Tough guy Hegseth shows off his warrior ethos
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Opinion
A terrifying crisis was manufactured to distract from a massive Trump scandal
Mark Twain allegedly quipped, “God created war so Americans would learn geography.” Whether or not he actually said that, might it not be a good test, that the world’s most mighty military power be prevented from waging war if a majority of Americans failed to find the alleged enemy on a world map?
Frivolity aside, this should not need to be said, but the United States has no legal authority to attack Venezuela (nor Iran, Sudan, Somalia, or any other country), nor engage in covert action to overthrow its government. Should the US do so, it will be opposed by everyone south of the Rio Grande, and rightly be seen as a racist resumption of the Monroe Doctrine. Whatever one thinks of the current government, nearly 30 million people live in Venezuela, and they don’t deserve to be demonized or threatened for the policies of their president, as Venezuela poses no threat to the United States.
The American people get this. A recent CBS News poll shows widespread public skepticism and disapproval of any US military attack against Venezuela, properly so, with 70 percent opposing the US taking military action.
Moreover, the current US military buildup in the Caribbean is an unnecessary and dangerous provocation. US Navy warships and Marine deployments to the region should be reversed to ease tensions. It is very unlikely the US would invade Venezuela with ground forces as even gung ho for blood Secretary of War Pete Hegseth must know a quagmire would ensue, but the Trump administration may see political advantage to have this as a simmering, manufactured “crisis,” to distract from the Epstein files; President Donald Trump’s sagging popularity; and his failed economic, domestic, and foreign policies. And Trump’s declaration closing Venezuelan air space has zero legitimacy, though it did scare many airlines into changing flight routes.
An obvious question comes to mind. Is this really about oil, not drugs? Fentanyl is not coming into the US via Venezuela, and the alleged drug ring run by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro does not exist. However, Venezuela does have the world’s largest known oil reserves.
I can’t imagine anyone wants a rerun of the Iraq wars. Let’s not test the adage that “history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme” (which again, Mark Twain may or may not have said). We don’t want to have to dust off our “No War for Oil!” protest signs. And there is also already a metastasizing problem with violent competition for rare earth minerals in Venezuela.
The brouhaha about the second attack on the alleged “drug boat” on Sept. 2 (and no evidence has been presented that it was a “drug boat” and even if it was, there was no legal authority to attack it, once or twice) possibly being a war crime misses the point, though Hegseth should be held to account; all the attacks on the alleged “drug boats” are illegal, and unauthorized by Congress.
Speaking of which, Congress needs to not only investigate these shady “drug boat” attacks, but assert its constitutional authority by passing a War Powers Resolution to stop the out-of-control Trump administration from further attacks or escalation. The US Senate failed to pass such a measure last month, 51-49, with all Democrats voting in favor and all but two Republicans voting against upholding the Constitution, but “the world’s greatest deliberative body” should try again. Perhaps Republicans can read the polls better now.
Also, US economic sanctions are hurting the people and economy of Venezuela, and should be at least reconsidered, if not scrapped altogether. Unfortunately, some self-appointed foreign policy experts think sanctions are a humane alternative to war, and better than “doing nothing.” The reality is broad economic sanctions hurt ordinary people the most, and are an immoral and ineffective way to try to get hungry people to overthrow their government, regardless of its domestic popularity or lack thereof.
Lastly, while I never bought this, wasn’t Trump supposed to be about “America First” and avoiding foreign wars? His voters thought so. Trump is about to risk American lives, when nobody voted to have their sons and daughters fight a war with Venezuela, or any other country. Congress needs to listen to the wisdom of the American people and shut this ill-conceived threat to Venezuela and its neighbors down now.
- Kevin Martin is the president of Peace Action and Peace Action Education Fund, with over 40 years experience as a peace and justice organizer. He is helping coordinate the Cease-Fire Now Grassroots Advocacy Network.
Keep reading...
Show less
This MAGA politician's disturbing rant shows a party hellbent on hurting its own
“It is hard to watch other states and cities across our nation leap toward socialism… Let’s keep our state moving forward by always rejecting the falsehoods sold by the radical left.” — Secretary of State Kris Warner, Facebook post, November 5, 2025.
Although I should be accustomed to it, it is always disturbing when MAGA politicians go off halfcocked about socialism. Here are some of the “radical left” socialist programs that Warner must be complaining about:
- Medicare
- Medicaid
- The Affordable Care Act
- Social Security
- SNAP (food stamps)
- Meals on Wheels and Office of Aging services
Oh, these are not the programs he was referring to? Many of my friends would be insulted if I told them they and their families are dependent on liberal “socialist” programs. People have such short memories.
Every single one of these programs was once characterized by right-wing politicians as a “socialist program.”
For example, let’s remember what Ronald Reagan said about Medicare before it was enacted:
- “From [Medicare] it’s a short step to all the rest of socialism.”
- ”Medicare will usher in federal programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country.”
- If Medicare is passed, “we are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it once was like in America when men were free.”
I’m a capitalist who spent decades as a high-level executive in corporate America, working in states like West Virginia. Yes, government on all levels is generally not efficient. However, it’s very effective in many areas. And, in some cases, it has proven to be more efficient than the private sector.
For example, Medicare overhead/marketing is 2 percent versus 12 percent for private insurance companies. In this instance, socialized health insurance is clearly more cost-effective than private insurance. We are simply being held back from Medicare for All by the health-care industrial complex (insurance companies, providers, drug companies) that likes things the way they are, with tens of millions of dollars in compensation to CEOs. They say universal coverage is unaffordable, but studies show differently. Canada and other democracies with universal health care all have per capita health expenditures a fraction of ours … with better results.
Traditional Medicare was clearly an expansion of government when enacted 50+ years ago, but it’s one that the public supports. Before Medicare, only about half of all seniors were covered by private insurance. Polls have shown that virtually no voters, even the MAGA folks, want to do away with it now.
Will Medicare for All cause our insurance system to fall apart, as Trump said in his 2018 USA Today editorial? Numerous polls show support for Medicare for All, including one recently illustrating 59 percent in favor. That poll showed support was strong in every category of Americans — except the MAGA faithful. A Gallup poll used the words “universal coverage” and had the same result — 62 percent supportive. Even almost two-thirds of independents were in favor. Again, the MAGA people were the only ones opposed.
America is still free and capitalistic despite what Reagan said about Medicare prior to enactment. Likewise, the sort of rhetoric spouted by Warner is simply a way of scaring American voters away from expansion of domestic programs designed to help the less fortunate. Programs that wealthier people like Warner’s financial backers will pay for and therefore dislike.
I’ve used Medicare as an example, but I could use many others. Social conservatives like Warner have a bad habit of talking about the ills of “socialism.” However, I don’t hear them asking that we convert our government employees in our military into private mercenaries. And, when we have used military “contractors,” the expense to the U.S. has been much greater.
In his Facebook post, Warner also stated, “Let’s always hold fast to our Christian conservative values that made our state the best to raise a family in the country.”
Yet, the numbers tell a different story about the state and its needs for public program expansion. For example, West Virginia has the fourth-highest poverty rate in the nation at 14 percent… and the second-highest mortality rate. It also has the third-highest incarceration rate and third-lowest income.
Instead of preaching about Christian values, West Virginians would be better off if Warner practiced Christianity by supporting the “socialist” programs he criticizes. As the Bible (Proverbs 14:31) states: “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”
- Jack Bernard was a corporate executive and a consultant for West Virginia hospitals. He is now a columnist and activist.
Keep reading...
Show less
These revolting outbursts point to something undeniable — and extremely urgent
After criticizing media coverage about him aging in office, Trump appeared to be falling asleep during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Tuesday.
But that’s hardly the most troubling aspect of his aging.
In the last few weeks, Trump’s insults, tantrums, and threats have exploded.
To Nancy Cordes, CBS’s White House correspondent, he said: “Are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? You’re just asking questions because you’re a stupid person.”
About New York Times correspondent Katie Rogers: “Third rate … ugly, both inside and out.”
To Bloomberg White House correspondent Catherine Lucey: “Quiet. Quiet, piggy.”
About Democratic lawmakers who told military members to defy illegal orders: guilty of “sedition … punishable by DEATH.”
About Somali immigrants to the United States: “Garbage” whom “we don’t want in our country.”
What to make of all this?
Trump’s press hack Karoline Leavitt tells reporters to “appreciate the frankness and the openness that you get from President Trump on a near-daily basis.”
Sorry, Ms. Leavitt. This goes way beyond frankness and openness. Trump is now saying things nobody in their right mind would say, let alone the president of the United States.
He’s losing control over what he says, descending into angry, venomous, often dangerous territory. Note how close his language is coming to violence — when he speaks of acts being punishable by death, or human beings as garbage, or someone being ugly inside and out.
The deterioration isn’t due to age alone.
I have some standing to talk about this frankly. I was born 10 days after Trump. My gray matter isn’t what it used to be, either, but I don’t say whatever comes into my head.
It’s true that when you’re pushing 80, brain inhibitors start shutting down. You begin to let go. Even in my daily Substack letter to you, I’ve found myself using language that I’d never use when I was younger.
When my father got into his 90s, he told his friends at their weekly restaurant lunch that it was about time they paid their fair shares of the bill. He told his pharmacist that he was dangerously incompetent and should be fired. He told me I needed to dress better and get a haircut.
He lost some of his inhibitions, but at least his observations were accurate.
I think older people lose certain inhibitions because they don’t care as much about their reputations as do younger people. In a way, that’s rational. Older people no longer depend on their reputations for the next job or next date or new friend. If a young person says whatever comes into their heads, they have much more to lose, reputation-wise.
But Trump’s outbursts signal something more than the normal declining inhibitions that come with older age. Trump no longer has any filters. He’s becoming impetuous.
This would be worrying about anyone who’s aging. But a filterless president of the United States who says anything that comes into his head poses a unique danger. What if he gets angry at China, calls up Xi Jinping, tells him he’s an asshole, and then orders up a nuclear bomb?
It’s time the media reported on this. It’s time America faced reality. It’s time we demanded that our representatives in Congress take action, before it’s too late.
Invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment.
- 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
Keep reading...
Show less
The most unlikely messenger just exposed the rotten core of Trumpism
The Trump White House just showed us something every American should find chilling, no matter what music they listen to or what party they vote for.
They took a video of aggressive ICE arrests, slapped Sabrina Carpenter’s song on top of it, and posted it like it was a victory lap. Then, when Carpenter objected and said the video was “evil and disgusting” and told them not to use her music to benefit an “inhumane agenda,” the White House hit back with a statement that sounded like it came from a playground bully, not the seat of American government.
They didn’t debate her point. They didn’t defend policy with facts. They went straight to dehumanization and insult, calling people “illegal murderers, rapists, and pedophiles,” and saying anyone who defends them must be “stupid” or “slow.”
That’s not just ugly: it’s a warning.
Because the biggest story here is not a celebrity clapback; it’s that the White House is using the power of the state to turn human beings into a violence-normalizing punchline, and using America’s culture as a weapon to spread it.
This is what rising authoritarianism looks like in the age of social media.
A democracy survives on shared reality and shared humanity. It survives when the government understands that it works for the people and must be accountable to the Constitution, to due process, and to basic human decency.
But what happens when a government starts producing propaganda like it’s a teenage streamer chasing clicks and the president runs the White House like it’s a reality show operation, right down to the televised Cabinet meetings?
We get a machine that can normalize cruelty. We get a public trained to cheer at humiliation. We get outrage as entertainment. And we get the steady erosion of our ability to ask the most important questions in a free society.
Was this legal? Was it justified? Was it proportional? Was it humane? Were innocent people caught up? Were families separated? Was there due process? Is it even constitutional?
Those questions disappear when the government turns an ICE arrest into a meme.
There are, of course, serious crimes in every society and violent criminals should be held accountable under the law. But that isn’t what the White House statement was doing. It was, instead, engaged in something far more ancient, cynical, and dangerous.
It was trying to paint everyone in that video with the worst label imaginable so the public stops caring about what happens next.
That’s how they get permission — both explicit and implicit — for abuses.
If the audience for Trump’s sick reality show is told, “These are monsters,” then — as we’ve most recently seen both with ICE here domestically and with people in small boats off the coast of Venezuela — any cruelty becomes acceptable.
Any killing becomes a shrug. Overreach becomes a punchline. And following the rule of law becomes something we apply to our friends while we throw it away for people we have been taught to hate.
That is exactly why authoritarians always start by dehumanizing a target group.
And it always spreads.
Trump started by demonizing and then going after immigrants. Then he demanded fealty (and millions of dollars) from journalists, universities, and news organizations. He demonizes his political opponents to the point they suffer death threats, attacks, and assassinations. And if Trump keeps going down this same path — as Pastor Martin Niemöller famously warned the world — it’ll next be you and me.
Consider this regime’s cultural warfare program. The White House has reportedly used music from multiple artists without permission and now brags that they’ve used those creators’ work to bait outrage, to “own the libs.”
All to drive attention, create spectacle, and turn governance into a constant fight as they punish anyone in public life — today it’s Sabrina Carpenter — who dares to speak up.
This is intimidation pretending to be a joke. If you’re an artist, a teacher, an organizer, or just a person with a platform, the message is simple: “We can drag you into our propaganda machine whenever we want, and if you object we’ll mock you and send an online — and often physical — mob after you.”
That’s a chilling reality, and it matters in a democracy. People start to think twice before speaking. They start to retreat. They start to self censor.
And that’s the Trump regime’s first goal.
Then there’s the distraction, particularly from a cratering economy and Trump’s association with Epstein and Maxwell.
With this strategy, borrowed from the Nazis (as my guest on the radio show Monday, Lawrence Reese, noted in his book The Nazi Mind 12: Warnings From History), culture war isn’t a sideshow anymore, it’s part of a larger strategy.
When the government posts a meme like the one where ICE used Carpenter’s music, it isn’t trying to inform us: it’s trying to trigger us. It’s trying to bait us into amplifying the clip, fighting over the celebrity angle, and losing sight of the real issue.
And that real issue is Trump’s and the GOP’s insatiable lust for state power and the wealth that power can allow, bring, and protect.
Armed agents. Detention. Deportation. Families. Fear. Mistakes that can’t be undone. Human beings who can be disappeared from their communities with the tap of a button and a viral soundtrack. Or killed by “suicide” in a jail cell when they threaten to go public.
If we care about freedom, we can’t just stand by and say nothing while this regime turns ICE’s violence into content.
Because once a government learns it can win political points by broadcasting humiliation, it’ll do it again. And it’ll escalate. It’ll push the line farther and farther until we wake up one day and wonder how we got here.
So what do we do?
- First, stop amplifying their propaganda on their terms. Don’t share their clips as entertainment, even to condemn them without context (no links in this article). When you must talk about it, talk about the power being abused, not the celebrity drama.
- Second, demand oversight. Call your members of Congress (202-224-3121. Demand hearings on ICE media practices and the use of official government accounts and our tax dollars to promote dehumanizing propaganda. Demand transparency on how these videos are produced, approved, and distributed.
- Third, support civil liberties groups and immigrant rights organizations that challenge abuses in court and document what’s happening on the ground. Democracy requires watchdogs like them when the people in power act like they’re above the law.
- Fourth, get inside the Democratic Party and vote — and help others vote — like it matters, because it does. Local prosecutors, sheriffs, governors, attorneys general, and members of Congress all shape how far this culture of cruelty can spread. Authoritarians rely on fatigue and cynicism: Don’t give them either: participate.
And finally, speak up. Sabrina Carpenter did, and she was right to. Not because she’s a pop star, but because she named the moral truth that the White House is trying to smother with what they pretend are jokes.
When a government starts celebrating the humiliation of vulnerable people, it’s telling the world that it no longer sees itself as the servant of a democratic republic. Of all the people. Instead, it now sees itself as the applause-hungry enforcer of a bloodthirsty tribe.
If we let this become normal, we will — one day soon — no longer recognize our country.
This is the moment to draw a line.
Not just for immigrants. Not just for artists. For the Constitution. For due process. For human dignity. For the idea that in America, power is accountable.
Call. Organize. Vote. Let’s not let cruelty become America’s official language.
Keep reading...
Show less
We must wake from this fawning nightmare even if Trump cannot
Perhaps you’ve seen the scene in Pyongyang when North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un convenes his cabinet of sycophants.
The generals and ministers rise as one, their faces frozen in practiced reverence, eyes locked on their Supreme Leader. No one dares look away. No one fidgets.
The ritualized praise flows like liturgy — each man competing to prove his loyalty, his devotion, his willingness to suspend all independent thought in service of the Dear Leader’s infallibility. Blink at the wrong moment, and you risk death.
We seem to be getting there.
Trump convened another one of his grotesque Cabinet-on-camera meetings Tuesday — produced by the master of Detached-From-Reality TV — and this one was quite a bit like the last one on Aug. 26. Except that jarred a fair amount of sensibilities in the chattering class. Now we seem to be used to it.
No need to dwell on the media angle. That ship has sailed.
But in case you missed it, behold the sweet sounds of sycophancy with which members of the Cabinet of the United States government abandoned their souls, in service of the leader of the band.
Lee Zeldin, EPA Administrator:
“If you were to ask me what I’m grateful for, whether it’s a Thanksgiving, it’s a Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year’s, any time of year the fact that this president, after four years serving in office, he could have just left it in the rear-view mirror and went on to really enjoy retirement. But he is willing to take a bullet for all of you tuning in at home because he believes in this flag, our freedom, our liberties and to save the greatest country in the history of the world. So, I’m grateful this holiday season for you, Mr. President, you’re willing to take a bullet for all of us and by all of us it’s the American public.”
Actually, no one asked you, Lee. But plenty of folks would rather take a bullet than listen to more of that.
Kristi Noem, Secretary of Homeland Security:
“You’ve saved hundreds of millions of lives with the cocaine you’ve blown up in the Caribbean.”
Now, there was plenty of other sycophancy from Noem, who served the 2.2 billion residents of South Dakota as their governor. But I’m sorry, creature, did you say Trump saved “hundreds of millions of lives” blowing up cocaine in the Caribbean? I thought you did.
Howard Lutnick, Secretary of Commerce:
"A year ago today I was working on transition with President Trump, right, to build the greatest cabinet ever for the greatest president ever. And I, as I sit here today, I can’t be more proud of how you did it, sir. You’ve created the greatest cabinet. It is a joy to be at this table.”
I’m sorry, sir. That's debatable at best.
Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Secretary of Labor:
“You made the American people realize the American dream is real for the American workforce. And it’s been under your leadership, Mr. President, that over 2 million jobs that have been created since you started have been native born workers. And that is the difference between this presidency, this administration as opposed to the Biden administration where mostly foreign born or federal government jobs.”
Chavez-DeRemer is the one dreaming. The claims about Trump rely upon taking raw data out of context without seasonal adjustments. The Biden stuff is a full-out lie: Native-born workers gained about 7.5 million jobs versus 6.5 million for foreign-born — during his four years. That is what once was called a “fact.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi:
”It’s unbelievable, on the ground in DC and Memphis…we have a 100 percent increase in the arrest of violent criminals, thanks to your leadership.”
That would be impressive were it not for the fact that no publicly available dataset even exists for tracking “violent criminal arrests” in D.C. or Memphis that could serve as a baseline for what Bondi is inventing here. Give them credit for chutzpah: This one’s just made up out of thin air.
Doug Burgum, Secretary of the Interior:
Mr. President, you’ve assembled an incredibly talented group here. If you took a look at this group compared to any Fortune 500 leadership team, any group of startup folks, I mean, this is an amazing group and the breadth of what’s being accomplished and the timing couldn’t be better because, with your leadership and vision, you’ve set us up for this age of abundance as we head into next year, the 250th anniversary of this country….the White House has never looked better, all because of your vision and leadership. So, again, thank you, sir. You’ve given an incredible Christmas gift to Americans by setting us up for an incredible 250th anniversary.
Doug, thanks for not finishing that part about the Fortune 500 companies.
Scott Turner, HUD Secretary:
“When you were giving your report, which was fantastic, and I listened to the report of all my colleagues here and those that will come, it reminds me when I played in the NFL, we had this thing called game film, you know all about film, and we had a saying that said the film don’t lie. The film tells the real story. And I hope that the American people when they watch the film that’s going on now in this time in our history, that they will see that America is greater today than it ever has been. And so, I thank you for that. And thank you for giving us good stories that we can tell for the American people.”
Thanks, Scott, for the newest slogan of the Trump Administration: “Film don’t lie. We do.” And for proving that covering NFL wide receivers — which you did so well — doesn’t mean you won’t fumble enforcement of the nation’s fair housing laws. Which you have.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins:
These jobs are hard, but the joy every day in getting to fight for America and save the country is the privilege of all of our lifetimes, I believe. So, thank you for that. At the US Department of Agriculture, the people’s department — Abraham Lincoln launched this department in 1862. But under your leadership we have finally again put farmers and ranchers and rural America first.
Finally, an Abe Lincoln reference. But apparently, Ms. Rollins statement was cut off. The full sentence should have read, “Under your leadership we have finally again put farmers and ranchers and rural America first in bankruptcy court, in climate-fueled disaster zones, and in the crosshairs of every trade war you lost.” Just editing.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:
“We’re going to see real wage increases. I think next year is going to be a fantastic year, taxes, deregulation, energy certainty. That’s why everyone, with your leadership, is coming to America.”
Everyone? Really? Not if they read this transcript from the cabinet meeting.
The fawning references to “your leadership” from Bondi, Rollins and Bessent were just three of 19 served up Tuesday to Trump. Noem and SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler led the way with four apiece, followed by three from Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
No mentions of Jeffrey Epstein.
Oh well, who’s counting? Trump, perhaps, but not Tuesday. It seems that the lead story coming out of the cabinet meeting was that Sleepy Don kept dozing off.
But it’s the rest of us who need to wake up to the soul-selling around the president.
- Click here for a paid or free subscription to Ray Hartmann's Soapbox
Keep reading...
Show less
A reckoning awaits these out-of-touch lawmakers hopelessly in denial
Last month, some House members publicly acknowledged that Israel has been committing genocide in Gaza. It’s a judgment that Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch unequivocally proclaimed a year ago. Israeli human-rights organizations have reached the same conclusion. But such clarity is sparse in Congress.
And no wonder. Genocide denial is needed for continuing to appropriate billions of dollars in weapons to Israel, as most legislators have kept doing. Congress members would find it very difficult to admit that Israeli forces are committing genocide while voting to send them more weaponry.
Three weeks ago, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) introduced a resolution titled “Recognizing the genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza.” Twenty-one House colleagues, all of them Democrats, signed on as co-sponsors. They account for 10 percent of the Democrats in Congress.
In sharp contrast, a national Quinnipiac Poll found that 77 percent of Democrats “think Israel is committing genocide.” That means there is a 67 percent gap between what the elected Democrats are willing to say and what the people who elected them believe. The huge gap has big implications for the party’s primaries in the midterm elections next year, and then in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
One of the likely candidates in that race, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), is speaking out in ways that fit with the overwhelming views of Democratic voters.
“I agree with the UN commission's heartbreaking finding that there is a genocide in Gaza,” he tweeted as autumn began. “What matters is what we do about it – stop military sales that are being used to kill civilians and recognize a Palestinian state.”
Consistent with that position, the California congressman was one of the score of Democrats who signed on as co-sponsors of Tlaib’s resolution the day it was introduced.
In the past, signers of such a resolution would have reason to fear the wrath — and the electoral muscle — of AIPAC, the Israel-can-do-no-wrong lobby. But its intimidation power is waning. AIPAC’s support for Israel does not represent the views of the public, a reality that has begun to dawn on more Democratic officeholders.
“With American support for the Israeli government’s management of the conflict in Gaza undergoing a seismic reversal, and Democratic voters’ support for the Jewish state dropping off steeply, AIPAC is becoming an increasingly toxic brand for some Democrats on Capitol Hill,” the New York Times reported this fall. Notably, “some Democrats who once counted AIPAC among their top donors have in recent weeks refused to take the group’s donations.”
Khanna has become more and more willing to tangle with AIPAC, which is now paying for attack ads against him.
On Thanksgiving, he tweeted about Gaza and accused AIPAC of “asking people to disbelieve what they saw with their own eyes.” Khanna elaborated in a campaign email days ago, writing: “Any politician who caves to special interests on Gaza will never stand up to special interests on corruption, healthcare, housing, or the economy. If we can’t speak with moral clarity when thousands of children are dying, we won’t stand for working Americans when corporate power comes knocking.”
AIPAC isn’t the only well-heeled organization for Israel now struggling with diminished clout. Democratic Majority for Israel, an offshoot of AIPAC that calls itself “an American advocacy group that supports pro-Israel policies within the United States Democratic Party,” is now clearly misnamed. Every bit of recent polling shows that in the interests of accuracy, the organization should change its name to “Democratic Minority for Israel.”
Yet the party’s leadership remains stuck in a bygone era. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, typifies how disconnected so many party leaders are from the actual views of Democratic voters. Speaking in Brooklyn three months ago, she flatly claimed that “nine out of 10 Democrats are pro-Israel.” She did not attempt to explain how that could be true when more than seven out of 10 Democrats say Israel is guilty of genocide.
The political issue of complicity with genocide will not go away.
Last week, Amnesty International released a detailed statement documenting that “Israeli authorities are still committing genocide against Palestinians in the occupied Gaza Strip, by continuing to deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” But in Congress, almost every Republican and a large majority of Democrats remain stuck in public denial about Israel’s genocidal policies.
Such denial will be put to the electoral test in Democratic primaries next year, when most incumbents will face an electorate far more morally attuned to Gaza than they are. What easily passes for reasoned judgment and political smarts in Congress will seem more like cluelessness to many Democratic activists and voters who can provide reality checks with their ballots.
- 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.
Keep reading...
Show less
Red state GOP goes scorched earth in effort to silence voters
Missouri Republicans have been doing everything they can to block a referendum to put the state’s gerrymandered congressional map on the 2026 ballot. The latest twist came late last month when Attorney General Catherine Hanaway accused a company hired to collect signatures for the campaign of human trafficking.
You read that right: Human trafficking.
If true, it would be a massive scandal — and a grave tragedy. But so far, the only evidence Hanaway has cited are “reports.”
After she made the initial accusation on social media, we sought clarification from her office on where she heard these allegations, what “reports” she was referring to and what led her to believe they were credible enough to seek assistance from ICE, the federal agency that enforces immigration laws.
Her office didn’t respond.
A few days later, Hanaway issued a statement announcing she had launched a formal investigation into the allegations. So we asked again for any information about the source of these claims. And this time, Hanaway’s office was quick to respond to tell us that because there is now an active investigation, no information can legally be released.
Welp…
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee seized on the news, using it in a Black Friday-themed text blast to warn Missourians not to sign petitions from a group being investigated for “improper conduct.”
At the center of the accusation is Advanced Micro Targeting — the Dallas-based firm hired by a PAC called People Not Politicians to collect signatures. The allegation is that AMT is bringing undocumented immigrants into the state to assist with the campaign.
To put it another way, at a time when many immigrants — regardless of their legal status — live in fear of being detained and deported, AMT has allegedly been able to convince some to stand outside of government buildings with clipboards.
AMT has strongly denied the accusations. According to the company, all signature gatherers are vetted through the federal E-Verify system. Every petition form lists the name of the signature gatherer, and all forms are reviewed by a notary who checks the signature gatherer’s ID.
Adding to the drama, AMT filed a federal lawsuit alleging four consulting firms are involved in an effort to pay AMT employees to abandon their work, turn over any signatures they gathered and badmouth the company — all to sabotage the petition drive.
Some employees, according to the lawsuit, were offered up to $30,000 to quit and provide “intelligence” to opponents of the referendum.
In a recording provided to The Independent by a supporter of the referendum, an individual who approached signature gatherers in Kansas City is heard identifying himself as an employee of one of the firms named in the lawsuit, Let the Voters Decide.
Let the Voters Decide, which is based in Florida, called AMT’s litigation a “bogus lawsuit” full of “absurd claims.”
And so here we are: an alleged sabotage campaign; an immigration investigation; a federal lawsuit; and a litany of procedural roadblocks.
The GOP is pulling out all the stops to keep the gerrymandered map off the 2026 ballot.
It’s understandable. Of the 27 times a referendum has been placed on the Missouri ballot, voters have rejected the General Assembly’s actions all but twice — including overturning a congressional map in 1922.
The fight over Missouri’s gerrymandered map seems destined to spiral deeper into political intrigue. What began as a dispute over lines on a map has now become a test of the state’s democratic backbone.
- Jason Hancock has spent two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, with most of that time focused on the Missouri statehouse as a reporter for The Kansas City Star. A three-time National Headliner Award winner, he helped launch The Missouri Independent in October 2020. Missouri Independent is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
Keep reading...
Show less
The most dangerous corporation in America is building Trump's police state
The most dangerous corporation in America is one you may not have heard of.
It’s called Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley tech company that may put your most basic freedoms at risk.
Palantir gets its name from a device used in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, in which a “palantir” is a seeing stone — something like a crystal ball — that can be used to spy on people and distort the truth. During the War of the Ring, a palantir falls under the control of the evil Sauron, who uses it to manipulate and deceive.
Palantir — co-founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel and its current CEO Alex Karp — bears a striking similarity.
It sells AI-based data platforms that let their clients, including governments, militaries, and law enforcement agencies, quickly process and analyze massive amounts of your personal data.
Whether it’s social media profiles, bank account records, tax history, medical history, or driving records, the tools that Palantir sells are used to help clients identify and monitor individuals — like you.
Why should this matter to you? Billions of your tax dollars are going to Palantir, and what Palantir is working on could be used against you.
As Karp says: “Palantir is here to disrupt and make the institutions we partner with the very best in the world and, when it’s necessary, to scare enemies and on occasion kill them.”
Early in his current term, Trump signed an executive order requiring government agencies to consolidate all of their information about you into one giant database — something that has never been done before. To help process this massive amount of information, Trump chose Palantir.
Trump claims this is about “efficiency.” But as one Silicon Valley investor described it, Palantir is “building the infrastructure of the police state.”
Data privacy experts warn that when government data is pooled together, it can be used by a tyrant to intimidate or silence opposition. The possibilities for abuse are huge. One of Palantir’s major projects is a new immigrant surveillance system for ICE deportations.
We’ve already seen Trump target people or organizations he considers enemies. Imagine if he could punish or deny services to individual Americans based on their political affiliation, whether they’ve attended a protest, or even posted an unflattering picture of him online.
Palantir could be giving Trump the power to do just this.
Palantir co-founder and Trump ally Thiel has made no secret of his disdain for democracy, writing: “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.”
But when he speaks of “freedom,” he isn’t thinking about you. To Thiel, “freedom” means that he and his fellow tech oligarchs get to do what they want, without consequences, while the rest of us live in an authoritarian police state.
It’s a match made in Mordor — Trump gets the infrastructure to go after his enemies. Thiel gets to end American democracy.
The danger of Palantir’s AI-powered super database on all Americans is amplified by the vast wealth and power of those associated with it, and their apparent disdain for democratic institutions.
To protect democracy and our individual freedoms, we need to elect leaders who will defend the public from corporations like Palantir — not partner with them.
Tolkien’s palantir fell under the control of Sauron. Thiel’s Palantir is falling under the control of Trump.
How this story ends is up to all of us. Please, help spread the word by sharing this video.
- YouTube www.youtube.com
- 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
Keep reading...
Show less
Without this group of people, there would be no President Trump
I have cut back on the time I spend on social media since last year’s terrible elections. It might be the only good that’s come from one of the worst days in American history.
A once thriving Twitter account is now dead and buried. I simply can’t be anywhere the ghastly Elon Musk and his phony hate-mongers. The place is an overflowing trashcan full of so many lies, and awful things, it’s a wonder it hasn’t self-combusted.
These days, I kick around Bluesky, and Substack’s Notes when I feel like I need to get something off my chest in a hurry.
Last week, white people’s support for Donald Trump and his revolting Republican Party was eating away at me as it often does, so I let go the below blast:
The very direct point, of course, was that without white people, there’d be no President Trump.
“Most white people” got that point, but too many didn’t for my taste, and were indignant that I would type such a thing. Many white commenters made it clear that they didn't vote for Trump, and/or scolded me for scapegoating them.
Here’s a few examples:
“Wow. What a massive generalization. Lots of brown and black people voted for him too but it’s really irrelevant because it’s not a race thing. It’s a stupid thing. There are lots of dumb people in this country who have zero critical thinking skills. That’s the problem. Not all the bad white people.”
“Uh, I don’t know where you got your stats from … but I’m not so sure. Certainly not this white person …”
“It is not most white people. It’s a select few fucking idiots.”
Thankfully, more got it, than didn’t. This one wins a trophy:
“As white people who *personally* did not vote for him, let’s acknowledge that OUR DEMOGRAPHIC did vote for him. The collective “We” must OWN that, and work harder to engage those who voted for him, or who didn’t vote at all.”
Listen to me: You don’t get credit for simply doing the right thing by not voting for a bigot. It’s the very least that should be expected of you. Voting against a vulgar racist like Trump should be as easy and reflexive as putting on a warm jacket to ward off the bitter cold.
The terrible fact is that in all three elections that the appalling Trump was on the ballot, a majority (most) of white people in America voted for him.
Is everybody a racist who supports Trump? Maybe not, but everybody who did vote for him is a hardcore racist, or best case, ignored his long history of hate, to knowingly put a racist in our White House.
Many of these morally bankrupt people are probably some of your friends and family, or in my case, and as I made clear, ex-friends and family.
Here’s the breakdown of the last three presidential elections from the Pew Research Center. I am not sure why the 2016 numbers are incomplete, but you’ll want to concentrate on the white men and white women columns:
In all three elections that Trump was on the ballot, “most” white men and women voted for him. Hence, my post above.
Now that you’ve had a chance to look at these dreadful numbers, let’s also acknowledge that America mostly has a terrible white man problem, and that there is still a mountain of work to do scouring out the terrible misogyny that still pervades too many households, workplaces and the current White House.
Misogyny goes hand in hand with racism, and is a destructive disease eating away at millions of weak, impressionable minds.
This past week or so alone, Trump, who is rotting from the inside out right in front of our eyes, has called female reporters, “Piggy” and “stupid, horrible and ugly.” This follows a long pattern over his morbid lifetime of disparaging women, and mostly their appearance.
HE, an orange mess of a man, who tapes a dead ferret to his head each morning, is mocking other people’s looks.
But back to the eyesore of a graphic above …
Please take a hard look what Black voters did. I have typed before, and will type until my last breath, that they are America’s true patriots, and the only voting bloc that overwhelmingly and consistently gets it right.
I make it a point of walking in their shoes and at least trying to see things through their eyes whenever I can. How incredibly sad it must be to see white people fail so catastrophically at the polls each year, by electing lowlifes who see white supremacy in America as a virtue, instead of a plague.
I try to imagine how many people would have been shot dead on the spot Jan. 6, 2021, if Black people had dared attack our Capitol and beat and stomped law enforcement officials into the curb, as all those lawless, violent white people did on one of America’s darkest days.
Would Trump have told these thugs that he loved them after that horrific day?
It defies logic that anybody could have watched what happened at our Capitol, and what has happened to the criminals who attacked us since, and not see the rampant, odious white privilege in this country.
I try to imagine how Black people must feel as schools, universities, and corporations recklessly abandoned their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts in the terrible wake of Trump’s win last year.
These important initiatives, many, decades in the making, now lay in the rubble because of the weak, submissive white people, who either never believed in what they were doing, or worse, are too cowardice to stand up for what is most certainly good … and right … and FAIR.
Because DEI has never once been about favoritism, it is about fairness. If you think Black people have gotten a fair shake in this country, then in addition to your bout with bigotry, you have a terrible case of lying to yourself.
As a white man, who has had every advantage in life, I will not stop hammering these points home. I will not surrender to bigots like Trump, and the horrible people who support him, and like the commenter said above, will “work harder to engage those who voted for him, or who didn’t vote at all.”
This is my core issue — the one that courses through my veins and gives my life real meaning.
I cannot think of men like Martin Luther King Jr. or John Lewis without getting a lump in my throat. These were giants, who endured beatings and even death to take America to a better place. We honor them, by standing on their broad shoulders and rising ever higher.
I will continue to speak up about racial equity, and down against people who do everything possible to prevent it. I will never stop talking about it, because that is exactly what these racists want.
Everything must be done to eradicate racism in America, because until it is dead and gone, we can never dare to say or believe that all men and women are created equal.
Right now, that is simply another lie, and shame on us for not doing everything in our power as caring humans beings to finally correct it.
- 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.
Keep reading...
Show less
Every time we let these people take the controls, America veers off the road
One of the greatest gifts Donald Trump and the 13 billionaires he pulled into his administration have given America is the reminder, finally and once and for all, that just because somebody is rich doesn’t mean they’re smart. Particularly if they inherited their starting capital from daddy, like Trump and Elon Musk both did.
Wealth in this country has become so intertwined with our mythologies of genius, destiny, and merit that we’ve ended up elevating into near-sainthood (and electing to high office) some of the least thoughtful, least competent, and least self-aware people ever to walk a boardroom floor. It’s a dangerous confusion, and one with deep roots.
I still remember a conversation on my radio program back in 2009 with Bill Gates Sr., one of the kindest and most grounded men I’ve hosted on the air. He told me, matter-of-factly, that while his son Bill was indeed a very smart guy, he also had the sort of upper-middle-class safety net that most Americans could only dream about. Had Bill Jr. been born poor, Gates Sr. said, the trajectory of his life (and the existence of Microsoft) would likely have been very different.
Talent exists everywhere; opportunity does not. That’s true for the brilliant, and just as true for the average or below-average minds who happen to be born into staggering wealth. Privilege — not genius — is what insulates foolish people from the consequences of foolish decisions.
Trump’s casinos went bankrupt even though casinos are literally engineered to make money. He claimed windmills cause cancer. He altered a hurricane map with a Sharpie rather than admit he was wrong. His incompetent handling of COVID caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and now he’s up all night ragetweeting.
Musk blew $44 billion on a website he’s turned into a global punchline, called a Thai cave-rescue diver a “pedo” because the man contradicted him, and cheer-led the destruction of USAID, an act that has severely damaged America’s international soft power, handed a huge geopolitical gift to Russia and China, and already led to what could be millions of unnecessary deaths. Mark Zuckerberg spent tens of billions on a plastic cartoon “metaverse” almost nobody asked for or used.
These aren’t the moves of geniuses. They’re the stumbles of men surrounded by people too afraid to tell them the truth. But this isn’t just about today’s crop of oligarchs. We’ve seen this movie before.
The plantation oligarchs of the 1850s South — men who were some of the richest Americans ever to live — tried to build a continent-wide authoritarian slave empire. They launched a war against democracy itself in 1861 and almost 700,000 Americans died in that Civil War as Lincoln and the Union fought valiantly to preserve our democracy.
During the late 19th-century Gilded Age, the robber barons — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gould, Vanderbilt — were worshiped as industrial gods. Tesla and Edison (genuine geniuses) were hailed as saints of electricity, but it was the financiers behind them who used their inventions to create monopolies and accumulate dynastic wealth.
Only later did America realize that many of these men were less geniuses than gamblers with armies of lawyers; that they built fortunes by crushing competition, often hurting communities, workers, and even the nation itself in their unquenchable quest for more, more, more money!
And then there was the Roaring Twenties, when the super-rich were again treated like royalty. The stock market was their playground, the nation their casino. Republican Presidents Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover gave them everything they asked for, from banking deregulation to massive tax breaks.
The result was the Republican Great Depression, and an entire decade of breadlines and collapsed banks. It took FDR and a generation of reformers to remind America that letting the wealthy run wild always ends the same way: with ordinary Americans paying the price.
After Franklin Roosevelt’s reforms, after the humiliation of the Depression, after decades of regulations and high taxes and guardrails to keep the oligarchs from crashing the system again, the morbidly rich mostly kept their heads down.
For a while, at least.
But by the late 1960s and early 70s, something was happening: people were forgetting the damage that celebrating unrestrained wealth had done the last time it was allowed to dominate American politics. That’s when Lewis Powell delivered his infamous “Powell Memo” in 1971, a corporate call to arms urging the wealthiest Americans to seize control of the media, academia, Congress and the judiciary, public opinion, and the political system itself.
It worked. And over the following decades — with the morbidly rich funding right-wing think tanks, engineering media consolidation, and pouring rivers of dark money into our political system — America once again drifted back toward the worship of wealth as a sort of near-divine wisdom. We thus elected a corrupt, felonious billionaire to the presidency, twice.
Every time we let the morbidly rich take the wheel, our nation veers off the road.
Part of the problem is psychological. Extreme wealth isolates people from reality. Studies on the wealthy show declining empathy, reduced capacity to recognize others’ emotions, and a dangerous overconfidence in their own intuition.
Research on CEOs finds that around 20 percent exhibit psychopathic traits — lack of empathy, superficial charm, impulsivity — compared to about one percent of the public. These aren’t qualities that make for wise leadership, but they do let people crawl over the bodies and lives of others to make themselves rich and powerful.
They also can make for headline-grabbing blunders, cruel policies, and breathtakingly stupid decisions insulated from consequence only by inherited wealth and an army of sycophants.
And as I wrote about the “Great Secession of the Morbidly Rich,” once wealth reaches a certain scale it becomes indistinguishable from hoarding disorder. Billionaires don’t just accumulate money: they stockpile influence, lawmakers, media platforms, even entire political movements. They withdraw from the common good, then blame the rest of us for the social and infrastructure instability their own excesses have created.
The truth is that America has always been at its strongest when it remembers that great nations are built by great communities, not great fortunes. When we measure character by contribution, not by bank balance. When we demand guardrails, boundaries, and democratic accountability for everyone, especially those with the most power to do the most harm.
The morbidly rich won’t police themselves. They never have. It thus falls to the rest of us to stop confusing wealth with wisdom, and to stop granting automatic deference to people who’ve shown us, over and over again, that riches are no guarantee of intelligence, judgment, or moral clarity.
If we forget that lesson again, they’ll be more than happy to remind us … at our expense.
Keep reading...
Show less
Trump's twisted onslaught won't be stopped by these enablers
The “F-word,” fascism, has recently seen increasing use in American public discourse — and for good reason. Some critics claim that the word, fascism, has been overused — and wrongly applied to the behavior and propaganda of President Donald Trump and his regime. They are wrong. Even though other words do describe Trump’s behavior, such as authoritarian, corrupt, cruel, vindictive, racist, or misogynistic, they do not wholly capture the political essence of Donald J. Trump. “Fascist” clearly does.
What are the classic hallmarks of fascism? The analyses of several historians and other experts, such as Ruth Ben-Ghiat (Strongmen), Timothy Snyder (On Tyranny), Jason Stanley (How Fascism Works) and Umberto Eco (“Eternal Fascism,” 1995 article in the New York Review of Books) describe fascism as including these features: mythologizing the past; persecution of racial, religious, or ethnic minorities and celebrating violence against them; pseudo patriotic and militaristic spectacles; big business capture of government; suppression of civil liberties, including free speech; white supremacy, combined with a sense of victimhood; and male dominance.
Without any doubt, Trump and his regime qualify as fascist, or at the very least, incipient fascist.
Only recently, the Trump regime issued a memorandum (NSPM-7) in which Trump directs his officials to investigate supposed incidents of “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism and anti-Christianity.” Trump falsely claims that leftists and other “antifa” activists use violence to accomplish their political goals. The memorandum facilitates Trump’s threat to go after “the enemy within” — which is anybody who opposes his policies or toxic rhetoric.
The “enemy within” designation was widely used by Hitler’s Nazi regime to denigrate Jews. The similarities between the propaganda and legal distortions of that regime and those of the Trump administration are chilling. (See, Hitler’s Justice: The Courts of the Third Reich, by Ingo Müller). Trump has also announced that he will use the military to enforce the criminal laws throughout the country — despite the prohibitions contained in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.
What hope can we have that the Supreme Court of the United States will put the brakes on Trump’s fascist policies?
The starting point toward venturing an answer to this question has to be the court’s 2024 decision in Trump v. United States, in which it held that a president has absolute immunity for “official acts” taken in the performance of his presidential duties.
That shocking decision constituted not only a “get-out-of-jail-free” card for Trump in the prosecutions the court was then reviewing; it also cloaked him with immunity for any crimes he might commit in the future as president. As a practical matter, that immunity will probably include any US murder charges that might have been brought for his having ordered alleged drug smugglers to be killed on boats in the Caribbean, since he was arguably acting as commander-in-chief of the armed forces when giving the orders. (International jurisdictions might not go along with the Supreme Court’s immunity grant).
With the exception of the April 2025 decision which the Supreme Court issued in the deportation case of Kilmar Albrego Garcia, (holding that the government had violated the immigrant’s due process rights by deporting him to El Salvador, and that the government had to “facilitate” his return to the US), the court has given the country sparse assurance that it will push back on Trump’s unique claims of expansive presidential powers.
In its emergency (“shadow”) docket rulings during Trump’s second administration, the Supreme Court has granted stays or reversals in the vast majority of cases in which the administration has appealed against US district court decisions that had slapped down various unprecedented power claims asserted by Trump. When those cases are eventually decided on their merits, the court may well embrace the “unitary executive” theory upon which many of the administration’s claims have rested. Should that come to pass, Trump’s descent into fascism may well be accelerated. Unfortunately, there is no space to elaborate on those shadow docket decisions here.
Most recently, Trump threatened on social media six Democratic members of Congress with “execution” and “death” for alleged “sedition,” that is, their having had the nerve to make a video reminding military officers and enlisted personnel that they have the right, and in some cases, the duty, under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, to refuse obedience to illegal orders. Those threats inspired at least hundreds of anonymous death threats against those Democrats in the ensuing days. That was one of Trump’s most crazy and reckless capers. It was also one of his most fascistic.
Trump’s placement of incompetent sycophants into top positions of the Justice Department and his directing them to prosecute his political rivals and critics is one of the most destructive of American norm-busting actions undertaken by Trump. Will the Republican majority on the Supreme Court — embracing the unitary executive theory — eventually approve of Trump’s twisted and vindictive use of political prosecutions to silence his political foes? Nobody knows, but the prospects are not very encouraging.
The resistance to Trump’s fascism must come from us.
- Robert S. Rivkin, author of GI Rights and Army Justice, is a retired San Francisco lawyer who specialized in military law.
Keep reading...
Show less
This Trump-voting state is now grappling with his terror
Tuesday, Nov. 18, started out the way most other days had of late in the relatively brief life of Triangle-area resident Fernando Vazquez. Like so many children of immigrants who, despite being native-born American citizens, find themselves working alongside their parents at difficult, low-paying jobs that most of their fellow Americans are unwilling to take on — office cleaners, farmworkers, construction site helpers — 18-year-old Fernando showed up for work at a Cary construction site.
Unfortunately, it didn’t end in normal fashion.
As NC Newsline’s Brandon Kingdollar reported, while Fernando was walking back to work after buying a drink at a nearby store, he saw a group of masked men wearing dark glasses emerge suddenly from a group of unmarked SUVs that had pulled up to the job site. Within a few moments, they had cornered Fernando behind a fenced-off HVAC area in which he had been trying to evade their attention.
“Where are you from?” one of the masked men demanded of Fernando as they handcuffed him and tossed him into one of the SUVs alongside another sobbing young worker.
Eventually, the masked men dumped Fernando — who was born in Raleigh and was carrying and displaying his North Carolina Real ID — in a parking lot a half mile or so from where they had grabbed him. They threw his wallet and ID cards out the window of the SUV as they sped off.
“I have no idea why they just dropped me off,” Fernando said later. “I kind of felt like I was being kidnapped.”
The men who carried out this terrifying assault like modern-day Klansmen or KGB thugs were, of course, by all indications, U.S. Border Patrol agents. Federal government employees. Your tax dollars at work.
This is the abysmally low place to which things have sunk in 2025 America during the second term of the nation’s autocrat-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
Across the nation — especially in jurisdictions in which politicians disfavored by Trump and his toadies have been elected to office — employees of the American government are riding into town unannounced and vigilante-like to round up people of varying immigration statuses and terrorize their communities. Almost invariably, the people in question are brown skinned.
And it’s just plain and irredeemably wrong.
Yes, it’s true that millions of people in this country are present without full legal authorization. And yes, it’s also true that a very tiny percentage of the people in this group are criminals who are preying upon others — mostly fellow immigrants.
But it’s also indisputably true that the overwhelming majority of the immigrants whose communities are subject to Trump’s terror tactics are, like the tens of millions of immigrants who preceded them (a group that included Trump’s own family), simple, salt-of-the-earth people looking for a better life.
They’ve come here to escape war, persecution and grinding poverty in their homelands and, quite often, to take on incredibly difficult and dirty jobs under conditions that few if any other Americans would find remotely acceptable.
Is the current immigration system broken? Of course it is. The need for reform that would provide millions of people with a realistic path out of the shadows and into full legal status has been overwhelming for decades. Right now, for most aspiring immigrants who lack wealth or light skin, such a path (or, at least, one that takes anything less than decades and vast sums of money) literally does not exist.
Indeed, the understanding and acceptance of this truth was so widespread as recently as early last year that Congress was on the verge of passing genuine bipartisan immigration reform/border control legislation. North Carolina’s senior Republican senator, Thom Tillis, was leader in the effort.
Tragically, however, that plan didn’t jibe with then-candidate Trump’s two-part scheme to make the demonization of immigrants the centerpiece of his campaign and to deny any kind of policy victory — even ones that were indisputably good for the nation — to the Biden-Harris administration. As a result, the plan was deep-sixed at Trump’s direction.
And so, here we are now, living in an unprecedented moment in the history of the nation that has long held itself out as the leader of the “free world.” It’s a moment in which masked employees of our government — many of them well-meaning individuals cynically misled into believing they are somehow helping to combat a “foreign invasion” — are employing terror tactics long reserved for the world’s totalitarian and authoritarian regimes.
Meanwhile, millions of good and honest people — many of them American citizens like Fernando Vazquez — must now go about their daily lives in constant fear that they too will be snatched off the street and secreted off to some domestic or foreign gulag.
Nearly a quarter century ago, a previous U.S. president undertook a global campaign that he called a “war on terror.” Today, it’s a shocking and sobering fact that the millions of caring and thinking Americans pushing back against Trump’s police state actions — people peacefully witnessing, documenting, protesting and organizing and lending moral support to their immigrant neighbors — now find themselves on the front lines in just such an effort.
- Senior contributor and award-winning journalist Rob Schofield authors regular commentaries and hosts the 'News & Views' weekly radio show/podcast. A part of NC Newsline since 2006, he served as editor from 2017 to 2025 and, prior to that, worked for many years as an attorney championing the rights of low-income people and civil liberties.
Keep reading...
Show less
Copyright © 2025 Raw Story Media, Inc. PO Box 21050, Washington, D.C. 20009 |
Masthead
|
Privacy Policy
|
Manage Preferences
|
Debug Logs
For corrections contact
corrections@rawstory.com
, for support contact
support@rawstory.com
.