Archives for the month of: January, 2026
« Older Entries

Minneapolis: Judge Orders ICE to Leave Lawful Immigrants Alone; Miller Pouts

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2026 //
0

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to stop harassing and detaining immigrants who were in this country lawfully. Trump’s deputy policy director, Stephen Miller, was outraged by the decision.

Jan Wolfe of Reuters reported:

WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked a recently announced Trump administration policy targeting the roughly 5,600 lawful refugees in Minnesota who are awaiting green cards.

In ‍a written ruling, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim in Minneapolis said federal agents likely violated multiple federal statutes by arresting some of these ⁠refugees to subject them to additional vetting.

“At its best, America serves as a haven of individual liberties in a world ‍too often full of tyranny and cruelty,” Tunheim wrote. “We abandon that ideal when we subject our neighbors to fear and chaos.”

Tunheim issued a temporary restraining order blocking federal agents from ‌arresting lawful refugees in Minnesota who have not been charged with immigration violations. The judge said the ruling would remain in place until he can hear additional legal arguments by civil rights groups challenging the policy.

The Trump administration sent thousands of immigration agents to Minneapolis and Saint Paul beginning in December in what officials described as an operation to enforce immigration laws and stop fraud.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the architect of President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, criticized Tunheim’s ruling on X, saying: “The judicial sabotage of democracy is unending.”

The order was a major setback to “Operation PARRIS,” a program ‌announced by the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month and billed as “a ⁠sweeping initiative reexamining thousands of refugee cases through new background checks.”

Tunheim said his order does not affect DHS’s ability to reexamine refugee applicants and that it “does not ⁠impact DHS’s lawful enforcement of immigration laws.”

Categories Ethics, Immigration, Minneapolis

King Donald the First!

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2026 //
1

Gene Nichol, professor of law at the University of North Carolina, wrote a rousing article in an effort to awaken the citizens of his once-progressive state to the dictatorship that Trump has built in the past year. He refers to him as King Donald the First.

Personally, I think that Trump operates not as a king but as a Mafia boss. He extracts protection money from universities and law firms. He threatens our allies (but strangely not our enemies). He takes campaign contributions in exchange for pardons. His sons invest in lucrative real estate deals with nations that want an entree to the President. He tears down the East Wing of the White House to build a gaudy ballroom, without going through any of the steps required to make changes in a historic building. He slathers the austere and beautiful Oval Office with tawdry gold ornaments befitting the Godfather’s crass taste.

Actually, Professor Nichols agrees with me. In the article, he compares Trump to Al Capone.

Professor Nichol wrote in the Raleigh News & Observer:

We have launched a war against Venezuela — apparently because we can. We have provided no justification, no rationale, no candor. Their oil, we claim, is now ours. We’ll sell it and, Donald Trump explains, the “money will be controlled” by him. If the Venezuelans don’t bend quickly enough to our command, we’ll kill more of them. It’s like a video game to us. You know, like blowing up the boats. The U.S. military has proven its mastery — in an illegal and blatantly unconstitutional and brutal cause.

Next, Trump explains, “we’re going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.” If we “don’t do it the easy way, we’re going to do it the hard way.” Cuba and Mexico are, perhaps, after that. As Stephen Miller oozes — who is going to stop us? It’s a real world out there. “You can talk about international niceties, but we live in a world governed by strength, by force, by power,” Miller says. The strong, apparently, take what they want and the weak, in turn, bear what they must. (I think the ancient Greeks said that.)

The Western Hemisphere is reportedly ours. So is any other nation that has anything we want. The only limit is Trump’s moral compass. Imagine, if you can.

ICE continues to terrorize Democratic cities — killing a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis, because, in this new era, that’s how you look manly, lethal. We advertise for agents on TV. Give ‘em signing bonuses. Le mercenaire.

The president of the United States extorts like Al Capone. Universities, law firms, corporations, media folks, researchers, artists, nonprofits, cities (Democratic ones), states (blue ones) and countries (weak ones). If you don’t do what he wants, he’ll bring bombers and gunships to your shore to see if that changes your mind. Maybe he’ll take the money, or maybe he’ll give it to his family. The corruption is so outlandish, we’ve quit keeping track. A surpassingly gutless House and Senate bless the effort. Their only apparent actual oath is to Donald J. Trump. A supine Supreme Court utters immunity. There is, literally, nothing beyond his power. And if there was, he could hire goons to do it and then pardon them.

We have fretted, as a nation, over whether Trump would become a dictator. He has. Donald The First. Anyone who thinks he and his crew will surrender power is three shades past delusional. At least the mystery is gone. The only question is whether he will be cabined, suppressed, rejected — legally — by the constitutional democracy he seeks to undo. That will require an actual Congress, resolute state governments, faithful and independent federal courts, but, most of all, a massively engaged, courageous and patriotic citizenry. It’s not yet clear whether we can manage to deliver these undoubted and foundational requisites. I wish I knew the answer. I do know it’s the most important question we face. Maybe that we’ll ever face.https://a13dfb665532302bfc5f824632f0e1ca.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-45/html/container.html?n=0

Surveying my home — a state that I love and that counts for the nation — the North Carolina Republican Party must now denounce President Trump. If they don’t, all Tar Heels, citizens and officeholders, must abandon the party. This day. There could be no stronger proof that an institution is unfit to govern than the continued embrace of Donald Trump — the gravest single threat to constitutional democracy in American history. No patriot can support dictatorship. And no honest human can any longer pretend that’s not what is happening here.

Contributing columnist Gene Nichol is a professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, For-Profit, Trump

Paul Thomas: Why You Should Never Believe in Education “Miracles”

By dianeravitch
January 29, 2026 //
0

Paul Thomas was a classroom teacher for many years in South Carolina. He decided to become a professor of education, and eventually joined the faculty at Furman University, first class liberal arts institution in South Carolina.

He writes here about the improbability of miracles. I disagree with Paul Thomas on one point: Miracles are not only unlikely or improbable. There are NO miracles in education. My friend Mike Klonsky of Chicago said to me years ago. “If you are looking for a miracle, go to church, not to school.”

In all my years, I have found no reason to doubt this wisdom.

Paul Thomas writes:

My entire career in education, begun in the fall of 1984, has been during the accountability era of education that is primarily characterized by one reality—perpetual reform.

The template has been mind-numbingly predictable, a non-stop cycle of crisis>reform>crisis>reform, etc.

Another constant of that cycle is that the crisis-of-the-moment has almost always been overblown or nonexistent, leading to reforms that fall short of the promised outcomes. Reforms, ironically, just lead to another crisis.

But one of the most powerful and damning elements in the crisis/reform cycle has been the education miracle. [1]

Two problems exist with basing education reform on education miracles. First, and overwhelmingly, education miracles are almost always debunked as misinformation, misunderstanding of data, or outright fraud. Research has shown that statistically education miracles are so incredibly rare that they essentially do not exist.

Second, even when an education miracle is valid, it is by definition an outlier, and thus, the policies and practices of how the miracle occurred are likely not scalable and certainly should not be used as a template for universal reform.

Those core problems with education miracles have prompted the attention of Howard Wainer, Irina Grabovsky and Daniel H. Robinson, who have analyzed the reading reform miracle claims linked to Mississippi:

In 1748, famed Scot David Hume defined nature. He elaborated such a law as “a regularity of past experience projected by the mind to future cases”. He argued that the evidence for a miracle is rarely sufficient to suspend rational belief because a closer look has always revealed that what was reported as a miracle was more likely false, resulting from misperception, mistransmission, or deception….

A careful examination confirms that enthusiasm to emulate Mississippi should be tempered with scepticism….

In short, the authors followed a key point of logic: If something seems too good to be true, then it is likely not true.

In their analysis, On education miracles in general (and those in Mississippi in particular), they focused on two of the key problems with the story about Mississippi’s outlier grade 4 reading scores (in the top quartile of state scores) on NAEP: What is the cause of the score increases? And, why are Mississippi’s grade 8 reading scores remaining in the bottom quartile of state scores?

They found, notably, that Mississippi’s instructional reform, teacher retraining, additional funding, and reading program changes were not the cause of the score increases, concluding:

But it was the second component of the Mississippi Miracle, a new retention policy, perhaps inspired by New Orleans’ Katrina disaster a decade earlier, that is likely to be the key to their success….

Prior to 2013, a higher percentage of third-graders moved on to the fourth grade and took the NAEP fourth-grade reading test. After 2013, only those students who did well enough in reading moved on to the fourth grade and took the test.

It is a fact of arithmetic that the mean score of any data set always increases if you delete some of the lowest scores (what is technically called “left truncation of the score distribution”)….

In short, Mississippi has inflated grade 4 NAEP scores, but that is unlikely evidence that student reading proficiency has improved. This is not a story about reading reform, but about “gaming the system”:

It is disappointing, but not surprising, that the lion’s share of the effects of the “Mississippi miracle” are yet another case of gaming the system. There is no miracle to behold. There is nothing special in Mississippi’s literacy reform model that should be replicated globally. It just emphasises the obvious advice that, if you want your students to get high scores, don’t allow those students who are likely to get low scores to take the test. This message is not a secret….

Wainer, Grabovsky and Robinson’s analysis also needs to be put in context of two other studies.

First, their analysis puts a finer point on the findings by Westall and Cummings, whose comprehensive review of contemporary reading reform found the following: Third grade retention (required by 22 states) is the determining factor for increased test scores (states such as Florida and Mississippi, who both have scores plummet in grade 8), but those score increases are short-term.

Next is a recent study on grade retention. Jiee Zhong concluded:

[T]hird-grade retention significantly reduces annual earnings at age 26 by $3,477 (19%). While temporarily improving test scores, retention increases absenteeism, violent behavior, and juvenile crime, and reduces the likelihood of high school graduation. Moreover, retained students exhibit higher community college enrollment but lower public university attendance, though neither estimate is statistically significant.

Grade retention masquerading as reading reform, then, is fool’s gold for inflating test scores, but it is also harming the very students the reform purports to be helping.

The evidence now suggests that reading reform should not be guided by miracle claims; that no states should be looking to a miracle state for reading reform templates; that the so-called “science of reading” movement is mostly smoke and mirrors, and should be recognized as the “science of retention”; and that grade retention policies are distorting test scores at the expense of our most vulnerable students in life changing ways.

[1] Thomas, P.L. (2016). Miracle schools or political scam? In W.J. Mathis & T.M. Trujillo, Learning from the Federal Market-Based Reforms: Lessons for ESSA. Charlotte, NC: IAP.

If you want to help with the costs of keeping my public work open access and free, please DONATE.

Categories Education Reform, Hoax, Literacy, Mississippi

Bruce Springsteen Writes a New Song: “The Streets of Minneapolis”

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2026 //
7

Count on America’s bard Bruce Springsteen to rise to the occasion with a new song:

The Streets of Minneapolis

Categories Art, Creativity, Minneapolis

Nick Covington Interviews Me About My Memoirs

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2026 //
0

This is a terrific interview conducted by Nick Covington about my bio, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else.

Please listen.

Categories Charter Schools, Common Core, Democracy, Education Reform, Inequality, NCLB, Racism, Ravitch, Diane

No, ICE May Not Enter Your Home Without a Judicial Warrant

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2026 //
2

The deployment of ICE to detain and arrest undocumented immigrants threatens to become a war against U.S. citizens who object to ICE’s brutal tactics. We have all seen the videos of ICE agents smashing car windows, knocking men and women to the ground, grabbing women by their hair, pummeling people on the ground, operating in teams of 5 or 6 as they beat up those they choose.

The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution forbids ICE from entering homes. This article appeared on the blog CAFE, where seasoned prosecutors and law professors comment on matters of law and hold the federal government accountable.

No ICE Cannot Enter Your Home Without a Warrant — and Why Doing So Is Very Dangerous For All of Us
By Perry A. Carbone and Mimi Rocah

Dear Insider,

A leaked internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) memo claims that ICE agents may enter people’s homes without a judicial warrant. That claim is wrong as a legal matter— and it threatens one of the most basic freedoms Americans have: the right to be safe in their own homes.

The memo—dated May 12, 2025 and signed by Acting Director Todd Lyons—was leaked by two whistleblowers and shared with Senator Richard Blumenthal. According to the whistleblowers, the memo was directed to all personnel but was distributed in a secretive manner to selected personnel.
We spent many years as federal prosecutors enforcing federal law – about 50 years between the two of us. We know firsthand the power of law enforcement authority and how important it is that it be exercised within constitutional limits, especially within the sacrosanct safety of a person’s home.

Our homes have special protection under the Constitution. The Fourth Amendment to the Constitution protects people from unreasonable government searches and seizures and explicitly names “houses” as protected spaces: “The right of the people to be secure in their … houses … against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause….”
 
The Supreme Court has repeatedly made this protection crystal clear.

In Payton v. New York (1980), the Court held that police may not enter a home to make an arrest without a judicial warrant, unless there is an emergency or the resident consents, calling  physical entry of the home “the chief evil against which the wording of the Fourth Amendment is directed.”

In Kyllo v. United States (2001), the Court reaffirmed that the home is a place where privacy protection is at its highest. Even using technology to detect heat patterns inside a home — without ever physically entering — violated the Fourth Amendment if it was done without a warrant.

In Florida v. Jardines (2013), the Court held that bringing a drug-sniffing dog to the front porch of a home to investigate constituted an unlawful “search” under the Fourth Amendment, if done without a search warrant.
If the Constitution forbids the government from using technology and animals to sense what happens inside a home, it certainly forbids crossing the threshold without judicial approval.

The whistleblower disclosure shows ICE claiming its agents may enter homes without judicial warrants because immigration enforcement is “civil.” But the Fourth Amendment does not contain a “civil enforcement” carveout. And the relevant Supreme Court’s cases do not turn on whether a matter is labeled “civil” or “criminal.”  There is no “immigration exception” to the Constitution.

The ICE memo reportedly relies on Form I-205, a “warrant of removal/deportation” created within the executive branch and not signed by a judge. It authorizes officers to use “necessary and reasonable force” to enter certain residences to arrest people with final removal orders.

That is incompatible with the Fourth Amendment’s demand for judicial oversight. A judicial warrant is one that is issued by an individual who is ”neutral and detached” and can determine probable cause. An administrative warrant, by contrast, is issued by the government agency itself and so does not meet the Constitution and Court’s repeated requirement of being issued by someone “neutral” and “detached.”  Federal agencies do not get to rewrite the Constitution through internal memos. Put simply, an administrative warrant is the government agency authorizing itself to enter a home — the constitutional equivalent of letting the fox write its own warrant to enter the henhouse.

This is not an immigration issue. It is a constitutional issue with consequences for all Americans. Yes, it will have huge implications for immigrants, who have long been advisednot to open their door to federal agents unless they have a warrant signed by a judge. But it will not end there. If ICE is permitted to enter homes without judicial warrants, the consequences will not stop with immigration enforcement. Other agencies will follow the same path — and they will do so using the same logic: that civil enforcement, public safety, or administrative necessity justifies bypassing judicial oversight.

One can easily imagine a parade of horribles:

  • Tax enforcement: IRS agents entering homes to seize records or property based solely on internal agency warrants, without a judge ever reviewing probable cause.
  • Health and safety enforcement:Public health officials entering private residences to conduct inspections or remove occupants during disease outbreaks without judicial authorization.
  • Child welfare investigations: Social services entering homes to investigate allegations based only on agency paperwork, without court approval.
  • Firearms regulation: Regulatory agents entering homes to inspect compliance with gun laws without judicial warrants.
  • Local law enforcement: Police departments reclassifying certain arrests as “civil” or “administrative” to avoid the warrant requirement altogether.

Once the government can enter a home based on its own approval, the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement becomes optional — a procedural inconvenience rather than a constitutional command.

And that erosion won’t stop at homes. If agency-issued warrants suffice for entry, then agency-issued authorizations will soon suffice for searches of phones, computers, bank accounts, and digital records — all areas the Supreme Court has increasingly treated as deserving heightened constitutional protection.

The Fourth Amendment was written precisely to prevent this outcome: a system in which government officials authorize their own intrusions. Judicial warrants are not a technicality — they are the firewall between liberty and unchecked power. And when that firewall falls, it does not fall selectively. It falls for everyone.

The home is the heart of American liberty. The Fourth Amendment draws a bright line at the front door — and for good reason. This leaked ICE memo crosses that line. It is legally wrong. It is constitutionally dangerous. And it should concern everyone who values privacy, liberty, and the rule of law — regardless of their views on immigration.

Stay Informed, 
Mimi & Perry 

CAFE Contributor Mimi Rocah is the former District Attorney for Westchester County, and previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and Division Chief for the Southern District of New York. She is currently an adjunct professor at Fordham School of Law.

Perry A. Carbone served as Chief of the White Plains Division at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; he previously served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the District of New Jersey.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom, Justice

John Thompson Reviews the Evidence About Mississippi’s “Miracle”

By dianeravitch
January 28, 2026 //
2

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, is concerned about the snake-oil salesmen pitching the Mississippi “miracle” in his home state. It’s amazing how quickly quack ideas spread.

He writes:

As Oklahoma’s legislative leaders became even more devoted to the “Mississippi Miracle” narrative pushed by “astroturf” think tanks like Jeb Bush’s ExcelinEd, and the Chamber of Commerce, I’ve been taking a closer look into the so-called “studies” they spread. I’ve long been wary of cheap, simplistic solutions to complex, interconnected problems.  But, the research I’ve been analyzing provides warning that their agenda is more dangerous than I would have anticipated.  

After discussions with advocates for large numbers of retentions of children who don’t produce grade level reading scores, I’ve focused on the need to fund and build the support services, like high-dose tutoring programs – before holding student back. Apparently, many of them believe that we were on track to an Oklahoma Miracle in 2014 when we held back 21,000 children, second only to Mississippi. In fact, our scores had been improving before the retentions, almost certainly due to meaningful funding increases that ended in 2008. And, like Mississippi, our retention-driven approach didn’t increase 8thgrade scores, indicating that they taught young children how to improve test scores, without improving reading comprehension.

After federal Covid funding ended, Mississippi shifted to a cheaper method of tutoring students, known, ironically as the “Paper” online tutoring.   In 2023, the reliable Chalkbeat did a deep dive into “Paper,” which documented, “This online tutoring company says it offers expert one-on-one help. Students often get neither.”

Chalkbeat found a system which required single tutors to multitask, working at a breakneck speed to serve multiple students. One tutor served up to 12 students at once. And “Paper” incentivized outputs with “surge” bonuses of 2 to 3 times more than their regular wages for tutoring multiple students at a time. 

I wonder what parents would think if their 3rd graders had to undergo the stress that that sort of online technology can generate. And since Mississippi spent $10.7 million dollars for online tutoring for kids from 3rd to 12th grade, how will such a system effect the learning cultures of schools? 

Moreover, National Public Radio recently presented the findings of the Brookings Institution’s study of A.I., which concluded, “At this point in its trajectory, the risks of utilizing generative AI in children’s education overshadow its benefits.”

NPR reported:

At the top of Brookings’ list of risks is the negative effect AI can have on children’s cognitive growth — how they learn new skills and perceive and solve problems.

The report describes a kind of doom loop of AI dependence, where students increasingly off-load their own thinking onto the technology, leading to the kind of cognitive decline or atrophy more commonly associated with aging brains.

One of the report’s authors warned:

When kids use generative AI that tells them what the answer is … they are not thinking for themselves. They’re not learning to parse truth from fiction. They’re not learning to understand what makes a good argument. They’re not learning about different perspectives in the world because they’re actually not engaging in the material.

And, NPR quoted one student who’s comment on A.I., “It’s easy. You don’t need to (use) your brain.”

There are some reasons for hope in Oklahoma. It is my understanding that more business leaders have been listening to real education experts, and people in our schools. And, Representative Dick Lowe has filed HB 3023 which says:

Reading intervention shall not be provided solely by digital technology. Reading intervention shall include a majority of direct instruction from a teacher, specialist, or literacy coach and shall be led by a teacher or specialist trained in the science of reading.

But, our budget will remain flat, at a time when federal cuts for agencies and nonprofits that provide essential services to schools, are struggling to finance their own programs. 

And, it is hard to be hopeful in regard to legislators and business people who believe, or claim to believe, and join in spreading,  the lies told by true believers in reward-and-punish, free market ideologies, and think tanks like ExcelinEd.

Sadly, we must continue to push back against corporate school reformers, at a time when we we face world history levels of challenges, such as the rapid rise of A.I. increased inequality, and Trumpism.   

Categories Curriculum, Education Industry, Literacy, Mississippi, Oklahoma

ICE Murdered a Good Man

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2026 //
12

Categories Minneapolis, Trump

Mark Carney’s Speech at Davos

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2026 //
3

Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, gave a speech at Davos that was widely hailed as a realistic response to the disintegration of the old world order.

Carney’s speech received a standing ovation from the audience of global leaders, diplomats, and corporate executives. This is a rare occurrence at Davos, where most speeches are received with polite applause.

Richard Haas, former chief executive at the Council on Foreign Relations, said this about Carney’s speech:

The most important speech delivered at the Davos enclave was not that of Trump but rather Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney.

Reportedly written by Carney himself, the speech was steeped in realism, both as to the state of world order and how small and medium powers, such as Canada, must adapt. Early on he made his basic point, one that provides the title for this week’s newsletter: “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition…Canadians know that our old comfortable assumptions that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security – that assumption is no longer valid…Nostalgia is not a strategy.”

Carney was no less direct as to what Canada needed to do: “When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. And we are no longer just relying on the strength of our values, but also the value of our strength…To help solve global problems, we’re pursuing variable geometry, in other words, different coalitions for different issues based on common values and interests. This is not naive multilateralism, nor is it relying on their institutions. It’s building coalitions that work – issues by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. The middle powers must act together, because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu.”

There is much talk of regime change within countries such as Venezuela, Iran, and Cuba, but the most fundamental form of regime change taking place is at the international level. A post-American world is fast emerging, one brought about in large part by the United States taking the lead in dismantling the international order that this country built and underwrote and that served this country and the world well for eight decades. It is being carried out in a manner reminiscent of two characters in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby: “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that held them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…” All of which, I am sad to say, applies to this president and his administration—and to their many enablers in the Republican-controlled Congress, the Supreme Court, and throughout American society.

Categories Economy, International

Trump’s Speech at Davos

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2026 //
4

Steel yourself. Here is Trump’s full speech at the annual World Economic Forum at Davos. This is the one where he confused Greenland with Iceland–not once, but four times.

World leaders convene in late January every year to meet and greet and confer about the future of the global economy.

Trump’s speech received muted applause. Some attendees opened their cell phones or walked out.

Richard Haas, former executive director of the Council of Foreign Relations, said this about Trump’s speech:

Making it all worse was Trump’s long, rambling, and indulgent speech delivered to the global good and great. It was filled with exaggerations and falsehoods, insults and threats, and more than a few strange detours and digressions. He confused Iceland with Greenland multiple times. The speech disparaged European leaders and Europe’s sacrifices and contributions to the common defense. (“We’ve helped them for so many years, we’ve never gotten anything.”) There was no mention of NATO invoking Article 5 in the aftermath of 9/11, and no mention of the more than 700 European soldiers who died alongside Americans in Afghanistan.

Trump was not content to target foreigners. He repeatedly criticized his predecessor. He also went after the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, a man he appointed. He announced his intention to prosecute individuals for rigging the 2020 election even though there is no evidence it was rigged. What came to mind was the title of the 1958 novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer, The Ugly American.

One last point. The speech was isolationist as well as unilateralist. “What does the United States get out of all of this work, all of this money – other than death, destruction, and massive amounts of cash going to people who don’t appreciate what we do? They don’t appreciate what we do. I’m talking about NATO, I’m talking about Europe. They have to work on Ukraine, we don’t. The United States is very far away. We have a big, beautiful ocean separating us. We have nothing to do with it.”

Such thinking ignores the lessons of history, from World War II and the Cold War to 9/11, Covid-19, and climate change. The Atlantic and Pacific oceans are decidedly not moats. Growing disorder in other regions can and will affect U.S. prosperity and security alike. The United States may choose not to engage the world but the world will find us all the same.

The Guardian said that Trump’s speech was “racism-drenched:”

Donald Trump turned up in Davos wielding an insult bazooka. He mocked Emmanuel Macron’s aviator sunglasses, chided Mark Carney (“Canada lives because of the United States”), asserted that the Swiss are “only good because of us” and had a dig at Denmark for losing Greenland “in six hours” during the second world war.

But beyond the fractious rhetoric, the US president brought a deeper message on Wednesday that sought to unify the west rather than divide it. It was his most dark, insidious and sinister project of all.

Trump surmised: Yes, we might have our internal squabbles, but I am bringing tough love because we are all in this together. We are the standard bearers of western civilisation. We must resist the barbarian hordes. We must save the white man.

The ageing president, who in 2024 complained, “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now,” told the World Economic Forum that he was “derived from Europe”, namely: “100% Scotland, my mother; 100% German, my father. And we believe deeply in the bonds we share with Europe as a civilisation.”

He lamented that “certain places in Europe are not even recognisable, frankly, any more”, blaming culprits that included “unchecked mass migration”. Trump said: “It’s horrible what they’re doing to themselves. They’re destroying themselves, these beautiful, beautiful places. We want strong allies, not seriously weakened ones.”

What came next was pure racism as Trump reflected on immigration to his own country, where he has made the Somali community a special target of his deportation rhetoric after recent government fraud cases in Minnesota in which a majority of defendants had Somali roots.

“We’re cracking down on more than $19bn in fraud that was stolen by Somalian bandits,” he said. “Can you believe that Somalia – they turned out to be higher IQ than we thought. I always say these are low-IQ people. How did they go into Minnesotaand steal all that money?”

Then he got to the heart of the matter: “The situation in Minnesota reminds us that the west cannot mass-import foreign cultures which have failed to ever build a successful society of their own. I mean, we’re taking people from Somalia, and Somalia is a failed – it’s not a nation. Got no government, got no police, got no nothing.” (Somalia does, in fact, have a government, though not democratically elected.)

He launched a bitter tirade at Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Democratic congresswoman who is a US citizen. Then he insisted: “The explosion of prosperity and conclusion and progress that built the west did not come from our tax codes. It ultimately came from our very special culture.

“This is the precious inheritance that America and Europe have in common, and we share it. We share it but we have to keep it strong. We have to become stronger, more successful and more prosperous than ever. We have to defend that culture and rediscover the spirit that lifted the west from the depths of the dark ages to the pinnacle of human achievement.”

Trump’s speech had the fingerprints of Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and architect of his draconian immigration policy, all over it. It chimed with an entire discourse of white identity politics festering on the US right.

It is there in the “great replacement” theory, a conspiratorial notion that demographic change is engineered to replace white majorities with non-white populations, undermining traditional culture. It is there in Trump’s decision to grant asylum to white South Africans because of a fictitious “white genocide” said to be taking place in their country. It is there in the rabid ideology underpinning Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) thuggish assault on immigrants in Minneapolis.

It is also there in Miller’s worldview, which has long promoted racist fears of demographic replacement of white people and civilisation decline. He has become the editor who turns Trump’s pub chatter into “Make America great again” scripture.

The Guardian said:

The message: I am still the great white hope.

Bear in mind that Davos draws leaders from around the world. Not only Europeans, but Africans, Asians, Hispanics, the Middle East, and everywhere else.

Categories Trump
« Older Entries