Eight years ago, the lobby of the Trump International Hotel in Washington became the symbol of influence peddling. Tourists giddily mingled with lobbyists and campaign donors. The cheapest cocktail went for $24. How quaint.

This term, Donald Trump Jr. announced that he is opening a private, members-only club in Georgetown called Executive Branch. Members of the Trump administration, CEOs, and tech executives are among those who have signed up. The membership fee is currently $500,000.

That is the context for the controversy now erupting over Qatar’s gift of a roughly $400 million airplane for use as the new Air Force One, a 747 that would be transferred to the Trump Presidential Library when he leaves office, potentially making it available for his personal use (although he denies he would use it). It’s outlandish on its own terms. And it is just the most visible part of a new ethos of self-dealing, with lines between public purpose and private enrichment not just blurred but erased.

Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms.

Days before his return to office, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency token, $TRUMP, which immediately enriched him by an estimated billions of dollars (although the coin’s worth has since dropped). Since crypto is a purely speculative vehicle, this gave “investors” a chance to send funds straight to Trump, without disclosure or pretense. Sure enough, the United Arab Emirates, another country where he visited this week, gave him... sorry, “invested” $2 billion.

Trump’s family enterprise already owns a crypto mining company, World Liberty Financial, which benefits from his shift from skeptic to deregulator.

Then there are the transactions that all seem to end up with the first family being paid—starting with the $28 million paid by Amazon to First Lady Melania Trump for a documentary.

Now, let’s not romanticize a past golden age of government ethics. The White House saw the Crédit Mobilier scandal of the 1870s and Teapot Dome in the 1920s. Lyndon Johnson used the Federal Communications Commission to give preferential treatment to radio stations he owned. In more recent decades, presidents of both parties conducted a grueling schedule of nearly nonstop campaign fundraising. (My old boss Bill Clinton certainly got grief when party donors slept in the Lincoln Bedroom.) Hunter Biden was accused of peddling influence for personal gain before his father pardoned him on the way out of office.

What’s different here is that the funds are flowing not to a political party or campaign but to the officeholder as an individual. The transaction is direct, naked.

The founders were very concerned about an individual using the power of the presidency to enrich themselves and their family members. They focused sharply on the risks of corruption and were well aware of the myriad ways the system could be abused. And they were especially worried that foreign governments could influence American presidents.

At the Constitutional Convention, Gouverneur Morris feared the possibility of the president receiving foreign bribes: “One would think the King of England well secured against bribery. Yet Charles II was bribed by Louis XIV.” The founders wrote anti-corruption protections into our Constitution.

Article I of the Constitution forbids any officeholder from accepting any gift or title from any “King, Prince, or foreign State” without congressional consent. It’s called the Foreign Emoluments Clause. At the Virginia ratifying convention for the Constitution, Edmund Randolph made clear how viscerally the framers recoiled from the possibility of foreign funds. He described “an accident, which actually happened, [which] operated in producing the restriction. A box was presented to our ambassador by the king of our allies. It was thought proper, in order to exclude corruption and foreign influence, to prohibit any one in office from receiving or holding any emoluments from foreign states.”

Trump said, “I would be a stupid person” to turn down the $400 million plane. But remember that the Emoluments Clause is in the part of the Constitution making clear Congress’s power—it’s not up to the president to decide.

In his first term, Maryland and the District of Columbia sued, alleging that Trump illegally profited from foreign and domestic officials who visited his hotel. We agreed. That case got tied up in court, and in 2021, the Supreme Court ultimately dismissed it since Trump was no longer president.

So what lessons can we learn from this, and what ironclad rules could prevent future presidents from profiting so brazenly from office?

To start, Congress should make clear it does not approve of this massive foreign gift to our president. More comprehensively, Congress could pass legislation to fully enforce the Constitution’s Foreign Emoluments Clause and remove the procedural hurdles that derailed lawsuits in Trump’s first term.

Then it would be time to recognize that we have relied on common sense or self-restraint from previous chief executives. The Brennan Center’s task force of Republican and Democratic former senior officials recommended that presidents be required to put their businesses and assets into a blind trust, a proposal that is part of the Protecting Our Democracy Act that fell to a filibuster in 2022.

Even those protections may be inadequate. Neither the founders nor later generations of lawmakers profited from meme coins.

Out of today’s scandals come tomorrow’s reforms. For now, all of our astonished outrage is a good start.

The National Day of Action is set for May 31, 2025, as a call to action in communities across the United States. The goal is to unite people locally and nationally to eliminate profit-based healthcare. This nonviolent campaign is a collective effort that aims to put National Single Payer on the national agenda. Everyone has a basic human right to healthcare.

This opinion piece shares research findings to advocate for a single-payer healthcare system. Among wealthy countries, the U.S. has by far the most expensive healthcare system, and yet the only one without universal coverage. It is fundamentally broken. The system is inequitable due to differences in insurance availability based on work status, income, and other factors. Individuals of different backgrounds don’t have the same level of access to quality healthcare services. Excess administrative costs for insurers and providers add to an estimate of $504 billion out of $1.1 trillion. The time that it takes providers to complete billing tasks can compromise patient-provider relationships and care delivery.

Employer-sponsored insurance plans are the mainstay of U.S. health insurance. More than 156 million Americans (workers and their families) are covered by job-based insurance. The plans can incur high costs for employees and their families. It also places a burden on employers, including premium payments, time spent managing insurance, and potential compromises to hiring and worker productivity. One study estimated annual transactions costs to companies of $21.6 billion. Time spent by employees dealing with insurance issues may constitute the “sludge” that reduces productivity.

“All my employees are friends of mine. It really pains me to see them not go to the doctor, especially for specialists.”

Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and the University of California, San Francisco studied the consequences of the U.S. system of health insurance on employers. We conducted seven company case studies, with companies in various industries and of varying sizes. Companies were qualitatively and quantitatively explored for the burdens imposed on employers by providing health insurance to their workers and dependents. We interviewed company owners and managers. Below are summaries of the findings:

• All of the companies care about employee health and financial well-being. They strive to provide reliable health insurance, though employees often have other options (spousal coverage or Medicaid).

• Strategies vary widely in terms of types of coverage. Most companies reported substantial management time overseeing the insurance process. Several companies have utilized brokers or consultants for assistance.

• The two largest companies (both in the manufacturing industry) incurred unique costs related to being self-insured.

• Premium and other financial costs represented 4% to 27% of labor costs. The management cost component is up to 50% of the premium cost. Employee productivity lost to insurance activities was not significant. While there hasn’t been a significant impact on business operations, such as strategies to increase production to meet demand surges, it does affect hiring and can lead to significant costs.

Below are direct quotes from some of those interviews:

“Where [health insurance] really has an impact is who we can hire. The people who would want to work for us would want insurance and so that was always a big barrier to getting talent.”—Owner, Custom Gifts and Products company

“The cost of health insurance has limited, I mean that there’s a certain limit to my profit margin and particularly with other factors such as supply chain issues... I’m getting squeezed on a lot of different fronts, and if my health insurance didn’t go up 10% every year, I could pay people 10% more every year... They don’t want to give up their health insurance, but I think they know that it’s suppressing the wages that we can pay.”—Owner, Print and Design company

“All my employees are friends of mine. It really pains me to see them not go to the doctor, especially for specialists... And our specialist cost is very high... And for some of our employees, especially the warehouse employees, they’re not super high compensation.”—Owner, Aviation Distribution company

To conclude, job-based insurance poses health-related and financial burdens on company employers and employees. These burdens would disappear with the implementation of a national single-payer healthcare system.

Charles Fremont Dight has been reincarnated in the worm-gnawed brain of Bobby Kennedy, Jr. A medical professor at the University of Minnesota, Dight hoped to rid society of its unfit members. Dight, an eccentric who lived for a time in a treehouse, wrote about these unfit people in such publications as "Increase of the Unfit, A Social Menace," and "A Proper Function of Society is to Control Reproduction." Like other eugenicists, Dight believed in stronger immigration laws to keep the unfit aliens, but emphatically not people of Anglo-Saxon "stock," out of the country. In 1933, Dight wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler praising the Fuhrer's efforts to "stamp out mental inferiority."

Eugenics, a mainstream science in the early 20th century, sought restrictive marriage laws, isolation of the "unfit" in special colonies for the "feeble minded," and forced sterilization to shield society from the cost of caring for its most vulnerable citizens. Recent immigrants with poor English, children who had what are now recognized as learning disabilities, Down syndrome Americans, and many others were at risk of being paraded before eugenics courts for summary judgment and sent off to isolation colonies. Once removed from society, the eugenicists claimed, those with better bloodlines would be freed of their burden to care for them.

A Registry of Eugenic Discrimination

Bobby Kennedy, Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has embarked on policies that frighteningly resemble those of eugenicists: They seek to identify and disempower the underprivileged, they serve anti-immigrant and racist sentiment, and they embrace pseudoscience. Bobby Jr. wants to identify citizens with autism and place them in some kind of registry. He ordered the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to build "a real-world data platform enabling advanced research across claims data, electronic medical records, and consumer wearables," to determine the root causes of autism spectrum disorder, and to give Bobby and his team of autism falsifiers data drawn from public and private sources in violation of federal privacy and security rules. (Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently signed an executive order to block the federal government from collecting these data related to autism and to protect "dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination" of Illinois residents.

Bobby's eugenics registry will succeed in stigmatizing people, especially young people, the way that eugenics surveyors stigmatized the "feeble-minded."

The HSS database, like those of the eugenicists, will be subjective and impressionistic. U.S. eugenicists built a registry for the unfit at the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in Cold Spring Harbor, New York under director Harry Laughlin. Laughlin and his poorly trained minions assembled index cards about American families, often from a cursory glance at a person's face and carriage, to create genetic family trees. The ERO believed they had proved a huge number of people carrying hereditary disease who could be identified to be isolated or sterilized; 80,000 Americans were sterilized.

Racism and Pseudoscience in HHS

Bobby Jr. shares the eccentricities and racism of the eugenists. He cut up whale skull found on the beach near the Kennedy Compound in Hyannis Port, apparently because he likes to study animal skulls and skeletons, tied it to the roof of the family car, and drove it back to New York, while the rank "whale juice" poured into the car and onto his children. Bobby's interest in skulls may have been kindled by the work of craniologist Samuel Morton (1799-1851). In his Crania Americana Morton set forth a hierarchy of intelligence with Native Americans and Blacks at the bottom to justify their enslavement, removal, and other disturbing acts of violence against them.

Building on Morton's thesis, racist scientists and eugenicists documented lack of mental acuity among African Americans. They assigned Blacks special diseases and susceptibilities, one of which, drapetomania, led slaves to run away from cruel owners; another ordained syphilis as a "Negro disease." These racists believed that Blacks have a higher pain tolerance and weaker lungs that could be strengthened through hard labor (slavery). Bobby Jr. claims that Black people have a stronger immune system than white people and thus should receive vaccines on a different schedule. He observed that "to particular antigens, Blacks have a much stronger reaction." Bobby Jr. has said that African AIDS is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS, and he reiterates the fiction that HIV does not cause AIDS.

Another leg in the eugenicists' program was anti-immigration laws. ERO director Laughlin testified before the U.S. Congress in support of the Immigration Act of 1924 and its restrictions on admission to the U.S. of "races" considered inferior to the Anglo stock. On the basis of flawed data, Laughlin told Congress that recent immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe were "socially inadequate," and tended to "degeneracy, shiftlessness, alcoholism, and insubordination," all of which were supposedly genetic traits. The 1924 act was easily passed signed into law by President Calvin Coolidge who believed that "America must be kept American" and that "biological laws show that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races."

No wonder Donald Trump selected Bobby Jr. to head HHS. Trump began his first presidential campaign commenting with conviction that Mexican immigrants were drug dealers and rapists. Trump draws on the work of criminal anthropologist Cesare Lombroso and the racial hygienists of Nazi Germany where a person's genes or bloodline determine his or her capacity for success or violence. Trump said, "You know, now, a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes." But the Trump family has good genes, although his convictions for sex and financial crimes might offer counter evidence: "We're smart people… We're like racehorses." During his ongoing campaign against undocumented aliens and citizens with foreign-sounding names, Trump ordered white South Africans to be given asylum in the U.S., but pointedly not Afghans who fought for freedom against the Taliban, Mexicans, or any other "races."

The Pseudoscience of Mercury-Caused Autism

The entire premise of Bobby's registry is the fully discredited assertion that vaccinations cause autism which is based on a retracted and discredited 1998 study by Andrew Wakefield that linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. Wakefield combed his data, weeded out some children who didn't fit, and carefully included others. Further, his research was funded by lawyers acting for parents who were involved in lawsuits against vaccine manufacturers.

Like Dight, Laughlin, and other eugenicists, Bobby lies and misinterprets data to fit his predetermined and erroneous conclusions that vaccines cause autism. In one article Bobby "claimed that the amount of ethyl mercury in vaccines was 187 times greater than the recommended limit, when it was only 1.4 times greater." He cited one study to contend that tuna sandwiches laced with mercury being fed to two-month-old babies. There is nothing of the sort in the study.

Eugenics and the Decline of Public Health

Bobby's strange mix of false science will exacerbate such public health crises as the ongoing measles epidemic as confused parents deny their children life-saving vaccinations. Bobby Jr. hates vaccines. He referred to the Covid-19 vaccine as "the deadliest vaccine ever made." The vaccine saved perhaps as many as 20 million lives. Kennedy has said that he only drinks raw milk. Doing so puts people at risk of foodborne illness, since pasteurization kills off pathogens. Drinking it may increase the risk of the spread of bird flu. Bobby wants to remove fluoride from drinking water and claims bone cancer, IQ loss, thyroid disease, and other things may result from its use. This is untrue. Fluoride prevents cavities.

Kennedy's fabrications about autism, mercury, and other topics recall the misguided work of eugenicist Henry Goddard. Goodard was the director of research at New Jersey's Vineland Training School for Feeble-Minded Girls and Boys. He opened an early clinical laboratory to study intellectual disabilities. Tracing the lineage of one of his young patients and building her family tree back to the Revolutionary War, Goddard concluded that intelligence, sanity, and morality were hereditary, and every effort should be undertaken to keep the "feeble-minded" from procreating to eliminate them from the breeding pool. His study on the "Kallikaks" (1912) used touched-up photos to show the Kallikaks as inferior creatures.

Always lurking in the minds of this MAGA government are racist scientific ideas about breeding and innate intelligence; about the evils of immigrants; and about the need to revitalize science away from rigorous hypothesis and testing toward conspiracy, pseudoscience, and eugenics. Bobby's eugenics registry will succeed in stigmatizing people, especially young people, the way that eugenics surveyors stigmatized the "feeble-minded." Perhaps the registry will confirm what is well known: that increasing numbers of people identified with autism is largely to do with increased screening for and greater identification of people with autism. There is no epidemic. But, like a good eugenicist, he has determined his conclusions before the study begins.

Happy measles, everyone! Or, as Donald Trump says, he only hires the best people.

Copaganda is a specific type of propaganda in which the punishment bureaucracy and the powerful interests behind it influence how we think about crime and safety. I use the term “punishment bureaucracy” instead of “criminal justice system” in this book because it is a more accurate and less deceptive way to describe the constellation of public and private institutions that develop, enforce, and profit from criminal law. The government determines what things are considered a “crime” subject to punishment versus what things are permitted or tolerated even if they hurt people. Then, the government determines what kinds of punishments are appropriate for the conduct it prohibits. Across history and different societies, the definition of crime and how it should be punished has varied depending on who has power and what serves their interests, not an objective evaluation of what causes harm.

The powerful define crime to suit their interests, making some things legal and others punishable. They also decide how what is criminalized gets punished. Should the government execute or cage or whip people who break a law? Should the government mandate a public apology, permit survivors to initiate restorative processes, seize assets, require volunteer work, revoke a business or driver’s license, confine someone to their home, banish them? Should society show them love and give them help? Should society instead invest more in preventing certain harms from happening in the first place?

Having defined crime and punishment, the government also determines which crimes to enforce against which people. “Law enforcement” rarely responds to most violations of the law. It only enforces some criminal laws against some people some of the time.

The obsessive focus by news outlets on the punishment bureaucracy as a solution to interpersonal harm draws away resources from investment in the things that work better, along with a sense of urgency for those priorities.

These decisions, too, follow patterns of power, not safety. That is why U.S. police chose for many years to arrest more people for marijuana possession than for all “violent crime” combined. That is why police prioritize budgets for SWAT teams to search for drugs in poor communities over testing rape kits. That is why the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office responded to proposed county budget cuts by threatening to cut the divisions that handle white-collar crimes and sexual abuse. That is why about 90 percent of people prosecuted for crimes are very poor. That is why no senior figures were prosecuted for the 2008 financial crisis or the U.S. torture program after 9/11. That is why police tolerate widespread drug use in dorms at Ivy League universities. That is why most of the undercover police operations in hundreds of U.S. cities target disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and immigrant people instead of other police officers, prosecutors, real estate developers, fraternities with histories of drug distribution and rape, or corporate board rooms with histories of tax evasion, fraud, and insider trading. That is why a playground fight at a low-income school results in a child being taken away from their parents and jailed with a criminal record, while the same fight at a prep school may result in a call to parents for an early pickup that afternoon.

In an unequal society where a few have more money and power than the many, the punishment bureaucracy is a tool for preserving inequalities. It maintains the social order by using government violence to manage the unrest that comes from unfairness, desperation, and alienation, and it crushes organized opposition against the political system. These functions explain why the punishment bureaucracy expands during times of growing inequality and social agitation. Throughout history, those who are comfortable with how society looks tend to preserve and expand the punishment bureaucracy, even though—and largely because—it operates as an anti-democratic force. Those who have wanted to change certain aspects of our society—such as movements for workers, racial justice, women’s suffrage, economic equality, peace, ecological sustainability, immigrant rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and so on—have tended throughout history to combat the size, power, and discretion of the punishment bureaucracy. Why? Because it is almost always wielded against them.

So, how does copaganda work? It has three main roles.

Job #1: Narrowing Our Understanding of Threat

The first job of copaganda is to narrow our conception of threat. Rather than the bigger threats to our safety caused by people with power, we narrow our conception to crimes committed by the poorest, most vulnerable people in our society. For example, wage theft by employers dwarfs all other property crime combined—such as burglaries, retail theft, and robberies—costing an estimated $50 billion every year. Tax evasion steals about $1 trillion each year. That’s over sixty times the wealth lost in all police-reported property crime. There are hundreds of thousands of known Clean Water Act violations each year, causing cancer, kidney failure, rotting teeth, damage to the nervous system, and death. Over 100,000 people in the United States die every year from air pollution, about five times the number of homicides. At the same time, most sexual assaults, domestic violence crimes, and sex offenses against children go unreported, unrecorded, and ignored by the legal system. Punishment bureaucrats feed reporters stories that measure “safety” as any short-term increase or decrease in, say, official homicide or robbery rates, rather than by how many people died from lack of health care, how many children suffered lead poisoning, how many families were rendered homeless by eviction or foreclosure, how many people couldn’t pay utility bills because of various white-collar crimes, how many thousands of illegal assaults police and jail guards committed, and so on. Sometimes the rates of various crimes go up and down, and we should all be concerned about any form of violence against any human being. But the first job of copaganda is getting us focused almost exclu- sively on a narrow range of the threats we face, mostly the officially-recorded crimes of poor people, rather than the large-scale devastation wrought by people with power and money.

Job #2: Manufacturing Fear

The second job of copaganda is to manufacture crises and panics about this narrow category of threats. After the 2020 George Floyd uprisings, for example, the news bombarded the public with a series of “crime waves” concerning various forms of crime committed by the poor even though government data showed that, despite some categories of police-reported crime rising and others falling at the beginning of the pandemic, overall property and violent crime continued to be at near-historic fifty-year lows the entire time. As a result of continual news-generated panics, nearly every year of this century, public opinion polls showed people believing that police-reported crime was rising, even when it was generally falling.

Copaganda leaves the public in a vague state of fear. It manufactures suspicion against poor people, immigrants, and racial minorities rather than, say, bankers, pharmaceutical executives, fraternity brothers, landlords, employers, and polluters. Copaganda also engenders fear of strangers while obscuring the oppressive forces that lead to interpersonal violence between acquaintances, friends, and family members. (Police themselves commit one-third of all stranger-homicides in the U.S., but these figures are generally excluded from reported crime rates.) This matters because when people are in a perpetual state of fear for their physical safety, they are more likely to support the punishment bureaucracy and authoritarian reactions against those they fear.

Job #3: Promoting Punishment as the Solution

The third job of copaganda is to convince the public to spend more money on the punishment bureaucracy by framing police, prosecutors, probation, parole, and prisons as effective solutions to interpersonal harm. Copaganda links safety to things the punishment bureaucracy does, while downplaying the connection between safety and the material, structural conditions of people’s lives. So, for example, a rise in homeless people sleeping in the street might be framed as an economic problem requiring more affordable housing, but copaganda frames it as “disorder” solvable with more arrests for trespassing. Instead of linking sexual assault to toxic masculinity or a lack of resources and vibrant social connections to escape high-risk situations, copaganda links it to an under-resourced punishment system. Like a media-induced Stockholm syndrome, copaganda sells us the illusion that the violent abuser is somehow the liberator, the protector, our best and only option.

If police, prosecutions, and prisons made us safe, we would be living in the safest society in world history. But, as I discuss later, greater investment in the punishment bureaucracy actually increases a number of social harms, including physical violence, sexual harm, disease, trauma, drug abuse, mental illness, isolation, and even, in the long term, police-recorded crime. Instead, overwhelming evidence supports addressing the controllable things that determine the levels of interpersonal harm in our society, including: poverty; lack of affordable housing; inadequate healthcare and mental wellness resources; nutrition; access to recreation and exercise; pollution; human and social connection; design of cities, buildings, and physical environments; and early-childhood education. Addressing root causes like these would lower police-reported crime and also prevent the other harms that flow from inequality that never make it into the legal system for punishment, including millions of avoidable deaths and unnecessary suffering that exceed the narrow category of harm that police record as “crime.”

The obsessive focus by news outlets on the punishment bureaucracy as a solution to interpersonal harm draws away resources from investment in the things that work better, along with a sense of urgency for those priorities. It also promotes the surveillance and repression of social movements that are trying to solve those root structural problems by fighting for a more equal and sustainable society. Copaganda thus contributes to a cycle in which the root causes of our safety problems never get solved even though people in power constantly claim to be trying.

As you read the examples collected in this book with the above three themes in mind, ask yourself: what kind of public is created by consuming such news? If we see one of these articles once, we may not notice anything odd, or we may shake our heads at how silly, uninformed, and nefarious it is. But if we see thousands of them over the course of years, and we hardly see anything else, we become different people. It is the ubiquity of copaganda that requires us to set up daily practices of individual and collective vigilance.

Copyright © 2025 by Alec Karakatsanis. This excerpt originally appeared in Copaganda: How Police and the Media Manipulate Our News, published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission and please note that it is not available for re-posting elsewhere.

By Ralph Nader May 16, 2025 Dictator Donald Trump’s ego has gone global and dominates the news cycle.  His domestic opponents are left with too little too late rebuttals and, again, are victims of his genius in diverting and distracting them and the media. Take his “triumphant” trip to the wealthy Arab Nations in the…

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This week’s DMZ America podcast delivers a compelling deep dive into the Supreme Court’s high-stakes oral arguments on national stays, separation of powers, and the 14th Amendment. Hosts Ted Rall and Scott Stantis, joined by legal expert Ricardo Aparicio, unpack a case that could reshape the core of American governance. The Court is grappling with the controversial use of nationwide injunctions that halt federal policies, the boundaries of authority between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and the 14th Amendment’s role in safeguarding rights in today’s polarized climate. These arguments strike at the heart of how power is balanced and how laws are enforced across the nation. With the potential to set precedents that will echo for decades, the outcome could redefine judicial reach and constitutional interpretation. What’s at stake for democracy when the justices weigh these monumental issues? How will their rulings impact the fabric of American law? Tune in for an incisive, serious discussion that cuts through the complexity, offering sharp insights into a defining moment for the nation’s highest court.

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Join hosts Ted Rall and John Kiriakou on this riveting episode of DeProgram as they tackle three seismic issues in U.S. foreign and domestic affairs. First, they dive into the high-stakes Ukraine peace talks, where U.S. diplomacy navigates a delicate path amid Russia’s advances and global pressure for resolution. Next, they unpack the intensifying U.S. sanctions on Venezuela, fueling economic chaos and regional instability with far-reaching consequences. Finally, they explore the Supreme Court’s latest clash over the 14th Amendment, a domestic showdown with profound implications for civil rights and constitutional law. With their sharp insights and fearless commentary, Rall and Kiriakou cut through the spin, delivering clarity on these pivotal moments. This episode is essential for anyone craving a deeper understanding of the forces shaping America’s role at home and abroad. Tune in to DeProgram for unfiltered analysis that challenges conventional narratives and equips you with the knowledge to navigate today’s complex world. Subscribe now, catch the episode on your favorite platform, and join the conversation about the future of U.S. policy and justice. Don’t miss this chance to stay informed and engaged with the issues that matter most.

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I remember the phrase from my boyhood, listening to baseball games on the old wooden radio by my bed. A major hitter would be up and—bang!—he’d connect with the ball in a big-time fashion. The announcer in a rising voice would then say dramatically: “It’s going, going, gone!” It was a phrase connected to success of the first order. It was Duke Snider or Mickey Mantle hitting a homer. It was a winner all the way around the bases.

Today, though no one may say it anymore, somewhere deep inside my mind I can still hear it. But now, at least for me, it’s connected to another kind of hitter entirely and another kind of reality as well. I’m thinking, of course, about the president of these (increasingly dis-)United States of America, Donald J. Trump, and how, these days, his version of a going-going-gone homer is simply the going-going-gone part of it.

But no one reading this piece should be surprised by that. After all, in my own fashion, for the last 24 years here at TomDispatch, I’ve been recording the going-going-gone version of both this country and, as time has gone on, this planet.

This isn’t simply a moment of imperial decline, something all too common in the long story of humanity, but of a marked planetary decline as well.

And of course, I’ve lived through it all as well. I mean, imagine: I was born on July 20, 1944, less than 13 months before World War II ended in all-American success with the ominous use of two atomic bombs to obliterate the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (Going, going, gone!) And I grew up in the 1950s, years when the president of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, had previously been nothing less than the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force in Europe in World War II and a five-star Army general. And it would be under his presidency that this country would end its military action in Korea with an armistice that left that land split in two. And that unsatisfying conclusion would prove to be but the first of what, over the decades to come, would be an almost endless series of unwinnable wars in countries ranging from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, to Afghanistan, Iraq, and in the era of the Global War on Terror, an unnerving percentage of the rest of this planet. (Going, going gone!)

We’re talking about the military that, in those same years, would establish an unparalleled 750 or more military bases across significant parts of planet Earth and would, while it was at it, create what was functionally a global navy and air force.

In those same decades, as literally millions of people died in all-American wars, we would, in response, pour ever more money into the institution that was all too inaptly—or do I mean ineptly?—called the Department of Defense. Of course, the question of whether it should actually have been called the Department of Offense simply never came up. And yet, despite three-quarters of a century of remarkable lack of success in its conflicts, in the years to come, the Pentagon, under Donald J. Trump, is likely to break quite a different kind of record when it comes to success. No, not in fighting wars, but in being funded by the American taxpayer in what, if any sort of perspective were available, would be seen as a staggeringly unbelievable fashion. After all, President Trump is now aiming for a 2026 “defense” budget that, with a rise of 13%, would break the trillion-dollar mark. And mind you, that sum wouldn’t even include the $175 billion he hopes to invest in “securing” our border with Mexico, or the funding for the rest of the national security bureaucracy.

And to set the stage for all of this, he even all too (in)appropriately launched a new American conflict, an air war on Yemen, a country that, I would bet, most Americans didn’t even know existed and certainly couldn’t locate on a global map. And given the American record on such matters since 1945, it was perhaps strangely on target of him recently to suddenly halt that bombing campaign, since you can count on one thing without even having access to the future: There was no way it would have proven successful and victory there would never have been at hand.

And consider it strange as well that, even in the decades of this country’s imperial success, when it helped form and support the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Europe, when it developed a vast network of military bases and military allies across the Pacific littoral from Japan to Australia and beyond, when it faced off against the Soviet Union on this planet (and did indeed, in the end, leave that imperial power in the dust of history), it was still, in war-fighting terms, a military disaster zone. In short, since its victory in World War II soon after my birth, this country has never again come close to winning a war.

And yet, here’s the strange thing, historically speaking: Those years of disastrous wars were also the years of American imperial greatness. Who, today, can even truly remember the moment that the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, its empire dissolving, while it fell into utter disarray, leaving this country, in imperial terms, standing distinctly alone on planet Earth, not an enemy or even a true opponent in sight? (Communist China was then still a modest power, though on the rise.)

Going Down the Trumpian Toilet

Thirty-four years later, how things have changed! (Yes, given those years, it seems to me that an exclamation point is anything but inappropriate!) And if you want to take in the true nature of that change, you have to look no further than one Donald J. Trump. How extraordinary that he has become the Dwight D. Eisenhower or John F. Kennedy of this strange moment of ours.

I think that someday, looking back, hard as that act may be even to imagine right now, Donald Trump will be seen as a—or perhaps the—symbol of the decline and fall of just about everything. Or looked at another way, what’s left of imperial America appears to be going down Trump’s toilet, while this country itself threatens to come apart at the seams. Meanwhile, America’s first billionaire president, who has surrounded himself with a bevy of other billionaires, continues to have the urge to profit personally from this increasingly strange world of ours. Of course, that should hardly be shocking on a planet where, in 2024, even before his second term in office, the cumulative wealth of billionaires was estimated to have grown by $2 trillion, or $5.7 billion a day, with the creation of an average of four new billionaires a week. And according to Oxfam, “In the U.S. alone, billionaire wealth increased by $1.4 trillion—or $3.9 billion per day—in 2024, and 74 more people became billionaires.”

And mind you, all of that was true even before (yes, that word should indeed be italicized!) billionaire Donald Trump reentered the Oval Office, while his sons continued to wildly circle the globe trying to make yet more money for themselves and him. And who wouldn’t agree that, in these last months, the second time around, he’s been a distinctly tarrific president? (Don’t you dare disagree or I’ll put a 10%,—“the new zero”—if not a 145% tariff on you personally!)

Oh, and the man who rode into office on a promise to save the American middle class has promisingly staffed his administration with at least 12 other billionaires. And oh (again!), I haven’t even mentioned the richest man on planet Earth yet, have I? Yes, Elon Musk has lent a distinctive hand—and what a hand!—to dismantling significant aspects of the U.S. government (but not, of course, the Pentagon!), throwing tens of thousands of people out of work, while ensuring that parts of the government that actually helped Americans and others on this planet of ours would no longer be functional. No less impressively, he did so at a genuine cost to himself. The fall in value of the stock of his increasingly unpopular car company, Tesla, has been little short of stunning, leaving him with a mere $300 billion or so (no, that is not a misprint!), which represents a loss of about $131 billion so far in 2025 alone.

The President from Hell

But what makes Donald Trump’s and Elon Musk’s moment and movement so different from any other moment or movement in our history is another reality (and it is a reality) entirely: This isn’t simply a moment of imperial decline, something all too common in the long story of humanity, but of a marked planetary decline as well.

Yes, the Earth itself is, it seems, going down that same imperial toilet. And unlike the decline of great powers, the decline of Planet Earth is likely to be devastating indeed for the rest of humanity. It’s hard even to believe, in fact, that Americans elected (twice, no less!) a man who has insisted that climate change is a “giant hoax” and, once in office, has seemed intently focused on increasing the levels of drilling for and the burning of oil and natural gas, even though it’s hardly news anymore that such acts will, over the years to come, help devastate this already overheating planet of ours—the last 10 years having already been the hottest on record—and everyone on it.

Storms, floods, and fires of a historic—or do I mean post-historic?—sort clearly lie in our future in a fashion that we humans have never experienced before. And it’s perfectly obvious that 78-year-old Donald Trump simply couldn’t give less of a damn. After all, he certainly won’t be here to experience the worst of it. He is, in short, not just a tariffic president but, in some futuristic sense, all too literally the president from hell.

And all of this should have been obvious enough from his first round in the Oval Office, so consider all too many of us Americans, if not us humans, to have some version of a Trumpian-style death wish, even if not for ourselves but for our children and grandchildren. In so many ways, in retrospect, the reelection of Donald Trump seems to represent—explain it as you will—the enactment of a human death wish on a scale almost beyond imagining.

And with that in mind, let me return to the threesome I began this piece with. Those three words may no longer be a baseball line at all—I wouldn’t know since I haven’t listened to a baseball game in years—but they still have a certain grim futuristic significance on our planet. So let me repeat them again as a kind of warning about where, if we’re not far more careful in our political choices, all too much of humanity is heading—thank you, Donald J. Trump!

Going, going, gone!

(Let’s truly hope not!)

As House Republican leaders work to advance a reconciliation bill to the floor, their agenda couldn’t be clearer: stripping health care and food assistance away from millions of people and raising families’ costs, breaking their promises to help people on the margins of the economy — while showering ever larger tax breaks on the wealthiest households.

House Republicans’ extreme SNAP cuts would take some or all food assistance away from millions of low-income people and families who struggle to afford groceries. This will drive up hunger, deepen poverty, and leave more people unable to afford basic needs.

House Republicans are trying to hide much of the impact of the SNAP cuts by slashing federal funding and then passing the buck to states. When a state can’t come up with the money to backfill for the large federal cuts totaling billions nationally, it will have to choose how to cut the number of people getting help or whether to opt out of having a SNAP program entirely. With this scheme, the plan walks away from the 50-year, bipartisan commitment to ensure that poor children get the help they need, whether they live in Alabama, Missouri, or California.

Proponents want to shift blame for the cuts to states, but the blame game won’t matter to children, families, seniors, people with disabilities, veterans, small business owners, and others when they are hungry and can’t afford food. (Republican portrayals of who gets helped by SNAP and Medicaid are selective at best — about 1 in 4 veterans and 1 in 4 small business owners live in a household getting help from SNAP, Medicaid, or CHIP at some point in the year, Census data show.)

This plan is replete with proposals that will add red tape, making things more cumbersome, more bureaucratic, and less user-friendly — and ultimately designed to fail families in ways that will leave people sicker, poorer, and hungrier.

At the same time, at least 13.7 million people would lose health coverage and become uninsured under the House Republicans’ Medicaid and Affordable Care Act marketplace agenda that deeply cuts Medicaid, erects new barriers to coverage, and allows the enhanced premium tax credits (PTCs) that help low- and middle-income families and small business owners afford health coverage to expire, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates. Some Republicans argue they shouldn’t be blamed for the 4 million people projected to lose coverage due to the PTCs’ expiration. That’s frankly absurd: they wrote a bill that extends all of the expiring 2017 tax cuts — and even expands provisions that benefit the wealthiest people in the country — yet chose not to extend the enhanced PTCs for people who need help affording coverage. That’s their agenda and they need to own it.

Like their approach to SNAP, House Republicans seek to obscure the impact of their health care cuts through complicated proposals, like limiting the ways states can fund Medicaid and adding lots of red tape and paperwork that makes it harder for people to get and keep health coverage. But here, too, there’s no hiding the outcome: millions of people, including children, will lose coverage and access to care for life-threatening and chronic illnesses as well as preventive care.

The House Republican plan targets some of its harshest attacks on people who are immigrants and their families. It would take away Medicare and marketplace coverage from certain immigrants, including people granted refugee and asylee status after proving they face persecution in their home countries, victims of trafficking and domestic violence, and people with Temporary Protected Status. The plan also takes away the Child Tax Credit from U.S. citizen children if both parents don’t have a Social Security number (even if one parent is a citizen), and strips access to SNAP benefits from people granted asylum and refugee status and other vulnerable groups who are living and working lawfully in the U.S.

Proponents of these cuts often falsely claim that they are restricting access for people who lack documentation, when the reality is that people without a documented immigration status already do not qualify for these benefits, and the cuts will largely impact lawfully present immigrants and U.S. citizen children in immigrant families.

Despite House Republicans’ rhetoric about supporting the “working class,” the plan targets working people and their families, making it much harder for them to get help weathering life’s ups and downs.

Despite House Republicans’ rhetoric about supporting the “working class,” the plan targets working people and their families, making it much harder for them to get help weathering life’s ups and downs. Workers may need help because their employer lays them off or cuts their hours, or because they get sick or have to miss work to care for a sick loved one, and the House Republican plan takes help away from people in exactly these situations.

And for all of the rhetoric coming out of DOGE about making government work more efficiently, that commitment doesn’t seem to apply to working families who need help. This plan is replete with proposals that will add red tape, making things more cumbersome, more bureaucratic, and less user-friendly — and ultimately designed to fail families in ways that will leave people sicker, poorer, and hungrier.

Moreover, the House Republican plan would deny as many as 20 million children in working families from receiving the full $2,500 Child Tax Credit because their parents — who work important but low-paid jobs — don’t earn enough. The 17 million children who currently don’t get the full $2,000 Child Tax Credit would get nothing from the credit’s $500-per-child increase, even as families earning up to $400,000 would get the full increase. Last year 169 House Republicans voted to help most of the families they are now leaving out.

In contrast to its disdain for people whose budgets are stretched thin every month, the plan showers more tax cuts on the wealthy, extending the highly skewed provisions of the 2017 law and adding permanent expansions for wealthy households. In 2027 it gives households earning more than $1 million a year an annual tax cut of roughly $90,000, while low-income households receive an average of just $90 from the tax cuts — the same households who will then bear the brunt of cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.

This agenda won’t create a future of shared prosperity and economic opportunity, which is what’s required to build a country that’s truly great.

The plan’s tax cuts would cost nearly $4 trillion through 2034 — and over $5 trillion if one sees through its timing gimmicks like turning off tax cuts for middle-class families after four years while making some of its most top-tilted tax cuts — like the cut in the estate tax and the deduction for pass-through income — permanent. Moreover, the House Republicans cut more than $500 billion in clean energy tax credits — which would worsen health outcomes for communities facing high rates of pollution, and the plan’s health cuts would make it harder for them to access health care.

It’s been clear for some time that House Republicans were headed down this harmful path, but to see the contours of this bill emerge is somehow still shocking: that they would hurt so many people who struggle to afford basic needs and whom they have promised to help. And they continue to pursue this agenda at a time when the President’s tariffs, chaotically crafted and applied, have caused increased uncertainty and raised the risk of a recession, higher unemployment, and surging prices.

Whatever Republican policymakers may think, these policies aren’t popular with the public because they aren’t consistent with core American values, which include helping people when they fall on tough times and expecting wealthy people to pay their fair share.

This agenda won’t create a future of shared prosperity and economic opportunity, which is what’s required to build a country that’s truly great. There’s a better path forward, but it requires tearing up this legislation and replacing it with a plan that lowers costs and invests in people and families, while raising the revenues from the wealthy to make those investments and reduce economic risks associated with high debt.

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On this riveting episode of The TMI Show, hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan dive into France’s ambitious quest to build a “Collective European Defense,” a seismic shift in the continent’s security framework. With global power dynamics in flux, France is leading the charge to unite European nations, fostering military cohesion and reducing dependence on NATO. This episode unravels the implications of this bold strategy, exploring how France aims to strengthen Europe’s strategic autonomy amid rising tensions with powers like Russia and China. What obstacles lie ahead for a unified European defense? How will this reshape alliances across the Atlantic? Tune in for a sharp, serious breakdown of a development poised to transform global geopolitics.

Plus:

• Trump’s Iran nuclear proposal: The U.S. delivers a plan to address Iran’s advancing nuclear program, with talks reaching expert-level intensity. Tehran demands the right to enrich uranium, while the Trump administration insists on a total halt.
• Aviation data sold to ICE: A massive aviation clearinghouse sells passenger data to the Trump administration for its immigration crackdown.
• CRISPR baby’s historic treatment: A U.S. infant with a rare genetic condition receives a groundbreaking personalized gene-editing therapy.

The post TMI Show Ep 140: “Europe Plans for Life After NATO” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

The numbers are clear. Nursing home residents depend on Medicaid. According to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, fully 63% of nursing home care in the United States is funded by Medicaid. Some states are even more dependent on Medicaid than the national average. For example, in West Virginia fully 77% of nursing home care is funded by Medicaid.

Politico reported on the morning of May 15 that after a marathon markup session lasting 26 hours, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced legislation that “would slash Medicaid spending by hundreds of billions of dollars.” These cuts would directly impact nursing home residents and their families. The Washington Post reports that:

“Their [nursing home residents] coverage will be at risk,” said Katie Sloan Smith, president and chief executive of LeadingAge, a Washington lobbying association for operators of nonprofit senior-care facilities. “Either the home itself will have to make up for that loss in some way or they will simply have to say, ‘We can no longer support people on Medicaid’ and close those beds.”

While the Medicaid cuts would hurt nursing home patients, they would also severely impact those who receive care at home (often referred to as home and community-based care). According to National Public Radio, Medicaid pays for care at home for roughly 4.5 million Americans.

The Medicaid cuts that passed the Energy and Commerce Committee would devastate America’s family caregivers as Medicaid also funds caregiver respite programs and caregiver training. The cuts would hurt our most vulnerable and their families.

Where are our citizens on the question of Medicaid cuts? The evidence clearly shows that the American people oppose Medicaid cuts. In fact, there is support for more spending on Medicaid. Polling from the Kaiser Family Foundation published in March of this year found that 42% want to see an increase in Medicaid spending. Just under 3 in 4 (73%) of respondents say that Medicaid is important to their local communities. Democrats (83%), Independents (74%), and Republicans (61%) all see Medicaid as very important to their local community.

Late Thursday May 15, the fate of the measure that passed the Energy and Commerce Committee was in doubt as the legislation moves to a vote in the House of Representatives. There will no doubt be more twists and turns before the measure heads to the Senate. Every moment that activists can delay the passage of these Medicaid cuts is more time to mount an opposition. Republicans might not want to admit it, but support for Medicaid is strong and deep.

This is the greatest threat to Medicaid since its creation in 1965. The GOP legislation is a dagger pointed directly at our most vulnerable. Many of those who would be impacted by Medicaid cuts are not able to raise their voices. Therefore, it up to those of us who can, to raise our voices and tell our elected representatives to reject these cruel proposals that would devastate our families, friends, and neighbors. The stakes in the debate over Medicaid are far too high for any of us to stay silent.

Former presidential adviser-cum-rightwing podcaster Steve Bannon often mentions that discerning the truth of President Donald Trump's policy goals entails focusing on the signal and not the noise.

But doing so has been next to impossible when trying to figure out the rationale behind the administration's moves in agriculture, which since January have generated widespread confusion and uncertainty.

Specifically, while Trump publicly proclaims that he stands with farmers, his tariff war with China stands to rob producers of their markets. Since Trump's last term, China has already been looking to countries like Brazil for soybeans as the U.S. has proven an unreliable partner. Adding insult to injury, unexpectedly cancelling government contracts with thousands around the country early in his term placed undue stress on farmers who already have to contend with what extreme weather events throw their way.

Taken together, the bailouts along with the freshly inked U.K.-U.S. trade deal and easing of tariffs on China illustrate how the Trump administration prioritizes export agriculture as the driving force of our country's farm system.

Now, with the details of the U.K.-U.S. trade deal becoming known, the signal—that is, the truth—of the Trump administration's vision for agriculture is coming into view. To the point, not unlike how U.S. agriculture has been directed for the past few decades, it is becoming clear that this administration will prioritize exports. The problem with this vision is that, even if it generates short-term profits, it endangers our long-term national food security by dangerously further internationalizing our agricultural system.

Consider the praise that U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins heaped on the U.K.-U.S. deal that was made on May 8, singling out its supposed gains for farmers.

Following the announcement, the secretary announced a tour that she will take through the United Kingdom to tout the agreement. While details are still being hashed out, we are told of a promised $5 billion in market access for beef and ethanol.

Contrast that clear messaging—the signal—with how government contracts with farmers were frozen and made subject to administrative review, and the funding for local food programs was slashed.

The contracts were connected with the Biden administration's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which included resources for initiatives like those dealing with soil and water conservation, and supporting local food processing. Additionally, programs that connected local producers with schools and food banks, for example, the Local Food for Schools Cooperative Agreement Program and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program, had their funding cut in the amount of about $1 billion.

Since February, some of the contracts have been unfrozen if they aligned with the administration's political objectives (i.e. not promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, or DEI). Despite court orders ruling that all contracts must be honored, if and when the funds will be distributed, remains to be seen.

Overall, the noise surrounding the unfolding contract drama signals to farmers who want to diversify their operations and serve local markets that they should second guess looking to the government for help.

At the same time, Trump has not abandoned all producers.

In fact, amid the commotion about freezing some contracts, Secretary Rollins ok'd billions in direct payments, or bailouts, for growers of commodity crops such as corn. Thanks to such payments and not any improvements to markets, it is expected that farmers will see their incomes increase when comparing this year with the last.

Taken together, the bailouts along with the freshly inked U.K.-U.S. trade deal and easing of tariffs on China illustrate how the Trump administration prioritizes export agriculture as the driving force of our country's farm system.

Such dynamics smack of contradiction, as Trump appears eager to send our food abroad while he's willing to do whatever to bring manufacturing back to America's shores in the name of strengthening the national economy.

Still, the deeper problem is with how export promotion makes our food system insecure, subjecting farmers to international political upheavals and economic disruption.

Remember the 1970s, when a grain production crisis prompted sudden demand in the Soviet Union. Then-Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz told farmers to "plant fence row to fence row" and "get big or get out" to profit from the newfound export opportunity.

The promise of international markets came—and went. President Jimmy Carter's embargo of grain exports to the Soviet Union in 1980 for that country's invasion of Afghanistan came as a body blow to the farmers who made commodity exports central to their financial plans. Farmers then struggled to pay off the debt for the land and machinery that they acquired just a few years before, which, with rising gas prices, contributed to the 1980s farm crisis. Parallels abound now, including the initial effects of Russia's invasion of Ukraine increasing fertilizer and gasoline costs, and most recently, the ongoing dynamics of Trump's trade war with China.

Concerning the U.K.-U.S. deal, U.K. imports of ethanol may seem a boon for corn growers. But without future terms of the deal becoming clear, it is unclear if this is simply a continuation of what the British already import. Similarly, the significance of the slated $250 million in purchases of beef products is of questionable importance, as last year the U.S. exported $1.6 billion to China. Regardless of the recent 90 day truce in the China-U.S. trade dispute, the remaining 30% tariff would still hurt American farmers. The Trump administration's export push will find farmers without markets and in need of more bailouts.

Besides subjecting U.S. farmers' livelihoods to international uncertainty, the other concern is the lack of concern for the next generation of food producers. Year after year, the country's farmers are getting older, with no one stepping up to replace them. According to the 2022 Agricultural Census, the average farmer is over 58 years old, up over half a year from when the last census was conducted in 2017. During that same time, we lost nearly 150,000 operations. Since 2012, over 200,000 farmers have left the industry, representing a 10% decline. Meanwhile, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, upwards of 70% of farmland is expected to change hands over the next 20 years.

Export promotion serves a temporary fix, but places farmers at the whims of international politics. Moreover, it threatens our country's already economically pressed farmers, making our country even more dependent on a dwindling number of people for our food, as well as imports. In fact, since 2004, while exports have nearly doubled from $50 billion to $200, our food imports have increased slightly more so.

Trump's efforts to undo the previous administration's policies set up our food system for disruption and crisis, subjecting farmers to the uncertainties of international markets and developments elsewhere. If there is a signal with the noise that Trump is making with our food system, then this is it—farmers better get ready for a volatile next few years and more bailouts, as operations will continue to go under. Overall, Trump's nationalist rhetoric amounts to little, as our food system becomes more global, increasingly made vulnerable to dynamics outside our control.

I have taught AP U.S. history for years, as well as Government and World History courses. I have written an original curriculum for Honors Economics. I coached successful Public Forum and Policy debate teams for five years. In addition to my professional experience, I am a close reader of both historical scholarship and current events. The conclusions that follow are drawn from a systematic comparison of this year’s immigration and due process developments with established patterns in the historical record.

The federal government is executing a coordinated legal and administrative campaign aimed at the identification, arrest, and removal of millions of undocumented immigrants. These efforts rely on expanded authority for military and federal agencies, the criminalization of municipal noncooperation, and the systematic dismantling of legal protections previously afforded to vulnerable populations. Though presented as standard immigration enforcement, the structure and language of these measures reflect a state-directed attempt to displace a racially and ethnically defined group. The legal apparatus includes provisions for indefinite detention, the arrest of elected officials, and the use of private contractors to operate beyond traditional channels of accountability.

These policies are not theoretical. They are codified in executive orders, agency directives, and prosecutorial actions. The stated goal exceeds the undocumented population, and enforcement does not rely on individualized findings of legal status. It is categorical. The administration describes its targets as “invaders” and “vermin” and frames sanctuary jurisdictions as criminal conspiracies. These terms do not function as rhetoric. They define policy. Laws criminalizing refusal to comply with deportation efforts are designed to eliminate legal and institutional resistance.

The most effective deterrent to escalation remains noncompliance at every level of implementation.

What follows is a chronology of recent actions taken or proposed during the second Trump administration, aligned with legal precedents from early Nazi Germany. These are not metaphors. Each section pairs language from contemporary United States policy with that of the 1930s German state, using identical structure and phrasing where historically appropriate. The purpose is to allow for clear legal comparison of governance models used to execute racialized mass removal.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14159 titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” The order suspended habeas corpus protections for undocumented immigrants, expanded federal authority over sanctuary jurisdictions, and authorized indefinite detention and mass deputization of local police under 287(g) agreements.

On February 28, 1933, Adolf Hitler enacted the Decree of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State. The decree suspended habeas corpus, granted the central government power over state authorities, and permitted indefinite detention and mass deputization of local police to suppress declared enemies of the state.

In April 2025, the Trump administration began removing civil servants based on prior involvement in diversity or civil rights programs. A directive issued April 2 targeted officials for dismissal or reassignment solely for ideological nonconformity.

On April 7, 1933, Hitler’s regime enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. This measure removed Jews and political opponents from public office based on ancestry or beliefs and mandated reassignment or termination for ideological deviation.

In May 2025, the Department of Justice ordered the identification of state and local officials who refused to assist with federal immigration enforcement. These officials were targeted for prosecution under statutes related to obstruction and harboring.

In March 1933, the Nazi regime began detaining opposition party members and regional officials who resisted centralized directives. Local leaders were prosecuted or removed for obstructing enforcement of national laws.

In February 2025, the Trump administration revoked federal support for PBS and NPR and initiated reviews of media funding for ideological violations. The stated aim was to eliminate sources of disinformation and enforce loyalty to national priorities.

In March 1933, the Nazi government enacted the Editors Law, revoked press credentials from noncompliant outlets, and placed all broadcast content under state control. The purpose was to remove disloyal voices and ensure total ideological conformity.

In May 2025, a Wisconsin judge was arrested for allegedly aiding an undocumented immigrant. Federal officials warned that similar acts of judicial noncooperation could be prosecuted as subversion.

In July 1933, the Nazi regime dismissed judges deemed politically unreliable and established special courts. Judges who issued rulings contrary to regime policy were disciplined or removed.

In April 2025, Trump officials proposed turning military bases into detention centers for families without legal review. These facilities would be operated by private contractors under emergency protocols.

In June 1933, Nazi authorities converted military and industrial sites into concentration camps. The camps detained prisoners without court oversight and were run by SS forces under emergency powers.

In May 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced it was considering the arrest of Democratic members of Congress who protested at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility. They were accused of obstructing federal officers and interfering with detention protocols.

In March 1933, the Nazi regime arrested parliamentary members and accused them of obstructing national authority. Resistance to regime policy was criminalized as a threat to public order.

Trump has constantly proposed legislation to end birthright citizenship for children of undocumented parents. His proposals aim to redefine legal membership in the national community.

In 1935, the Nazi regime enacted the Reich Citizenship Law. The law stripped Jews of citizenship and redefined the legal criteria for national belonging.

The current phase of the Trump administration’s immigration policy reflects an early stage rather than a peak of repression. The legal and operational structure for targeted mass removal is being assembled through executive orders, bureaucratic purges, and prosecutorial test cases that redefine the limits of federal authority.

The scale of proposed removals exceeds historical precedent but has not yet reached full execution. Institutional resistance is inconsistent but has not been eliminated. Local and state officials retain procedural leverage if they choose to apply it. The most effective deterrent to escalation remains noncompliance at every level of implementation.

The policy direction is explicit. Continued repression is not a possibility but a stated intention. The presence of Latino Americans in federal agencies and military institutions has not prevented policy targeting based on national origin or perceived foreignness. Participation does not provide exemption from removal. The structural conditions that have historically preceded ethnic cleansing are now observable. The determining factor will be whether enough people act before enforcement becomes normalized.

Earlier this year, the University of York released a sobering report: 90% of secondary school teachers in the U.K. said their male students are being heavily influenced by online misogynistic figures—often quoting or defending toxic masculine personalities in classes. Girls, meanwhile, are withdrawing from discussions, leaving classrooms quietly divided along gender lines.

This is not just a school issue; it's a society-wide crisis forming in real time, and it's happening worldwide. Boys are learning that dominance is power and empathy is weakness, lessons they carry with them far beyond the walls of a classroom. Online misogyny thrives not only because of those who perpetrate it but also due to the silence of many men who choose not to confront it. This passive complicity allows harmful narratives to flourish, shaping a digital culture where toxic masculinity is normalized and women's voices are marginalized.

There is a better way forward. As a human rights advocate with extensive experience in promoting positive masculinity at RWAMREC, Rwanda Men's Resource Center, I have witnessed firsthand how transformative male engagement approaches can challenge gender-based violence and reshape harmful cultural narratives, both online and in the real world. But, despite their demonstrated successes, these programs are vastly underutilized. Many campaigns focus exclusively on empowering women to protect themselves, rather than mobilizing men to take collective responsibility for change. To truly create lasting change and address online misogyny, we must invest in programs that equip men with the tools and confidence to act as allies.

Without the active involvement of tech companies in combating online misogyny, even the most well-intentioned male allies will face an uphill battle.

Content creators promoting hypermasculine personas characterized by control, dominance, and anti-woman rhetoric have amassed audiences in the tens of millions across platforms like X, TikTok, and YouTube. Such creators often blend self-improvement themes with misogynistic and conspiratorial messaging, making their content more appealing and harder to critique. A U.K.-based survey of secondary school teachers revealed that 90% observed male students mimicking or defending online personalities who espouse these hypermasculine ideologies, demonstrating their real-world influence in shaping gender attitudes among youth. Too many boys view this kind of hateful content with complacency, fostering environments where such attitudes are normalized. But a recent study presented compelling evidence supporting the effectiveness of male bystander intervention in reducing sexist behavior. The research found that when male bystanders actively confronted instances of gender prejudice, female victims experienced increased feelings of empowerment and a greater willingness to confront the perpetrator themselves.

By encouraging men to reflect on their behaviors and understand the impact of their words, the toxic patterns that often go unchecked in digital spaces can be dismantled. Educational campaigns that include men in honest conversations about gender equality have led to more respectful engagement on social media, gaming platforms, and online forums. Participants are more likely to recognize misogynistic content, challenge harmful narratives, and avoid contributing to hostile online environments. These efforts not only reduce the prevalence of online abuse but also shift cultural norms around masculinity, making empathy and accountability part of the standard.

Of course not all boys and men endorse or participate in misogynistic behavior online, and many already stand as strong allies in promoting gender equality. However, the pervasive nature of online misogyny calls for a collective response. While male engagement is essential, it is not enough on its own. Tech companies also play a critical role, as their platforms often become spaces where misogynistic content thrives. These companies must take responsibility by implementing robust policies, monitoring harmful behavior, and holding users accountable. Without the active involvement of tech companies in combating online misogyny, even the most well-intentioned male allies will face an uphill battle.

The fight against misogyny requires active engagement from all corners of society, including those who have the privilege and responsibility to challenge these harmful ideologies. By standing up and speaking out, men can help disrupt the cycle and create a safer, more inclusive online environment for everyone. We need increased funding for initiatives that engage men in preventing online misogyny. We also need media literacy education in schools that arm young people with tools to recognize and challenge harmful online behaviors. Men's active involvement in challenging misogyny is more than supportive, it's revolutionary. When boys and men confront sexist remarks, push back against harmful gender stereotypes, or simply opt out of disrespectful conversations, they break the cycle that normalizes misogyny in everyday life.

A widely recognized poem by Martin Niemoller illustrates the gradual expansion of oppression as it targets one group after another. Niemoller’s work, often titled First They Came, reflects on the Nazi era, noting how inaction enabled broader persecution: initially targeting socialists, then trade unionists, followed by Jews, and eventually the speaker, with no one left to protest. The Trump Administration has intensified its deportation efforts at a pace that exceeds the early progression of Nazism. Within three months the scope of roundups broadened significantly. Authorities first focused on gang members. They then moved to individuals wrongly accused of gang ties. Next came campus protesters followed by green card holders. The policy soon reached people nearing citizenship and finally extended to babies holding United States citizenship. This swift escalation shows a widening net that engulfs diverse populations rapidly. Each phase builds momentum surpassing historical examples in speed. The strategy of this leadership highlights risks of unchecked overreach.

What IS the Left? What should we fight for? How can we rebuild outside of the Democrats? Order my latest book “WHAT’S LEFT” here at Rall.com. It comes autographed to the person of your choice, and I’ll deliver it anywhere. Cost including shipping is $29.95 in the USA.

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Republicans in the House of Representatives voted out of committee early Wednesday morning legislation that would strip as many as 14 million Americans of their Medicaid-based healthcare, including millions of seniors in nursing homes and children living in poverty.

Ironically, red states will be hit harder by this than blue states, as they’re generally less capable of making up the loss of federal funds (Medicaid is administered at the state level with block grants from the feds).

Which provokes some serious head-scratching among the pundit class: Why would Republicans kneecap their own people? Do they really think they can get away with it, just to fund tax breaks for Elon, Mark, Jeff, and Donald? And, for that matter, why is it that red states are so vulnerable to this GOP perfidy?

Republicans are more than willing to tolerate massive, desperate levels of human suffering to make sure there’s a steady supply of cheap labor. In fact, they intentionally run their states that way to produce those results.

One of the enduring mysteries of America is why the citizens of red states are generally poorer, less educated, and sicker than the citizens of blue states. To that question, I step up as your hierophant with an answer to this deep mystery that you may not have previously considered.

First, that generalization is broadly true:

• Blue states account for about 71% of America’s GDP, whereas red states only produce 29% of our income and wealth.
• The median family income in blue states is $74,243. In red states it’s $63,553. Individual states highlight the disparity: New Jersey’s median income is $89,703, while Mississippi’s is $49,111.
• Counties that voted for former President Joe Biden in 2020 are more diverse, being 35% nonwhite compared to 16% nonwhite populations in counties that voted for President Donald Trump.
• Counties that voted for Biden in 2020 are better educated, with 36% of their population having some college education compared to Trump’s counties at 25%.
• Residents of blue states live 2.2 years longer, on average, than residents of red states.

And, second, it’s undeniably true (and documented with each hotlink below) that Republican-controlled red states, almost across the board, have higher rates of:

• Spousal abuse
• Obesity
• Smoking
• Teen pregnancy
• Sexually transmitted diseases
• Abortion (at least before Dobbs; now it would be “forced births”)
• Bankruptcies and poverty
• Homicide and suicide
• Infant mortality
• Maternal mortality
• Forcible rape
• Robbery and aggravated assault
• Dropouts from high school
• Divorce
• Contaminated air and water
• Opiate addiction and deaths
• Unskilled workers
• Parasitic infections
• Income and wealth inequality
• Covid-19 deaths and unvaccinated people
• Federal subsidies to states (“Red State Welfare”)
• People on welfare
• Child poverty
• Homelessness
• Spousal murder
• Unemployment
• Deaths from auto accidents
• People living on disability
• Gun deaths

But are all these things happening because Republicans simply hate their citizens and explicitly want high levels of poverty, ignorance, death, and disease?

Turns out there’s a much simpler answer.

The problem for red states is that Republicans worship cheap labor, because it drives up profits for the fat cats who own American businesses—and having a steady and reliable supply of cheap labor to maintain high profits requires widespread poverty, ignorance, death, and disease.

That poverty, of course, brings along with it the long list of social ills above, but Republicans are more than willing to tolerate massive, desperate levels of human suffering to make sure there’s a steady supply of cheap labor. In fact, they intentionally run their states that way to produce those results.

If you have any doubts about this, if that sounds like hyperbole, simply look at the policies the GOP has promoted for the past century:

• Republicans hate unions, because unions raise wages and benefits for workers, shifting them from poverty into the middle class. Once thus empowered, those uppity middle-class people then start to demand “unreasonable” things like overtime pay (Project 2025 would functionally end it), healthcare, paid vacations, paid sick leave, and paid family leave.
• Republicans hate Social Security and have worked to gut, privatize, or outright end it ever since FDR signed it into law in 1935. They do this because elderly workers in poverty are a great source of compliant, cheap labor. Former President Ronald Reagan’s changes in Social Security benefits have led to millions of Boomers having to take gigs as greeters, waiters, etc., for low wages; prior to Reagan’s changes in the Cost of Living Adjustments (COLAs) and his raising the retirement age to 67, you could safely retire on Social Security in most parts of America at 65. Now, Republicans want to raise that age to 69 or 70.
• Republicans hate universal or inexpensive healthcare (and real Medicare for the elderly) because having massive medical debt provides a large pool of desperate workers willing to work crappy jobs for pathetic wages to pay it off. It’s why the 10 states that refuse to expand Medicaid for low-income workers are all Republican-controlled. Medical debt is a non-issue in every other developed country in the world, but here in America 79 million people are struggling to pay off doctors’ or hospital bills (7 million of those debtors are elderly, many the victims of the Medicare Advantage scam).
• Republicans hate the minimum wage because it cuts into profits. That’s why the minimum wage in blue states can be more than twice that of red states (Washington State is $17 per hour versus Texas’ $7.25 per hour). When most families are barely earning enough to get by, employers have their pick of distraught, panicked workers willing to work for subsistence wages.
• Republicans hate empowered women because forced pregnancies create more potential workers and unwanted children exacerbate poverty. Thus their 50+ years of opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment and their embrace of abortion bans.
• Republicans promote hatred of racial, religious, and gender minorities because when Americans are at each other’s throats they’re not organizing to throw off the GOP-corporate yoke. It’s hard to remember that the billionaires have stolen fully $50 trillion from the middle class over the past 44 years of the Reagan Revolution when you’re constantly distracted with hysteria about Black Haitians, Brown Mexicans, and trans students who just want to use the damn bathroom.
• Republicans hate education because it’s the main tool for people to lift themselves out of poverty and thus demand higher wages and better benefits. Before the Reagan Revolution, every American who wanted to and could pass the entrance exams could go to college; many universities (like the entire University of California system) were free, and you could pay your tuition at most other colleges like I did in the 1960s working weekends as a dishwasher at Bob’s Big Boy in East Lansing, Michigan and pumping gas at the Esso station across the street. This is also why so many red states are gutting their public education systems with private school vouchers. Less education, more poverty; more poverty, more cheap labor.
• Republicans hate atheism and embrace a neofascist form of Protestant Christianity and a bizarre, right-wing version of Catholicism that goes by a Latin name because both are hierarchical and male-dominated, just like corporate culture. It’s why the Confederacy was explicitly Christian. “Don’t worry about how much you’re paid, boy, or bother organizing into a union; just keep picking that cotton and you’ll get your reward in heaven when you die.” After all, according to the Bible your fate was preordained “before the foundation of the world,” as was that of your boss, who must have been selected for particular grace by God or he wouldn’t be so rich.
• Republicans hate food stamps, housing supports, aid to women and dependent children, and every other form of what they call “welfare” because these programs slightly reduce the desperation of people who might otherwise be easily forced to work for a pittance.
• Republicans hate environmental protections because they cut into profits; who cares if the lack of them creates things like the “Cancer Alley”—which hits children particularly hard—that runs through Texas and Louisiana?
• Republicans hate unemployment insurance because it reduces the privation people can experience when they lose a job. It’s why all the blue states offer at least 26 weeks of benefits, but red states often radically reduce that (Florida, North Carolina, Kentucky; 12 weeks; Alabama: 14 weeks; Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Missouri: 16 weeks).

So, the next time somebody asks why Republican policies so often hurt their own people, just tell them, “It’s all because of the cheap-labor Republicans and their loyalty to their greedy billionaire owners.”

Anti-Semitism as we know it has resulted from a complex witch’s brew of historical stereotypes, economic resentments, ignorance and political extremism. Anti-Semites believe that Jewish people “have too much power,” “have too much control and influence,” and “are more willing than others to use shady practices to get what they want.”

A central, paranoid canard of anti-Semitism is that Jews secretly manipulate the media, business, politics, academia and other institutions via a shadowy cabal. Rational people know this is not and cannot be true. One in five Jewish households in the U.S. is either poor or near-poor, meaning they cannot make ends meet or are barely managing to do so. If practitioners of their 4,000-year-old religion is dedicated to conniving and getting rich, they’re doing a lousy job.

Anti-Semitism is poisonous and stupid. Yet, after decades of subsiding, it appears to be spreading again. Zionism is a contributing factor to the recent increase—or, more specifically, the tactics being deployed by some Zionists to stifle their political opponents.

Supporters of Israel have long argued that criticism of the Jewish state and/or the policies of its government is tantamount to anti-Semitism. Since many of the most strident enemies of Zionism are ultra-religious Jews and many of the most passionate opponents of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinians are Jewish, this too is not and cannot be true. After Hamas broke through the Gaza-Israel Barrier and attacked Israelis on October 7, 2023, Americans who back Israel have come closer than ever before to institutionalizing a presumed equivalence between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly declared the two to be one and the same in a bipartisan resolution, the once-staid Anti-Defamation League began counting reports of anti-Israel speech as anti-Semitic incidents, and Ivy League colleges like Columbia and Harvard adopted disciplinary codes that ban speech against Israel, including protest demonstrations.

Criticizing Israel has long been fraught. Now, it’s more dangerous than ever. You can be doxxed, fired, blacklisted, suspended, expelled, stripped of your college degree, arrested, overcharged with felonies, or disappeared and deprived of medical care to the point of imperiling your life. You can even have your application for citizenship summarily denied or be deported.

If the idea is to make people afraid of speaking their minds, these strongarm tactics are working—discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the Middle East has all but vanished from campuses and workplaces. Zionists and their Trump Administration allies don’t seem to mind. They say they’re fighting anti-Semitism, a goal all decent people agree with.

One wonders if they’ve considered the consequences of their aggressive approach, which brooks no dissent or criticism—and operates ruthlessly behind the scenes to get people. When you violate the privacy of and endanger passionate young antiwar protesters, and you derail their educations, and you pull strings at the White House to get them violently deported, will they start supporting Israel? It’s far likelier that they, their friends and family members, and those who read about what happened to them, will conclude that Zionists are vicious, disgusting people—that they “have too much control and influence.” Since Zionists have conflated their loyalty to a country with the practice of a religion, some may start to resent Jewish people as well.

Let’s say you’re one of the 30% of American voters who already believe Jews control the media. Supporters of Israel are working overtime to confirm your bigotry.

News coverage of Israel’s war in Gaza spills nearly as much ink on the few hundred hostages seized by Hamas as the few hundreds of thousands of Gazans killed by Israel. Few Democratic or Republican politicians are willing to criticize Israel, much less call for severing military and diplomatic relations to force Israel to stop its war—because they’re both afraid of AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobbying group. That, obviously, is influence.

Or, let’s say you think American Jews are like the man behind the curtain in The Wizard of Oz, pulling strings to get their way. Then you read how Angelica Berrie, a wealthy donor to Columbia, lit up her private direct line to that university’s president for months, threatening to withhold future payments unless the school provided “evidence that you and leaders across the university are taking appropriate steps to create a tolerant and secure environment for Jewish members of the Columbia community.” Yet when you scour the Internet for evidence that Jewish students at Columbia have suffered intolerance, there’s little there there. Instead, the university has banned Jewish groups that support Palestine, suspended and expelled their members, had them arrested and roughed up by the cops, and when that wasn’t enough for the donors, they got the president fired too, and convinced Trump to cancel hundreds of millions in federal research grants.

Even after all that, Columbia didn’t issue a peep of protest when one of its recent master’s degree graduates, Mahmoud Khalil, was dragged off into the night by unidentified goons in an unmarked car in front of his eight-month-pregnant wife and dumped in a private Louisiana prison, where he remains. His crime, according to Trump: peacefully protesting Israel’s war against the people of Gaza. Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk, currently out on bail, was similarly kidnapped off the street; her offense, according to the authorities, was co-authoring an op-ed in the student newspaper asking Tufts to support the Palestinians. The president and his secretary of state say these and other recent roundups are just the beginning, and that anyone who criticizes Israel risks deportation and similar abuse at the hands of the U.S. government.

Whatever one’s opinions on Israel, it’s impossible to deny that this tiny country the size of the state of New Jersey, with no natural resources to speak of, enjoys unique lèse-majesté status—a special don’t-go-there zone that has become even more ferociously defended under Trump. France is a close U.S. ally, yet Americans can say anything you want about it or its president, Emmanuel Macron. If you’re a green-card holder or attending an American college on a student visa, you need not fear deportation for insulting Eritrea on social media, or protesting Brazil on campus, or penning an op-ed about the rascals who govern South Korea.

The right-wing crackdown on anti-Israel commentary orchestrated by Zionists and their MAGA allies of convenience did not evolve organically, resulting from a vigorous and open exchange of views in a free society. There has been no buy-in, nor any effort by individuals and organizations who support Israel to reach out to people with moderate views, much less those who believe Israel is waging genocide and ethnic cleansing against the Palestinians. There has only been bullying. If you dare speak out against Israel, sinister forces, that you may or may not ever be able to identify, will declare you an anti-Semite and crush you.

Which might prompt you to conclude that you’d been the victim of people who “use shady practices to get what they want.”

For the time being, Zionist bullying will continue to be effective. But it cannot and will not seduce any hearts and minds into seeing things from Israel’s perspective. To the contrary, support for Israel in the United States has plunged to a 25-year low over the last two years. It will keep dropping.  If you’re truly worried about anti-Semitism, and you ruin people’s lives for expressing anti-Zionist thoughts while you equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism, you will not only turn Americans against Israel, you will turn them against Jews. Some of your victims—and those who care about them—will become vulnerable to the toxin of actual anti-Semitism.

(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s WHAT’S LEFT.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com.)

What IS the Left? What should we fight for? How can we rebuild outside of the Democrats? Order my latest book “WHAT’S LEFT” here at Rall.com. It comes autographed to the person of your choice, and I’ll deliver it anywhere. Cost including shipping is $29.95 in the USA.

The post How Zionism Causes Anti-Semitism appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In a recently conducted YouGov survey, designed by the Center for Working Class Politics and the Labor Institute, 63% of 2024 voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin said they supported “granting legal status to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least three years and have not been convicted of a felony.”

Supporters surprisingly included 36% of those who voted for U.S. President Donald Trump last year.

That wording was taken directly from the American National Election Studies survey (ANES) of 28,311 respondents between 1996 and 2020. In my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, I used the ANES survey to zero in on white working-class voters’ opinions across the country. The results were startling:

In 2016, only 32% supported granting legal status to undocumented (“illegal”) residents. By 2020, support had jumped to 62%.

We expected that voters of all shades and persuasions may have turned against immigrants after Trump highlighted the issue in his three campaigns, focusing attention (with the often-relentless help of Fox News) on a number of horrific but rare violent crimes apparently committed by the undocumented. He threatened the mass deportation of undocumented residents in 2016 and 2020 and then began a campaign of highly visible deportations after winning the presidency in 2024. But as the chart below shows voters in key swing states, all of which voted for Trump, still supported legalization, as of April 2025. (3,000 voters were surveyed.)

Here are the results broken down by the 2024 presidential vote in the same four states.

By party identification:

By ideology:

By class:

And by ethnicity:

The survey also shows that support for legalization is highest among younger voters: 76% of those 30 years of age and younger support legalization.

But isn’t immigration the big right-wing issue?

There is a big difference between controlling immigration at the border and criminalizing hard-working undocumented residents. You can be for secure borders and restrained immigration while also supporting legalization of the 11 million undocumented workers now living in the shadows.

Our analysis shows that a majority of voters are compassionate toward immigrants and understand that having 11 million people living and working without legal protections is not good for them or for working people in general.

Undocumented workers find it very difficult to exercise their rights. They can be forced to work for lower wages in poor conditions and have no easy recourse to complain about it without fear of being reported by their employers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Those we surveyed clearly understand that this places downward pressure on wages in many occupational categories, hurting American workers as well as immigrants.

Arguing that undocumented workers do jobs that U.S. citizens no longer want to do completely misunderstands the labor market. If wages are pushed up, instead of down, good-paying jobs would be filled both by U.S. citizens as well as legalized immigrants.

So why aren’t the Democrats on it?

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure. But I suspect that the Democrats have drifted so far away from the working class that they don’t understand that legalization of undocumented workers is a working-class issue. I don’t know who does their polling, but I would bet they are not asking the kind of questions we are asking. They have long ago stopped trying to understand the needs and interests of working people.

For whatever reasons, the Democrats are letting Trump stomp all over undocumented workers. Yes, there is concern about specific immigrants who have been illegally detained and deported. Yes, there is mumbling about providing citizenship for Dreamers—those born here with undocumented parents. But there is radio silence about hard-working undocumented workers receiving legal status. This is a fight the Dems are choosing to avoid.

Trump’s weaponization of the immigration issue might have Democratic politicians on the defensive, but there might be another reason they’re choosing not to engage. The group that most wants immigrants to stay in the shadows are those who profit from low-wage labor.

There is a vast ecosystem of sub-contractors and temp agencies that supply undocumented workers for warehouse operations like Amazon’s and food-processing plants, like those of JBS and Tyson. Tens of billions of dollars in extra profits are made off the backs of these workers, few of whom have any way to exercise normal employee rights, much less fight to unionize. They can and are being exploited.

The employers who have their hooks into these undocumented workers also have their hooks into both political parties. They are not keen on uplifting their lowest-paid employees or having those who receive their political donations fighting for their rights.

The travesty of the two political parties not fighting the rights of these working people, even with strong polling supporting such a fight, is just one more reason why we need a new political entity, one that focuses on the needs and interests of all working people.

The billionaires have two parties: We need one of our own!

LIVE 10 AM Eastern time, Streaming Anytime:

Get ready for a gripping episode of The TMI Show with hosts Ted Rall and Manila Chan, diving into one of the most pivotal legal battles of 2025! The main focus is the U.S. Supreme Court’s oral arguments on May 15, tackling whether federal courts can issue sweeping temporary stays to block President Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. This historic case, rooted in the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of citizenship for those born on U.S. soil, pits the Trump administration against 22 Democratic-led states and immigrant rights groups. Federal judges in Washington, Massachusetts, and Maryland issued nationwide injunctions, calling the order “blatantly unconstitutional,” but the administration argues these broad blocks overstep judicial power.

With arguments set to explore the scope of universal injunctions, the outcome could reshape how courts check executive actions, impacting millions and redefining citizenship rules. Tune in for a deep dive into this constitutional showdown, its implications for immigration policy, and the balance of judicial authority.

Plus:

• An Israeli airstrike in Northern Gaza killed 50, including 22 children, as Israel escalates its offensive to “capture” the enclave.
• Iran-backed Houthi rebels fired missiles at Israel, prompting evacuation orders for Yemeni ports amid rising tensions.
• U.S. drug overdose deaths dropped 27% in 2024 to 80,000, the largest decline on record, driven by naloxone and methadone access.

Join The TMI Show for unfiltered analysis of these critical issues, streaming live and 24/7!

The post TMI Show Ep 139: “SCOTUS Tackles Birthright Citizenship” appeared first on Ted Rall's Rallblog.

In these first 100-plus days of the nation’s 47th presidency, President Donald Trump and his sidekick Elon Musk have cast a frightful spell over the country. As if brandishing wands from inside their capes—poof!—offices and their employees, responsibilities and aims, norms and policies have simply disappeared. The two have decreed a flurry of acts of dismantlement that span the government, threatening to disappear a broad swath of what once existed, much of it foreshadowed by Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for drastically reorganizing and even dismantling government as we know it during a second Trump administration.

To my mind, the recent massive removals of people, data, photos, and documents remind me of the words of Czech novelist Milan Kundera in his classic novel The Book of Laughter and Forgetting: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

Dismantling the Institutions

By the middle of March, the new administration had already eliminated dozens of departments and offices, as well as thousands of staff positions, with the supposed goal of “government efficiency.” Buyouts, layoffs, reassignments, and a flurry of resignations by those who preferred not to continue working under the new conditions all meant the elimination of tens of thousands of government workers—more than 121,000, in fact, across 30 agencies. The affected agencies included the Department of Energy, Veterans Affairs, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Internal Revenue Service, as well as multiple offices within Health and Human Services, including the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the National Institutes of Health. The Department of Education lost nearly half its staff. And then there was the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). By the end of March, the administration had closed its offices and reduced its staff from approximately 10,000 personnel to 15.

The gutting of such offices and their employees is—I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn—expected to cripple significant government services. At the Department of Education, for example, billions of dollars of institutional aid as well as student loans will be affected. Cuts at the Office of Veterans Affairs, which faced one of the largest staff reductions, are predicted to deprive veterans and their families of healthcare services. USAID’s end will cut programs that addressed poverty, food insecurity, drug trafficking, and human trafficking globally. At the Department of Health and Human Services, the availability of vaccines, the tracking of infectious diseases, and all too much more are threatened and could, according to the executive director of the American Public Health Association, “totally destroy the infrastructure of the nation’s public health system.”

But, as novelist Kundera reminds us, the toll won’t just be to government officials and the positions they’re leaving in the dust of history. The cuts also include a full-scale attack on the past.

Records Gone Missing

As part and parcel of this bureaucratic house-clearing, an unprecedented attack on the records of government agencies has been taking place. Basic facts and figures, until recently found on government websites, are now gone. As I wandered the Internet researching this article, such websites repeatedly sent back this bland but grim message: “The page you’re looking for was not found.”

Many of the deletions of facts and figures have been carried out in the name of the aggressive anti-DEI stance of this administration. As you’ll undoubtedly recall, in the first days of his second term in office, Donald Trump declared DEI programs to be “illegal” and ordered the elimination of all DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) “policies, programs, preferences, and activities in the Federal Government, under whatever name they appear.” A Pentagon spokesperson then tried to explain such acts this way: “History is not DEI.”

The assault on the facts and figures of the past includes an adamant refusal to keep records for the future.

And indeed, at the Pentagon’s website, at least 26,000 portraits, ranging from a World War II Medal of Honor recipient to the first women to graduate from Marine infantry training, were scheduled for removal in the name of the administration’s anti-DEI agenda. In addition, articles were deleted from the site, including a story on baseball great Jackie Robinson, who had served in World War II, as well as mentions of women and minorities. On the website of Arlington National Cemetery, information about Blacks, Hispanics, and women went missing as well. At the Smithsonian Institution, where Vice President JD Vance was put in charge of the world’s largest museum enterprise, consisting of 21 separate museums and the National Zoo, the mandate similarly became to “remove improper ideology” from those museums, as well as from the education and research centers that its portfolio includes.

Following a storm of protest, some efforts at restoration have occurred, including the material on Jackie Robinson, The Washington Post reports that “the categories ‘African American History,’ ‘Hispanic American History,’ and ‘Women’s History’ no longer appear prominently.” Yet some information and artifacts, officials predict, have been lost forever.

The attack on history is perhaps most strikingly apparent in the disruption of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the institution whose mission is precisely to preserve government records. As The Associated Press summed it up, “As the nation’s recordkeeper, the Archives tells the story of America—its founding, breakdowns, mistakes, and triumphs.” The attack on NARA has come in the form of staff reductions, including the firing of the Archivist of the United States and the departure, owing to firings, buyouts, or resignations, of half of that office’s staff. (Remember, NARA was central to the federal criminal case brought against Trump for his alleged mishandling of classified documents, a case which was eventually dismissed.) Notably, the Department of Justice reportedly removed a database which held the details surrounding the charges and convictions that stemmed from the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

At USAID, an agency founded more than 60 years ago and now utterly eviscerated, the destruction of past records has been a top-line item. As ProPublica first reported, and other news sources later detailed, employees at USAID were ordered to destroy classified and personnel records. “Shred as many documents first,” the order read, “and reserve the burn bags for when the shredder becomes unavailable or needs a break.” Meanwhile, massive layoffs at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are expected to drastically curtail the access of Americans to public records. At the CDC, cuts have included gutting the public records staff (though HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has claimed that he plans to reverse that).

Perhaps not surprisingly, the assault on the facts and figures of the past includes an adamant refusal to keep records for the future, a tendency that also marked the first Trump administration and has already proved striking in the first 100 days of his second term.

The Signalgate scandal is a case in point. In the group chat held by then-National Security Adviser Mike Waltz on the Signal app, instead of a designated classified communications channel, discussing an imminent attack on Yemen, national security officials communicated classified information outside of approved channels. In addition to violating norms and laws governing communications involving classified information, the fact that the app was set to auto-delete ignored the law that mandates the preservation of official records.

Nor was Signalgate a one-off. Trump administration officials have reportedly taken to using Gmail, while Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been relying on Google Docs for the drafting of government documents, in each case attempting to bypass laws regulating the archiving of public records by potentially “failing to preserve all iterations of its drafts as well as comments left on shared documents.”

Of course, the president’s aversion to creating records in the first place long predates the present moment. During his first term, for example, he had a tendency to rip up documents as he saw fit. “He didn’t want a record of anything,” a senior official told The Washington Post. Notably, he refused to have notes taken at several meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin and, after one encounter with the Russian president at a Group of 20 meeting in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, he confiscated the interpreter’s notes.

Evading the Law

In such an ongoing obliteration of the records of government activities, the violations that have already taken place have essentially rendered the law invisible. The Federal Records Act, as Lawfare reminds us, requires any federal agency to ”make and preserve records containing adequate and proper documentation of the organization, functions, policies, decisions, procedures, and essential transactions of the agency.” And when it comes to presidential records, the Presidential Records Act categorizes them as the property of the United States and requires the president to take “all such steps as may be necessary” to preserve those records.

There is, however, a giant carve-out to that requirement. During his tenure in office, the president can seek to withhold certain records on the grounds that the documents have ceased to have “administrative, historical, informational, or evidentiary value.” In order to make such a decision, however, the president must first consult with the national archivist, a position that at present belongs to the now four-hatted Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is currently the acting head of the National Security Agency (NSA) and USAID, as well as the National Archives. It’s worth noting that there is no enforcement mechanism in place to address a decision to dispose of documents, or to challenge the legality—or even the wisdom—of such a decision. The law, as one scholar argues, remains essentially “toothless.”

Why History Matters

Historians like me are particularly sensitive to the destruction of government records. Archival materials are our bread and butter. Who knows what new information we might find and what new insights we might gain from a fresh look at the letters of John Adams on the eve of the outbreak of the American Revolution or the records of the dissenters in George W. Bush’s administration in the run-up to the War in Iraq? With the new insights that documents and records provide can come new understandings of who we are as a country, what ills our leaders have (or haven’t) addressed, what tragedies might (or might not) have been avoided, what successes might (or might not) have been more likely to come about. In sum, the records of the past hold innumerable lessons that could guide us into a more sustainable and just future.

That documentary record helps—or at least until this fragile moment, helped—us understand the pathways that have brought us here in both moments of glory and times of trouble. The record feeds us, inspires us, and allows us to feed and inspire others. It’s through the telling of history that we have come to understand our collective selves as a nation, our individual selves as actors, and our leaders’ decisions about the future.

Expunging history was an early tactic of the Nazis, who sought to turn the clock back to a time before the French Revolution and its values altered the course of history.

All that is, of course, now changing and the spell cast by the administration’s ongoing destruction of those records, the emptying or altering of the nation’s cache of documents, has been enhanced by another spell—that of suspicion over the contents of what documents remain, based on accusations that the record itself is partisan and tainted, and so deserving of eradication.

For historians and the public we serve, when record-keeping is marred or even annihilated by a political agenda, as is happening today, such acts can carry special interest for scholars of the past. After all, purposeful deletions from and false additions to the historical record offer a truly grim possibility: the creation of what could pass for a new history of this country. As of now, the Trump administration is functionally acting to rewrite the prevailing narratives of our past—a past of progress toward equal rights, fact-based education, and lessons learned from mistakes and achievements. In sum, to alter or erase the historical record amounts to erasing our knowledge of ourselves.

David Corn, in his newsletter Our Land, recently posted a piece entitled “Trump’s War on History.” In it, he quotes George Orwell from his classic dystopian novel 1984: “Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” As Corn points out all too ominously, expunging history was an early tactic of the Nazis, who sought to turn the clock back to a time before the French Revolution and its values altered the course of history. As Corn puts it, for the Nazis, “the animating ideas of the French Revolution, such as liberty, civic equality, and human rights, were to be crushed.”

For Orwell, as for Kundera, owning history with a firm grip is a power of immense consequence, never to be lightly dismissed. Memory and the records that sustain knowledge of the past are essential to humankind’s struggle against the worst sort of naked power grabs, never more so than now.