ICE: Trump's original mission creeps
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
I'm not a mother but I know Pam Bondi's view of motherhood is truly disturbing
I have yet to be a mother, but I froze my eggs a few years ago, and am thankful to have that choice to have a family of my own one day — a choice that was taken away from a woman in Georgia who was declared brain dead in February, yet kept on life support and forced to carry her fetus until she gave birth this June.
This harrowing situation unfolded because hospital officials feared they'd violate Georgia's law banning most abortions after fetal cardiac activity.
A few years ago, after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, some anti-abortion advocates were taking issue with IVF procedures, citing that destroying unused embryos is equivalent to taking a life.
In May 2025, a car bomb exploded in the parking lot at a fertility clinic in Palm Springs. Upon hearing the news, I immediately felt concern for the individuals who kept their eggs and embryos at this clinic. While no individuals or reproductive materials were harmed, the fear was palpable for me, having stored my own eggs in a Massachusetts clinic. This incident was deemed an act of terrorism, carried out by the perpetrator because of his anti-natalist views — his belief that it is wrong to have children.
What all these stories have in common is the insidious attempt to control women — control our reproductive health, our bodies, whether we live or die. They are only the most recent examples of how women's choices are being systematically stripped away.
Even the way those in power respond shows a disturbing and deeply ingrained narrow view of women and their choices. In response to the Palm Springs incident, Attorney General Pam Bondi stated in a post on X, "Let me be clear: The Trump administration understands that women and mothers are the heartbeat of America. Violence against a fertility clinic is unforgivable."
That sentence, though seemingly innocuous, reveals a troubling worldview. It implies that women are primarily valued as mothers, that our worth as women is intimately connected to our reproductive lives, and our health choices are directly tied to our ability to fulfill this singular role.
Yet there are myriad valid reasons why a woman may never have children: health issues, infertility, personal choice, not finding a suitable partner, or socioeconomic instability, to name a few.
Despite this, the current Trump administration and the conservative faction in our country seem fixated on justifying womanhood solely through the lens of motherhood. This reductive stance is evidenced by Vice President JD Vance's dismissive "childless cat lady" comment, where he questioned the stake of childless individuals in the nation's future, and further underscored by the Trump administration's proposals for “baby bonuses'” and tax-deferred investment accounts designed to incentivize childbirth.
Consider the ripple effects of this narrow perspective.
The overturning of Roe v. Wade has paved the way for states to make abortion illegal or incredibly restrictive, fundamentally stripping women of their agency and bodily autonomy. Once pregnant, in 41 states, a woman's body is now no longer entirely her own, but rather a vessel subject to state control.
The very act of bombing a fertility clinic, while deplorable, was deemed so primarily because a fertility clinic is associated with the creation of babies. The outrage stemmed from the perceived threat to potential motherhood, not necessarily the broader violation of individual liberty or the act of terrorism itself.
This singular focus extends to how women are perceived even in death. The Georgia case forces us to confront a horrifying reality: Even when a woman is brain dead, her bodily autonomy can be overridden in favor of a fetus. Her existence, in this context, is reduced to her reproductive capacity, even in her final moments.
This legal and ethical quagmire highlights how deeply ingrained the concept of women as mere incubators has become in some interpretations of the law.
Individuals should be valued for more than their potential or actual role as mothers.
I do not disagree that motherhood can be a profoundly important and vital aspect of life, and for many, it is. As someone who still hopes to be a mother, it is for me. Yet I do not know the future, and there is a real possibility that I may never have children. Therefore, to define a woman's entire identity and worth by her reproductive capacity is a dangerous reduction, not to mention emotionally charged for individuals such as myself.
Like any human, women are multifaceted beings with diverse aspirations, careers, contributions to society, and personal lives that extend far beyond the biological function of childbearing.
This societal obsession with motherhood as the pinnacle of female existence not only devalues women who choose not to have children or are unable to, but it also places undue pressure on those who do. It limits our collective imagination of what a woman can be and achieve.
We must challenge this pervasive narrative and advocate for a society where women's autonomy, choices, and identities are respected and celebrated in all their diverse forms, irrespective of their maternal status. It is time to assert that a woman's life, and her death, should be her own.
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This gangster move is just Trump's latest disgrace
At least no one can accuse Donald Trump of hiding his agenda.
When Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, showed up Wednesday at Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s corruption trial in Tel Aviv, he hadn’t come to schmooze or testify. He wasn’t distributing evangelical offers of salvation to Jews.
Huckabee came to glower.
And, with his very presence, to deliver a stark reminder to Israelis, and in particular the three judges who would decide Bibi’s fate: The Boss says this whole trial is a witch hunt. You know how much the Boss hates witch hunts, don’t you?
Netanyahu faces charges of “bribery, fraud and breach of trust” for, allegedly, trading regulatory favors to a telecom giant in exchange for good media coverage and receiving as much as $210,000 in gifts after providing favors to well-heeled businessmen, among other counts. Netanyahu denies all the charges.
So does his ally in authoritarianism, Donald Trump.
Among what Trump spewed in a social-media post — repulsive even by his subterranean standards — was this warning:
“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this.”
And, of course, the obligatory all-caps closer: “LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”
“Nice little security package you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.”
Now, the phrase “Let my Bibi go” might somehow get set to Jewish music were it not for the fact that the guy who coined it also famously said, “the only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”
And who is a human trope machine when it comes to lecturing American Jews about “disloyalty” if they don’t vote Republican to protect “your country,” Israel. Hearing about dual loyalty brings back such great memories to us Jews.
But to be fair, Trump hasn’t launched a public anti-Semitic slur in a full two weeks, dating all the way back to July 3 — when he mused about some bankers being “shylocks.”
Trump, who grew up in Queens, claimed with a reportedly straight face that he’d never hear the “word” shylock for Jews. Now, we can all agree that Trump probably didn’t first learn the term from reading William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
But, Mr. President, you don’t remember hearing “shylock” as an antisemitic thing? We’ll take that as a “cognitive decline” defense.
The art of the extortion is where Trump is very much on his game. Dispatching Huckabee bared brazen disrespect for the Israeli judicial system — a passion of Bibi’s, too — and the message wasn’t lost on Haaretz, my choice as Israel’s most reliable source of news pertaining to the U.S.
Under the headline, “Mike Huckabee's Mafioso Move at Netanyahu's Trial Has Trump's Fingerprints All Over It,” Haaretz reported this:
“Huckabee's visit to the Tel Aviv District Court during Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial was an American, Mafioso-like intimidation tactic on a democratic ally's independent justice system for the sake of protecting its political partner…
Beyond the hypocrisy, Trump and Huckabee's advocacy for Netanyahu to be freed from his legal burdens is not driven by a pursuit of justice. Rather, the trial strictly represents a nuisance to broader American policy initiatives: (that they) supposedly rely on Netanyahu's availability as prime minister.”
Trump’s insistence on propping up Netanyahu is hardly novel in the annals of dictator-propping by the U.S., but traditionally that nefarious pastime didn’t involve our allies with democratic forms of government. This situation strikes a personal nerve with Trump. And the convicted felon let the world know:
"Netanyahu is right now in the process of negotiating a deal with Hamas, which will include getting the hostages back. How is it possible that the prime minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a courtroom all day over nothing?"
So it came to pass that Trump dispatched Huckabee much the way that, in The Godfather, Vito Corleone sent his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to Hollywood to persuade studio head Jack Woltz to cast Johnny Fontane in a film. At first, Woltz said no. He would go on to change his mind.
I believe the Israelis watched that movie and surely they remember that scene depicting what happens when at first you don’t do what the boss says.
Something about waking up to your horse’s head.
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I'm no conspiracy theorist but the Supreme Court and Epstein got me thinking
Anyone wanting to understand the brouhaha over Pam Bondi’s refusal to turnover (or even acknowledge) the Epstein files need look no further than what the Supreme Court just did.
In McMahon v. New York, the Supremes gave Trump a simple way to revoke federal spending authorized by Congress: just fire everyone responsible for implementing that spending.
The high court is allowing Trump and Education Secretary Linda McMahon to fire over half the people who work for the Department of Education until there’s a full hearing on the constitutionality of their action. But by then it will be too late to save much of the department.
Note that the Supreme Court made this astounding decision on its so-called “shadow docket” where it doesn’t even have to explain itself (the only record we have is Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent).
No matter that Congress created the Department of Education; apparently, Trump can effectively end it. No matter that Congress in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act prohibits a president from unilaterally refusing to spend money that has been authorized by Congress; apparently, Trump can disregard the Act.
Trump now has unbridled power to repeal federal laws by the simple expedient of firing federal employees who implement them.
Why? How? On what basis? Who’s behind this? We don’t know. We may never know.
Which gets us to the brouhaha over Jeffrey Epstein.
For years, Trump has talked darkly of a “deep state” — a secret cabal intent on destroying America by harming the nation’s children.
Such as, perhaps, six justices who let him shut down the Education Department without even setting out their reasons?
Recall “Pizzagate,” the QAnon conspiracy theory that in 2016 allegedly linked Democrats to a ring of child sex-traffickers. It’s still around but has morphed into a less partisan conspiracy theory involving an alleged worldwide elite of child sex-traffickers.
Jeffrey Epstein and his death fit perfectly. Many right-wing media personalities have posited that the billionaire convict was murdered in prison as part of a cover-up of a sprawling sex-trafficking conspiracy.
Senior Trump administration officials built up great fanfare around the release of the supposed Epstein “client list.”
Even JD Vance accused the government of hiding the list. “If you’re a journalist and you’re not asking questions about this case,” Vance said, “you should be ashamed of yourself.”
But that was back in 2021, before Vance became part of the, um, conspiracy.
In February of this year, Attorney General Pam Bondi acknowledged the existence of Epstein’s client list. She said the client list is “sitting on my desk right now.”
Now the Trump-Vance administration says Epstein’s client list doesn’t exist.
The Epstein case illustrates Trump’s “deep state” no less than does an unsigned “shadow docket” Supreme Court decision allowing Trump to wipe out the Department of Education.
The phrase “Epstein didn’t kill himself” — a rebuttal to the official explanation of Epstein’s death — has taken on a cultural meaning way beyond the facts of the case. It means an unaccountable elite doing evil things in secret.
Trump built his political base on that premise. Once in office, he said time and again, he would expose that unaccountable, secret, evil elite.
No wonder 70 percent of voters believe “law enforcement is withholding information about powerful people connected to Epstein,” including 61 percent of Trump voters. And 58 percent of voters said Trump “maybe was or definitely was” involved in a cover-up.
Conspiracy theories thrive when elites act in secret. I have no idea whether Epstein killed himself or was murdered. But Wired Magazine’s metadata — showing that the FBI’s “raw” surveillance video from the night Epstein killed himself is seemingly missing 2 minutes and 53 seconds — got my attention.
As did the Supremes' bonkers secret decision in McMahon.
And I’m no conspiracy theorist.
After hyping the promised release, a joint FBI and Department of Justice report last week said they had found no evidence of a list — or that Epstein had been murdered — prompting outcry from within MAGA circles.
As Bondi faces heightened scrutiny for her repeated attempts to dodge questions about the Epstein files, Laura Loomer also teased that “there are people in the White House who agree with me that Pam [Bondi] spent too much time on Fox News and her statements were inconsistent and undermined what messaging is today about the Epstein files.”
Other prominent MAGA-aligned supporters of the president have also warned that Trump could see significant damage to his standing among his base if he does not change course.
Sixty-three percent of voters in a Quinnipiac University national poll released Wednesday said that they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the files. Republicans were also nearly split. Just 40 percent said they support how he’s handled the files, with 36 percent disapproving and another 20 percent not offering an opinion.
Mike Flynn — who briefly served as Trump’s national security adviser in his first term — wrote in a lengthy X post on Wednesday that Trump needed to “gather your team and figure out a way to move past this.”
“The roll out of this was terrible, no way around that,” Flynn wrote. “Americans want America to be successful, therefore, WE NEED YOU TO BE SUCCESSFUL.”
Elon Musk — with whom Trump had a blowup fight last month in which Musk accused Trump of being named in the Epstein files — criticized his former boss for trying to paint the whole situation as a hoax.
“He should just release the files and point out which part is the hoax,” Musk wrote on X Wednesday.
The MAGA meltdown over Epstein “could be his Afghanistan going into the fall,” Mark Mitchell, head of polling and operations at Rasmussen Reports, told Steve Bannon Tuesday on his “War Room” podcast
“People are trying to say this isn’t a big deal,” Mitchell said. “People are trying to say nobody wants this Epstein information out. It’s an absolute misdirection. This is horrifying. And if it isn’t corrected, it threatens derailing Trump’s agenda, getting rid of his political capital.”
“This is not about a guy who died in 2019, this is about a representation of two-tier justice and about unaccountable government,” Mitchell told Bannon.
On Wednesday, conservative political commentator John Solomon told Bannon that he had interviewed the president, and that Trump supported the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate elements of the Epstein case as part of a broader look into a supposed deep state conspiracy to punish the Republican Party.
“I think he’s frustrated by all the social media chatter by people who don’t really know what’s in the Epstein files,” Solomon said. “He was very pointed about that, let’s stay focused on the things that matter to the American people. ‘I want the answers to Epstein like everyone’, he said, so let the prosecutor do that.”
The Epstein fiasco also prompted Speaker Mike Johnson to split with Trump on Tuesday, calling for the Department of Justice to release all the information it has on the sex offender in the name of “transparency.”
“It’s a very delicate subject, but you should put everything out there, let the people decide it,” Johnson told conservative commentator Benny Johnson, adding that Bondi should explain her previous claims of having the elusive Epstein “client list.”
Just a day prior, the Louisiana Republican had defended Bondi, choosing to defer to the Trump administration instead of criticizing the attorney general.
But Trump appears to remain unmoved despite growing rebellion within his MAGA cohort.
In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump repeated his claims that the whole ordeal was a “hoax” peddled by Democrats and once again defended Bondi’s handling of the case.
“She’s done very good. She says ‘I gave you all the credible information,’ and if she finds any more credible information, she'll give that too. What more can she do than that?” Trump said, adding that he had “lost a lot of faith in certain people” over their outcry on the administration’s approach to the issue.
- Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com
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Supreme Court's democracy hijack is one step closer to complete
Earlier this month, Louise and I vacationed across several different cities and rural areas in Norway, the country from which my grandfather emigrated to the United States in 1917. The place was immaculate, modern, and, astonishingly, seemed entirely free of homelessness. Official stats say around 3,000 people lack housing across the entire country. That’s about the number you’ll see sleeping on sidewalks in a single Los Angeles neighborhood.
Depending on the city, it looked like half or more of the cars on the road were electric. Norway has mandated that, starting this coming January, all new cars sold in that nation must be zero-emission. Charging stations are everywhere. Already, 89 percent of all new cars sold there last year were fully electric.
But the real eye-opener wasn’t the electric cars or tidy sidewalks; it was the democracy. Norway is a functioning democratic republic, but not in the American sense where billionaires run the show to their own benefit.
It’s a country that practices democratic socialism, a term that causes conniptions among Fox “News” anchors and libertarian think tanks but simply means this: The people vote for leaders who actually implement policies the majority wants.
Sadly, that’s not the case here pretty much at all, at least since the Reagan Revolution. Back here in the United States, six billionaire-corrupted Supreme Court justices just told us that democracy doesn’t matter anymore. That the desires of millions of Americans can be rendered meaningless, especially if billionaires and their puppets want it that way.
Yesterday, this Trump-packed Supreme Court quietly — in an unsigned ruling on their badly-abused so-called “shadow docket” with no public debate and no explanation — handed down one of the most destructive rulings in modern history.
In a 6–3 decision, the justices green-lit Trump’s plan to gut the Department of Education, firing 1,400 people, freezing $6.8 billion in funding, and throwing the constitutional guarantee of equal access to education under the proverbial bus. It also flies in the face of the constitutional requirement that the president “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” by spending money Congress appropriates and keeping open agencies Congress created.
Justice Sotomayor’s dissent was scathing, calling the ruling “indefensible” and warning it would “cripple the federal government’s ability to ensure civil rights are enforced in education.”
The highest court in our land just sided with a twice-impeached, sexual-assaulting, insurrection-inciting president to dismantle the very agency responsible for making sure children with disabilities get accommodations. That Black and Brown, Jewish and Muslim students aren’t systematically discriminated against. That poor children in poor neighborhoods can still get a good education. That people with massive student debt can get some small breaks. That schools have at least some federal oversight.
Compare that to Norway.
While American billionaires are buying legislators and court decisions to keep their taxes low, their subsidies for the fossil fuel industry flowing, and to crush unions, Norwegians are investing in their people.
Nobody in Norway ever goes bankrupt from medical bills. College and trade schools are free. Unions are everywhere, wages are high, and stiff taxes on the morbidly rich ensure that public services like education and healthcare are publicly funded rather than run by greedy corporations and billionaire CEOs.
How do they do it? Why is it so different there compared to here?
Because in Norway, and across most of Europe, democracy is real. Citizens are automatically registered to vote. Elections are free of voter suppression, and dark money is illegal. Politicians are answerable to the people, not to fossil fuel barons or Wall Street banksters.
And so, people can vote for legislators who can actually give them what they want:
- Universal healthcare
- Free higher education
- Robust public transit
- Workers’ rights and living wages
- Climate action, not climate denial
Meanwhile, in America, six corrupt Republicans on our Supreme Court have become an unelected, billionaire-funded wrecking crew that’s gleefully tearing down every public institution that threatens plutocratic rule.
This disparity, this tragedy, is no accident here in our country.
As I’ve written about for years and most recently detailed in The Hidden History of the Supreme Court and the Betrayal of America, it began in the modern era with Lewis Powell’s 1971 Memo, a blueprint for corporate America to seize the courts, media, education, and politics. Nixon rewarded Powell by putting him on the Supreme Court the following year, and the rest is tragic history.
From Buckley v. Valeo to Citizens United, this court and its billionaire benefactors have redefined bribery as “free speech” and legalized the wholesale purchase of politicians. And, of course, Supreme Court justices.
This week’s shadow docket ruling is just the latest in that decades-long march toward oligarchy and, now, dictatorship.
The irony? The majority of Americans want a Norway-style system.
- 66% support Medicare for All
- 58% support free college and student debt cancellation
- 64% support taxing the ultra-rich more heavily
- 60% of workers say they’d join a union if they could
So why don’t we have it?
Because six corrupt Republican Supreme Court justices, and the corrupt rightwing billionaires who bought them and support their lavish lifestyles, won’t let us.
They’ve legalized voter suppression, gutted campaign finance laws, blessed gerrymandering, and are now attacking public education, the very foundation of a functioning democracy.
The lesson of Norway isn’t that the people there are somehow better. It’s that they’ve built institutions that respect the will of the majority and block the power of the morbidly rich. And when their democratic institutions are under threat, they act.
In America, we must do the same.
- End lifetime appointments to the Supreme Court and put in term limits.
- Ban dark money in politics.
- Rebuild public education, not dismantle it.
- Tax the morbidly rich.
- Expand and protect voting rights.
This isn’t a left-right issue; it’s a democracy-versus-oligarchy issue. And this week’s Supreme Court ruling should be a five-alarm fire.
If we want a country that looks more like Norway and less like the feudal state Trump and his bought-off justices envision, we’ve got to fight for it.
The billionaires may have the Supreme Court, the White House, and Congress, at least for now. But we still have the numbers.
And in a democracy, that still means something, if we make it mean something.
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D.C. Republicans are employees, not demigods. We demand answers
Now that America is in the 249th year of our republic, getting ready for the Semiquincentennial celebration next July 4, it is time to consider what kind of a government is forming before our eyes.
Is it a government truly “of the people, by the people, for the people” – or is it now dictum by blunt-force trauma?
What roles will our four Republican representatives in Congress – Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy, Reps. Troy Downing and Ryan Zinke – carry out on behalf of Montanans in the next three-and-a-half years? To this point, all four have adhered to the wishes of President Trump – except for the sale of public lands in the West.
How will these four collaborate in the Senate and House to restore the separation of powers envisioned in the Constitution? Do they care about it? Frankly, at this point we don’t know.
Do they want to return the federal “power of the purse strings” to the House in deciding how much money is spent on different government activities and initiating all spending bills? Will the Senate exercise its shared fiscal responsibilities with the House?
And on tariffs: While Congress has delegated certain authorities to the president, the Constitution explicitly grants Congress in Article I, Section 8, the power to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” placing tariffs squarely within congressional purview. What does our delegation think about the international – and domestic – upheaval caused by Trump’s chaotic approach?
What do our well-educated and gentlemanly representatives think about the level of name-calling from the Oval Office – by historic standards beneath the dignity of the position? And are they supportive of the unfettered actions of retribution against Trump’s perceived enemies?
As Montanans we don’t know because each member of our delegation purposefully chooses not to directly engage us except for carefully arranged and vetted interactions. But these same guys are big players on Fox talk shows and on the “X” platform if you happen to have an account.
It is well known that many Montanans are concerned about the plight of Palestinians caught in devastation reminiscent of World War II, yet our delegation stands with Netanyahu’s government. Are they content have Bebe pound Gaza into oblivion while their only public comment is that they “stand with” him? Again, we don’t know.
Trump said the ongoing immigration roundup would focus on the “worst of the worst,” but ICE data shows 72% of those detained so far have no criminal history. Across the country, we are seeing collateral damage to agriculture, industry, construction, nursing care and the hospitality industry. Might any of our four consider a guest-worker program that would rachet down the national drama and provide workable solutions? Or do they continue to fear the word “amnesty” as a full stop to any discussion?
These are answers we would like to have.
During the upcoming months, we’ll learn the full extent of federal funding hits to Montana on the state budget, education, food and childcare resources, Medicaid as it exists here and the domino effect changes in that program to fall on our rural hospitals. What do our semi-sequestered representatives truly understand about these concerns, or, as it seems, are they just parroting the party line?
May we ask them questions with opportunity for follow-ups?
It is vital for Montanans to also remember that “our guys” are our employees, not demi-gods. When elected each one promised to represent us all – it is our duty to remind them.
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Trump's Red Scare tactics point to dark origins of deportations policy
By Daniel Tichenor, Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon
Nativism, the idea that government must guard native-born Americans from various threats posed by immigrants, has a long history in the United States.
Today, the Trump administration is citing the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, a restrictive measure written by nativist members of Congress decades ago when fears of communism were rampant, to sharply restrict the rights of noncitizens.
Under this law, also known as the McCarran-Walter Act, federal agencies have arrested and detained noncitizens associated with pro-Palestinian protests, reintroduced immigrant registration requirements, and imposed a new travel ban that affects 19 nations.
Since the 1950s, Congress has removed some of this sprawling federal law’s most discriminatory features, such as racist national origins quotas. But other key provisions remain on the books. Now they are the primary legal basis for some of President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration crackdowns.
Foreign policy trumps free speech
In March, the White House invoked the McCarran-Walter Act to justify arresting and deporting Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who participated in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.
Officials pointed to Section 237(a)(4)(C) of the law, which states that any “alien whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”
This has been tried only once before. In 1995, the Clinton administration unsuccessfully sought to use the provision to deport a former Mexican official, Mario Ruiz Massieu, to face charges in his homeland for extortion and obstructing a murder investigation. Ruiz Massieu was later indicted in the U.S. on money laundering charges and died by suicide shortly before his arraignment.
The Trump administration cited the same provision to justify detaining Tufts University doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk in March.
Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s position on the Israel-Gaza war. Surveillance footage of a terrified Ozturk being arrested by masked Immigration Customs and Enforcement agents on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, drew criticism from government officials and civil liberties advocates. In response, Secretary of State Marco Rubio alleged that Ozturk had harmed U.S. interests by supporting “movements that are involved in doing things like vandalizing universities, harassing students, taking over buildings, creating a ruckus.”
Khalil and Ozturk both were released after weeks in detention, pending final resolution of their cases. Their lawyers argue that their clients’ treatment violates free speech protections and that the defendants were punished for expressing their political beliefs.
Monitoring noncitizens
The McCarran-Walter Act also authorizes intrusive registration and tracking requirements for noncitizens who remain in the U.S. for 30 days or longer.
On Jan. 20, 2025, Trump issued an executive order directing the Department of Homeland Security to enforce an “alien registration requirement.” The agency issued a final rule in April requiring all noncitizens over the age of 14 to register and be fingerprinted. Parents or guardians must register noncitizen children under age 14. The rule also requires adult noncitizens to carry “evidence of registration” at all times.
Such policies aren’t new. Noncitizen registration was codified in the Alien Registration Act of 1940, on the eve of U.S. entry into World War II. The law was designed to regulate the foreign-born population and encourage eligible noncitizens to join the U.S. armed forces. Its requirements were written into the McCarran-Walter Act.
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Bush administration created the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which targeted noncitizen males age 16 or older from 25 Muslim-majority countries. It required registrants to submit biometric information, check in regularly with immigration authorities and use specific ports of entry for travel.
The Obama administration suspended this system in 2011 and dismantled it in 2016.
Today, Trump officials say they are simply enforcing long-standing legal authority. A federal judge agreed, ruling on April 10 that the Homeland Security Department could require noncitizens to register and carry documentation.
Travel bans redux
On June 2, Trump announced a new travel ban on foreign nationals from 12 countries, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. The ban draws its authority from the McCarran-Walter Act. Two days later, Trump claimed the same legal discretion to exclude Harvard University’s international students from the U.S.
During his first term, Trump invoked these sections of the law to justify a travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately upheld this action in 2018 by a 5-4 vote in Trump v. Hawaii. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts stated that the travel ban was well within broad powers over immigration granted to the president under the McCarran-Walter Act. He added that the court had “no view on the soundness of the policy.”
Trump’s new ban is more carefully crafted than earlier versions and more likely to withstand legal challenges. But his efforts to use the McCarren-Walter Act to ban international students from attending Harvard face stiff legal headwinds.
On May 22, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem notified Harvard officials that the agency was revoking the school’s certification to participate in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, which grants visas to international students to come to the U.S. In a June 4 proclamation, the White House claimed that foreign students at Harvard had behaved in ways that threatened U.S. national security.
A federal judge in Boston quickly blocked the revocation, holding that it violated core constitutional free speech rights. “The government’s misplaced efforts to control a reputable academic institution and squelch diverse viewpoints seemingly because they are, in some instances, opposed to this administration’s own views, threaten these rights,” wrote Judge Allison D. Burroughs.
The latest step came on July 9, when the Trump administration subpoenaed Harvard for information on its foreign students, including their disciplinary records and involvement in campus protests.
Broad power over noncitizens
Ironically, congressional sponsors of the McCarran-Walter Act were at odds with the White House when the law was enacted in 1952. They overrode a veto by President Harry S. Truman, who thought the law’s nativist ideas were unfitting for a nation of immigrants and global defender of democracy.
However, the expansive executive powers created by this law have endured largely unaltered over time, through waves of immigration reform.
Now they are a boon to the Trump administration’s ambitious immigration crackdown. It’s a telling reminder that repressive old laws can come back to life – even when they don’t reflect the current views of many Americans.
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It’s time to be honest about what caused the Texas floods
More than 120 deaths have been reported, and at least 161 people remain missing after catastrophic floods tore through Central Texas on July 4. The death toll is expected to rise. As communities reel from the tragedy, the question remains: Will anything change?
Over the last 12 months, hundreds of Americans have died in disasters made deadlier and more likely by climate change. Yet, the U.S. government and many state and local leaders continue to deny and otherwise downplay the climate emergency. How many lives will be lost before our leaders confront reality?
Climate-driven catastrophes
The floods in Hill Country, Texas are only the most recent in a devastating string of climate disasters across the U.S. in the last year alone.
In September 2024, Hurricane Helene killed more than 200 in North Carolina and drenched the Southeast with 20 trillion gallons of rain — 50% more than would have fallen without climate change, according to experts.
This January, wildfires swept across Los Angeles, killing 30 people in what were some of the most destructive fires in the city’s history. Fueled by extreme heat, record winds, and historic drought — conditions exacerbated by climate change — the fires were a reminder of the human causes and consequences of global warming and the disasters it fuels. The smoke may lift, but the consequences will linger, reshaping lives and landscapes for years to come.
In March, a deadly tornado outbreak tore through much of the Midwest and South, killing 42 people. It was the largest tornado outbreak ever recorded for the month of March, again, made more likely by a warming climate.
Just two months later, in mid-May, a severe tornado outbreak struck the Midwestern and Southeastern United States, spawning 60 tornadoes and claiming 27 more lives.
Tornadoes emerge from powerful thunderstorms, and climate change is making these storms more frequent and more intense. As the atmosphere warms and holds more moisture, the conditions that fuel tornadoes — like those seen in March and May — are arriving earlier, occurring more often, and leaving more destruction.
Despite the relentless and deadly reminders of climate change, the U.S. administration remains in denial. Just last week, they replaced hundreds of scientists and experts working on the federal government’s flagship climate impacts report with known climate skeptics.
Cost of climate denial
Just a month before the floods, NASA released new research showing a sharp rise in the intensity, frequency, duration, and severity of extreme weather events — including floods — over the past five years. The Texas floods are another example of the devastating extreme weather events fueled by rising temperatures and human-caused climate change.
The fatal Texas flooding began with torrential downpours that overwhelmed the Guadalupe River and its tributaries. In a matter of hours, more than 10 inches of rain fell, causing the river to rise nearly 29 feet in less than an hour. This kind of extreme rainfall has become far more likely in our warming world.
As Andrew Dessler, a climate scientist at Texas A&M University, put it, “Climate change is like steroids for the weather — it injects an extra dose of intensity into existing weather patterns.”
Global temperatures have already risen 1.5°C, on average. Warmer air holds more water vapor, enabling bigger downpours and more intense rainfall. At least 1.8 trillion gallons of rain fell over the impacted area.
Arsum Pathak, director of Adaptation and Coastal Resilience at the National Wildlife Federation, explained it simply: “The atmosphere is like a giant sponge. As the air gets warmer, which is what’s been happening because of climate change, the sponge can hold a lot more water. And then when there’s a storm, the same sponge can squeeze out way more water than it used to.”
In Texas, warmer temperatures mean storms like this one are now up to 7% wetter than during similar storms in the past. The region has experienced a 21% increase in total precipitation on the heaviest rainfall days since the 1950s. These are no longer theoretical risks; they are lived realities.
Blame game
Many politicians and officials have been quick to blame the severity of the flooding on the federal administration’s weakened civil service and cuts to disaster response agencies. It is true that hollowing out of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has left communities less prepared and protected.
But we cannot lose sight of the bigger picture.
A search dog operates at Camp Mystic after deadly flooding in Kerr County, Texas. REUTERS/Sergio Flores
Climate change.
In all the chatter about preparing for extreme weather, “climate change” has barely been uttered by federal, state, or local officials from either political party. Indeed, like challenges to preparedness, efforts to raise climate change as a contributing factor have been met with tired accusations of “politicizing a tragedy.” But as Nobel laureate Paul Krugman rightly argues:
Now is exactly the time to put officials on the spot … if we don’t make an issue of how this happened … nothing will be learned and nothing will change.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dismissed the idea of blame, calling it a word for “losers” before pivoting to football metaphors. But unless climate change becomes part of the game plan, Texans — and all Americans — will continue to lose.
It’s all about climate change
To ignore the fact that global warming amplified this flood is to invite the next storm — wetter, hotter, and deadlier. Every moment we stay silent about climate change, we sink deeper into a fossil-fueled future defined by disaster.
The fossil fuel industry is driving disaster.
The science is undeniable. Greenhouse gases are at their highest concentration in at least 800,000 years, and fossil fuels are their primary driver. 2024 was the warmest year on record, with the global average near-surface temperature 1.55°C above the preindustrial average. The last decade was the warmest ever documented.
Who pays?
The deadly floods in Texas will cause an estimated $18 billion to $22 billion in damage and economic loss. But it won’t be the fossil fuel companies footing the bill. It will be ordinary Texans‚ families already grieving lost loved ones and livelihoods.
As the waters recede, many flood victims will discover they won’t be insured for the damage. Standard homeowners’ insurance doesn’t cover flooding. Separate flood insurance, often prohibitively expensive, isn’t always required, and only a fraction of Texans carry it.
Across the 21 counties included in Gov. Abbott’s disaster declaration, only 10% of homeowners carry federal flood insurance. In Kerr County, the worst-hit area where 95 people died, just 2% of homeowners hold federal flood insurance. In neighboring Kendall County, it is less than 5%.
Homeowners can purchase a separate flood insurance policy from a private insurance provider, but it is expensive and the coverage is limited. It’s not yet clear how many Texas flood victims held separate private flood insurance as an add-on to their homeowners policy.
Frames hang from a wall with flood marks, following flooding at Camp Mystic near Hunt, Texas. REUTERS/Marco Bello
The residents facing the greatest climate-related vulnerabilities, including those living in RVs, mobile homes, or informal housing, face even greater risks. Several RV and mobile home parks in Central Texas were swept away by floodwaters, highlighting how those with the fewest resources are often forced to live in the most dangerous places.
And yet, the insurance industry — an industry that invests billions in fossil fuel companies and underwrites fossil fuel projects —continues to fuel the climate crisis while shielding itself from its financial impacts. Insurers raise premiums, limit coverage, or leave disaster-prone areas altogether, but they remain heavily invested in the fossil fuel economy that’s driving these disasters.
Accountability and action
The tragic loss of life in Texas was undoubtedly fueled by climate change — and climate change is driven by the fossil fuel industry. The fossil fuel industry must be held accountable for its contribution to the floods in Texas — and other fossil-fueled climate catastrophes.
Insurance companies must also be called to account. They cannot claim to be managing climate risk while actively financing and underwriting the industries that create it. State insurance regulators should require insurers to divest from fossil fuel companies and stop insuring fossil fuel projects. And responses to the climate-driven insurance crisis should prioritize the needs of residents on the front line of fossil-fueled climate disasters, not insurers’ bottom line.
Extreme weather events will continue to escalate until we confront their root cause. State and local leaders hold the keys to both prevention and recovery. It’s time for them to face reality and protect the people they serve.
- Conor MacDonald, Financial Strategies Attorney, Charles Slidders, Manager and Senior Attorney, and Lindsey Jurca, Senior Communications Campaign Specialist, work at the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL).
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Alligator Alcatraz: how DeSantis bent the law to build it
The state of Florida has opened a migrant detention center in the Everglades. Its official name is Alligator Alcatraz, a reference to the former maximum security federal penitentiary in San Francisco Bay.
While touring Alligator Alcatraz on July 1, 2025, President Donald Trump said, “This facility will house some of the menacing migrants, some of the most vicious people on the planet.” But new reporting from the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times reveals that of more than 700 detainees, only a third have criminal convictions.
To find out more about the state of Florida’s involvement in immigration enforcement and who can be detained at Alligator Alcatraz, The Conversation spoke with Mark Schlakman, a lawyer and senior program director for The Florida State University Center for the Advancement of Human Rights. He also served as special counsel to Florida Gov. Lawton Chiles, working as a liaison of sorts with the federal government during the mid-1990s when tens of thousands of Haitians and Cubans fled their island nations on makeshift boats, hoping to reach safe haven in Florida.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has characterized the migrants being detained in facilities like Alligator Alcatraz as “murderers and rapists and traffickers and drug dealers.” Do we know if the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz have been convicted of these sorts of crimes?
The Times/Herald published a list of 747 current detainees as of Sunday, July 13, 2025. Their reporters found that about a third of the detainees have criminal convictions, including attempted murder, illegal reentry to the U.S., which is a federal crime, and traffic violations. Apparently hundreds more have charges pending, though neither the federal nor state government have made public what those charges are.
There are also more than 250 detainees with no criminal history, just immigration violations.
Is it a crime for someone to be in the U.S. without legal status? In other words, is an immigration violation a crime?
No, not necessarily. It’s well established as a matter of law that physical presence in the U.S. without proper authorization is a civil violation, not a criminal offense.
However, if the federal government previously deported someone, they can be subject to federal criminal prosecution if they attempt to return without permission. That appears to be the case with some of the detainees at Alligator Alcatraz.
What usually happens if a noncitizen commits a crime in the U.S.?
Normally, if a foreign national is accused of committing a crime, they are prosecuted in a state court just like anyone else. If found guilty and sentenced to incarceration, they complete their sentence in a state prison. Once they’ve served their time, state officials can hand them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. They are subject to deportation, but a federal immigration judge can hear any grounds for relief.
DHS has clarified that it “has not implemented, authorized, directed or funded” Alligator Alcatraz, but rather the state of Florida is providing startup funds and running this facility. What is Florida’s interest in this? Are these mostly migrants who have been scooped up by ICE in Florida?
It’s still unclear where most of these detainees were apprehended. But based on a list of six detainees released by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier’s office, it is clear that at least some were apprehended outside of Florida, and others simply may have been transferred to Alligator Alcatraz from federal custody elsewhere.
This calls to mind the time in 2022 when Gov. Ron DeSantis flew approximately 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts at Florida taxpayer expense. Those migrants also had no discernible presence in Florida.
To establish Alligator Alcatraz, DeSantis leveraged an immigration emergency declaration, which has been ongoing since Jan. 6, 2023. A state of emergency allows a governor to exercise extraordinary executive authority. This is how he avoided requirements such as environmental impact analysis in the Everglades and concerns expressed by tribal governance surrounding that area.
For now, the governor’s declaration remains unchallenged by the Florida Legislature. Environmental advocates have filed a lawsuit over Alligator Alcatraz, and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a decision by a federal judge temporarily barring Florida from enforcing its new immigration laws, which DeSantis had championed. But no court has yet intervened to contest this prolonged state of emergency.
This presents a stark contrast to Gov. Lawton Chiles’ declaration of an immigration emergency during the mid-1990s. At that time, tens of thousands of Cubans and Haitians attempted to reach Florida shores in virtually anything that would float. Chiles’ actions as governor were informed by his experience as a U.S. senator during the Mariel boatlift in 1980, when 125,000 Cubans made landfall in Florida over the course of just six months.
Chiles sued the Clinton administration for failing to adequately enforce U.S. immigration law. But Chiles also entered into unprecedented agreements with the federal government, such as the 1996 Florida Immigration Initiative with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. His intent was to protect Florida taxpayers while enhancing federal enforcement capacity, without dehumanizing people fleeing desperate circumstances.
During my tenure on Chiles’ staff, the governor generally opposed state legislation involving immigration. In the U.S.’s federalist system of government, immigration falls under the purview of the federal government, not the states. Chiles’ primary concern was that Floridians wouldn’t be saddled with what ought to be federal costs and responsibilities.
Chiles was open to state and local officials supporting federal immigration enforcement. But he was mindful this required finesse to avoid undermining community policing, public health priorities and the economic health of key Florida businesses and industries. To this day, the International Association of Chiefs of Police’s position reflects Chiles’ concerns about such cooperation with the federal government.
Now, in 2025, DeSantis has taken a decidedly different tack by using Florida taxpayer dollars to establish Alligator Alcatraz. The state of Florida has fronted the US$450 million to pay for this facility. DeSantis reportedly intends to seek reimbursement from FEMA’s Shelter and Services Program. Ultimately, congressional action may be necessary to obtain reimbursement. Florida is essentially lending the federal government half a billion dollars and providing other assistance to help support the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda.
Florida is also establishing another migrant detention facility at Camp Blanding Joint Training Center near Jacksonville. A third apparently is being contemplated for the Panhandle.
ICE claims that the ultimate decision of whom to detain at these facilities belongs to the state of Florida, through the Florida Division of Emergency Management. Members of Congress who visited Alligator Alcatraz earlier this week have disputed ICE’s claim that Florida is in charge.
You advised Florida Division of Emergency Management leadership directly for several years during the administrations of Gov. Charlie Crist and Gov. Rick Scott. Does running a detention facility like Alligator Alcatraz fall within its typical mission?
The division is tasked with preparing for and responding to both natural and human-caused disasters. In Florida, that generally means hurricanes. While the division may engage to facilitate shelter, I don’t recall any policies or procedures contemplating anything even remotely similar to Alligator Alcatraz.
DeSantis could conceivably argue that this is consistent with a 287(g) agreement authorizing state and local support for federal immigration enforcement. But such agreements typically require federal supervision of state and local activities, not the other way around.
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'Hell is empty': GOP's flood of lies has drowned this basic human truth
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” – William Shakespeare
While the Occupant of the White House has wreaked havoc on the lives and fortunes of immigrant families in Los Angeles, New York, and other sanctuary cities, his MAGA partner in Florida has been working just as diligently to wage war on undocumented immigrants and foreign-born, brown-skinned U.S. citizens.
The DeSantis administration made it unlawful for anyone to transport undocumented immigrants, characterizing that act as human smuggling. Senate Bill 1718 also invalidated drivers licenses issued by other states to undocumented immigrants; orders that hospitals and clinics that accept Medicaid question patients about their immigration status and report these data (without personally identifiable information) to the state; and the law now requires undocumented individuals taken into custody by a law enforcement agency to submit a DNA sample when he or she is booked into a jail, correctional, or juvenile facility.
(The U.S.Supreme Court has for now upheld an injunction against the law pending a legal challenge.)
DeSantis announced in February that the Florida Highway Patrol, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, and the Florida State Guard had entered into agreements to help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement round up migrants.
The latest piece of the anti-immigration dragnet occurred on Tuesday, July 1, when DeSantis officially opened a migrant detention center at little-used airport, deep in the Everglades, slated to house as many as 5,000 migrants awaiting deportation, DeSantis and Trump administration officials told CNN.
Meanwhile, the MAGA Republican Project 2025 blueprint in Florida and nationally is forcing people to choose between paying rent and buying medicines; between purchasing groceries and paying back their student loans. All these leaders are doing, per the authoritarian playbook, is stoking fear among Floridians and Americans about a fake enemy while pursuing health, environmental, and other policies that make people weaker and easier to dominate and oppress.
When President Donald Trump visited the detention center, he gave DeSantis the pat on the head the governor so deeply craves.
Consternation
Establishment of this concentration camp has caused consternation among critics including environmental activists, civil and human rights advocates, immigration supporters, and members of the Miccosukee and Seminole tribes. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity filed a lawsuit before Florida officials opened the facility.
“This site is more than 96% wetlands, surrounded by the Big Cypress National Preserve, and is habitat for the endangered Florida panther and other iconic species,” Friends of the Everglades executive director Eve Samples said in a news release. “This scheme is not only cruel, it threatens the Everglades ecosystem that state and federal taxpayers have spent billions to protect.”
The lawsuit names several federal and state agencies as defendants, including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
The two groups claim in the lawsuit that the division holds no independent authority to construct and manage a correctional facility and that attempting to do so exceeds the scope of authority granted by Florida law.
They also contend “the installation of housing units, construction of sanitation and food services system, industrial high-intensity lighting infrastructure, diesel power generators, substantial fill material altering the natural terrain, and provision of transportation logistics (including apparent planned use of the runway to receive and deport detainees) poses clear environmental impacts” to listed species, wetlands, and surface waters.
Melissa Abdo, regional director of the National Parks Conservation Association Sun Coast, outlined the danger to the fragile wetlands:
“Building a bare-bones tented detention center on hot tarmac in the middle of the Everglades and exposing imprisoned immigrants to the elements is a cruel and absurd proposal,” she said. “The Everglades’ intense heat, humidity, and storms can be hazardous without proper precautions. This facility’s remote, harsh nature could leave people in very real danger, especially as Florida’s heat index skyrockets and hurricane season escalates.
“Development of this scale at this location would require massive changes to an ecologically delicate landscape, including running huge generators, trucking in massive amounts of food and water and trucking out waste. Endangered wildlife, iconic national parks, and Florida’s fresh drinking water supply would be at risk from this ill-conceived plan. Communities and villages that live in the area, as well as the people detained and working at this facility, could all be at serious risk if the need arose to quickly evacuate from a hurricane, using only a single two-lane highway that’s currently under construction.”
Grotesque acts of cruelty
DeSantis, Trump, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, and immigration arch-villain Steven Miller are positively gleeful as they orchestrate these grotesque acts of cruelty.
Just in case you’re unaware of the shamelessness we’re dealing with, consider that the Republican Party of Florida is selling “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise, hats, T-shirts, and other gear.
The White House is unconcerned about the dehumanization of human beings, the optics, or the fact that fewer than 10% of those who have been kidnapped by ICE have committed serious crimes. They love the “cartoonish imagery of a draconian outpost in a wilderness patrolled by razor-toothed reptiles and venomous snakes.”
“The only way out is a one-way flight. It is isolated and surrounded by dangerous wildlife and unforgiving terrain,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Monday. “When you have illegal murderers and rapists and heinous criminals in a detention facility surrounded by alligators, yes, I do think that’s a deterrent for them to try to escape.”
Of course, DeSantis’ spokesman said the governor plans to oppose the lawsuit in court.
“Governor Ron DeSantis has insisted that Florida will be a force multiplier for federal immigration enforcement, and this facility is a necessary staging operation for mass deportations located at a pre-existing airport that will have no impact on the surrounding environment,” said Bryan Griffin in an email. “We look forward to litigating this case.”
Author and MSNBC contributor Brian Tyler Cohen captured the absurdity in a recent Facebook post: “Alligator Alcatraz was built in eight days. It took just over a week to create a massive concentration camp. Remember that the next time those in power claim they can’t house the homeless, feed the starving or provide medical care for the poor. They can. They just don’t want to.”
DeSantis leveraged emergency powers to seize the land the concentration camp sits on and fast-tracked the project under the pretext of attempting to stem “a crisis of illegal immigration.” An executive order allowed the state to award no-bid contracts and begin construction despite the strenuous objections from Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava and local activists.
Amazingly, DeSantis has launched the project during hurricane season, planning on siphoning off $450 million in FEMA money that’s supposed to pay for assistance to residents and handle any potential damage caused by hurricanes during what experts expect to be a busy hurricane season. However, DHS has said in court papers that it neither funded nor authorized the detention center.
Trump has expressed his desire to open these camps around the country, while DeSantis official told CNN in a statement that another site at the Camp Blanding National Guard training center in northeast Florida is also in the works.
Lost in the lies and demonization is that the undocumented are often escaping poverty, political upheaval, gangs, and other challenges in their home countries. All they want is a chance to live their lives, take care of themselves and their families, and be left alone. Instead, they have become political footballs in the cynical political calculus of racist xenophobes like DeSantis, Trump, and Miller.
“When we talk about people as if they’re vermin … The location, the manner in which it’s done, the dehumanizing language … there’s nothing about this detention camp that is not cruel and inhumane,” said Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigration Coalition in a CNN interview.
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This banker embodies the cowardice of elites under Trump
A few days ago, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorganChase, the largest bank in the United States, said at an international forum in Dublin, Ireland, the tax-haven capital of Europe:
“I have a lot of friends who are Democrats, and they’re idiots. I always say they have big hearts and little brains. They do not understand how the real world works. Almost every single policy rolled out failed.”
Failed? Like the Affordable Care Act? Medicare and Medicaid? Social Security? Spending on basic research and infrastructure? On protecting Americans from dread diseases? On protecting workers from death and injury on the job? On protecting the environment?
As distinct from policies rolled out by the Republicans? Such as their subsidies to Big Oil? Their racist attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion? Or Trump’s Big Ugly Bill that will take $1 trillion out of Medicaid, cause over 11 million Americans to lose their health coverage, and increase the national debt by more than $3 trillion — all to cut the taxes of the ultra-wealthy, such as Jamie Dimon?
Why do I even mention Jamie Dimon? Who cares what he thinks?
Well, many people do. He’s the business person the mainstream media turns to for his views on the economy and the direction America is heading.
For years he’s also been the darling of corporate Democrats.
Dimon was the business person Democrats turned to when they needed someone to say (as he did, truthfully) that “40 percent of Americans make less than $15 an hour [and] can’t afford a $400 bill, whether it’s medical or fixing their car,” or that “middle class incomes have been stagnant for years. Income inequality has gotten worse. More than 28 million Americans don’t have medical insurance at all.”
In those days, Dimon was a truth-teller. He also sounded like a Democrat, which he used to claim he was.
Until Donald Trump came along. Then Dimon became a dimon in the rough (sorry).
This morning after JPMorgan Chase’s second-quarter earnings exceeded forecasters’ expectations, Dimon called the economy “resilient” and opined that Trump’s policies were responsible.
“The finalization of tax reform and potential deregulation are positive for the economic outlook,” he said.
Oh, please. Trump’s cockamamie tariffs and his Big Ugly bill could cause the economy to tank within weeks. We learned today that inflation grew in June as the weight of Trump’s tariffs started to affect the economy.
But big banks and their CEOs have reaped a bonanza from high interest rates. They’ll do even better from Trump’s tax cuts and further deregulation of Wall Street.
Yet the real tragedy for America has to do with Dimon himself.
At a time in this nation’s history when our most influential business leaders need to stand up loudly and clearly — for the rule of law, for democracy, for decency, for America’s moral authority in the world, and against Donald Trump — Jamie Dimon is calling Democrats “idiots” and otherwise staying silent in the face of Trump’s cruelty and brutality.
Dimon is the quintessence of Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous admonition: “The silence of the good people is more dangerous than the brutality of the bad people.”
This is how fascism takes root and spreads.
Isn’t it time we held Jamie Dimon accountable? My strong recommendation for those of you who have an account with JPMorganChase is to consider moving your money to another bank headed by someone with more integrity.
- 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
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Trump is testing how far he can go
Trump’s threat to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship is a “test.”
Kids do it all the time. Throw a tantrum in the store demanding cookies and if the parents don’t remove them from the store right away, every visit will see the tantrums escalate. Testing the boundaries. When the test succeeds, the boundaries get moved and a new boundary gets tested, on and on until finally the child’s behavior is so egregious he’s stopped. Or he always gets away with everything and grows up to be Donald Trump.
We learn this early.
We’ve seen a series of these tests coming from the Trump administration, following the very specific and consistently repeated pattern that history tells us played out in the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğon, el Sisi, and pretty much every other person who took over a democracy and then, step-by-step turned it into a dictatorship.
Trump started testing racism as a political weapon when he came down the elevator at Trump Tower and spoke about “Mexican murderers and rapists” in front of what media reports said was a crowd he’d hired for $50/person from a company that provides extras to movie and TV production companies.
While his initial goal was reportedly to get NBC to renew The Apprentice and pay him more than Gwen Stefani, his racism test work out shockingly well; suddenly he was a serious contender for the party that had inherited the KKK vote when Democrats abandoned the South with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in the 1960s.
Another test was whether the exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies that he and his family had used to hustle real estate could work in politics.
He quickly discovered that GOP base voters — after decades of having uncritically (slavishly, even) swallowed lies about trickle-down economics, “evil union bosses,” and the “importance of small government” — were more than happy to embrace or ignore, as the occasion demanded, his prevarications.
From there, Trump tested exactly how gullible his most fervent supporters — and the media that fed them a daily diet of very profitable outrage and hate — would buy into a lie so audacious, so in defiance of both the law and common sense, so outside the bounds of normal patriotism, that they could be whipped into a murderous frenzy and kill three police officers while trying to overthrow the government of the United States of America.
The nation and our press reacted as if he’d failed that test, but when he was able to cow enough senators to avoid being convicted in his impeachment trial, he knew he’d won.
Now he’s again testing how far he can go.
George Retes is a 25-year-old Hispanic natural-born American citizen and disabled Army veteran working as a security guard at a legal marijuana operation in California. When it was raided by ICE, he got in his car and tried to drive away to avoid getting in the middle of what he saw as trouble.
Masked agents chased him down, smashed the window of his car and pepper-sprayed him in the face, dragged him out of his car, and disappeared him.
Testing.
Will Democrats make a stink? Will the media make it more than a one-day story? Will any Republicans break rank and stand against his excesses? Was it even mentioned on any of the Sunday shows? How far can he go next time?
So far, Trump thinks he’s winning these tests. The outrages are coming so fast and furious that it’s becoming impossible to keep track of them, just like in Germany in 1933 and Chile in 1973.
Retes wasn’t the only US citizen who’s been arrested or detained by ICE; they’ve gone after a mayor, a member of Congress, and even assaulted a United States senator.
A 71-year-old grandmother was assaulted and handcuffed by masked agents. Axios documents others; as the CNN headline on the story about other US citizens being snatched notes: “‘We are not safe in America today:’ These American citizens say they were detained by ICE.”
Testing.
After years of hysteria on the billionaire-owned sewer of Fox “News” about our nation’s first Black president deploying “FEMA Camps” to detain white conservatives, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others in Las Vegas, ranting that FEMA Camps set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and...confiscating guns.”
He murdered those innocent concert-goers, he said, to “wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves,” saying, “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”
Now those detention facilities conservatives feared has come into being, as Republicans in Congress just funded concentration camps like “Alligator Auschwitz” in multiple states across America.
Visiting congress members claim inmates are packed over 30 to a cage, with Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz reporting her horror when she was shown that, “They get their drinking water, and they brush their teeth, where they poop, in the same unit.”
Testing.
We recently learned via CBS News from a whistleblower and now-released texts that Trump’s former lawyer and now-nominee for a lifetime federal judgeship, Emil Bove, then working in the Justice Department, advised the administration officials to tell federal courts “fuck you” when they ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvadoran hellhole concentration camp.
For months, the administration appears to have followed his obviously unconstitutional and illegal advice. Republicans want him on the federal bench anyway.
Testing.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia — who Trump official Erez Reuveni said had been deported “in error” — described how he was treated in that El Salvadoran concentration camp, telling his attorneys and the court that he’d been repeatedly beaten, then forced to kneel from 9 pm to 6 am “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion.”
He had committed no crime and was deported in open violation of a federal judge who demanded the plane either not take off or return before landing in El Salvador. The Trump administration simply and contemptibly ignored the court’s order.
Testing.
In a White House visit, Trump told the El Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele (who refers to himself as “the world’s coolest dictator”), that he wants to send American citizens to that country’s torture centers.
“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns,” Trump said as the two men laughed. “You’ve got to build about five more places.”
Testing.
Meanwhile, ICE detention facilities are also holding US citizens like Andrea Velez, 32, who was snatched by masked agents during a raid in Los Angeles. As LA’s ABC News affiliate Channel 7 reported:
“Velez, a marketing designer and Cal Poly Pomona graduate, was arrested Tuesday morning after her family dropped her off at work. According to her attorneys, Velez's sister and mother saw her being approached and grabbed by masked men with guns, so they called the Los Angeles Police Department to report a kidnapping.
“Police responded to the scene near Ninth and Spring streets and realized the kidnapping call was actually a federal immigration-enforcement operation.”
She’s out of the detention facility now, but on $5000 bond; ICE apparently has plans for her future.
Testing.
And now Trump is telling us he wants to strip a natural-born US citizen comedienne — who’s made jokes about him that pissed him off — of her US citizenship, “Because,” he says, “of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
If he can do it to Rosie — if there isn’t furious pushback (and so far, there isn’t) against this latest test — he can do it to me or you.
Hitler gained the chancellorship of Germany in January 1933; by July of that same year, a mere six months later, he’d revoked the citizenship of thousands for the crimes of being “socialists,” “communists,” Jews, or journalists and commentators who’d written or spoken ill of him. Trump appears to be just a bit behind him on that timeline.
Testing.
Trump wants NPR and PBS defunded as soon as possible, having issued an Executive Order to that effect, and has ordered his FCC to launch investigations that could strip major TV networks of their broadcast licenses if they continue to report on him and his activities in ways that offend him. He shut down the Voice Of America, ending America’s promotion of democracy across the world. He kicked the Associated Press out of the White House press pool.
Testing.
Trump has declared large strips of land along the southern border to be federalized territory and put the American military in charge of policing the area, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. That law prohibits the military from performing any sort of police function against civilians.
Testing.
When students spoke out on campus against Trump ally and longtime Kushner family friend Bibi Netanyahu’s murderous assault of Gaza and support for settlers stealing West Bank land from Palestinians, armed and masked federal agents began arresting those students, imprisoning them for their First Amendment-protected speech.
Then Trump went after their universities, bringing several to heel just as Orbán has in Hungary and Putin has in Russia.
Testing.
Yesterday, six Republicans on the Supreme Court said that Trump could wholesale mass-fire employees of the Department of Education, essentially shutting down an agency created and funded by Congress in defiance of the constitutional requirement that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Justice Sotomayor wrote the dissent, flaming in extreme alarm at her colleagues:
“[This decision] hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. … The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”
Or maybe the six Republican justices on the Court are just scared? After all, judges across the country are being threatened, having pizzas delivered to their homes in the middle of the night by way of saying, “We know where you live.” This after U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’s son, Daniel Anderl, was fatally shot at their New Jersey home by a gunman disguised as a pizza delivery driver. Her husband was also shot, but survived.
A few months ago, after one of Trump’s rants against judges who rule against him, Judge Salas told the press:
“Hundreds of pizzas have been delivered to judges all over this country in the last few months. And in the last few weeks — judges’ children. And now Daniel’s name was being weaponized to bring fear to judges and their children. You’re saying to those judges — ‘You want to end up like Judge Salas? You want to end up like Judge Salas’ son?'”
Testing.
What’s next? Will we see Americans who’ve spoken poorly of Trump on social media arrested like both Orbán and Putin do?
Will more students end up on the ground or in jail?
Will more judges be charged with the crime of running their own courtrooms in ways Trump and ICE dislike?
More mayors arrested?
More Democratic senators taken to the ground and handcuffed?
Will Americans start being disappeared in numbers that can’t be ignored? Deported to El Salvador and South Sudan?
Will journalists be destroyed by massive libel suits or imprisoned for what they write?
Will more judges bend to Trump’s will because they’re either terrified or, like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, have apparently become radicalized by Fox “News” or other rightwing propaganda outlets?
The way we all react to these tests will determine Trump’s and the GOP’s next steps. So, what do we do?
President Obama says Democrats need to “toughen up.” While true, it would have been nice to hear “tough” words of outrage, warning, and leadership from him and Kamala Harris over the past six months. And Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
But now — as it was in South Korea when their president tried to end democracy there last year and people poured into the streets and forced the government to act — it’s apparently going to be pretty much exclusively up to us.
See you on June 17th — this Thursday — for some “good trouble.”
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Don't expect Texas to learn lessons of deadly floods
By Ivis García, Jaimie Hicks Masterson and Shannon Van Zandt, Texas A&M University.
The devastating flash floods that swept through Texas Hill Country this month highlight a troubling reality: Despite years of warnings and recent improvements in flood planning, Texas communities remain dangerously vulnerable to flood damage.
The tragedy wasn’t caused just by heavy rainfall. It was made worse by a lack of money for early warning systems, by drainage systems and emergency communication networks that haven’t been updated to handle more intense storms or growing populations, and by the many older buildings in harm’s way.
A 2024 state report estimated the cost of flood mitigation and management projects needed statewide at $54.5 billion. But in Texas, most of that work is left to local governments.
We study disaster planning at Texas A&M University and see several ways the state and communities can improve safety for everyone.
Progress since Harvey
Since Hurricane Harvey devastated the Houston area in 2017, Texas has made strides in flood planning.
The state in 2024 created its first comprehensive flood plan, which identifies flood risks statewide and recommends projects to reduce them. The state now requires all local governments to adopt and enforce flood plain regulations that meet federal standards, enabling residents to purchase federal flood insurance.
The plan represented a major shift for a state government that historically left flood planning to local communities.
However, it also revealed widespread risks: Approximately 5 million Texans live or work in flood-prone areas, and an estimated 1.5 million homes and other structures are in flood plains.
Flood risks are intensifying as Texas experiences more extreme rainfall. State climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon and colleagues at Texas A&M University found that extreme one-day precipitation has increased by 5% to 15% in Texas since the late 20th century, and another 10% increase is expected by 2036.
Rural communities lack resources
The biggest problem for small towns and rural communities isn’t just weak regulations. Many can’t afford to hire specialized staff for technical work such as hazard assessment and regulatory enforcement.
While the state provides planning frameworks, implementation and enforcement remain local responsibilities.
Budget limitations can mean one emergency manager serves as fire marshal, building inspector, engineer and flood plain administrator for hundreds of square miles.
These officials must still meet federal standards and develop detailed disaster plans. But cash-strapped communities often lack the funding to implement solutions.
What they need is practical hazard mitigation plans. Those include specific evacuation routes for each neighborhood, identifying which buildings house vulnerable populations, such as older adults, and steps local officials can implement immediately during emergencies. It also means aligning of other local planning documents, such as comprehensive plans or land use plans. Access to flood gauge data, weather monitoring and social vulnerability mapping is also important for determining when to close roads or activate emergency shelters.
That work takes time, expertise and funding.
Challenge of older buildings
Creating safer communities also requires investment to address challenges with both new development and vulnerable existing structures.
For new construction, many communities require buildings to be built above flood level. The state could help small communities in this area by funding new local code enforcement jobs, similar to the way it provided training and guidance to local officials after Harvey. However, that might not be possible in the Texas Legislature today.
The bigger challenge is older buildings. According to federal requirements, unless a structure floods or gets “substantially damaged” — meaning damage exceeds 50% of its value — there’s no requirement to make it safer.
Research shows that retrofitting homes by improving drainage to avoid future flood damage and voluntary buyout programs can be effective. Buyout programs allow families to sell their homes at market rate and relocate to higher ground when the programs are properly designed and funded.
Harris County’s buyout program after Harvey acquired nearly 200 flood-damaged homes in the Houston area for a total of $20 million. That helped families escape repeated flooding. The homes were demolished, and the land became permanent open space. By preventing future development, the land can take on floodwater without economic harm.
Many counties can’t afford buyout programs, though. A statewide voluntary buyout program could help them by prioritizing the most vulnerable properties. But to have a wide reach, such a voluntary program would need dedicated funding in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Beyond voluntary buyouts, the state could expand programs that help property owners retrofit existing houses and other buildings, such as elevating structures, installing flood vents that allow water to flow through, or using flood-resistant materials. Tax incentives and low-interest loans could make these improvements more affordable while respecting property owners’ right to choose to participate or not.
Texas currently offers limited retrofit assistance through the General Land Office’s disaster recovery programs. But it lacks a comprehensive retrofit program with dedicated funding that would help homeowners prepare before the disaster strikes.
Communities taking important steps
Some innovative approaches are emerging in Texas cities and counties.
Liberty and Comanche counties have partnered with Texas A&M's Texas Target Communities program to create comprehensive plans that help their communities grow but in safer ways. Research shows that when communities integrate land use planning, hazard mitigation, emergency response and economic development plans, they can better ensure that new development avoids high-risk areas and that existing vulnerable areas are targeted for improvement projects.
Houston, despite lacking traditional zoning, has implemented strict flood plain regulations that require new construction to be elevated above flood levels and prohibit development in the most dangerous flood-risk areas. By maintaining a top rating in FEMA’s Community Rating System, the city helps residents qualify for discounts on flood insurance.
The tragedy in Hill Country is a reminder that many Texas communities face flood risks yet lack the funding and technical capacity to implement comprehensive flood risk reduction on their own without state support. As extreme weather becomes more common, the question is whether communities will be able to protect themselves without more help.
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