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Anand Girihadaras: Why Trump’s Birthday Parade Failed

By dianeravitch
June 16, 2025 //
17

The crowds were larger and more animated at the No Kings rallies than on Constitution Avenue, where Trump summoned up a parade in honor of his 79th birthday.

Yesterday evening, I saw tweets comparing the demeanor of the American service members to their parade counterparts in Russia, North Korea, and China. The soldiers in other countries marched in perfect symmetry, with not an eye or a boot out of place. The Americans seemed to be strolling. The tweets were meant to mock us. Some were posted by someone in another country. I responded, “Those Russian troops in perfect formation have not been able to beat Ukraine in three years. If they engaged American troops, our army would kick them all the way back to Moscow.”

Anand Girihadaras wrote a wonderful reflection on the same videos:

The country that invented jazz was never going to be good at putting on a military parade. It was never going to be us.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s flaccid, chaotic, lightly attended, and generally awkward military parade, a meme began doing the rounds. Its basic format was the juxtaposition of images of the kinds of parades Trump presumably wanted with the parade he actually got.

Over here, thousands of Chinese soldiers marching in perfectly synchronized lockstep; over there, a lone U.S. soldier holding up a drone. Over here, North Korean legs kicking up and coming back down with astounding precision; over there, a dozen U.S. soldiers walking somewhat purposelessly through Washington.

Trump’s biggest mistake was wanting a military parade in the first place. The United States military is not a birthday party rental company. Any therapist will tell you that no number of green tanks on the street is enough to heal the deep void left by a father’s withheld love.

But, setting aside the wisdom of wanting a military parade, there is the issue of execution. Even if you’re going to do the wrong thing, do it well. Do it with flair. With the most powerful military in history at his disposal, Trump couldn’t even pull off a decent parade.

But I’m here to say it’s not his fault alone. It’s hard to wring a military parade of the kind he dreamed of from a people free in their bones.

You see, it is a good thing not to be good at some things. The great beauty of his terrible parade is the reminder that Trump is waging a war against the American spirit, and this fight he is struggling to win.

No matter how much money and effort you throw at the parade, you cannot escape the fact that America is not the country of North Korean unity. We’re the country of Korean tacos.

The Korean-American comedian Margaret Cho once described those tacos, as made famous by the chef Roy Choi, of similar heritage, thus: “There were so many things happening: The familiarity of the iconic L.A. taco, the Korean tradition of wrapping food, the falling-apart short rib that almost tastes like barbacoa, the complementing sweetness of the corn tortilla.” Korea running into Mexico, running into North Carolina, and beyond. Today on the website of the Kogi food empire that Choi built, these are some of the recipes: a Korean barbecue pizza, a Korean Philly cheesesteak, a kimchi fried chicken sandwich, a Korean gyro, and Korean pulled pork nachos. I may be wrong, but here is my hypothesis: the kinds of places good at putting on parades like North Korea’s will never come up with food like this; and the kinds of places good at making food like this will never rival the give-me-synchronicity-or-give-me-death parades of places like North Korea.

America is not the country of perfectly synced swinging arms. It’s the country of “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing).” That song, by the legendary Duke Ellington, belongs to a genre of music that could only have been invented in America — jazz. As the documentarian Ken Burns explained, jazz was born in New Orleans when and because people from so many heritages were jammed together — the sounds of Africa and the sounds of Appalachia and the sounds of Germany and the sounds of indigenous people colliding to make something new. It was never scripted, always improvisational. Ellington himself made the connection to democracy:

Put it this way: Jazz is a good barometer of freedom…In its beginnings, the United States of America spawned certain ideals of freedom and independence through which, eventually, jazz was evolved, and the music is so free that many people say it is the only unhampered, unhindered expression of complete freedom yet produced in this country.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me societies that have the thing Trump wanted in his parade don’t got that swing, and societies that got that swing don’t have the thing he craved.

America is not a country of uniformity, even in its uniforms. It’s a big multicolored mess.

What is striking in the images of Chinese and North Korean and Iranian parades is the uniformity, right down to the uniforms themselves. The soldiers are often seen wearing the same thing. It gives the kind of picture Trump likes. But the images this weekend were not like that at all. In America, different units wear different uniforms. Images from the parade this weekend showed one uniform after another. The military is not a monolith. It is made up of units with their own histories and traditions and identities and loyalties. There are rivalries and competing slogans.

I may be wrong, but I would wager that societies that have first-rate matchy-matchy uniform aesthetics may look good but fight wars mediocrely, and societies that allow for variety and diversity may give less pleasant aerial shots during parades but fight wars better.

Today is ten years to the day since Trump came down the escalator and changed the course of the country and, in so many ways, changed us. It is a moment to think back and think of how much coarser, uglier, crueler the nation has become in the hands of an unwell man. The daily drumbeat of abductions and cuts and eviscerations and illegal actions and sadistic policy ideas slowly corrodes the heart. We are being remade in Trump’s sickness.

And yet. And yet what the parade reminded me is that Trump, in one regard, at least, faces steep odds. His project depends on turning Americans into something we are deeply not: uniform, cohesive, disciplined, in lockstep.

But we are more hotsteppers than locksteppers. We are more improvised solo than phalanx. We are more unruly than rule-following. Trump has a lot working in his favor as he seeks to build a dictatorship for his self-enrichment. But what will always push against him is this deep inner nature that has stood through time: the chaotic, colorful spontaneity of the American soul. We don’t march shoulder to shoulder. We shimmy. 

Categories Character, Citizenship, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Discipline, Ethics, Freedom, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump and Musk Are Destroying the Government

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2025 //
14

Heather Cox Richardson demonstrates the negative effects of Elon Musk’s DOGS, which protected his interests and saved little, if any, money. With Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax plan, the deficit will increase by $4-5 trillion, so Musk’s chainsaw contributed nothing but demoralization and destruction of the federal workforce. She also summarizes the multiple ways in which Trump is sabotaging the rule of law. She includes footnotes, as usual. Subscribe to her blog to see them.

She writes:

In July 2024, according to an article published today by Kirsten Grind and Megan Twohey in the New York Times, billionaire Elon Musk texted privately about his concerns that government investigations into his businesses would “take me down.” “I can’t be president,” he wrote, “but I can help Trump defeat Biden and I will.”

After appearing on stage with Trump on October 5, Musk texted a person close to him: “I’m feeling more optimistic after tonight. Tomorrow we unleash the anomaly in the matrix.” About an hour later, he added: “This is not something on the chessboard, so they will be quite surprised. “‘Lasers’ from space.”

Musk invested about $290 million in the 2024 election and, when Trump took office, became a fixture in the White House, heading the “Department of Government Efficiency.” It set out to kill government programs by withholding congressionally approved funds, a practice that courts have ruled unconstitutional and Congress expressly prohibited with the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

Musk vowed that his “Department of Government Efficiency” would cut $2 trillion from the U.S. budget, but he quickly backed off on those numbers. In the end, DOGE claimed savings of $175 billion, but that claim is unverifiable and CNN’s Casey Tolan says it’s probably wrong: less than half of it is backed up with any documentation.

Instead, as CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf reported today, since DOGE cut staffing at the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service, for example, and cut employees at national parks, which also generate revenue, its cuts may well end up costing money. Max Stier, who heads the Partnership for Public Service, suggests DOGE cuts could cost U.S. taxpayers $135 billion because agencies will need to train and hire replacements for the workers DOGE fired. Stier called DOGE’s actions “arson of a public asset.”

Grind and Twohey reported that Musk’s drug consumption during the campaign—they could not speak to his habits in the White House, although he appeared high today at a White House press conference—was “more intense than previously known.” He was a chronic user of ketamine, took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms, and traveled with a box that held about 20 pills for daily use. Those in frequent contact with him worried about his frequent drug use, erratic behavior, and mood swings. As a government contractor, Musk should receive random drug tests, but Grind and Twohey say he received advance warning of those tests.

It was never clear that Musk’s role at DOGE was legal, and the White House has tried to maintain that he was only an advisor, despite Trump’s February 19 statement, “I signed an order creating [DOGE] and put a man named Elon Musk in charge.” On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that 14 states can proceed with their lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk and the “Department of Government Efficiency,” saying the states had adequately supported their argument that “Musk and DOGE’s conduct is ‘unauthorized by any law.’”

Trump posted today on social media: “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific!” In a press conference today, Trump reiterated that Musk “is not really leaving.”

Musk’s time at the helm of DOGE might not have saved taxpayer money, but it has changed the world in other ways. Musk has used his time in the government to end investigations into his companies, score government contracts, and get the government to press countries to accept his Starlink communications network as a condition of tariff negotiations. According to John Hyatt of Forbes, Musk’s association with Trump has made him an estimated $170 billion richer.

The implications of DOGE’s actions for Americans are huge. DOGE operatives are now embedded in the U.S. government, where they are mining Americans’ data to create a master database that can sort and find individuals. Former Ohio Democratic Party chair David Pepper called it “a full-scale redirection of the government’s digital nervous system into the hands of an unelected billionaire.”

Today, Sheera Frenkel and Aaron Krolik of the New York Times reported that Musk put billionaire Peter Thiel’s Palantir data analysis firm into place across the government, where it launched its product Foundry to organize, analyze, and merge data. Thiel provided the money behind Vice President J.D. Vance’s political career. Wired and CNN had previously reported how the administration was using this merged data to target undocumented immigrants, and now employees are detailing their concerns with how the administration could use their newly merged information against Americans more generally.

Internationally, Musk’s destruction of the United States Agency for International Development, slashing about 80% of its grants, is killing about 103 people an hour, most of them children. The total so far is about 300,000 people, according to Boston University infectious disease mathematical modeller Dr. Brooke Nichols. Ryan Cooper of The American Prospect reported today that about 1,500 babies a day are born HIV-positive because Musk’s cuts stopped their mothers’ medication.

In the New York Times today, Michelle Goldberg recalls how Musk appeared uninterested in learning what USAID actually did—prevent starvation and provide basic healthcare—and instead called it a “radical-left political psy-op,” and reposted a smear from right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos calling USAID “the most gigantic global terror organization in history.” Goldberg also recalls Musk’s tendency to call people he disdains “NPCs,” or non-player characters, which are characters in role-playing games whose only role is to advance the storyline for the real players.

Aside from DOGE, the focus of Trump’s administration—other than his own cashing in on the presidency—has been on tariffs and immigration. Like the efforts of DOGE, those show a disdain for the law in favor of concentrating power in the executive branch.

During the campaign, Trump fantasized that constructing a high tariff wall around the U.S. would force other countries to fund the national deficit, enabling a Republican Congress to extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations. In fact, domestic industries and consumers bear the costs of tariffs. Trump’s high tariffs, many of which he imposed by declaring an economic emergency and then using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), created such havoc in the stock and bond markets that he backed off.

Yesterday, Sayantani Ghosh, David Gaffen, and Arpan Varghese of Reuters reported that although most of the highest tariffs have yet to go into effect, Trump’s trade war has cost companies more than $34 billion in lost sales and higher costs.

Trump has changed tariff policies at least 50 times since he took office, and traders have figured out they can buy stocks cheaply when markets plummet after a dramatic tariff announcement, and sell when Trump changes his mind. This has recently given rise to Trump’s nickname “TACO,” for “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

This moniker has apparently irritated Trump so much he has taken to social media to defend his abrupt dropping of tariffs on China, saying he did it to “save them” from “grave economic danger,” although in fact, China turned to other trading partners to cushion the blow of U.S. tariffs. Trump went on to suggest China did not live up to what he considered its part of the bargain, and he would no longer be “Mr. NICE GUY!”

On Wednesday a three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that President Donald J. Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” tariffs based on the IEEPA are illegal. The Constitution gives to Congress, not to the president, the power to levy tariffs. Trump launched a social media rant in which he attacked the judges, insisted that “it is only because of my successful use of Tariffs that many Trillions of Dollars have already begun pouring into the U.S.A. from other Countries,” and said that he could not wait for Congress to handle tariffs because it would take too long—in fact, most of Congress does not approve of the tariffs—and that following the Constitution “would completely destroy Presidential Power.” “The President of the United States must be allowed to protect America against those that are doing it Economic and Financial harm.”

Yesterday the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit paused that ruling until at least June 9, when both parties will have submitted legal arguments about whether the stay should remain in place as the government appeals the ruling that the tariffs are illegal. White House senior counsel for trade and manufacturing Peter Navarro, the key proponent of Trump’s trade war, said: “Even if we lose, we’ll do it another way.”

Today Trump said he will double the tariff on steel imports from 25% to 50%.

The other major focus of the administration has been expelling undocumented immigrants from the U.S. During the 2024 campaign, Trump whipped up support by insisting that former President Joe Biden had permitted criminals to walk into the U.S. and terrorize American citizens. Trump vowed to launch the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history” and often talked of deporting the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S., although his numbers have ranged as high as 21 million without explanation.

The administration has hammered on immigration to promote the idea that it is keeping Americans safe. But its first target of arresting at least 1,200 individuals a day has fallen far short. In Trump’s first 100 days, Immigration and Customs Enforcement says it arrested an average of about 660 people a day.

On Wednesday, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who along with Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem is the face of the administration’s immigration policy, told the Fox News Channel that the administration is now aiming for “a minimum of 3,000 arrests…every day.” Administration officials hope to deport a million people in Trump’s first year in office.

CNN reported yesterday that those officials are putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies to meet that goal. This means that hundreds of FBI agents have been taken off terror threats and espionage cases involving China and Russia to be reassigned to immigration duties. Some FBI offices are offering overtime pay if agents help with “enforcement and removal operations.” Officers from other agencies, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) have also been deployed against immigrants in place of their regular duties.

Steven Monacelli of The Barbed Wire noted today that local law enforcement and state troopers have also been diverted to immigration, using a national network of cameras that read license plates. Joseph Cox and Jason Keobler of 404 Media reported yesterday that a Texas sheriff used the same system over the course of a month to look for a woman whom he said had a self-administered abortion, saying her family was worried about her safety.

Their attempt to appear effective has led to very visible arrests and renditions of undocumented migrants to prisons in third countries, especially the notorious CECOT terrorist prison in El Salvador. The administration has deliberately flouted the right of persons in the United States to due process as guaranteed by the Constitution. The administration has met court orders with delay and obfuscation, as well as by attacking judges and the rule of law.

The administration continues to insist those it has arrested are dangerous criminals who must be deported without delay, but more and more reporting says that many of those expelled from the country had no criminal convictions. Today, ProPublica reported that the Trump administration’s own data shows that officials knew that “the vast majority” of the 238 Venezuelans it sent to CECOT had not been convicted of crimes in the U.S. even as it deported them and called them “rapists,” “savages,” “monsters,” and “the worst of the worst.”

ICE has increasingly met quotas by arresting immigrants outside of immigration check-ins and courtrooms: yesterday Dina Arévalo of My San Antonio reported that ICE arrested five immigrants, including three children, outside of an immigration court after a judge had said they were no longer subject to removal proceedings. The officers used zip ties on all five individuals.

At stake is the turn of the United States away from democracy and toward the international right wing. Yesterday the U.S. State Department notified Congress that it intends to use the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor to promote “Democracy and Western Values.” On Tuesday a senior advisor for that bureau, Samuel Samson, who graduated from college in 2021, explained that the State Department intends to ally with the European far right to protect “Western civilization” from current democratic governments.

It also plans to turn the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, which manages the flow of people into the U.S., into an “Office of Remigration” to “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries and “advance the president’s immigration agenda.”

“Remigration” is a term from the global far right. As Isabela Dias of Mother Jones notes, its proponents call for the “mass expulsion of non–ethnically European immigrants and their descendants, regardless of immigration status or citizenship, and an end to multiculturalism.” Of the congressional report, a person who works closely with the State Department told Marisa Kabas of The Handbasket: “All of it is pretty awful with some pieces that definitely violate existing law and treaties. But institutionalizing neo-Nazi theory as an office in the State Department is the most blatantly horrifying.”

This concept is behind not only the expulsion of undocumented immigrants, but also the purge of foreign scholars and lawful residents. The Supreme Court blessed this purge today when, during the period that litigation is underway, it allowed the administration to end immigration paroles for about 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela admitted under a Biden-era program, instantly making them undocumented and subject to deportation.

The court decided the case on the shadow docket, without briefings or explanation. In a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote: “[S]omehow, the Court has now apparently determined…that it is in the public’s interest to have the lives of half a million migrants unravel all around us before the courts decide their legal claims.”

Jackson added a crucial observation. The court, she wrote, “allows the Government to do what it wants to do regardless [of the consequences], rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”

—

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom, Funding, History, Immigration, Musk, Elon, Propaganda, Trump

Thom Hartmann: In Trump’s America, ICE Can Detain Anyone–Even You–Without Cause or a Hearing

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2025 //
9

As I read this frightening post by Thom Hartmann, I was reminded of the many times in first term that he longed for protestors or suspects to be roughed up. He spoke to police officers in New York and urged them not to be so gentle when they apprehended suspects. He encouraged his audience to beat up troublemakers and send him their legal bills. He has a strange love of violence, though he himself dodged the draft five times.

Hartmann describes the freedom of ICE to arrest and detain anyone without a warrant, without any due process. Where is this going?

It can happen here. It is happening here.

Hartmann writes:

Imagine stepping off a plane in the United States, fully expecting to enter the country without issue, only to be surrounded by armed agents, handcuffed, and thrown into a freezing detention center. No trial. No lawyer. No contact with the outside world.

In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or freedom—because now, it takes nothing more than an ICE agent’s “suspicion” to make you disappear.

This isn’t a mistake. It’s part of an expanding system of cruelty, where ICE—once an agency tasked with immigration enforcement—is now operating like an unchecked police force, targeting legal residents, visitors, and even US citizens with impunity.

They have become—since the days when Trump sent them here into Portland without ID to kidnap citizens off the streets and torment them in 2020—the Führer’s private police force. His very own “protection squads” or Schutzstaffel.

People who follow every rule, complete all the required paperwork, and obey every regulation are still finding themselves locked away, held in horrific conditions, and stripped of their rights—all based on the whims of an agent who doesn’t even need evidence to justify an arrest.

A U.S. citizen from Chicago was among 22 people recently subjected to unlawful arrests and detention by ICE. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that during Trump’s first term, immigration authorities asked to hold approximately 600 likely citizens and actually deported about 70 likely citizens.

But now, in part because of the Laken Riley Act, it’s getting worse. Forty-two Democrats in the House and fourteen in the Senate voted to pass this execrable GOP bill last month; it was named after a young woman murdered by an undocumented alien whose story was relentlessly promoted by Fox “News” and other rightwing hate media.

That law, recently signed by Trump, says that ICE now has the authority to detain anybody — anybody — for an indefinite period of time — no time limit whatsoever — if an ICE agent simply says that he or she “suspects” the person is in the country illegally or without documentation.

Did you think, “It can’t happen here”?

Wake up: Trump has already begun putting it into effect, although our media seem curiously silent about its application.

Fabian Schmidt, a German-born engineer, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades, legally working, paying taxes, and contributing to his community. None of that mattered when he returned home from a trip abroad. As soon as he landed at Logan Airport in Boston, ICE agents pulled him aside. His green card renewal was “flagged” for some unknown reason—no explanation, no opportunity to clarify, just a red mark in a government system.

That was all it took. ICE stripped him of his clothes, subjected him to hours of aggressive questioning, and locked him in a detention center. They threw him into an ice-cold shower and left him shivering on the concrete floor, humiliated and terrified.

For days, his mother, Astrid, desperately tried to find him. She called ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and any agency that might give her an answer. They either ignored her or outright lied, claiming they had no record of her son. When she finally learned where he was, Fabian was barely holding himself together. “They treat us like animals,” he told her.

And why was he there? Because of a supposed “bureaucratic error.” ICE used a minor paperwork issue as an excuse to detain a legal resident of the United States without due process, a tactic that’s becoming frighteningly common.

For Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, her visit to the United States was supposed to be brief—just a trip to see friends and enjoy the country. She had a valid passport, a return ticket, and legal permission to enter under the Visa Waiver Program. Yet, ICE decided that she might try to work while visiting, a baseless assumption that required no proof and no justification. 

Just “suspicion.” That was enough to detain her indefinitely.

Once inside, the nightmare deepened. They threw her into a cell with no bed and no access to legal assistance. For eight straight days, they kept her in solitary confinement. The lights never dimmed, and the sounds of other detainees screaming in despair echoed through the walls. She started hallucinating, her grip on reality slipping. Desperate to feel something, anything real, she punched the walls until her knuckles bled.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Amelia, searched frantically for her. ICE refused to confirm her location or even acknowledge that they had detained her. No charges, no trial, no legal recourse—just silence.

Jessica’s case isn’t unique. People who follow all immigration rules are being detained under vague suspicions, often disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. And once they’re inside the system, their rights mean nothing.

Consider Jasmine Mooney, the actor who starred in the American Pie franchise and a Canadian businesswoman who played by the rules. She secured a job offer, completed all visa paperwork, and followed every U.S. immigration law to the letter. But that didn’t stop ICE from shackling her, chaining her wrists, ankles, and waist as if she were a violent offender.

For days, she was trapped in a brutal private, for-profit detention facility, laying on the bare floor with nothing but a crinkled foil sheet for warmth. Then, in the dead of night, ICE dragged her from her cell, bound her in chains again, and forced her onto a bus with dozens of other women. They drove for hours, denying them food, water, or bathroom breaks. By the time she arrived at another facility, she had been awake for 24 hours and was too weak to stand.

To this day, ICE refuses to explain why she was detained. And why would they? They don’t have to. The agency operates with absolute power, detaining people for as long as they want, answering to no one.

Moody tells her horrifying story to The Guardian, writing:

“I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet. …

“There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.”

These aren’t isolated cases. ICE has transformed itself into an authoritarian force that detains people indefinitely on suspicion alone. No evidence? No trial? No problem.

And the for-profit prison industry that’s holding many if not most of them has no incentive to help these people; the more they detail and the longer they stay, the more money the prison companies make (which they then share as campaign donations with Republican politicians).

ICE agents don’t need proof. They only need the power to act—and Trump has given it to them.

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Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Immigration, Injustice, Shame, Trump, Tyranny

Robert Reich: Plan to Resist Trump’s Tyranny on April 19

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2025 //
21

Robert Reich is a relentless fighter for our democracy. He served in the administrations of Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and Bill Clinton, in whose administration he was secretary of Labor.

He wrote recently to urge people to organize against Trump’s violations of the law.

Friends,

Before I post my Sunday cartoon, I want to share with you some thoughts about the third hellish week of Trump II.

As of Friday, Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders, covering every aspect of American life and much foreign policy. 

It’s not just that this number of executive orders is unprecedented in modern American politics. Many are unlawful, unconstitutional, or both. 

In the age of monarchs, kings issued decrees. The tsars of imperial Russia proclaimed ukases. The dictators of the 20th century made diktats. 

Trump issues executive orders.

Average people in the age of monarchs, tsars, and dictators were largely powerless. Resistance meant almost certain death. 

Many people were resigned to vulnerability. They practiced passivity. They knew no life other than repression. But their deference entrenched and ensured the power of monarchs, tsars, and dictators.

Arbitrary power depends on the acquiescence of everyone subjected to it. 

Right now, after three weeks of Trump’s “flooding the zone” (as Trumpers like to say) some of you may be feeling powerless. 

Trump wants you to feel powerless. He depends on your passivity in the face of his takeover of American democracy. 

He wants to be a strongman who can act unilaterally and arbitrarily — who can issue orders about anything that pops into his head. Purging, firing, prosecuting, or deporting anyone he wants removed. Obliterating, freezing, and pummeling any institution he wants destroyed. Unleashing the richest man in the world to do whatever the hell he wants with the government of the United States. 

If you are dumbfounded into inaction, if you don’t even want to hear the news, if you feel as though you’re living through a nightmare over which you have no control, I get it. Every other day I feel the same.

But hear me out. 

You and I have no real choice but to stand up to Trump, Musk, and their lapdogs. To allow them to bully us into submission invites more bullying, more lawlessness, more gonzo executive orders.

Last week I suggested a number of actions we can take. It wasn’t an exhaustive list, of course, only some possibilities. 

Millions of Americans — including many who have been purged from their positions of responsibility — are standing up to Trump and Musk’s tyranny. 

Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski says the Senate phone system has been receiving around 1,600 calls each minute, compared to the 40 calls per minute it usually gets — thus disrupting the system.

We are beginning to flood Trump and Musk’s zone. 

Let’s flood it out. 

This coming April 19 will mark the 250th anniversary of the battles of Lexington and Concord, which began the American Revolution and our war against monarchical power. 

Anti-royalist militia in Massachusetts refused to disperse when ordered to by British troops. A shot was fired, and the troops kept firing, killing eight of those American resisters. Later that day, the militiamen returned that fire, killing a number of British soldiers. The revolution had begun. 

Please don’t get me wrong. I do not advocate violence. I’m simply reminding you that this nation was founded on resistance to arbitrary authority. We built American democracy in the face of what seemed to be impossible odds. 

And we will never, ever give up that fight. 

My friend Harold Meyerson suggests that on April 19 we stage massive peaceful protests in every city and town — crowds of Americans celebrating the anti-monarchical uprising of 1775 and pledging their allegiance to that heritage by denouncing Trump’s increasingly autocratic rule: Thereby flooding Trump and Musk’s zone still further. 

Sounds like a good idea to me. You?

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Racism, Trump

Joel Westheimer: The Gilded Age of Tech Plutocracy

By dianeravitch
January 26, 2025 //
10

Joel Westheimer is Professor of Education and Democracy at the University of Ottawa. He is also a columnist for CBC Radio in Ontario. His most recent book is What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good.

This column appeared in the Globe & Mail in Canada.

When Mark Zuckerberg declared that Meta would stop its fact-checking efforts on its social media platforms, he was conducting a master class in bowing to authoritarianism. The move has been viewed as an effort to placate U.S. president-elect Donald Trump, who has praised Meta’s decision. But while it’s easy to direct our outrage at Mr. Zuckerberg personally, his announcement reflects something much deeper and more troubling: the rarefied world of the modern plutocrat.

Social norms govern behaviour for most people, setting limits on what we deem acceptable. But those norms are no longer the same across different social and economic strata. We would like to believe that commonly held norms reflect ideals of fairness, decency and accountability. But Mr. Zuckerberg and his fellow plutocrats share their own set of norms that privilege shareholder value, political expediency and the maintenance of their unparalleled influence. These norms, values and perceptions of what is acceptable behaviour are shaped not by the needs of democracy or society, but by the insulated, self-reinforcing logic of their own milieu – a logic wherein bowing to a fascist seems reasonable, even admirable.

As former deputy prime minister Chrystia Freeland pointed out more than a decade ago, plutocrats live entirely insulated from the rest of us. Their lives are global. They move from one Four Seasons hotel to another. They eat at the same restaurants. They see only each other. As much as we would like to believe otherwise, Mr. Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and their peers do not feel guilty at night. They sleep fine.

The chasm between their world and ours mirrors the grotesque wealth inequality that defines our era, an inequality not seen since the days of the robber barons. And like that earlier gilded age, this one is undermining democracy at its core.

The insulated world plutocrats live in also allows for dangerous indifference to the consequences of their decisions. While the rest of society grapples with misinformation, rising authoritarianism and the erosion of trust in public institutions, the tech elite shrug. Their wealth not only shields them from the effects of democratic decline but often ensures they benefit from it. After all, authoritarian regimes offer stable environments for market expansion and profit maximization – no pesky regulations or democratic checks to contend with.

The implications are chilling. Meta’s decision isn’t just a policy shift; it’s a reflection of a deeper decay in democratic accountability. In a world where billionaires and their companies wield extraordinary power, platforms such as Facebook and X have become the de facto public squares of our time. Yet these spaces are governed not by the public interest but by the profit margins of the ultra-wealthy. When this small handful of individuals decide what speech is amplified, suppressed or ignored, they fundamentally reshape the boundaries of democratic discourse.

What does it mean for democracy when the norms governing the lives of the wealthiest people on Earth are so utterly detached from the values of the societies their platforms claim to serve; when truth is sacrificed to political gain; when fascism is appeased to protect market share; and when those with unimaginable resources opt to placate authoritarianism rather than challenge it? These decisions do not occur in a vacuum. They emerge from a cultural context that prizes wealth and influence above all else – even the integrity of democratic systems.

Mr. Zuckerberg’s announcement is a reminder that democracy does not simply erode; it is eroded. The responsibility for this erosion lies not just with one, two or three men or companies, but with a broader culture of plutocratic complacency and complicity. The erosion is cumulative, each decision stacking upon the next to create a structure that serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

The rest of us, however, are not powerless. History demonstrates that when perverse norms of the wealthy are weaponized against democracy, people can and do fight back. From labour movements to civil-rights struggles, ordinary citizens have reclaimed power from elites before and can do so again. Norms can be reimagined and reclaimed. It’s time to insist that truth is not negotiable, that democracy is not a product to be monetized, and that the plutocrats of our age should not be above accountability.

The robber barons of old built railroads and monopolies; today’s tech barons shape reality itself. If we fail to hold them accountable, the price will be not just economic inequality, but the very fabric of democracy. And that is a cost we cannot afford to pay.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Citizenship, Democracy, Inequality, Technology

Doktor Zoom: We Are Going to Miss Joe Biden!

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
10

Doktor Zoom writes on the blog Wonkette. This is an excellent commentary on Biden’s farewell address.

President Biden made mistakes. He was not perfect. But he survived an unprecedented barrage of defamation from the Republications, who did everything possible to portray him as a criminal and to destroy his son. Never mind that the Republican’ star witness against the Bidens was an FBI informant who falsely claimed that Biden and Hunter took millions in bribes, and eventually confessed to being a Russian plant; he was recently sentenced to six years in prison.

Biden is a good man. He is a man with a heart. He is deeply empathetic. We can’t say the same for the felon who succeeds him.

And, despite razor-thin numbers in both houses of Congress, he managed somehow to pass a remarkable lot of legislation that will rebuild our nation’s infrastructure, create good jobs, attract new industries, revive technology manufacturing, and address climate change. Trump inherits a thriving economy–the best in the world–and will claim credit for it. In the 48 months of Biden’s time in office, there was job growth inbb by every single month. Furthermore, he relieved the debts of millions of students, prioritizing those who got debt forgiveness in return for public service. The Republicans accused him of buying votes, but they lied: Biden continued to forgive college debt after the election.

And that Norman Rockwell painting portrayed in the post? It hangs in Biden’s White House. You can be sure it will be moved to storage on Monday.

Doktor Zoom writes:

….Biden made an explicit parallel to Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address, which warned about the threat of the “military-industrial complex” that nevertheless still has a stranglehold on our economy and politics in a “disastrous rise of misplaced power.” 

Today, Biden said, we should be wary of the “potential rise of a tech-industrial complex”: 

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power. The free press is crumbling. Editors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.”

He didn’t name Donald Trump explicitly, just some of those forces that helped him retake power, and which threaten to help Trump and his billionaire buddies undo democracy.

Biden also offered some very concrete steps that might help rein in the destructive forces, although the chances they’ll be enacted during the tenure of the Lord of Misrule seem slim. He started with the easy stuff that won’t happen under Trump. 

“We must reform the tax code. Not by giving the biggest tax cuts to billionaires, but by making them begin to pay their fair share.

“We need to get dark money — that’s that hidden funding behind too many campaign contributions — we need to get it out of our politics.”

Then it was on to three ideas that will almost certainly have to wait until we bury Trumpism, at the very least. 

“We need to enact an 18-year time limit, term limit […] and the strongest ethics reforms for our Supreme Court. We need to ban members of Congress from trading stock while they are in the Congress. We need to amend the Constitution to make clear that no president, no president is immune from crimes that he or she commits while in office. The president’s power is … not absolute. And it shouldn’t be.”

OK, maybe the second one, the ban on members of Congress trading stocks, has some ghost of a chance; it also wouldn’t really do anything to keep Trump in check, though it’s certainly a general good-government idea. Maybe Biden threw it in for the sake of parallelism, to call for reforms in all three branches of government. 

Letting the super-wealthy run things, Biden reminded us, is a recipe not just for oligarchy, but for despair: If everyone knows the system is rigged, we all too often give up, or lash out in violence, neither of which is good for democracy. He offered as a hopeful metaphor an image from a 1946 Norman Rockwell painting that hangs in the White House, showing a crew of workers cleaning the torch on the Statue of Liberty, so its “rays of light could reach out as far as possible.” Keeping that torch lit is the work we all have to do as citizens. And while Biden didn’t mention this detail, do keep in mind that Liberty is not enlightening the world with a damn tiki torch, either. 

The bald guy with the pipe is a caricature of Rockwell. Wikipedia notes that ‘The inclusion of a non-white figure working with whites, apparently only noticed in 2011, contravened a Saturday Evening Post policy of only showing people of ethnicity in subservient roles.’ Darn that DEI! 

Biden closed with a rather remarkable passing of the torch, not so much to the incoming wrecking crew, but to the only people who can stop those bastards: Us. 

“I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands — a nation where the strength of our institutions and the character of our people matter and must endure. Now it’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keeper of the flame. May you keep the faith. I love America. You love it, too.”

What a contrast to the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, who blithely called America a “shining city on a hill” because it’s so plainly the bestest place possible. (As Sarah Vowell reminds us, adding “shining” was a sunny perversion of the original Puritan metaphor’s dour intent, which warned that everyone would see our sins, like Abu Ghraib). 

But America isn’t a self-illuminating beacon of virtue that’s virtuous just because it’s America. Instead, Biden argues, the light of freedom requires constant maintenance and renewal — and it only keeps shining if we do the hard, even risky work of participatory democracy. 

We’re going to miss that guy.

Categories Biden, Character, Citizenship, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom, Goodness, History, Justice

Adam Kinzinger Pays Tribute to Jimmy Carter, a Great American

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2024 //
5

The death of President Jimmy Carter at age 100 reminds us of how far we have fallen as a nation. Where once we elected a man to lead the nation who was a model of honesty, integrity, humility, faith, and conviction, we just re-elected a man who lacks any principles and who lives to make more and more money. Where Carter spent his post-presidential years serving others, Trump spent four years whining and threatening revenge and retribution. Carter’s selflessness was legendary; no one has ever mentioned any selfless act ever performed by Trump.

Adam Kinzinger was one of the few Republican members of Congress who stood up to Trump. Along with Liz Cheney, he served on the Commission that investigated January 6, 2021. He left Congress and now writes a blog, commenting on current events. If the Republican Party ever breaks free of the dead hand of MAGA, Adam is one of the people who should lead it.

He wrote this tribute to Jimmy Carter:

As I sit down to reflect on the passing of Jimmy Carter, my heart is heavy with both sorrow and profound gratitude. President Carter’s life was a testament to the power of humility, faith, and a commitment to serve others. He wasn’t just a former president; he was a moral compass for our nation, a reminder of the values that should guide us as Americans and as human beings.

Born into modest beginnings in Plains, Georgia, Jimmy Carter’s faith was a cornerstone of his life. A devout Christian, Carter lived out the teachings of his faith with quiet resolve. He taught Sunday school well into his 90s, often drawing crowds who came not only to hear his words but to witness the authenticity of a man who practiced what he preached. His commitment to human dignity and compassion wasn’t confined to words or sermons—it was demonstrated through decades of action.

After leaving the White House, Carter could have easily faded into a life of comfort and prestige. Instead, he chose a path of service that extended far beyond his presidency. Through the Carter Center, he fought tirelessly for human rights, free elections, and the eradication of preventable diseases. His work in global health alone saved countless lives, exemplifying what it means to leave the world better than you found it.

Perhaps one of the most visible symbols of his post-presidential legacy was his dedication to Habitat for Humanity. Even in his later years, you could find him with a hammer in hand, building homes for families in need. This was Jimmy Carter—a man who believed that faith without works is dead, who lived his life proving that service to others is the highest calling.

In a time when our nation often feels divided, President Carter’s life offers a blueprint for unity. He believed in the power of kindness and the necessity of justice. Whether championing peace in the Middle East or advocating for marginalized communities at home, Carter’s moral clarity reminded us that politics should serve the people, not the other way around.

The country is better because of Jimmy Carter. Not just because of his policies or achievements, but because of the example he set. He showed us what leadership grounded in humility and grace looks like. He reminded us that faith can be a force for good, that it should inspire us to build bridges and extend a helping hand.

As we mourn his loss, let us also celebrate the remarkable legacy he leaves behind. May we strive to embody the values he lived by—faith, service, and an unwavering belief in the potential for good in every person. Rest in peace, President Carter. You were a beacon of light in a world that often seems dark, and your impact will endure for generations to come.

Categories Character, Citizenship, Courage, Democracy, Ethics, Religion

Jan Resseger: How Privatization Of Public Services Undermines Democracy

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2024 //
8

Jan Resseger lives in Ohio. Before retiring, Jan staffed advocacy and programming to support public education justice in the national setting of the United Church of Christ—working to improve the public schools that serve 50 million of our children; reduce standardized testing; ensure attention to vast opportunity gaps; advocate for schools that welcome all children; and speak for the public role of public education.  Jan chaired the National Council of Churches Committee on Public Education for a dozen of those years.

Jan recently wrote this post for the National Center on Education Policy at the University of Colorado.

She writes:

I suppose many of us think about the classes we wish we had signed up for in college.  Right now, as somebody who believes public schools are among our nation’s most important and most threatened public institutions, I wish that in addition to enrolling in The Philosophy of Education, I had also taken a class in political philosophy—or at least Political Science 101. How have groups like the Heritage Foundation, the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Betsy DeVos’s American Federation of Children and their proxies like Moms for Liberty managed to discredit public schooling and at the same time spawn an explosion of vouchers, which, according to the editors of last year’s excellent analysis, The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, are failing to serve our society’s poorest children even as they are destroying the institution of public schooling?

Here are that book’s conclusions: “As currently structured, voucher policies in the United States are unlikely to help the students they claim to support. Instead, these policies have often served as a facade for the far less popular reality of funding relatively advantaged (and largely White) families, many of whom already attended—or would attend—private schools without subsidies. Although vouchers are presented as helping parents choose schools, often the arrangements permit the private schools to do the choosing… Advocacy that began with a focus on equity must not become a justification for increasing inequity. Today’s voucher policies have, by design, created growing financial commitments of taxpayer money to serve a constituency of the relatively advantaged that is redefining their subsidies as rights—often in jurisdictions where neighborhood public schools do not have the resources they need.” (The School Voucher Illusion: Exposing the Pretense of Equity, p. 290)

As I watch the wave of school privatization washing across conservative states and read about universal school choice as one of the priorities of presidential candidate Donald Trump as well as a goal of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, I find myself wishing I had a better grasp of how our society has gone off the rails.  I wonder what I would have learned about the difference between democracy and extreme individualism in that political theory class I missed, and I find myself trying to catch up by reading—for example—on the difference between a society defined by individualist consumerism and a society defined by citizenship.

Back in 1984, the late political theorist Benjamin Barber published Strong Democracy, a book defining the principles our federal and state constitutions and laws are presumed to protect:  “Strong democracy … rests on the idea of a self-governing community of citizens who are united less by homogeneous interests than by civic education and who are made capable of common purpose and mutual action by virtue of their civic attitudes and participatory institutions rather than their altruism or their good nature. Strong democracy is consonant with—indeed depends upon—the politics of conflict, the sociology of pluralism, and the separation of private and public realms of action… The theory of strong democracy… envisions… politics as… the way that human beings with variable but malleable natures and with competing but overlapping interests can contrive to live together communally not only to their mutual advantage but also to the advantage of their mutuality…  It seeks to create a public language that will help reformulate private interests in terms susceptible to public accommodation… and it aims at understanding individuals not as abstract persons but as citizens, so that commonality and equality rather than separateness are the defining traits of human society.” (Strong Democracy, pp 117-119)

In that same book, Barber describes the consumer as a representative of extreme individualism—the opposite of the public citizen: “The modern consumer is the… last in a long train of models that depict man as a greedy, self-interested, acquisitive survivor who is capable nonetheless of the most self-denying deferrals of gratification for the sake of ultimate material satisfaction. The consumer is a creature of great reason devoted to small ends… He uses the gift of choice to multiply his options in and to transform the material conditions of the world, but never to transform himself or to create a world of mutuality with his fellow humans.” (Strong Democracy, p. 22)

Two decades later, Barber published Consumed, in which he explores in far more detail the danger of a society defined by consumerism rather than strong democracy. As his case study he contrasts parent-consumers who prioritize personal choice to shape their children’s education and parent-citizens: “Through vouchers we are able as individuals, through private choosing, to shape institutions and policies that are useful to our own interests but corrupting to the public goods that give private choosing its meaning.  I want a school system where my kid gets the very best; you want a school system where your kid is not slowed down by those less gifted or less adequately prepared; she wants a school system where children whose ‘disadvantaged backgrounds’ (often kids of color) won’t stand in the way of her daughter’s learning; he (a person of color) wants a school system where he has the maximum choice to move his kid out of ‘failing schools’ and into successful ones. What do we get?  The incomplete satisfaction of those private wants through a fragmented system in which individuals secede from the public realm, undermining the public system to which we can subscribe in common. Of course no one really wants a country defined by deep educational injustice and the surrender of a public and civic pedagogy whose absence will ultimately impact even our own private choices… Yet aggregating our private choices as educational consumers in fact yields an inegalitarian and highly segmented society in which the least advantaged are further disadvantaged as the wealthy retreat ever further from the public sector.  As citizens, we would never consciously select such an outcome, but in practice what is good for ‘me,’ the educational consumer, turns out to be a disaster for ‘us’ as citizens and civic educators—and thus for me the denizen of an American commons (or what’s left of it).” (Consumed, p. 132)

Barber concludes: “It is the peculiar toxicity of privatization ideology that it rationalizes corrosive private choosing as a surrogate for the public good.  It enthuses about consumers as the new citizens who can do more with their dollars… than they ever did with their votes. It associates the privileged market sector with liberty as private choice while it condemns democratic government as coercive.” (Consumed, p. 143)  “The consumer’s republic is quite simply an oxymoron… Public liberty demands public institutions that permit citizens to address the public consequences of private market choices… Asking what “I want’ and asking what ‘we as a community to which I belong need’ are two different questions, though neither is altruistic and both involve ‘my’ interests: the first is ideally answered by the market; the second must be answered by democratic politics.” “Citizens cannot be understood as mere consumers because individual desire is not the same thing as common ground and public goods are always something more than an aggregation of private wants…. (W)hat is public cannot be determined by consulting or aggregating private desires.” (Consumed, p. 126)

So that is today’s lesson from the political philosophy class I was never able to fit into my schedule in college: “Freedom is not just about standing alone and saying no. As a usable ideal, it turns out to be a public rather than a private notion… (N)owadays, the idea that only private persons are free, and that only personal choices of the kind consumers make count as autonomous, turns out to be an assault not on tyranny but on democracy. It challenges not the illegitimate power by which tyrants once ruled us but the legitimate power by which we try to rule ourselves in common. Where once this notion of liberty challenged corrupt power, today it undermines legitimate power… It forgets the very meaning of the social contract, a covenant in which individuals agree to give up unsecured private liberty in exchange for the blessings of public liberty and common security.” (Consumed, pp.119-123)

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Citizenship, Democracy, Deregulation, Education Reform, Ethics, Inequity, Privatization, Vouchers

Trump: He Will Pardon J6 Rioters, Try to End Birthright Citizenship on Day 1

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2024 //
20

Trump was interviewed by “Meet the Press” today.

He talked about his Day 1 goals.

He said he would pardon the January 6 insurrectionists, but the reporting did not clarify whether that would include those who brutalized police officers. If so, Republicans should stop calling themselves the party of law and order.

He said he would try to end “birthright citizenship,” the grant of citizenship to persons born in the U.S. He says he would achieve this goal by executive action but birthright citizenship is written into the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. Trump said that no other country in the world has birthright citizenship but NBC said that 30 other nations do.

As usual, Trump ranted about immigrant criminals but NBC pointed out that immigrants are half as likely to commit crimes as native-born citizens.

He also said he would work with Democrats to protect “Dreamers.” These are children who were brought to this country as young children.

Categories Citizenship, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Immigration, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Brave Republicans and Those Who Are M.I.A.

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2024 //
10

Jennifer Rubin was a solid conservative journalist and lawyer who was hired by the Washington Post to express the conservative view on politics in a column called “Right Turn.” After Trump’s election, she became increasingly critical of him and eventually reversed her ideology. She is today one of the most incisive critics of the MAGA movement. In this column, she chastises Prominent Republicans for remaining silent in this election.

She writes:

One of the most uplifting parts of last week’s Democratic convention was the presence of so many Republicans, such as former Illinois congressman Adam Kinzinger and former Georgia lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan. Both decided to put country over party and self.

“I know Kamala Harris shares my allegiance to the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy, and she is dedicated to upholding all three in service to our country,” Kinzinger said. “Whatever policies we disagree on pale in comparison with those fundamental matters of principle, of decency and of fidelity to this nation.” Likewise, Duncan said, “Let me be clear to my Republican friends at home watching: If you vote for Kamala Harris in 2024, you’re not a Democrat. You’re a patriot.”

The day after the convention, a dozen former lawyers from the three Republican administrations before Donald Trump’s published a letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris. They wrote, “Trump’s attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power after losing the election proved beyond any reasonable doubt his willingness to place his personal interests above the law and values of our constitutional democracy.” They argued that returning Trump to office “would threaten American democracy and undermine the rule of law in our country.” Then, a four-star general who served under President George W. Bush and hundreds of former Republican staffers endorsed Harris.

So, the question remains: Where are the rest of the Republicans who understand Trump is an existential threat to democracy? Most of the big names still refuse to follow Kinzinger and Duncan’s lead.

Former president George W. Bush must be in a witness protection program; he has virtually disappeared. Former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney courageously stood up to Trump when he tried to stage a coup. But, sorry — if you pledge to do everything possible to prevent Trump’s return to power, you have an obligation to endorse Harris, the only person who can beat him.

Former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who shredded Trump in the primaries, previously objected to endorsing President Joe Biden because of Biden’s age. (“President Biden, in my view, is past the sell-by date.”) What is his excuse now for refusing to endorse the new, 59-year-old Democratic nominee?

Paul Ryan, a Fox board member and former speaker of the House, was quoted in May as saying, “Character is too important for me. … [The presidency] is a job that requires the kind of character [Trump] doesn’t have.” But Ryan too lacks the nerve to support the only viable alternative. When he rationalizes his refusal to endorse a Democrat on the grounds that he differs on “policy,” he is telling us that preserving democracy is not a high policy priority for him.

The list goes on: H.R. McMaster (actually commending Trump’s foreign policy in the Atlantic!), Jim Mattis, Condoleezza Rice. Moral cowardice, or craving for access in future Republican administrations, seems to have silenced even those most vocal on America’s defense of Ukraine and other allies. History will not treat them kindly.

Certainly, getting some Republicans to refrain from voting for Trump is helpful. But if they are as devoted to democracy and as committed to the international world order as they say, there is no moral argument for refraining from going the rest of the way to endorse Harris, especially after such a robust affirmation of her foreign policy views.

Biden gave up the presidency for the sake of our democracy. Can’t these Republicans give Harris their votes?

Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom, Harris, Kamala, Republicans, Trump
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