Lady Justice taken prisoner by 'tough-on-crime' Trump
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
Trade policy isn’t sexy, but it is weighty, economically speaking. Jobs and wage-income are at-stake. Take President Trump’s trade policy, notably his fondness for tariffs, a tax on US imports that businesses and workers pay.
We begin with the Trump administration’s decision to provide a $20 billion “swap line” (currency exchanges between central banks) with the government of Argentina. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is the point man for the White House on this financial and political issue. Behind Bessent is a Wall Street hedge fund manager, Rob Citrone, a major foreign investor in Argentina, CNN reported.
The Latin American country is in financial distress over its issuance of foreign bonds since President Javier Milei slashed public spending to spur economic growth. Such economic policy goes by the name of austerity.
However, Milei’s so-called pro-growth approach has had the opposite effect. Hunger and poverty among the Argentine working class are up. Workers’ household income is down.
“Argentina’s poverty rate has soared to almost 53 percent in the first six months of Javier Milei’s presidency,” reports The Guardian, “offering the first hard evidence of how the far-right libertarian’s tough austerity measures are hitting the population.”
What in part preceded such measures slamming the Argentine people was inflation, a general rise in prices.
In the meantime, the Milei government cut the export tax on soybeans. Chinese buyers jumped at this opportunity, reportedly purchasing some 20 shiploads of soybeans from Argentina.
That tax holiday cut revenue to the Argentine government, and created the trade conditions for lower export prices for foreign buyers. That arrangement didn’t fix the tax revenue problem for the Argentine government, however.
Meanwhile, American Soybean Association President Caleb Ragland shared this statement on some impacts of Trump’s trade policy of tit-for-tat tariffs between the world’s two biggest economies:
US soybean farmers have been clear for months: the administration needs to secure a trade deal with China. China is the world’s largest soybean customer and typically our top export market. The US has made zero sales to China in this new crop marketing year due to 20% retaliatory tariffs imposed by China in response to US tariffs. This has allowed other exporters, Brazil and now Argentina, to capture our market at the direct expense of US farmers.
According to Politico, the use of tariffs in China-US trade is having far-reaching effects on American agriculture generally.
“The 20 percent retaliatory tariff that Beijing has imposed on US imports hasn’t just pounded soybean producers. All agriculture exports to China were down 53 percent in the first seven months of 2025, compared with the same period last year, according to USDA data.”
Ragland, head of the ASA, continues his criticism of Trump’s trade policy on American soybean farmers:
“The frustration is overwhelming. US soybean prices are falling, harvest is underway, and farmers read headlines not about securing a trade agreement with China, but that the US government is extending $20 billion in economic support to Argentina while that country drops its soybean export taxes to sell 20 shiploads of Argentine soybeans to China in just two days.
”ASA is calling on President Trump and his negotiating team to prioritize securing an immediate deal on soybeans with China. The farm economy is suffering while our competitors supplant the United States in the biggest soybean import market in the world.“
What will the White House do to relieve the pain from the decline of demand from China for American agricultural products? Well, the president is considering a $10-$15 billion bailout for agriculture commodity producers.
Wait. There is a federal government shutdown. In other words, the allocation and distribution of a federal bailout for farmers experiencing a shortage of buyers from China will have to wait for the government shutdown to end. Your guess is as good as mine when that happens.
Such contradictions of economics and politics drive history, according to Marx. The federal government shutdown over health care spending while US Border Patrol agents and National Guard troops deploy on the streets of American cities for reason of so-called public safety are two cases in point. Trade policy that harms domestic agriculture generally and soybean growers particularly is another.
What are the No Kings protests about?
It’s a natural question if one has never been to a large protest. I’ve seen many of my friends on the right, especially after the first No Kings protests in June, wonder why people choose to do so. Let me offer a view.
I was at the first Boise No Kings rally in June and will be at the next on Saturday … which would surprise some people given my long Republican past.
I spent decades being active and working in GOP politics, at the local, state, and federal levels, including working for a Republican U.S. senator and President George W. Bush.
And I want nothing to do with the presidency of Donald Trump.
Some critics of No Kings question the value of peaceful protests. Gandhi, Martin Luther King, et. al. disagree. Critics also get hung up on the “No Kings” name and argue we don’t have a monarch, so what’s the point?
We don’t have a king, but we do have a hot mess in this country thanks to a chaotic and impulsive president and his administration.
We have an unlawful and economically damaging tariff regime that both changes on a whim and has sent us into a jobs recession while stoking more inflation.
We have publicly ordered, flimsy prosecutions of political enemies, even as veteran U.S. prosecutors and Justice Department officials are being fired and resigning rather than follow unlawful and unethical orders.
We have equally unlawful firings of federal employees during a government shutdown, happening because a Republican president and GOP majorities in both houses of Congress can’t govern. Ironic firings since many similar layoffs during the failed DOGE experiment (remember that?) were reversed in court because — and I believe we have a pattern here — they were unlawful.
But not just unlawful, incompetent too. The Trump administration’s war on public health continued last Friday with mass layoffs at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But mirroring the failures of DOGE, hundreds of those firings were rescinded within hours. Maybe someone figured out laying off people with important jobs working on epidemics and infectious diseases is a bad idea?
Proving the point of the incompetence, one CDC employee currently working on measles outbreaks (caused by the anti-vaccine thinking now touted by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) was one of the recent, quickly rescinded layoffs, even after she experienced the same, “Now-you’re fired, now-you’re not” whipsaw under DOGE while working on Ebola earlier this year.
All of which gets to part of what is driving protests like No Kings: These are not just protests about policy disputes, they are protests about the very nature of how our government is being run.
And there is no clearer example of that right now than the conduct of ICE and other federal agents, lawlessly detaining and abusing U.S. citizens and others legally in our country because of how they look, not because of probable cause that such persons have committed a crime.
I remember from my decades in Republican politics that the right used to object to the idea of masked, unidentified agents of the federal government roaming the streets of America in unmarked vehicles going after people they think don’t look like real Americans.
That’s as good a reason to protest as any if you believe in the Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
Some on the right will claim No Kings is just “antifa” or that such protests are riots. That’s laughably false. I’ve spent enough time in politics in the Northwest, especially around Seattle, to know what is called “antifa” is a tiny, motley collection of anarchists and far-left activists who think Bernie Sanders is a bit too conservative.
I’ve also been to enough protests and have friends around the country who have done likewise to know the No Kings protests are legal, permitted events in public spaces to exercise the right of free speech. There were millions of Americans at those protests in June. There will be millions more at hundreds of protests around the country on Saturday.
Some may disagree with the anti-Trump motive for these protests, but that is their purpose, and as U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, encouraged to: “Be peaceful, patriotic, and joyful.”
Airport managers need to wake up fast. With only a handful of exceptions, people running airports across America are risking serious fines and being barred from government work for up to five years by broadcasting political messaging on behalf of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Federal law — the Hatch Act — makes it a crime, punishable by fines and loss of current and future employment, to use government facilities or taxpayer money for partisan political purposes. Yet Noem, who has earned her national reputation as a puppy-killer and by cosplaying “tough cop” with her alleged boyfriend (they’re both married to other people), has pushed out a video to airports across the country blaming Democrats for the current shutdown.
This isn’t just a violation of federal law; it’s also a bald-faced lie.
Republicans today control the House, the Senate, the White House, and the Supreme Court. If Senate Majority Leader John Thune wanted to end the shutdown, he could do so this afternoon.
All it would take is the same maneuver Republicans have used repeatedly: a Senate rules change allowing passage of their Continuing Resolution to keep the government open, using only 50 votes plus the Vice President.
We’ve seen it before. Betsy DeVos only became Secretary of Education because Mike Pence broke a 50–50 tie in the Senate. Jeff Sessions squeaked through 52–47 as Attorney General. Rex Tillerson and Tom Price were confirmed with slim margins. And when it came to the Supreme Court, Mitch McConnell killed the filibuster to ram through Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.
Democrats, by contrast, failed when they tried to change the rules to pass the For the People Act and John Lewis Voting Rights acts. Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin sided with Republicans to preserve the filibuster, betraying the public interest.
So let’s be clear: this shutdown is not a matter of Senate procedure. Republicans have the power to end it today. They’re choosing not to because they want to strip health care from millions while protecting their $4 trillion tax cut for billionaires.
The 1939 Hatch Act, upheld by the Supreme Court in CSC v. Letter Carriers, outlaws the practice of federal officials converting government facilities into campaign machines. Its penalties are real: removal from service, debarment, suspensions, reprimands, and fines.
Some airport managers understand this, which is why several are refusing to air Noem’s message.
As of today, at least seven airports have declined to run the video at TSA checkpoints, citing policies and laws that prohibit political messaging in publicly funded facilities. Portland International Airport management informed the local ABC News affiliate:
“We believe the Hatch Act clearly prohibits using public assets for political purposes and messaging.”
The Washington Post reports that Buffalo, Charlotte, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Seattle, and Portland have all also said no, with at least two explicitly pointing to the Hatch Act as the reason.
By distributing this video, Noem has implicated not just herself but also airport managers nationwide, most of whom are now breaking federal law by broadcasting it. They face personal liability, including fines and disbarment from government work.
That they’ve gone along with Noem reflects how normalized lawbreaking has become in today’s Republican politics led by a 34-times-convicted felon and alleged rapist.
The lie about the shutdown itself compounds the crime. Citizens in a democracy must be able to trust their government to tell the truth about who is responsible for policy decisions and why they’re done. When those in power use public money to gaslight the public, accountability collapses. That is exactly why the Hatch Act exists.
There is precedent for enforcement of the Act even at the highest levels. The Office of Special Counsel recommended Kellyanne Conway be fired for repeated Hatch Act violations. Trump ignored it. He also ignored the law when his administration used the White House for the Republican National Convention and when he and Elon Musk went out front of it to hustle Teslas.
Republicans have apparently learned that if they break the law and face no consequences, the law effectively ceases to exist.
If Democrats are serious about defending both the rule of law and what’s left of America’s democracy, they must insist on prosecutions. That means removal from office for Noem, claims against the propagandists who produced and distributed the video, and charges against airport managers who continue broadcasting it. Anything less signals that the Hatch Act — and the rest of American law that could restrain Trump and his lickspittles — is a dead letter.
This is not a partisan point. Imagine if a Democratic administration produced a video blaming Republicans for a shutdown, then forced airports to broadcast it. Republicans would be demanding prosecutions, and rightly so. The law must apply equally or it means nothing at all.
Noem needs to stop lying. She needs to stop breaking the law. And Democrats need to stop pretending this is “politics as usual.” It is not. These are crimes designed to shift blame for a shutdown that is entirely the responsibility of the Republican Party, which could end it tomorrow with 51 votes in the Senate.
If there is no accountability now, America will slide further toward a future where propaganda is pumped through every government-owned screen and speaker. That is what has happened in Russia and Hungary, where public spaces are saturated with partisan messaging and independent voices silenced.
The Hatch Act was written to prevent that fate here. It must be enforced — with indictments, prosecutions, and disbarment — before it’s too late.
We are witnessing lawlessness on a scale none of us has seen in our lifetimes. It’s so bad that over the weekend, even Kamala Harris was forced to admit she’s lost faith in the American system of justice.
“I don’t know if we can trust what’s coming out of the Department of Justice,” the former vice president told MSNBC.
“That pains me to say that, as someone who spent the majority of my career as a prosecutor. Many who have worked as US attorneys … talk openly and rightly about the fact that they should do their work without any fear and not in the interest of favor. That so clearly is not what is ruling day there.”
In her new book, she repeatedly says the Democrats should fight fire with fire. Should they do with the US Department of Justice what the Republicans under Donald Trump have done to it? Her answer: No.
“No president should think of the Department of Justice as being their personal attorney,” Kamala Harris said. “No president should try to influence prosecutorial decisions based on a political agenda, period.”
But I suspect she knows it’s more complicated. No legal institution — not the courts and not the Department of Justice — is going to hold Donald Trump accountable for the crimes he has committed without the political motivation to do so. But there will be no such motivation if the Democratic Party sticks with its “norms and institutions” view of criminal justice. It must channel the public’s desire for retribution.
The people want payback, wrote Christopher Jon Sprigman.
“When this is over – and it will end – there has to be a sustained and severe campaign of retribution, from Trump down to the masked ICE fascists who carried this out,” he said. “No f–––––g kumbaya. Consequences.”
Sprigman is the Murray and Kathleen Bring Professor of Law at New York University and co-director of its Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy. I got in touch with him. Below is our conversation.
JS: The Democrats seem to have stopped talking in terms of compromise and have begun talking in terms of accountability. You think they need to demand retribution (your word). Why?
CS: There are two reasons.
First, the American people need to hear that when this is all over, elected Democrats aren't going to want to sing kumbaya — which is probably the instinct that a lot of them have. If that happens, if perpetrators in this administration aren't punished — severely punished — we'll be right back in this mess very quickly.
Second, the word "retribution" is part of justice. And in situations like the one we face, it should take center stage. Existing law and courts — the institutions we rely on to provide justice — are plainly inadequate to meet the challenge of the wide-scale lawbreaking, abuse and utter lack of human decency that we see from Trump on down to ICE. What's needed is something beyond existing law and legal process.
What would that something be?
I've been re-reading Justice Robert Jackson's opening statement at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal. I'm not saying the administration has risen, or sunk, to the level of the Nazis ... although, give them some time, I suppose. What I am saying is that some of what Jackson says about why a special set of proceedings was required for Nazis — you can't just try them in US courts — is applicable to our situation.
Jackson insisted that "[t]he common sense of mankind demands that law shall not stop with the punishment of petty crimes by little people. It must also reach men who possess themselves of great power and make deliberate and concerted use of it to set in motion evils which leave no home in the world untouched."
I think our courts — most notably the Supreme Court — have demonstrated that they will not hold Trump to account. So, for example, if Trump's attacks on alleged Venezuelan drug boats are really the murder of a bunch of innocent fishermen, US courts are not going to permit him to be tried for murder.
Later in his speech, Jackson noted that trying the Nazis in regular US courts would be an interminable process — and that years of delay was unacceptable:
"Never before in legal history has an effort been made to bring within the scope of a single litigation the developments of a decade, covering a whole Continent, involving a score of nations, countless individuals, and innumerable events. Despite the magnitude of the task, the world has demanded immediate action. This demand has had to be met, though perhaps at the cost of finished craftsmanship. In my country, established courts, following familiar procedures, applying well-thumbed precedents, dealing with the consequences of local and limited events seldom commence a trial within a year of the event in litigation."
So too here. This administration has been in power less than 10 months, and already the scale of its lawbreaking is immense. Trials in US courts would likely drag on for more than a decade.
Why do we need to go outside existing law and legal process? Why can't we do it ourselves, so the people can get fully behind it?
There is simply no law that squarely covers a lot of what Trump has done. Partially because we could not previously imagine a criminal sociopath being elected president. Partially because the Supreme Court has — based on literally nothing — conjured a crazily broad presidential immunity doctrine just at the moment a criminal sociopath was in place to abuse it.
And also partially because the federal courts are now packed with partisans who cannot be trusted to apply the law evenhandedly. We need new rules, and we need a new institution to judge Trump and his enablers and thugs. We need to apply the Nuremberg model here.
It seems to me, for all these reasons, Trump is going to get away with his crimes. But the same might not be said for his minions. Can our system seek retribution sufficiently to deter future conspirators?
I don't think it's time yet to accept that Trump is going to get away with it. If we leave this to regular law and courts, he will. That's why I'm making these arguments.
The US is currently in a state of lawlessness. It may not seem that way to the average person. The law still applies to them. But that's the trick. The law doesn't apply to Trump and his allies. That is a particularly threatening type of lawlessness.
Law for some. Impunity for others.
And my point is: the law is broken. The response to that should not be strictly legal — at least not "law," as it stands currently. We need a new law that responds to lawlessness. We need a new institution to enforce it on the lawbreakers. That was the essence of Nuremberg.
To answer your question directly: if there's no punishment for Trump and we focus on Trump's enablers, that's a terrible outcome.
That will breed more contempt for the law.
And it should.
To make reforms happen, there must be political will. Something big enough to force the Democrats — who are the only way Trump will feel the consequences of his actions — to act. Perhaps Epstein is the stand-in for all elite corruption and impunity for law?
I worry every day that this is asking too much of a party that retains as its legislative leaders two men as limp as Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries. I mean, how can any elected Democrat explain that?
But it's not in my nature to just throw up my hands. And there is a level of anger and frustration in this country — and revulsion in seeing our government turn into a crime syndicate — that I think some enterprising politician will eventually harness. Of course, that comes with great danger. We're living very close to the edge right now, and will be for some time, unless we fall completely into the abyss.
The furor around the Epstein files is an indicator that this fury at our elites is shared by many Republicans as well as Democrats. Trump has somehow convinced people — for now — that he is the vessel for retribution (that word again) against corrupt elites. Of course, he never was that. People bought it. They may continue to. But the Epstein files seem to have had some power to shake people's faith in Trump and Trumpism. We'll see how that develops. I'd be surprised if it goes away.
In any event, I hope voters will send Democrats a clear message.
If they do ever regain power, they cannot leave the Trump administration’s lawbreaking unaddressed. And they cannot leave it to existing law and our politicized courts. We need new rules and new institutions. And they have to judge Trump and his enablers, right down to the masked, violent ICE agents on the street.
By Sam D. Hayes, Assistant professor of politics and policy, Simmons University.
On Oct. 15, 2025, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in one of the most anticipated cases of the 2025-2026 term, Louisiana v. Callais, with major implications for the Voting Rights Act, racial representation and Democratic Party power in congress.
The central question in the case is to what extent race can, or must, be used when congressional districts are redrawn. Plaintiffs are challenging whether the longstanding interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which requires protection of minority voting power in redistricting, violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees that individuals should be treated the same by the law.
In short, the plaintiffs argue that the state of Louisiana’s use of race to make a second Black-majority district is forbidden by the U.S. Constitution.
This is the second time that the court will hear oral arguments in Louisiana v. Callais after no decision was reached last term. From my perspective as a scholar of U.S. federal courts and electoral systems, this case represents the collision of decades of Supreme Court decisions on race, redistricting and the Voting Rights Act.
To understand the stakes of the current case, it’s important to know what the Voting Rights Act does. Initially passed in 1965, the act helped end decades of racially discriminatory voting laws by providing federal enforcement of voting rights.
Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act forbids discrimination by states in relation to voting rights and has been used for decades to challenge redistricting plans.
The current case has its roots in the redistricting of Louisiana’s congressional districts following the 2020 Census. States are required to redraw districts each decade based on new population data. Louisiana lawmakers redrew the state’s six congressional districts without major changes in 2022.
Soon after the state redistricted, a group of Black voters challenged the map in federal court as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. The plaintiffs argued that the new map was discriminatory because the voting power of Black citizens in the state was being illegally diluted. The state’s population was 31 percent Black, but only one of the six districts featured a majority-Black population.
The federal courts in 2022 sided with the plaintiffs’ claim that the plan did violate the Voting Rights Act and ordered the state legislature to redraw the congressional plan with a second Black-majority district.
The judges relied on an interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act from a 1986 Supreme Court decision in the case known as Thornburg v. Gingles. Under this interpretation, Section 2’s nondiscrimination requirement means that congressional districts must be drawn in a way that allows large, politically cohesive and compact racial minorities to be able to elect representatives of their choice.
In 2023, the Supreme Court upheld a lower court’s interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in a similar racial gerrymandering case in Alabama.
Following the court order, the Louisiana state legislature passed Senate Bill 8 in January 2024, redrawing the congressional map and creating two districts where Black voters composed a substantial portion of the electorate in compliance with the Gingles ruling. This map was used in the 2024 congressional election and both Black-majority districts elected Democrats, while the other four districts elected Republicans.
These new congressional districts from Senate Bill 8 were challenged by a group of white voters in 2024 in a set of cases that became Louisiana v. Callais.
The plaintiffs argued that the Louisiana legislature’s drawing of districts based on race in Senate Bill 8 was in violation of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, which requires equal treatment of individuals by the government, and the 15th Amendment, which forbids denying the right to vote based on race.
Essentially, the plaintiffs claimed that the courts’ interpretation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional and that the use of race to create a majority-minority district is itself discriminatory. Similar arguments about the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause were also the basis of the Supreme Court’s recent decisions striking down race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
In 2024, a three-judge district court sided with the white plaintiffs in Louisiana v. Callais, with a 2-1 decision. The Black plaintiffs from the original case, and the state of Louisiana, appealed the case to the Supreme Court. The court originally heard the case at the end of the 2024-2025 term before ordering the case re-argued for 2025-2026.
If the Supreme Court ultimately upholds the lower court decision in Louisiana v. Callais, deciding that Louisiana’s congressional districts are unconstitutional racial gerrymanders, it will have substantial impacts on minority representation. The decision would upend decades of precedent for Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.
For 39 years, Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act has required redistricting institutions to consider racial and ethnic minority representation when devising congressional districts. Majority-minority districting is required when a state has large, compact and cohesive minority communities. Historically, some states have redistricted minority communities in ways that dilute their voting power, such as “cracking” a community into multiple districts where they compose a small percentage of the electorate.
Section 2 also provides voters and residents with a legal tool that has been used to challenge districts as discriminatory. Many voters and groups have used Section 2 successfully to challenge redistricting plans.
Section 2 has been the main legal tool for challenging racial discrimination in redistricting for the past decade. In 2013, the Supreme Court effectively ended the other major component of the Voting Rights Act, the preclearance provision, which required certain states to have changes to their elections laws approved by the federal government, including redistricting.
If the court overrules the current interpretation of Section 2, it would limit the legality of using race in redistricting, end requirements for majority-minority districts and eliminate the most common way to challenge discriminatory districting.
Additionally, because of the strong relationship between many minority communities and the Democratic party, the court’s decision has major implications for partisan control of the House of Representatives.
If Section 2 no longer required majority-minority districts, then Republicans could use the ruling to redraw congressional districts across the country to benefit their party. Politico reported that Democrats could lose as many as 19 House seats if the Supreme Court sides with the lower court.
Recent Supreme Court precedent gives conflicting signals as to how it will decide this case.
In 2023, the court rejected a challenge to Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act related to Alabama’s congressional districts. In 2024, the court overruled a lower court’s finding of racial vote dilution in South Carolina.
Airports across the United States have been experiencing significant flight delays recently because of a shortage of air traffic controllers, who have been required to work without pay since a government shutdown began on Oct. 1, 2025.
Reports suggest employees have been calling in sick in increased numbers. And since there was already a shortage of controllers before the shutdown, the impact has been severe, with thousands of flights delayed or canceled since the shutdown began.
The Conversation U.S. asked Brian Strzempkowski and Melanie Dickman, aviation experts at The Ohio State University, to explain how the shutdown is affecting air travel, what that means for passengers and air safety, as well as the air traffic controller shortage that has been plaguing U.S. airports for years.
Air traffic controllers are deemed essential workers, meaning they are still required to work while not receiving compensation – which they would typically then receive in a lump sum after the shutdown ends. President Donald Trump created some uncertainty around this by suggesting workers may not get their back pay without explicit authorization from Congress, despite having signed a law in his first term that makes it a legal requirement.
Working without regular pay, combined with the possibility that they won’t get paid at all, is resulting in real financial stress for air traffic controllers, who perform one of the most stressful jobs there is.
As a result, there have been reports of air traffic controllers calling in sick in large numbers. This happened in previous shutdowns as well. During the 2018-19 shutdown, for example, sickouts started to happen around the two-week mark, roughly when the first paycheck was missed. Controllers, airport security employees, and other essential workers were calling in sick often so they could work another part-time job to pay their bills.
In the current shutdown, this appears to be happening sooner, less than a week after it began. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said around 10 percent of the controller workforce is engaging in this practice and threatened to fire these “problem children.”
Before the shutdown, there was already a critical shortage of air traffic controllers. Coupled with workers calling in sick in recent days, this has led to severe travel delays at many major airports, such as those in Atlanta and Denver, and regional ones, like those serving Burbank, California, and Daytona Beach, Florida.
A big question on travelers’ minds is whether this will affect air safety.
The air traffic control system is multi-layered and has redundancies built into it to ensure an incredibly safe environment. While controller shortages do begin to erode some of those redundancies, contingency plans are in place to help protect the system. For example, air traffic can be diverted away from affected locations or delayed, or the flight may even be be canceled before the plane leaves the gate.
As an example, Newark Liberty International Airport can accommodate approximately 80 aircraft departing or arriving per hour when the airport and airspace is fully operational. However, due to technical failures, staffing shortages and construction at the airport, capacity was limited to between 28 and 34 aircraft per hour in June 2025. Due to technology upgrades and procedural changes, that number was recently increased to between 68 and 72 aircraft per hour. By regulating the amount of traffic, the system can be protected to ensure the safety of every aircraft.
This was an example of high-level oversight in which the secretary of transportation was personally involved in seeking a solution to ensure air travel remained safe while trying to increase capacity.
On a more day-to-day level, the Federal Aviation Administration relies on the Air Traffic Control System Command Center, located about 40 miles away from Washington, D.C. This facility oversees the entire national airspace system and essentially “controls” the controllers. Air traffic professionals monitor staffing at air traffic facilities, weather conditions, equipment failures and unexpected disruptions to the system.
When an incident arises, such as Burbank Airport recently reporting that no controllers were available, the command center issues an alert stating that any aircraft inbound to Burbank must divert to an alternate airport, and any aircraft that has not yet taken off will be held on the ground.
Staffing shortages at other air traffic control facilities may require alternate plans, such as transitioning workloads from one facility with fewer controllers, to another that is appropriately staffed. There is a wide range of tools that the Air Traffic Control System Command Center can utilize to protect the system, but it all stems from the idea of managing the capacity. Flight delays and cancellations, while disruptive to individual travelers, are actually good from a system perspective, because they prevent congestion in the airspace.
There has been a systemic problem with hiring of air traffic controllers for more than a decade.
Over the years, the FAA has fallen behind on training enough controllers to replace those who retire each year. In May 2025, we wrote about the FAA’s plan to utilize colleges across the country to provide the professional training for this career field. While it will take a little time for the students to matriculate through college and into the workforce, this plan will be a significant contributor to solving the controller shortage problem.
Meanwhile, the FAA Academy, which trains U.S. air traffic controllers, only has limited funding from the previous federal budget for current students. The shutdown means no new students can begin training. Depending on the length of the shutdown, the funding may run out as additional employees are furloughed. The ripple effects of a shutdown can remain for many months after the government reopens.
In July, Congress authorized more than US$12 billion in funding to help modernize the air traffic control system.
Secretary Duffy is currently leading an effort to identify a contractor to implement the technology upgrades needed to modernize the system and make it more robust. Duffy has said an additional $19 billion investment will be needed to complete the task.
What happens when huge amounts of money pour into poorly understood and unregulated industries that promise spectacular profits for a few winners?
At best, some investors lose their shirts while the lucky ones make fortunes. At worst, the bubble bursts and takes everyone down with it — not just its investors, but the entire economy.
My purpose today isn’t to worry you but to give you some economic information that may help you. I’m deeply concerned that two opaque industries are creating giant bubbles on the verge of bursting.
One is AI.
AI is worrisome enough as is — its insatiable thirst for energy and water, its capacities to override the wishes of human beings, its potential to destroy the planet.
My immediate concern is that AI is becoming a financial bubble whose bursting will harm lots of innocent people.
Anyone remember the dot-com bubble of the late 1990s? The housing bubble of 2006? The tulip-mania bubble of the 1630s? The South Sea bubble of 1720?
They all followed a well-worn pattern.
An asset generates excitement among investors because its value starts rising — mainly because other investors are also becoming excited and investing in it. Investors borrow piles of money to get in on the action.
The bubble bursts when it becomes evident that way too much has been invested relative to the potential for real-world profits. Smart investors cash out first. Everyone else is left with worthless pieces of paper. Borrowers go broke. Those insuring the borrowers disappear. If bad enough, governments have to bail out the biggest borrowers.
The Bank of England recently warned that AI stock market valuations appeared “stretched” — risking a “sudden correction” in global markets. Translated: The bubble will burst.
AI has many of the characteristics of a bubble.
Market valuations of its major players — OpenAI, Anthropic, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google, Oracle, Amazon, Meta, and Elon Musk’s xAI — have soared. Most of this is on the basis of hope and hype.
Shares of stock surrounding AI and its data centers account for an estimated 75 percent of the returns to America’s biggest corporations, 80 percent of earnings growth, and 90 percent of the growth in capital expenditures.
Yet, according to an MIT report, 95 percent of companies that try AI aren’t making any money from it.
Taxpayers are footing some of this bill. Thirty-seven states have passed legislation granting hundreds of millions of dollars of tax exemptions for the building of data centers.
Meanwhile, factory construction and manufacturing investments in the rest of the American economy have slowed. Manufacturing has lost 38,000 jobs since the start of the year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Amazon’s Jeff Bezos recently admitted that AI is likely a bubble but that some investments will eventually pay off.
“When people get very excited, as they are today, about artificial intelligence, for example ... every experiment gets funded, every company gets funded. The good ideas and the bad ideas. And investors have a hard time in the middle of this excitement, distinguishing between the good ideas and bad ideas.”
The flood of money into AI has made America’s billionaire oligarchs far richer.
By Forbes’ count, 20 of the most notable billionaires tied to the explosive growth in AI infrastructure have already added more than $450 billion to their fortunes since January 1.
Oracle cofounder and chief technology officer Larry Ellison’s wealth has increased $140 billion in the past year, as Oracle’s shares jumped 73 percent (compared to 15 percent for the entire stock market). This was due to projected revenue from Oracle’s cloud infrastructure to power AI.
This has made Larry Ellison the second-richest person in America (just behind Elon Musk). The Ellison family is pouring some of this wealth into a media empire aligned with Trump.
The wealth of Nvidia cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang has increased $47 billion this year as shares of his chipmaking giant have risen 40 percent.
Wait for the burst.
Oracle is carrying more debt than ever, issuing another $18 billion of debt in September. The S&P’s credit rating bureau downgraded its outlook for the company to “negative” in July, citing concerns about free cash flow.
Other major players are also deep into debt.
Frankly, I don’t care which giant corporations or ultra-wealthy investors strike it big and which lose their shirts.
I worry about the economy as a whole, about working families who could lose their jobs and savings. The losses when the AI bubble bursts could ricochet across America.
Trump has put David Sacks, co-founder of an AI company and, of course, a fierce Trump loyalist, in charge of AI and cryptocurrencies. So far, Sacks has killed any restrictions and regulations that might stand in the way of either.
The Trump regime has been opening the doors for trillions of dollars in pension funds to be invested in crypto, AI, venture capital, and private equity. Even 401(k) plans have joined the flood.
Crypto is my second bubble concern. It’s a classic Ponzi scheme. It’s growing because investors believe other investors will keep buying it. And like AI, crypto’s meteoric growth has also been powered largely by the ultra-wealthy. (Trump and his family are said to have made $5 billion off it so far.)
Also like AI, crypto uses up massive amounts of energy but doesn’t actually create anything. Gertrude Stein’s famed description of Oakland, California, seems apt: There’s no there there.
Consider the online brokerage firm Robinhood, whose stock rose 284 percent in the year through September. What fueled this extraordinary increase in value? Trading in cryptocurrency and in betting on sports games.
Last month, Robinhood joined the S&P 500 — the index of America’s biggest corporations. As Jeff Sommer noted in The New York Times, had Robinhood been a member of the S&P 500 for the entire year, its meteoric rise would have been enough for it to lead the index.
Crypto tokens are even being sold as ways to get pieces of private firms like SpaceX and OpenAI. Watch your wallets.
When will the crypto bubble burst? Maybe it’s already started.
Friday’s cryptocurrency selloff — apparently triggered by Trump’s talk of a 100 percent tariff on China — wiped out more than $19 billion in crypto assets. Bitcoin dropped 12 percent, forcing liquidations that triggered more selling, pushing prices even lower. The token for World Liberty Financial, a crypto project backed by Trump and his sons, fell by more than 30 percent.
The sharp downturn exposed the huge amount of borrowing behind crypto’s nine-month rally, which began after the election of an administration seen as friendly to the industry.
The flood of money into these two opaque industries — AI and crypto — has propped up the U.S. stock market and, indirectly, the U.S. economy.
AI and crypto have created the illusion that all is well with the economy — even as Trump has taken a wrecking ball to it: raising tariffs everywhere, threatening China with a 100 percent tariff, sending federal troops into American cities, imprisoning or deporting thousands of immigrants, firing thousands of federal workers, and presiding over the closure of the U.S. government.
When the AI and crypto bubbles burst, we’ll likely see the damage Trump’s wrecking ball has done.
I fear millions of average Americans will feel the consequences — losing their savings and jobs.
Again, I’m not writing this to alarm you. You already have more than enough reason to be alarmed by what’s happening to America.
I want you to take reasonable precaution.
This isn’t an investment letter, but if you have savings, please make sure some are in low-risk assets such as money-market funds. As to your job, hold on.
It’s tempting to believe the Democrats are winning the shutdown fight. After all, if Marjorie Taylor Greene, she of Jewish space laser fame, is now the voice of reason, something is surely going their way.
Last week, the Georgia congresswoman tweeted that “WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THE ABSOLUTELY INSANE COST OF INSURANCE FOR AMERICANS,” after revealing that her adult kids are going to see their own Obamacare premiums increase by 100 percent.
Taylor Greene said: “Not a single Republican in leadership talked to [the House GOP conference] about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!”
The tide seems to be turning.
“How can you tell Democrats have the upper hand in the week-old shutdown fight?” said MSNBC anchor and columnist Catherine Rampell. “Marjorie Taylor Greene just endorsed their key demand.”
Indeed, others are putting the Democrats’ demand in a larger theory of political change. Symone Sanders Townsend, another MSNBC anchor and columnist, said the Democrats are winning because they are asking for something clearly defined in exchange for their support, not “some abstract principle or unreasonable demand.”
She added:
“Fighting is the only way to win. Progress is never handed over; it is wrestled into being. From the Civil Rights Movement to the labor movement, history tells us that those who wait patiently for justice are the ones left behind. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand.” Democrats are demanding something concrete: health care security for the people they represent.”
I don’t see any reason to doubt the assertion that the Democrats are currently winning the fight over the government shutdown, as polling suggests broad agreement in blaming Donald Trump and the GOP.
I question the cause, though. The consensus among liberals and Democrats seems to be that a concrete “kitchen-table issue” like rising health insurance premiums is pushing public opinion and, therefore, forcing at least one highly influential House Republican to break ranks.
But what if it’s simpler than that?
What if public opinion is turning against the president and his party, because the shutdown has exposed something true about them?
Trump has acted like the Congress doesn’t matter, like the courts don’t matter, like the electorate doesn’t matter, like the law and the Constitution don’t matter. All the while, the Republicans have greased the skids of his impunity. That includes the Republicans on the Supreme Court. They occasionally legalized his crimes after the fact.
The president has been telling us for going on a decade that the Democrats are part of a vast, secret and malign conspiracy to destroy the country from the inside — the Democrats are now “the enemy within” same as “domestic terrorist organizations” — and that he is not only the solution to America’s problems but America’s retribution.
And for the last 10 months, the administration, the congressional Republicans and, to a large extent, the Washington press corps have been talking about Trump as if he were less a man than an act of God whose mandate by “real Americans” shall not be denied. The accumulated effect of all this effort has been turning the president into a tiger burning so brightly there’s no point in resisting him.
Yet, despite the hype, the government is shut. The Democrats revealed a tiger made of paper. And all it took was the simple act of saying no.
That’s a better explanation for polling that blames Trump. It’s not that the Democrats are making concrete demands. It’s that they’re fighting, period, using Obamacare subsidies as a credible pretext. They are forcing the president to step off, thus proving he’s neither invincible nor inevitable. Mostly, however, they’re proving he’s not what he seems, and the longer this fight goes on, the clearer that will get.
Even to Republican voters.
And that right there is the thing.
From the point of view of the congressional Republicans, there’s nothing wrong with health insurance premiums going up by two or three or four times. They don’t care, even if their own people are suffering. This is evidenced by Medicaid cuts. They will devastate GOP voters, over a decade, out of public view, giving the Republican enough time to devise a plan to prevent their people from knowing Trump and the Republicans have been scamming them the whole time.
What they do care about is the shutdown giving the Democrats a chance to link the pain that GOP voters are about to feel to Donald Trump. That risks them knowing that he’s the one hurting them, not the Democrats, as well as knowing that the Democrats are trying to help them. The Republicans don’t care about pain, only the lessons of pain.
The consensus right now seems to be that the Democrats are winning the shutdown, because Greene appears to be standing up to the president. (Politico is calling it her “populist rebellion.”) More likely, however, is that Greene is like the canary in the coal mine, an early warning to Trump that something bad is coming, and it’s coming fast, namely, that the Republican Party is about to experience what happens when GOP voters realize what they have done to themselves.
She suggested as much. Though she’s the first House Republican to endorse the Democratic side, she’s trying to shield Trump from the coming blowback.
“I'm actually putting the blame on the Speaker [Mike Johnson] and [Senate Majority] Leader [John] Thune,” she told CNN. “This should not be happening ... We control the House and Senate and have the White House."
The Democrats are winning, but not because they are sticking to economic issues that affect millions of Americans (including me, by the way). They are winning, because the consequence of their choice to fight has been to expose Trump’s weakness. He’s not what he seems.
Perhaps, the same goes for Greene. Though it’s a running joke that she’s suddenly the voice of reason, it’s rational for her to protect Trump. Among the worst things to happen to him and their party would be for GOP voters to learn the truth about them.
I’ll admit to great relief that Donald Trump didn’t receive the Nobel Peace Prize, something for which he’d been shamelessly campaigning for months. I was firmly in the “anyone but Trump” camp but also heartened to see that the Nobel committee chose a worthy recipient, Maria Corina Machado of Venezuela.
Ms. Machado is everything that Trump isn’t, based on the criteria for which Nobel recipients are evaluated.
Machado was awarded the prize according to a Nobel press release for “her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela.” Trump tried to destroy the democratic rights of Americans by attempting to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and invalidate the voters’ constitutional right to elect their president.
Machado was recognized for “her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.” Rather than facilitate a peaceful transfer of power when he lost the 2020 election, Trump refused to accept the results and incited a violent riot at the Capitol to attempt to halt congressional certification of the duly elected president.
According to the Nobel committee, Machado “has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided.” Trump has been a sharply divisive figure. Within the Republican Party, anyone who didn’t agree with him was labeled a RINO, a traitor to the party, and effectively banished. Trump has characterized Democrats as the “enemy of the people,” and “the enemy within,” turning the parties against each other and deeply dividing the country.
As a founder of Súmate, an organization devoted to democratic development, Machado has stood up for free and fair elections for more than 20 years. Trump is doing everything possible to undermine America’s free and fair election process. He has encouraged gerrymandering to add more Republican-dominant districts in red states. He is attempting to skew elections in Republican’s favor, including opposing mail-in ballots, supporting paper ballots only, requiring proof of citizenship, and opposing voting-day registration.
The Nobel committee said, “We see the same trends globally: rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarization.”
The committee was not ignorant of the fact that under Trump, the US is part of this global trend: a president who consistently abuses the rule of law, undermines the free media, criminally indicts critics, asserts authoritarian power, and militarizes cities.
The Nobel press release continued, “When authoritarians seize power, it is crucial to recognize courageous defenders of freedom who rise and resist. Democracy depends on people who refuse to stay silent, … and who remind us that freedom must always be defended.” The Nobel committee was referring to people like Maria Corina Machado, who if an American, would not silently stand by and watch American democracy be destroyed.
It could not be lost on the Nobel committee that the person who was campaigning relentlessly in his egotistical quest for a Nobel was among the authoritarian leaders that the committee was condemning for threatening democracy worldwide. If there was ever an automatic disqualifier for the prize, that could be it.
Trump receiving a Nobel Peace Prize would have been a travesty. People don’t receive peace prizes who undermine their democracies and attempt to create autocratic rule. Maria Corina Machado received the Nobel Peace Prize for fighting courageously against people like Trump and defending Venezuelans’ right to democratic rule.
As to the case that Trump makes for his deserving a Nobel, it is based on his claim that he personally ended seven wars since he was reelected president. Like most of Trump’s claims, this one is a hodgepodge of lies, exaggerations and half-truths.
According to FactCheck.org, some of the conflicts are still ongoing, some agreements haven’t been ratified, and at least one conflict Trump played no role in. What success he did have was based on coercive threats of tariffs rather than diplomacy.
Trump is trying out the role of great international peacemaker to deflect from how he is attempting to unravel democracy at home and bend the judicial and legislative branches, cities, states, universities, and media to his will. The Nobel committee wasn’t the least fooled and awarded a person the peace prize who represents the greatest obstacle to the Donald Trumps of the world taking over.
Outside of everyone residing in the MAGA-world echo chamber, few in the country will lose sleep over Trump not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I suspect millions will sleep much better.
In New York, they brag about Broadway and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
In Chicago, it’s Millennium Park and Frank Lloyd Wright buildings.
Arizona has the Grand Canyon; Colorado has the Rockies; New Mexico has Area 51.
Very nice, I’m sure.
Still, none of them can hold a chlorine-scented candle to Florida, home of the Waste Pro Garbage Truck Museum; the Bike-Riding Parrots of Sarasota Jungle Gardens; Big Betsy, Islamorada’s 30-foot high spiny lobster; not to mention the Beach Tomb of Morris the Cat in Gulfport or any of our other awesome contributions to culture.
Nobody’s ever seen anything like them.
But our state will soon have an even more important attraction.
Lordly. Majestic. Certain to be clad in 24 karat gold.
I speak, naturally, of the Trump Presidential Library Hotel and Massage Parlor soon to be built in Miami.
Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.
Miami Dade College had some land sitting there on its Wolfson campus and, instead of doing something stupid with it like make a park or a cultural center or housing for students or whatever, MDC’s Board of Trustees voted to give the land — worth a paltry $200-$300 million — to the state.
They voted in secret, with no public comment and no community input, but who could possibly object to such a stable genius project?
The state will, in turn, give it to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation, which means the place will be controlled by the Trump family.
“President Trump has a great story to tell as a Florida resident,” says state Attorney General and swashbuckling scofflaw James Uthmeier. “I think it’s quite fitting that we house it … as Miami becomes kind of the capital of the world in many respects.”
New York, Mumbai, Beijing, London, Paris — y’all just shut up.
Suggestions that Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Florida Cabinet members may aspire to higher office in the near future, and know they’d be wise to court Donald Trump’s favor, are unfair.
AG Uthmeier has just been endorsed by the president, but that’s because he’s the greatest. Nobody’s ever seen anybody like him.
Second Son Eric Trump posted on social media (where woke rules of grammar, punctuation, syntax, and other boring so-called aspects of “English usage” totally do not apply): “Consistent with our families DNA, this will be one of the most beautiful buildings ever built, an icon on the Miami skyline.”
As we all know, Eric Trump is a brilliant and totally ethical businessman, and the Trumps have the most exquisite taste. Just look at what his father has done with the Oval Office.
Who knew you could get such gorgeous carved onlays from Home Depot!
It is true the parcel of land is a bit small, only 2.63 acres, especially compared to Lyndon Johnson’s 30 acres in Austin, Texas, or the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library’s 37 acres in Atlanta, Georgia.
So what? Size does not matter and small can be beautiful: Look at the president’s hands!
You build tall, tall like the president himself, who is at least 6ft 5. Maybe six.
How about 100 stories? That will beat the Panorama Tower, which everybody knows is not that beautiful.
The science nerds and climate change alarmists will tell you that since average elevation in Miami is two yards above sea level, and the site is pretty much on Biscayne Bay and about 300 feet from the Miami River, there’s a big danger of flooding.
Also, hurricanes.
No big deal. They can put the “library” part of the library lower down — that’s just books and paper and stuff — and the hotel and massage parlor — the important parts — on higher floors.
It’ll be a glittering palace on Biscayne, visible from space!
Just kidding about letting it flood. We’ll want to protect the priceless artifacts of America’s Golden Age.
Treasures such as the president’s collection of photo-shopped Time Magazine covers, the famous shoe with the piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of it, his hurricane-bending sharpies, his special copy of the Epstein “Birthday Book,” his diamond-studded ketchup bottle, and that world-famous 20-foot red necktie.
Sure, there are nay-sayers, carpers, whiners, complainers, boo-birds, and other losers making noise.
Miami Dade College President Emeritus Eduardo Padrón, a guy who obviously doesn’t understand the great honor being accorded MDC, says it’s “frankly unimaginable” this decision was made “without any real discussion of the consequences of what that will do to the college.”
A bunch of busybody pollsters have found that 74 percent of Miami-Dade residents want the college to keep the land.
Dr. Marvin Dunn, a professor of psychology at FIU, has filed a lawsuit on the ground that Miami Dade College state violated Florida’s Sunshine laws.
The suit claims the public notice posted by the MDC board did not say they would talk about giving away taxpayer-funded property, but just said they’d “discuss potential real estate transactions.”
Picky, picky, picky.
That Dunn guy is such a troublemaker, always going around telling people about Black history and whatnot, just to make them sad.
Now you’ve got a bunch of fuss bunnies banging on about how the Trump library/hotel/massage parlor site is next to Miami’s Freedom Tower, which some of those never-satisfied Cubans see as sacred or something.
Yeah, it’s the “Ellis Island of the South,” the place Cubans who ran from the communists in 1959 went to get papers and medical care, learn English, and receive help settling in Miami, where they began taking over, speaking a foreign language, insisting white people eat Ropa Vieja and drink good coffee, and attacking the integrity of American tooth enamel with their lethal Tres Leches cakes.
Some of them actually protested on the future site of what Eric Trump so rightly calls “the greatest Presidential Library ever built, honoring the greatest President our Nation has ever known.”
Tessa Petit, who runs some wild lib outfit called the Florida Immigrant Coalition, says “it’s ridiculous they’re putting a library of someone who represents everything that is contrary to freedom, someone who’s making it his mission to destroy immigrant families, next to the Freedom Tower.”
One woman, whose family left Cuba in the early 1960s, said she’s against it because the president has “a track record of destroying civic engagement and only supporting those world views that are in alignment with his own.”
Another Cuban-born radical named Yousi Mazpule, a Miami Dade College professor, calls it “a slap in the face,” telling WLRN she objects to the library/tower/massage parlor “being put right next to the Freedom Tower where so many Cubans ran from a dictator.”
That’s gratitude for you — after all the president has done for Cubans!
A bunch of them are currently getting free room and board in federal detention centers.
The Trump administration has revoked so-called “temporary humanitarian parole” for about 300,000.
Our dedicated Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem explains that Cuba, like Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Haiti, and Venezuela, are now perfectly safe, really nice places that probably have great malls.
Yes, the Cubans used to be welcome as refugees from communism, but that was before Kristi Noem was born, so she’s never heard about it and it doesn’t matter.
Now they qualify for a free trip home to Havana and, if ICE won’t let them take their small children or spouses, and they have to fly back wearing shackles, well, that what they get for being, like, foreign.
In the meantime, the Trump Freedom Tower Biscayne Hotel, Library, and Massage Parlor will draw crowds of pilgrims from all over the world, from Idaho to Oklahoma, to stay in one of its luxurious MAGA suites and worship at his shrine, drawn in like bugs to a glue trap.
Florida should be proud.
For the Trump regime, the brutality is the point. It’s the means to the end of a violent, single-party state that they’re openly proclaiming, even though our media insists on turning away from it.
Back in the 1980s, I lived with my family and worked in Germany for a bit short of two years. The international relief agency I worked for (and lived at the HQ of) jumped through all the necessary hoops to get me a work permit, but if I’d overstayed my permit/visa nobody would have kicked in my front door or invaded my home with flash-bangs and automatic weapons drawn.
Nobody would have smashed in the windows of my car, or shot me with pepper balls or rubber-coated bullets, or snatched our three children and put them into a privatized “Christian” foster care system from which thousands of kids simply vanish.
Instead, a polite fellow from the Ausländerbehörden (“Immigration Office”) would have dropped by, perhaps with a local police officer, to tell me how to navigate the system to either acquire the right to stay, or work out how I’d be leaving. He’d give me a few weeks, or possibly even a few months, to get everything together and leave the country.
I knew a few German police officers; they’re incredibly professional, having to have graduated from a three-year college program and undergone what’s typically a yearlong probationary period before they can publicly handle a firearm.
This is how civilized countries handle “illegal immigration.” So, why are Homan, Noem, Trump, et al, engaging in and celebrating such wild violence against people here?
There are now so many videos of ICE thugs unlawfully beating, kidnapping, and terrorizing brown people, their supporters, protestors, and journalists — even maliciously spraying pepper gas at peaceful protesters in inflatable animal costumes — that it’s getting impossible to keep track of them all.
From ICE agents smashing a car window to pull a man from his vehicle in New Bedford, Massachusetts (Apr. 16, 2025), to an ICE agent shooting Eric Díaz-Cruz in the face in Brooklyn (Feb. 2020), to masked agents breaking a car window during an arrest outside a Beaverton, Oregon preschool (Jul. 21, 2025), and even pepper-balling a Chicago pastor in the head during a protest (Sept. 2025), the videos keep piling up.
Add to that a viral clip of a cuffed Portland protester being wheeled away on a flatbed cart (Oct. 2025), neighbors in Nashville forming a human chain to stop an ICE pickup (Jul. 2019), and the on-camera violent throwing to the ground and arrest of a WGN journalist during a Chicago raid last week, and you get the picture.
This is how it always starts, this process of getting citizens used to the government using violence that will one day be turned against them.
When a regime wants to turn the police powers of the state — with all the brutality and violence they can legally wield — against its political opponents, it never starts with the members of the opposition party. But it always ends up there, be it in Germany in the 1930s or today’s Russia, Hungary, China, Turkey, Iran, etc., etc.
Hitler didn’t start by arresting and imprisoning lawmakers from or supporters of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Centre Party (Zentrum), or even the Communist Party (KPD) even though all of the three major German parties openly and outspokenly opposed his Nazi Party.
German Pastor Martin Niemöller’s famous poem begins with, “First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a socialist.” But, in fact, first Hitler came for queer people.
A year before Nazis began attacking union leaders and socialists, a full five years before attacking Jewish-owned stores on Kristallnacht, the Nazis came for the trans people at the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin.
In 1930, the Institute had pioneered the first gender-affirming surgery in modern Europe. It’s director, Magnus Hirschfeld, had compiled the largest library of books and scientific papers on the LGBTQ+ spectrum in the world and was internationally recognized in the field of sexual and gender studies.
Being gay, lesbian, or trans was widely tolerated in Germany, at least in the big cities, when Hitler came to power on January 30, 1933, and the German queer community was his first explicit target. Within weeks, the Nazis began a campaign to demonize queer people — with especially vitriolic attacks on trans people — across German media.
German states put into law bans on gender-affirming care, drag shows, and any sort of “public display of deviance,” enforcing a long-moribund German law, Paragraph 175, first put into the nation’s penal code in 1871, that outlawed homosexuality. Books and magazines telling stories of gay men and lesbians were removed from schools and libraries.
Thus, a mere five months after Hitler came to power, on May 6, 1933, Nazis showed up at the Institute and hauled more than 20,000 books and manuscripts about gender and sexuality out in the street to burn, creating a massive bonfire. It was followed by open and widely publicized violence against gay men and trans women.
It was the first major Nazi book-burning and violence against an “other,” and was celebrated with newsreels played in theaters across the nation. It wouldn’t be the last: soon it spread to libraries and public high schools.
Having established the legal precedent for dragging people from their homes and imprisoning them, Hitler then began arresting members of the non-Nazi political parties and their followers.
But first, he knew he had to get Germans used to the idea of authorities of the state kicking in doors and dragging screaming people into the street.
When the only victims of this brutality were queer people and “non-Aryans,” ethnic Germans let him and his Stormtroopers get away with it because the objects of the violence were “them.”
But it never ends with “them.”
Fascist regimes always turn their police powers against their own people, first going after those who ridicule, oppose, or have turned away from support for their leader.
ICE doesn’t need to rappel from helicopters, smash windows, zip-tie shivering naked American citizen children, and terrorize their parents to get non-citizens to leave the country.
Instead, like in Germany and most other civilized nations, they could simply give people the equivalent of a speeding ticket with a certain amount of time to get their affairs in order and leave the country before a next step — arrest and forced deportation — takes place. And they could threaten their employers with large fines, like my employer in Germany would have faced had I overstayed my visa.
But not here in America. Here, the agenda is quite different and involves explicit and highly publicized violence against undocumented people and their property.
For a reason.
Stephen Miller told us, when talking with Sean Hannity on Fox “News” in August, what that reason is, what their ultimate goal will be:
“The Democrat [sic] Party does not fight for, care about, or represent American citizens. It is an entity devoted exclusively [his emphasis] to the defense of hardened criminals, gang-bangers, and illegal, alien killers and terrorists. The Democrat Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization.” (emphasis added)
Immigrants are just the Trump regime’s warm-up act, just like trans people and Gypsies were in 1933 Germany. The real goal of this administration — by their own declaration — is to turn America into a one-party-rule nation.
To get there, though, they first must get us used to Trump’s masked secret police using violence on the streets and in our homes, right in front of us.
This is why DHS is proudly producing videos showing people being brutalized to upbeat music, why their agents are concealing their identities to increase the terror and minimize the possibility of accountability, and why complicit Republicans refuse to even use the correct name for their ultimate target, members of the Democratic Party.
Back in the 1950s, Joe McCarthy advised Republicans never to use the actual name of the Democratic Party, but instead to slander them with a slur.
“Never say Democratic Party, that sounds too nice, too democratic. Instead, always say ‘Democrat Party,’ with an emphasis on the ‘rat’.”
It’s why they’re flooding social media with celebrations of their violence, and why the millionaire talent on billionaire-owned Fox “News” are cheerleading them. It’s why Trump is openly talking about arresting Illinois’ Governor Pritzker and Chicago’s Mayor Johnson. It’s why his masked thugs tackled a US Senator, arrested a congresswoman, and imprisoned the mayor of Newark, all with great fanfare.
If you think Democrats — including registered Democratic voters — aren’t next, you’re not paying attention. They’re already trying to make sure our votes aren’t counted; when that fails they’ll proceed to Miller’s step two and start dealing with us as “domestic extremists.”
The brutality, in other words, is the point. It’s not an accident, a side effect, or the result of poor training. It’s intentional. It’s a signal of their broader intentions. Following the classic dictator’s playbook.
And if we ever get used to it, God help America.
Nick Anderson is a Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist.
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