin peace proposal rejected strongly by European countries and Ukraine. He has put the burden of funding military aid to Ukraine on European allies.
When Trump and Putin met in Anchorage, Alaska, in August, they ostensibly agreed that Putin’s wish list for ending the war would be part of a U.S. peace proposal. This wish list included the industrial-heavy Donbas region of Ukraine becoming a part of Russia, the Ukrainian army reduced significantly, and Ukraine never being allowed to join NATO.
To Ukraine, these demands landed in a 28-point peace proposal like exploding drones.
Naturally, Ukraine rejected the proposal, European NATO nations huddled quickly to reject it, and Trump re-framed the proposal as a starting point for talks. A second, 20-point U.S. proposal was next offered — containing the same poison pills. It was another pro-Putin proposal, aimed at getting Ukraine to capitulate.
As Ukraine refused to meet Russian demands, Trump implied that Zelenskyy was the obstinate party that didn’t want peace and bore responsibility for the war dragging on, by not agreeing to Trump’s Russo-centric peace proposal.
“It takes two to tango,” said Trump — meaning that to end the war, Zelenskyy must dance the Russian polka.
Music to Putin’s ears, Trump has been telling Zelenskyy and the world that Ukraine can’t win, that Russia “has the cards,” and that for Kyiv, fighting on is a lost cause. Trump has put Ukraine in a weakened military and political position, empowering Putin to press the battle with renewed vigor. At some point, Zelenskyy may have no choice but to capitulate and cede a part of his country to Russia. If that occurs, a brutal aggressor will have been rewarded for invading a sovereign nation — with a huge assist from Trump.
Had Trump not been elected, the U.S. no doubt would have continued its commitment to helping defend Ukraine and working within the NATO coalition to put maximum military and economic pressure on Russia. Ukraine would be in a much better place today to sue for a just peace, one that doesn’t reward the invader and that addresses the horrendous atrocities committed against Ukraine and its people.
When Trump was elected in 2025, Putin was given the greatest gift he could ask for since his invasion of Ukraine: an ally in the White House. Putin knew Trump’s loyalty would lie with Russia given Trump’s friendship, his long-time business dealings with Russian banks, and Russian elites’ investments in Trump properties. He also knew that to Trump, Ukraine was a small, dispensable piece of the political puzzle.
Trump’s insatiable quest for a Nobel Prize drives him to seek peace at any cost to Ukraine. In addition, he has accomplished what Putin could never do by himself: splintering the NATO coalition, pitting Trump’s pro-Russian peace efforts against European nations’ pro-Ukrainian works. Thanks to Trump, Putin could now blame NATO for hindering U.S. peace efforts and claim European nations are “on the side of war.”
While Trump is selling out Ukraine, European allies are increasing military aid to help fill the gap left by U.S. disengagement. Unlike Trump, leaders in Germany, France, Britain, Sweden, and Demark, along with Canada and Australia, refuse to turn their backs on an ally in its time of greatest need.
Historically, though imperfect in its efforts, America has been a staunch defender of democratic countries against totalitarian aggression. Under Trump, the U.S. has aided totalitarian aggression against a sovereign democracy by cutting off support essential for an ally’s defense.
If a perfidious land-for-peace appeasement agreement is reached, who would rule out Putin rewarding Trump with a deal providing U.S. access to critical minerals in Russia’s new Donbas region? One filthy hand washes the other.
- Tom Tyner is a freelance editorialist, satirist, political analyst, blogger, author and retired English instructor
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These 6 treacherous Trump lackeys will never be forgotten — or forgiven
The losers in political battles often insist that history will prove them right and their opponents wrong. As comforting a thought as this may be for people licking their political wounds, it is rarely true. History forgets far more than it remembers. Apart from a few major players, even people who gain a degree of prominence in the politics of their time will eventually disappear into the black hole of advancing years. Their victories, defeats, glories, and disgraces — all blown away by the wind of time like dust on their gravestones.
If there is any group today that deserves the censure of history, it is the Republican members of Congress. Faced with the existential threat that President Donald Trump poses to our democracy, their nearly unanimous response has been to worshipfully give him whatever he wants — reducing their role to little more than handmaidens to a would-be tyrant.
These people have been given the honor of serving as representatives in the United States Congress. And all the Constitution asks of them in return is to take and honor an oath to support and defend the Constitution.
One by one, these Republicans raise their right hands and take the oath of office. Then one by one, they quickly throw that oath away.
But as deserving as these Republican politicians are of history’s censure, most will likely escape it. There are just too many of them — 535 total senators and representatives, with approximately 272 of them currently Republican. Trump will, of course, be remembered and judged severely. The same goes for a few prominent congressional leaders. But as for the rest, within a relatively brief time, as measured by the long view of history, they will be forgotten, their sins forever interred with them in their graves.
But for justices of the United States Supreme Court, it is a different story. Unlike the Congress, the Supreme Court is made up of only nine justices. And of those nine current justices, only six have consistently supported Trump’s authoritarian actions. When it comes to the judgment of history, these few justices will have no place to hide and no crowd to be lost in. If they continue to support Trump’s ever-growing list of power grabs, their treachery, and yes it would be treachery, will never be forgotten and certainly never be forgiven.
The origin story of the current far-right Supreme Court majority begins 43 years ago, in 1982, when Ronald Reagan was president and car radios blasted out songs like “Eye of the Tiger” and “I Love Rock and Roll.” That was also the year the Federalist Society was born. Best described as a breeding ground for right-wing judges, it has led a decades-long quest by wealthy conservatives to produce a dependably right-wing Supreme Court.
They knew doing this would take time, and they were prepared to play the long game. The Federalist Society’s core strategy is to embrace and groom conservative law students. With easy access to almost limitless funding from their wealthy conservative patrons, the society has had no need to pinch pennies.
They have helped to establish Federalist Society chapters in law schools across the country, financed scholarships to Federalist Society seminars, arranged social opportunities for student members to meet and converse with prominent judicial conservatives, and much more. Later, after law school, the group works to connect prized prospects with leading right-wing judges for prestigious clerkships, putting them on the path to future judicial appointments of their own.
All six of the current far-right justices have strong connections with the group. They grew up as lawyers in an environment that strongly encourages the use of the law as a weapon to remake America into a far-right paradise. These six far-right justices are called conservatives, but this is true only in the political sense of the word. They are anything but conservative in the judicial sense.
Traditional judicial conservatism is based upon things like respect for precedent and a commitment to judicial restraint, neither of which in any way describes the actions of these six justices. Not only have they repeatedly overruled well-established precedents, they have shown no consistent judicial philosophy in doing so. And even when they do purport to follow a particular judicial philosophy, such as originalism, it is often little more than a smokescreen.
One “good” example from an earlier time is District of Columbia v. Heller, decided in 2008, in which the Supreme Court, for the first time, held that the Second Amendment creates a private right to gun possession. In writing the majority opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia claimed to follow an originalist view of the Constitution and that history supported this view. The audaciousness of this claim led to a number of conservative as well as liberal constitutional scholars rejecting the court’s rationale.
Even then, it was the political result that mattered, not the jurisprudence. This court isn’t about judicial philosophy and legal principles. It is about the raw application of power for political ends — political ends that are largely contrary to the preferences of a majority of the American public.
But then, why would it be otherwise? Does anyone believe that the small collection of massively wealthy families who funded this conservative judicial revolution did so out of concern for judicial philosophy? Of course not. These wealthy families spent their hard-earned money — or perhaps more accurately in many cases their hard-inherited money — for concrete political ends. They wanted to increase their wealth and power even further by reducing government regulation, destroying labor unions, cutting worker protections, ending government protection of the environment, force feeding right-wing religious dogma, and the rest of the fat catalog of the daydreams of the greed-is-good crowd.
And if these ends can best be achieved by flushing functioning democracy down the toilet, they will shed few tears. And if one is to judge by their actions since Trump returned to the presidency, the current right-wing justices seem ready to drive the train.
But there is a tenuous basis for hope. One characteristic shared by almost all Supreme Court justices is a profound concern over their historical legacy. These are smart people. Even living within the isolating fog of the far-right, at least a few of these justices must recognize they are dancing with a legacy of infamy. If defending democracy and the constitutional separation of power is not enough to motivate them to push back against Trump’s authoritarian actions, perhaps their certain condemnation by history will be.
The Dred Scott opinion was handed down almost 170 years ago, but the shame of the decision hasn’t lessened with time. The primary legacy Chief Justice Roger B. Taney left behind was a full-throated defense of the evil of slavery and racism. And that is how history remembers and damns him.
Few things are guaranteed in this world, but one thing seems certain. If the Supreme Court majority continues down the road of aiding and abetting Trump’s quest for dictatorial power, they are inviting an infamy far worse than Taney’s.
This is something the six justices should remember, because history will never forget.
- Steven Day practices law in Wichita, Kansas and is the author of The Patriot's Grill, a novel about a future America in which democracy no longer exists, but might still return.
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These hideous embarrassments show Republicans are staggering
The Kansas Republican Party has pickled itself in a brackish brine of racism, homophobia and intolerance.
Officials can dissemble all they want, but the party can’t hope to represent everyday Kansans while tasting so sour. Poorly canned pickles can give you botulism, remember.
This distasteful metaphor suggested itself as the party staggered from embarrassment to embarrassment in recent months. You’ll recall the racist and white supremacist texts shared by young Republicans. GOP officials condemned the rhetoric. But on Nov. 28, the state party’s social media accounts posted a screed against Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly from Ellis County GOP chairman Adam Peters.
Kansas Reflector readers might remember him as a central figure in our 2023 Church and State series. In recordings obtained by Kansas Reflector, Peters called for turning Kansas into a conservative sanctuary.
“If you can make it hostile to that group of people, that small sliver of society, and have them move elsewhere, that does a huge amount to shut this down,” he said of liberal Kansans.
While decrying “Antifa tactics,” Peters also told his audience: “We need to use the tools that are at our disposal. You know, if we look in scripture, there was a time when the nation of Israel had to take up arms in defense of themselves.”
He offered an offensive jumble of takes about race, suggesting all humans shared a common ancestry while saying “the main reason why Black suspects are disproportionately killed by the police is they disproportionately tried to kill the police.” He hinted that pastors who supported LGBTQ+ people had signed contracts with Satan.
The Ellis County party tried to deny that Peters had made such statements. But they were recorded for all to hear and judge.
No sane party seeking to appeal to mainstream voters would elevate someone like Peters. His apparent beliefs, as reported more than two years ago, should raise alarm bells for anyone. On the other hand, he said mean things about Kelly, so perhaps all was forgiven.
I reached out to state Republican Party Chairwoman Danedri Herbert for comment Friday evening. She didn’t respond by press time.
Meanwhile, one of the young Republicans at the center of the texting scandal made an unwelcome return to public view. The New York Times, of all outlets, elevated William Hendrix in a bewildering profile from Sabrina Tavernise and Georgia Gee. The organization’s former vice chairman used the words “n–ga” and “n–guh” and noted that “Missouri doesn’t like f–s.” I’m not sure why the Times decided to broadcast Hendrix’s self-justifications across the nation. A slow news day, perhaps?
Hendrix, apparently unlike those of us who don’t text racist epithets to one another, just wants to support his family and live his life. The rest of us don’t have the opportunity to have our profiles boosted by the nation’s newspaper of record.
Regardless of my quibbles, state GOP leaders promptly exiled Hendrix and dissolved the Young Republicans after Politico exposed texts. They destroyed his future in the party. Yet just a few weeks later, they elevated Peters, whose comments were made at a public forum and shared throughout the state.
I’ve written this before and I’ll write it again: The Kansas Republican Party cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim to despise discrimination while tolerating a host of hatreds within its ranks.
Don’t believe me? Try Republican condemnation of supposedly homophobic remarks directed toward Rep. Kyler Sweely, R-Hutchison. Its detestation of homophobia lasts until the point when lawmakers are asked to support gay children. The Kansas GOP also opposes racism, until a Black Democrat calls out double standards on the House floor and gets hauled into a disciplinary hearing.
Not all Republicans behave this way or believe these things. That’s what makes it bad.
When I lived for more than a decade in New Hampshire, I knew prominent Republicans. They believed in racial equality. They supported gay rights. They supported fiscal discipline, personal moderation and loathing of income taxes. They would have unhesitatingly purged their beloved party of the kind of vile nihilism you see in Kansas.
I might not have agreed with New Hampshire Republicans’ ideology. But their lack of overt hate sure made them more appealing. I suspect swing voters liked them, too.
The First Amendment still applies, of course. Anyone should feel free to believe anything they want as long as it does not involve physically harming or threatening others. Political parties have the same freedom. However, every one of us has the choice to coddle or confront. If members of your coalition hold offensive and destructive beliefs, you can make it clear they’re not welcome. Republicans can survive and thrive without white supremacists, homophobes and Groypers.
If the Republican brand has truly been pickled beyond palatability, voters can make their own choice. Pick a fresh cucumber and start again.
- Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.
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These signs show Trump's end is imminent — and make him more dangerous than ever
Ten and a half long months ago, America began spiraling in a terrifying direction. We knew Trump was bad; his first term had been a calamity. But few of us were prepared for the catastrophe that awaited us in the second.
Part of it came because Republicans gained control of both chambers of Congress, and Trump was able to intimidate and browbeat them into submitting to whatever he wanted to do.
Now, finally, the ground is shifting.
Some congressional Republicans are turning hawkish on the budget and reject Trump’s zany notion of $2,000 “tariff dividend” checks, as well as his stated desire to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies for two years.
Russian hawks dislike Trump’s love fest with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine.
Nor did they appreciate his happy meeting with Zohran Mamdani.
Or his refusal to release the Jeffrey Epstein files.
Some are demanding to know more about Trump’s and Pete Hegseth’s bombing (and re-bombing) of boats in the Caribbean.
When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) decided to pick up her bigotry and leave Congress, I assumed it was because she had picked a fight with Trump and lost. But other Republican members are threatening to depart too — potentially leaving Trump and his puppet Speaker Mike Johnson without enough votes to stop the Democrats.
Could it be — is it really possible? — that a few congressional Republicans are now feeling their backbones?
Yes — which is enough for other congressional Republicans to realize they, too, have vertebrae.
Why now?
Because the MAGA base that every congressional Republican is so afraid of and solicitous toward is falling apart.
They’re finally seeing Trump for what he is: a man without principle except getting richer and more powerful and engraving his name on buildings.
A lame-duck president who said he’d make life better for MAGA starting on “day one” but has made life worse for MAGA by month 10.
He doesn’t even believe in lowering prices. He calls the affordability crisis a “con” job.
Democrats swept last month’s off-year elections and performed better than usual in Tuesday’s House race in a bright-red Tennessee district.
If you’re taking some satisfaction from the MAGA crackup, don’t let your guard down.
It’s when Trump feels he’s in trouble that he does the biggest and craziest things to deflect attention.
So, my friends, beware.
- Robert Reich is a 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
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Trump will be battered by a midterm ferocity — if we can just get rid of these weaklings
Today, I will be typing to you with fire, and helping you deal with the excess hell that is being hand-delivered to us daily by the most lawless, bigoted, corrupt, heartless collection of sub-humans in American history.
I bring you those loaded words, and wonder if I still have somehow underestimated the revolting Republican Party.
I know that you are the true patriots in America who have the guts to pay attention, and then pay a terrible mental price for it. I know that you are the people who can be counted on to rush to the latest political fire, and if necessary use your bare hands to put it out.
I know that you are the people who deserve better than what you are getting both from the party you stand and fight for, and from the one that so obviously and consistently stands against Americans.
Every damn hour we are under steady assault by a repugnant collection of Republican, subservient thugs — a cult of knuckle-dragging hyenas — which are fronted by a gruesome man, who is so completely dead inside, the bile is starting to ooze out of him leaving bandaged hands, swollen ankles, and burnt-orange puddles wherever he was last seen sleeping in public.
The sickly Donald Trump does not have much time left, but then neither does the United States of America.
In fact, the only thing we have in common with this grotesque, abusive monster is that we are all locked in a battle for our survival.
Who’s going to die first? Our country or Trump?
There isn’t a single thing the bought-off Trump, aided by his subservient cult, won't do to end us, as he strangles a never-ending list of enemies, chokes the life out of America, and pockets millions and millions of dollars before he finally takes his last breath.
Our health care, food security, and clean air and water are all under steady assault. Our safety nets are gleefully being pulled from underneath us by lifeless billionaires who can never get enough. Our vote and humans rights are being incinerated. Prices are going up, and a lawless, bought-off conservative Supreme Court is doing everything in its seemingly unlimited power to drag us down.
Our military is being perverted into a partisan tool, and we are steaming toward the breaking point where it will be necessary to ask whether they are with us, or against us.
Trump will not stop until he is convinced he can snap his fat little fingers, and his military will do his heinous bidding. That’s what this is all about, because that is what this was always going to be about when he seized power last year.
This is a takeover, and an attack on a fragile democracy that has survived for centuries, but only because it could trust its president and courts not to unify with the odious intent of dismantling it.
Authoritarianism isn’t some fictional thing, people, it is A THING, and it is happening right in front of our tired eyes.
It is the laziest, most oppressive political system known to man, because it isn’t fueled by enlightenment or better ideas. No, instead it is all about the control by the few over the many, and rammed down our throats with brute force whether we like it or not.
It marches to the monotonous, banging drum of nonstop, state-run propaganda that props up evil, subservient agents in places like our Pentagon, Justice Department, the FBI, and that blasted court ...
You know what I am bringing to you this morning is true, because you have the audacity to pay attention. If you are reading this all-too-sober accounting of our current state, you can plainly see it, feel it, and most importantly: are wondering just what in the hell we are supposed to do about it.
Because if this is our reality, shouldn’t we all be sounding the alarms every chance we get, and supporting each other as we do the work to save the United States of America from itself?
I have great faith in you, dear reader. You give me strength simply by knowing you are out there. By God, there are millions of us, and we are our only chance to put this attack down, and save America.
So now an important question: Do you think the leadership in the Democratic Party is taking all this as seriously as you are?
If you are, we are done for the day. I wish you strength and peace of mind ...
Most of you will know that I am not a party man, because my work as a journalist prevented it, and because after observing political parties and their politicians closely, I trust most of them only as far as I can throw them with my old, tired left arm.
While we the people are fretting, and screaming, and voting, and marching, and hollering, and devouring all the warnings like this one, the leadership of the party we have assigned to save us, is at best badly misreading situation, or at worst, accepting too many horrible realities by the hour, that when piled atop each other will ultimately bury us — and most likely sooner than later.
Right now, like it or not — and man, I absolutely hate it — we are being asked to make the best of our tragic situation in America, while a trio of inaction figures spend the better part of each day rubbing the sleep from their eyes, and reacting instead of taking our righteous fight to the people 24/7.
How is it Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries and Ken Martin have been assigned to lead the Democratic Party in this historic hour of vital resistance?
Why are we STILL accepting this?
Isn’t it clear by now that time and again they have let us down since last year’s horrible elections? Isn’t it clear by now they have proven they are simply incapable of rising up to meet this dire situation?
Look, I don’t hate these men. I don’t even dislike them. I thank them for their service.
But now it’s time they return to the important ranks of the foot soldiers and backbenchers, because they are NOT leaders.
The irony is, we were always invariably going to be better off when we stopped with our absurd idolatry of politicians. It has been a weakness of the Democratic Party my entire professional lifetime, but that makes it no less a reality.
Here’s a fact: Most people simply don’t trust politicians, and that is actually a strength of a thriving Democracy. When one man or woman gains too much power we begin swerving toward what we fought to avoid more than 250 years ago.
Welcome to our current nightmare.
But since we are here, I will readily concede that occasionally, politicians can truly inspire. I have seen these rare folks and been sparked by them. Four come to mind in my lifetime: John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Michelle and Barack Obama.
In action and words, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) is my current favorite.
Lord knows, we have never needed inspiration more.
Schumer, Jeffries and Martin simply aren’t delivering it.
They have proven they lack the guts and talent to make our case to the American people. And making our case to the American people is what needs to be happening from sun up to sun down — from North Carolina to North Dakota — every single day.
We must grab the pulpit and shake it. We need to bring thunder to this war for our survival.
Tell me: When was the last time Schumer did that? As he ever done that?
Now tell me why Jeffries was siding with Trump earlier this week in the pardoning of Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas), who was indicted by the Biden Justice Department on bribery and money-laundering charges. Just last month, Jeffries slammed Trump for being “completely and totally out of control” with these relentless, lawless pardons.
Does Jeffries mean what he says? Too many times I am not sure what the New York Congressman is thinking, and that has become a big, damn problem for such a public figure.
I won’t waste too much of my my breath on the Democratic National Committee (DNC), because its pretty clear they quit really giving a damn the minute they had all our phone numbers, and could just sit back and batter our cell phones with never-ending fundraising requests.
It’s still hard for me to reckon how Ben Wikler didn’t get that job, given what he did to help rescue the Wisconsin Democratic Party from the abyss the past decade or so.
Look, if you told me 13 month ago, coming off the most catastrophic election losses in America history, the Democratic Party wouldn’t change a thing with its Congressional and Senatorial leadership, I would have slapped some self-respect into you.
But here we are with black eyes, because any party that trots out the same losers to lead it after absorbing a thorough beating like the one we got last November can’t respect you if it can’t even be bothered to respect itself …
Nothing, and I mean NOTHING would energize the Left more than putting new, invigorating leadership in place. It would show the party listens, and believes in action, not just empty words. It would invite millions of people in, instead of stiff-arming them away with the same old bulls--- …
CHANGE.
Too many people don’t trust the party, because they don’t think it is listening to them. This simply has to be rectified, because we don’t have any time left.
If we don’t win big next year, we can kiss it all goodbye. There will be no more do-overs. We simply must do EVERYTHING we can to ensure we win.
So one more question before I go: Why do we expect so damn much from ourselves, and so damn little from our leadership?
- (D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and finished up a 30-year career in journalism as the Managing Editor of Stars and Stripes. You can find all his work here.)
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Trump's lies are pushing his rotten foundation to collapse
Young people are furious. A survey released this week by the Harvard Institute of Politics finds that under-30 Americans are “a generation under profound strain” who’ve lost pretty much any confidence in government or corporate institutions.
By a 57 percent to 13 percent margin they told pollsters America is on the wrong track, and only 32 percent agree that the US is a healthy democracy or even one that’s “somewhat functioning.”
Fully 64 percent of young American adults say the system is either in trouble or has completely failed. Pollster John Della Volpe summarized the Institute’s findings:
“Young Americans are sending a clear message: the systems and institutions meant to support them no longer feel stable, fair, or responsive to this generation.”
Which raises the urgent question: How the hell did we get here from the widespread prosperity of the postwar years?
The 1970s were a pivotal decade, and not just because they saw the end of the Vietnam War, the resignation of Richard Nixon, and the death of both the psychedelic hippie movement and the very political (and sometimes violent) SDS, which I had joined. Most consequentially, the 1970s were when the modern-day Republican Party was birthed.
Prior to that, the nation had hummed along for 40 years on a top income tax bracket of 91 percent and a corporate income tax that topped out around 50%. Business leaders focused on running their companies, which were growing faster than at any time in the history of America, and avoided participating in politics.
Democrat Franklin Roosevelt and Republican Dwight Eisenhower renewed America with:
- modern, state-of-the-art public labs, schools, and public hospitals across the nation;
- nearly free college, trade school, and research support;
- enforcement of antitrust laws which produced healthy small and family businesses;
- unions protecting a third of America’s workers so fully two-thirds of us had a living wage and benefits on a single salary;
- an interstate highway system, rail system, and network of new airports paid for with tax dollars that transformed the nation’s commerce.
When we handed America over to Ronald Reagan in 1981 it was a brand, gleaming new country with a prosperous and thriving middle class. Young people saw a lifetime of opportunity ahead of them, and wealthy people were doing well, too.
The seeds of today’s American crisis were planted just ten years earlier, in 1971, when Lewis Powell, then a lawyer for the tobacco industry, wrote his infamous “Powell Memo.” It was a blueprint for the morbidly rich and big corporations to take over the weakened remnants of Nixon’s Republican Party and then seize control of the institutions of America.
Those groups, inspired by Powell, decided to take his advice and infiltrate our universities, create a massive, billion-dollar conservative media infrastructure, pack our courts, integrate themselves into a large religious movement to collect millions of votes, and turn upside-down our tax, labor, abortion, and gun laws.
That effort burst onto the American scene with the 1980 election of Reagan.
By 1982 America was agog at the “new ideas” this newly-invented, billionaire-owned GOP was putting forward. They included radical tax cuts for the rich, pollution deregulation, destroying unions, ending Roe v. Wade, and slashing the support services the New Deal and Great Society once offered citizens (because, Republicans said, feeding, educating, or providing healthcare to people made them “dependent on the government”).
Their sales pitch was effective, so we’ve now had 44 years of Republicans’ so-called Reagan Revolution.
It’s time to simply say out loud — as our young people are yelling at us — that it hasn’t worked. For example:
- Republicans told us if we just cut the top income tax rate on the morbidly rich from the 74 percent it was in 1980 down to 37 percent it would “trickle down” benefits to everybody else because, they said, the “job creators” would be “unleashed” on our economy.
Instead of a more general prosperity, we’ve now ended up with the greatest wealth and income inequality in the developed world, as over $50 trillion was transferred over those 44 years from the bottom 90 percent to the top 1 percent, where it remains to this day. The middle class has gone from over 65 percent of us to fewer than half of us. Because of 44 years of Reaganomics, it now takes two full-time wage earners to sustain the same lifestyle one could in 1980.
- Republicans told us if we just deregulated guns and let anybody buy and carry as many as they wanted, wherever they wanted, it would clean up our crime problem and put the fear of God into our politicians.
“An armed society is a polite society” was the bumper sticker back during Reagan’s time, the NRA relentlessly promoting the lie that the Founders and Framers put the Second Amendment into the Constitution so “patriots” could kill corrupt politicians. Five on-the-take Republicans on the Supreme Court even got into the act by twisting the law and lying about American history to make guns more widely available.
Instead of a “polite” society or politicians who listened better to their constituents, we ended up with school shootings and a daily rate of gun carnage unmatched anywhere else in the developed world. We regularly terrorize young people with active shooter drills; the number-one cause of death for American children (and only American children) is bullets tearing their bodies apart.
- Republicans told us that if we just ended sex education in our schools, purged our libraries of books, and outlawed abortion, we’d return to “the good old days” when, they argued, every child was wanted and every marriage was happy.
Instead of helping young Americans, we’ve ended up with epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and — now that abortion is illegal in state after state — a return to deadly back-alley abortions.
- Republicans told us that if we just killed off Civics and History classes in our schools, we’d “liberate” our young people to focus on science and math.
Instead, we’ve raised two generations of Americans who can’t even name the three branches of government, much less understand the meaning of the Constitution’s reference to the “General Welfare.” And forget about trying to explain to them the difference between Hitler’s fascism, Stalin’s communism, and the modern-day governments of Russia, Hungary, and China. Or what Trump and his cronies are up to.
- Republicans told us that if we cut state and federal aid to higher education — which in 1980 paid for about 80 percent of a student’s tuition — so that students would have “skin in the game,” we’d see students take their studies more seriously and produce a new generation of engineers and scientists to prepare us for the 21st century.
Instead of happy students, since we cut that 80% government support down to around 20% (with the 80% now covered by students’ tuition), our nation is groaning under a $2 trillion dollar student debt burden, preventing young people from buying homes, starting businesses, or beginning families.
While students are underwater, the banksters who own Republican politicians are making billions in profits every single week of the year from these bizarrely non-negotiable student loans, the consequence of legally paid-off legislators (because of Clarence Thomas‘s tie-breaking vote in Citizens United).
- Republicans told us that if we just stopped enforcing the anti-monopoly and anti-trust laws that had protected small businesses for nearly 100 years, there would be an explosion of innovation and opportunity as companies got bigger and thus “more efficient.”
Instead, we’ve seen every industry in America become so consolidated that competition is dead, inflation-causing price gouging and profiteering reign, and it’s hard to find small family-owned businesses anymore in downtowns, malls, and the suburbs. It’s all giant chains, many being sucked dry by hedge funds or private equity as we enter the cancer stage of capitalism. Few family or local businesses can compete against such giants and the door to entrepreneurialism is largely closed to Zoomers.
- Republicans told us that if we just changed the laws to let corporations pay their senior executives with stock (in addition to cash) they’d be “more invested” in the fate and future of the company and business would generally become healthier.
Stock buybacks used to be called felony stock manipulation, but Reagan legalized the practice in 1983. As a result, every time a corporation initiates a stock buyback program, billions of dollars flow directly into the pockets of the main shareholders and executives while workers, the company, communities, and even the businesses themselves suffer the loss.
- Republicans told us that if we just let a handful of individual companies and billionaires buy most of our media, a thousand flowers would grow and we’d have the most diverse media landscape in the world. At first, as the internet was opening in the 90s, they even giddily claimed it was happening.
Now a small handful of billionaires and often-rightwing companies own our major media/internet companies, radio and TV stations, as well as local newspapers across the country. In such a landscape, progressive voices, as young people will tell you, are generally absent.
- Republicans told us we should hand all our healthcare decisions not to our doctors but to bureaucratic insurance industry middlemen who would decide which of our doctor’s suggestions they’d approve for payment and which they’d reject. They said this “pre-approval” process would “lower costs and increase choice.”
Instead, in all of the entire developed world — all the 34 OECD countries on four continents — there are ~500,000 medical bankruptcies a year … and every single one of them is here in America. And now, as Republicans fight to prevent the renewal of Obamacare subsidies, millions — particularly young people working low-wage jobs — will simply be forced to drop health insurance altogether.
- Republicans told us if we just got rid of our unions, then our bosses and the companies that employ them would give us better pay, more benefits, and real job security.
As everybody can see, they lied. And are still lying as hard as they can to prevent America from returning to the levels of unionization (around a third of us) we had before Reagan’s Great Republican Experiment (now only a tenth of us have a union).
- Republicans told us if we went with the trade agreement the GHW Bush administration had negotiated — NAFTA — and then signed off on the WTO, that we’d see an explosion of jobs.
There was an explosion all right; lots of them, in fact, as over 60,000 American factories were blown up, torn down, or left vacant because their production was moved to China or elsewhere. Over 15 million good-paying union jobs went overseas along with those 60,000 factories.
- Republicans told us global warming was a hoax: they’re still telling us that, in fact. And therefore, they say, we shouldn’t do anything to interfere with the profits of their wealthy donors in the American fossil fuel industry and the Middle East.
The hoax, it turns out, was the lie that there was no global warming, a lie that the industry spent hundreds of millions over decades to pull off. By purchasing the GOP, they succeeded in delaying action on global warming for at least three decades and maybe as many as five. That lie produced trillions in profits and brought us the climate crisis that is today killing millions and threatens all life on Earth.
- And then, of course, there’s the biggest GOP lie of them all: “Money is the same thing as Free Speech and corporations are persons with rights under the Bill of Rights.” Five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court told us that if we threw out around 1000 anti-corruption and anti-bribery laws at both the state and federal level so politicians and political PACs could take unaccountable billions, even from foreign powers, it would “strengthen and diversify” the range of voices heard in America.
It’s diversified it, for sure. We’re now regularly hearing from racists and open Nazis, many of them elected Republican officials, who would have been driven out of decent society before the Reagan Revolution. American political discourse hasn’t been this filled with conflict and violence since the Civil War, and much of it can be traced straight back to the power and influence of dark money unleashed by those five billionaire-bought-off Republicans on the Supreme Court.
So now Donald Trump tells our young people that it’s time to make take the next big step — to reject democracy — as the logical outcome of the Reagan Revolution.
He says if we just abandon the rule of law and make him an uncountable emperor for life; punish with prison his political enemies; make women, Blacks, and Hispanics second-class citizens; end immigration for everybody except white South Africans; and forge alliances with dictators around the world, that life in America will become wonderful.
It should shock no one that young people aren’t buying this GOP b------t.
The bottom line is that we as a nation have now had the full Republican experience. We’ve done pretty much everything they suggested or demanded.
And as a result, young Americans are increasingly disgusted when they hear Republicans sermonizing about deficits (that they themselves caused).
Or welfare (that the GOP damaged and then exploited).
Or even whatever these sanctimonious Republicans are calling “faith” these days, be it the death penalty, forcing raped women and pre-teen girls to give birth against the threat of imprisonment, hiding Trump’s association with Epstein and Maxwell, or burning books.
Or having masked secret police kidnap people, including children, off the streets of our cities and throwing them into god-awful hellhole prisons.
Not to mention Trump’s sinister “revenge” campaign against the Americans he sees as his “enemies,” his eliminating pollution controls that protected our environment in exchange for a billion dollars in fossil fuel industry donations, and giving his billionaire donors another massive tax cut, to be paid for by the same next generation who’re protesting against him.
America’s young people are over it, Republicans, and they’re going to reboot this nation to fulfill its potential and promise.
A new, progressive America is being birthed from the ashes of the Reagan Revolution and the GOP and its billionaire owners can’t stop it much longer.
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This sinister pattern shows how Nazis will deploy AI
By Michelle Lynn Kahn, Associate Professor of History, University of Richmond
How can society police the global spread of online far-right extremism while still protecting free speech? That’s a question policymakers and watchdog organizations confronted as early as the 1980s and 90s — and it hasn’t gone away.
Decades before artificial intelligence, Telegram and white nationalist Nick Fuentes’ livestreams, far-right extremists embraced the early days of home computing and the internet. These new technologies offered them a bastion of free speech and a global platform. They could share propaganda, spew hatred, incite violence and gain international followers like never before.
Before the digital era, far-right extremists radicalized each other primarily using print propaganda. They wrote their own newsletters and reprinted far-right tracts such as Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf and American neo-Nazi William Pierce’s The Turner Diaries, a dystopian work of fiction describing a race war. Then, they mailed this propaganda to supporters at home and abroad.
I’m a historian who studies neo-Nazis and far-right extremism. As my research shows, most of the neo-Nazi propaganda confiscated in Germany from the 1970s through the 1990s came from the United States. American neo-Nazis exploited their free speech under the First Amendment to bypass German censorship laws. German neo-Nazis then picked up this print propaganda and distributed it throughout the country.
This strategy wasn’t foolproof, however. Print propaganda could get lost in the mail or be confiscated, especially when crossing into Germany. Producing and shipping it was also expensive and time-consuming, and far-right organizations were chronically understaffed and strapped for cash.
Going digital
Computers, which entered the mass market in 1977, promised to help resolve these problems. In 1981, Matt Koehl, head of the National Socialist White People’s Party in the United States, solicited donations to “Help the Party Enter The Computer Age.” The American neo-Nazi Harold Covington begged for a printer, scanner and “serious PC” that could run WordPerfect word processing software. “Our multifarious enemies already possess this technology,” he noted, referring to Jews and government officials.
Soon, far-right extremists figured out how to connect their computers to one another. They did so by using online bulletin board systems, or BBSes, a precursor to the internet. A BBS was hosted on a personal computer, and other computers could dial in to the BBS using a modem and a terminal software program, allowing users to exchange messages, documents and software.
With BBSes, anyone interested in accessing far-right propaganda could simply turn on their computer and dial in to an organization’s advertised phone number. Once connected, they could read the organization’s public posts, exchange messages and upload and download files.
The first far-right bulletin board system, the Aryan Nations Liberty Net, was established in 1984 by Louis Beam, a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan and Aryan Nations.
Beam explained: “Imagine, if you can, a single computer to which all leaders and strategists of the patriotic movement are connected. Imagine further that any patriot in the country is able to tap into this computer at will in order to reap the benefit of all accumulative knowledge and wisdom of the leaders. ‘Someday,’ you may say? How about today?”
Then came violent neo-Nazi computer games. Neo-Nazis in the United States and elsewhere could upload and download these games via bulletin board systems, copy them onto disks and distribute them widely, especially to schoolchildren.
In the German computer game KZ Manager, players role-played as a commandant in a Nazi concentration camp that murdered Jews, Sinti and Roma, and Turkish immigrants. An early 1990s poll revealed that 39 percent of Austrian high schoolers knew of such games and 22% had seen them.
Arrival of the web
By the mid-1990s, with the introduction of the more user-friendly World Wide Web, bulletin boards fell out of favor. The first major racial hate website on the internet, Stormfront, was founded in 1995 by the American white supremacist Don Black. The civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center found that almost 100 murders were linked to Stormfront.
By 2000, the German government had discovered, and banned, over 300 German websites with right-wing content — a tenfold increase within just four years.
In response, American white supremacists again exploited their free speech rights to bypass German censorship bans. They gave international far-right extremists the opportunity to host their websites safely and anonymously on unregulated American servers — a strategy that continues today.
Up next: AI
The next frontier for far-right extremists is AI. They are using AI tools to create targeted propaganda, manipulate images, audio and videos, and evade detection. The far-right social network Gab created a Hitler chatbot that users can talk to.
AI chatbots are also adopting the far-right views of social media users. Grok, the chatbot on Elon Musk’s X, recently called itself “MechaHitler,” spewed antisemitic hate speech and denied the Holocaust.
Countering extremism
Combating online hate is a global imperative. It requires comprehensive international cooperation among governments, nongovernmental organizations, watchdog organizations, communities and tech corporations.
Far-right extremists have long pioneered innovative ways to exploit technological progress and free speech. Efforts to counter this radicalization are challenged to stay one step ahead of the far right’s technological advances.
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Thanks to one man, Trump has ripped up two centuries of history
By SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, Assistant Professor of Public Policy and Politics, University of Virginia.
When the framers of what became the U.S. Constitution set out to draft the rules of our government on a hot, humid day in the summer of 1787, debates over details raged on.
But one thing the men agreed on was the power of a new, representative legislative branch. Article I — the first one, after all — details the awesome responsibilities of the House of Representatives and the Senate: power to levy taxes, fund the government, declare war, impeach justices and presidents, and approve treaties, among many, many others.
In comparison, Article II, detailing the responsibilities of the president, and Article III, detailing the Supreme Court, are rather brief — further deferring to the preferred branch, Congress, for actual policymaking.
At the helm of this new legislative centerpiece, there was only one leadership requirement: The House of Representatives must select a speaker of the House.
The position, modeled after parliamentary leaders in the British House of Commons, was meant to act as a nonpartisan moderator and referee. The framers famously disliked political parties, and they knew the importance of building coalitions to solve the young nation’s vast policy problems.
But this idealistic vision for leadership quickly dissolved.
The current speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, holds a position that has strayed dramatically from this nonpartisan vision. Today, the leadership role is far more than legislative manager — it is a powerful, party-centric position that controls nearly every aspect of House activity.
And while most speakers have used their tenure to strengthen the position and the power of Congress as a whole, Johnson’s choice to lead by following President Donald Trump drifts the position even further from the framers’ vision of congressional primacy.
Centralizing power
By the early 1800s, Speaker of the House Henry Clay, first elected speaker in 1810 as a member of the Whig Party, used the position to pursue personal policy goals, most notably entry into the War of 1812 against Great Britain.
Speaker Thomas Reed continued this trend by enacting powerful procedures in 1890 that allowed his Republican majority party to steamroll opposition in the legislative process.
In 1899, Speaker David Henderson created a Republican “cabinet” of new chamber positions that directly answered to — and owed their newly elevated positions to — him.
In the 20th century, in an attempt to further control the legislation Congress considered, reformers solidified the speaker’s power over procedure and party. Speaker Joseph Cannon, a Republican who ascended to the position in 1903, commandeered the powerful Rules Committee, which allowed speakers to control not only which legislation received a vote but even the amending and voting process.
At the other end of the 20th century was an effort to retool the position into a fully partisan role. After being elected speaker in 1995, Republican Newt Gingrich expanded the responsibilities of the office beyond handling legislation by centralizing resources in the office of the speaker. Gingrich grew the size of leadership staff — and prevented policy caucuses from hiring their own. He controlled the flow of information from committee chairs to rank-and-file members, and even directed access to congressional activity by C-SPAN, the public service broadcaster that provides coverage of Congress.
As a result, the modern speaker of the House now plays a powerful role in the development and passage of legislation — a dynamic that scholars refer to as the “centralization” of Congress.
Part of this is out of necessity: The House in particular, with 435 members, requires someone to, well, lead. And as America has grown in population, economic power and the size of government, the policy problems Congress tackles have become more complex, making this job all the more important.
But the position that began as coalition-building has evolved into controlling the floor schedule and flow of information and coordinating and commandeering committee work. My work on Congress has also documented how leaders invoke their power to dictate constituent communication for members of their party and use campaign finance donations to bolster party loyalty.
This centralization has cemented the responsibilities of the speaker within the chamber. More importantly, it has elevated the speaker to a national party figure.
Major legislation passed
Some successful leaders have been able to translate these advantages to pass major party priorities: Speaker Sam Rayburn, a Democrat from Texas, began his tenure in 1940 and was the longest-serving speaker of the House, ultimately working with eight different presidents.
Under Rayburn’s leadership, Congress passed incredible projects, including the Marshall Plan to fund recovery and reconstruction in postwar Western Europe, and legislation to develop and construct the Interstate Highway System.
In the modern era, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat and the first and only female speaker, began her tenure in 2007 and held together a diverse Democratic coalition to pass the Affordable Care Act into law.
But as the role of speaker has become one of proactive party leader, rather than passive chamber manager, not all speakers have been able to keep their party happy.
Protecting Congress’ power
John Boehner, a Republican who became speaker in 2011, was known for his procedural expertise and diplomatic skills. But he ultimately resigned after he relied on a bipartisan coalition to end a government shutdown in 2014 and avert financial crises, causing his support among his party to plummet.
Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted in 2023 from the position by his own Republican Party after working with Democratic members to fund the government and maintain Congress’ power of the purse.
Although these decisions angered the party, they symbolized the enduring nature of the position’s intention: the protector of Article I powers. Speakers have used their growing array of policy acumen, procedural advantages and congressional resources to navigate the chamber through immense policy challenges, reinforcing Article I responsibilities — from levying taxes to reforming major programs that affect every American — that other branches simply could not ignore.
In short, a strengthened party leader has often strengthened Congress as a whole.
Although Johnson, the current speaker, inherited one of the most well-resourced speaker offices in U.S. history, he faces a dilemma in his position: solving enormous national policy challenges while managing an unruly party bound by loyalty to a leader outside of the chamber.
Johnson’s recent decision to keep Congress out of session for eight weeks during the entirety of the government shutdown indicates a balance of deference tilted toward party over the responsibilities of a powerful Congress.
This eight-week absence severely weakened the chamber. Not being in session meant no committee meetings, and thus, no oversight; no appropriations bills passed, and thus, more deference to executive-branch funding decisions; and no policy debates or formal declarations of war, and thus, domestic and foreign policy alike being determined by unelected bureaucrats and appointed judges.
Unfortunately for frustrated House members and their constituents, beyond new leadership, there is little recourse.
While the gradual, powerful concentration of authority has made the speaker’s office more responsive to party and national demands alike, it has also left the chamber dependent on the speaker to safeguard the power of the People’s House.
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