Former President Bill Clinton released the following statement about what’s happening in Minneapolis and other places, as Trump unleashes the armed, masked ICE agents to arrest, harass, and murder our fellow citizens in pursuit of undocumented immigrants .
Well said. Where are other retired Presidents, Vice-Presidents, Senators?
Please speak up, Former Presidents Bush and Obama.
Station KARE in Minneapolis reported:
MINNEAPOLIS — The man shot and killed by a federal agent in Minneapolis on Saturday has been identified as Alex Pretti.
The Associated Press reported Pretti’s parents confirmed his identity, and that he worked as an ICU nurse.
State records show Pretti was issued a nursing license in 2021, we’ve also confirmed he worked for some time at US Dept of Veterans Affairs as a nurse.
Pretti was an American citizen.
Before Pretti’s killing, Governor Tim Walz activated the Minnesota National Guard to assist local police in maintaining safety.
The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Pretti had criminal record. He had parking tickets. He was a licensed gun owner.
Just moments earlier, Border Patrol Cmdr. Greg Bovino said at a press conference that the man who was killed “wanted to do maximum damage to agents.”
Walz rejected that as a false narrative.
“Thank God we have video,” Walz said. “It’s nonsense people. It’s nonsense and it’s lies.”
When killed by 10 shots, Alex Pretti did not have a gun in his hand. An ICE officer removed his licensed gun, which he never drew.
The video is startling. Between 3-6 armed, masked ICE agents surround a man, wrestle him to the ground, throw punches at him while he seems to be completely immobilized.
Then shots ring out, and the detainee is dead.
The Department of Homeland Security says he was armed and dangerous. The ICE agents killed him while defending themselves.
The sheriff said he was 37 years old. He believes the victim was an American citizen.
Yesterday, Minnesota held a general strike to protest the military occupation of Minneapolis. There were no incidents of violence.
Some Minneapolis businesses have opened their doors to help people who need to get out of the tear gas or pepper spray.
State and local officials have demanded that the federal government pull ICE out of Minneapolis.
Trump has prepared 1,500 US military to join the 3,000 ICE agents currently in Minneapolis, to subdue protestors. .
Is this America or Germany in 1933?
Foreign Policy, a distinguished publication for leading scholars of foreign affairs, published an article by staff writers Keith Johnson and Christina Lu asserting that Trump’s lust to control Greenland is just plain nuts.
They wrote;
Seeking additional barrels of oil in Venezuela or digging for rare earths in ice-covered Greenland makes no sense from an economic or security point of view. And yet U.S. President Donald Trump persists, even though the costs massively outweigh the benefits.
In reality, naked resource grabs explain a lot about Trump’s dizzying foreign policy, perhaps even more so than other explanations that have been proposed. It seems Trump may have reached back even further in time for his guiding light than tariff-happy William McKinley and big-stick imperialist Theodore Roosevelt to the British and Dutch quasi-state mercantilist corporations that introduced much of the world to rapacious capitalism starting in the 17th century. The British and Dutch East India Companies did grab much of the world, usually at gunpoint. At least they got pepper, spices, and tea. All we have here is sulfurous oil and neodymium.
Gunboat diplomacy is back, only this time without the diplomacy.
Trump’s obsession with natural resources that the companies paid to extract them refuse to touch does raise several questions. Are these even the right resources to be grabbing? Is any of this legal? And most importantly, is any of this a remotely good way to promote the security of the United States?
WHEN IT COMES TO OIL, which has been a Trump obsession for decades, the answer is clearly no.
Oil demand is a tricky thing to project into the future. Some forecasters expect global demand for oil to peak within five years, while others reckon fast-growing developing economies will still be thirsty into the next decade, requiring more wells and more production. Either way, oil from Venezuela and Greenland is not the answer.
Venezuela’s oil woes have been amply demonstrated. It’s an expensive thing to produce in a place with little security and less rule of law, especially with oil languishing in the mid-$50s a barrel. The chairman and chief executive of ExxonMobil, Darren Woods, told Trump at a White House meeting last week that Venezuela was “uninvestible.” Trump then said he would ensure that Exxon was kept out of any U.S.-led Venezuela ventures—and Exxon’s stock rose on the news.
Greenland, too, is rumored to have oil: billions of barrels of it. It’s not clear if that is actually the case, because decades of exploration have hit only dry wells, but on paper, Greenland could have 8 billion barrels of oil hidden under the tundra and the whitecaps, or nearly 3 percent of Venezuela’s unattractive reserves.
But there are some daunting challenges. Most of those estimated oil resources are north of the Arctic Circle, and mostly offshore. That is not easy to access, even with climate change stretching summer on both ends. Even the oil on land is not easy to tap. There are fewer than 100 miles of paved road on an island the size of Mexico. Deep water ports, airports, pipelines, oil-export terminals, housing, clinics—all are on somebody’s to-do list to build, but not that of oil majors.
Also relevant: Since 2021, Greenland has banned further oil exploration due to environmental concerns. The only current play, a land-based oil-exploration operation on the island’s east coast with U.S. backing, relies on a grandfathered lease from years ago. That legal stricture, in the absence of a complete annexation, could complicate further U.S. efforts to tap Greenland’s possible oil.
BUT WHAT ABOUT GREENLAND’S rare earths, which Trump officials have suggested are one of the primary reasons the U.S. president is so interested in the island?
While those who focus on rare earths mining simply say the plan is “bonkers,” the real issue is that rare earths are not rare—processing facilities and magnet factories are. Which makes a race for ice-bound dodgy mining prospects in somebody else’s territory all the harder to understand.
“It certainly doesn’t make any sense as a rare-earth story,” Ian Lange, a professor in the mineral economics program at the Colorado School of Mines, recently told Foreign Policy.
Rare earths, or a set of 17 metallic elements with obscure names like neodymium and samarium, have catapulted in geopolitical importance because they power everything from F-35 fighter jets to Arleigh Burke-class destroyers. China overwhelmingly commands their global supply chains, giving it powerful leverage in its ongoing trade spat with the United States.
Sure, Greenland may have some sizable rare earth reserves, according to the U.S. Geological Survey—but so do many other countries. And a big economic question hangs over potential operations in Greenland, where no rare earth mining has ever taken place and mining itself remains a fraught and divisive issue.
The biggest problem with Trump’s resource grabs is not their lack of economic foundation, which is nil, or their legality, which is none, but with what they do for U.S. security, which is little or worse.
Also, the bulk of Greenland’s land—a whopping 80 percent—is estimated to be covered in ice. All of those factors are certain to make establishing crucial mining and processing infrastructure, already a difficult and hefty financial endeavor, even more costly and challenging.
In his pursuit of rare earths, industry experts say, Trump will likely have an easier time looking elsewhere.
AND THEN THERE’S THE QUESTION of the legality of how Trump is going about his resource grabs. Abducting heads of government to seize resources is not anywhere sanctioned in the U.N. Charter, nor is threatening to invade a NATO alliance partner to forcibly annex their territory. But rogue states are hard to red team.
Trump has waved aside centuries of international law, telling the New York Times “I don’t need international law,” because his own “morality” was the only check or balance required.
It’s not an abstruse debate. For centuries, the West has sought to paint a patina of law over the anarchy of the international system, and even today, tomes are written about revisionist powers seeking to pervert international law for their own ends. Until very recently, the United States was not among the revisionist powers.
But there’s little to be done on that front. Trump’s installed successor in Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro’s former vice president and now also acting president Delcy Rodriguez, who has been under U.S. sanctions since 2017 for human rights abuses, is according to Trump “a terrific person.” Also not entirely legal is storing the proceeds of Venezuelan oil sales the United States has carried out in an offshore account in Qatar.
THE BIGGEST PROBLEM with Trump’s resource grabs is not their lack of economic foundation, which is nil, or their legality, which is none, but with what they do for U.S. security, which is little or worse….
The great advantage the United States had, until recently, was its network of alliances: NATO, Japan, South Korea, and a multitude of others. That’s all gone now, or nearly. It is surely a sign of bungled foreign policy when Sweden dispatches troops against you.
Nancy Bailey is an extraordinary blogger. She was a teacher for many years, and she’s an independent thinker. She has a keen eye for frauds, and she calls them out. A few years ago, Nancy and I collaborated on a book called Edspeak and Doubletalk: A Glossary to Decipher Hypocrisy and Save Public Schooling (Teachers College Press). We worked together closely by computer and telephone, despite the fact that we had never met.
One of this blog’s loyal readers said recently that he judged educational phenomena by the simple term WWNBD: “What Would Nancy Bailey Do?”
A good watchword.
In this post, Nancy Bailey catches Secretary of Education Linda McMahon devoting herself to a completely illegal activity, as explicitly defined in federal law: changing the history curriculum of American public schools.
On one hand, the former wrestling entrepreneur says that education should be returned to the states, but at the same time, she’s promoting a rightwing history curriculum that she describes as a “patriotic curriculum.”
Secretary McMahon is breaking the law. Surely the first duty of a citizen or patriot is to uphold the law. Secretary McMahon may be ignorant of the law but ignorance is not a defense for illegal actions.
In its wisdom, at the creation of the U.S. Department of Education in 1979, the U.S. Congress forbade any official in the U.S. Department of Education from interfering in matters of curriculum.
Traveling across the country, Education Secretary Linda McMahon is promoting patriotism and “History Rocks,” her religious civics curriculum for kids. She does this as Americans have watched the terror unfold in Minneapolis, including the shooting of a mom protecting undocumented immigrants, there will apparently be no investigation.
In addition, billionaire McMahon, like billionaire Betsy DeVos before her, and billionaire Donald Trump, chip away at the fabric of public schooling that this country’s children have relied on for years. She continues to dismantle the U.S. ED for her boss, without Congressional approval (a terrible civics lesson in and of itself), casting aside laws protecting students. Either she doesn’t understand the harm she’s doing, or she doesn’t care.
McMahon’s emphasis on state-run schools (public schools have always been run by states) is more about vouchers, which the privileged can cash in on to supplement the tuition of their children attending private schools, which are unaffordable for many Americans. Those other children will get charter schools, which are inconsistent and mostly unregulated.
It’s not just McMahon. For years, the incredibly wealthy in America have done little to assist those who helped them acquire their wealth. When it comes to public schools, they’ve done much to destroy them.
What kind of civics is McMahon promoting? How patriotic must children be when they don’t have access to decent health care or good schools? Patriotism? How difficult is it to wave the flag when you’re a hungry child without a home? Or what if you come from a family of undocumented immigrants, whose dream has been to be able to wave that flag, but their dream has now been dashed?
Senator Bernie Sanders has said:
It’s hard to miss.
Our country is rapidly evolving into two Americas.
One America consists of less than a thousand billionaires who have an unprecedented amount of wealth and power and have never ever had it so good.
The other America, where the vast majority live, consists of tens of millions of families who are struggling to put food on the table, pay their bills and worry that their kids will have a lower standard of living than they do.
How is McMahon giving back to America? Providing kids a so-called civics program that includes religion is hollow when they’re hungry.
Has she spoken with US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins? Rollins is not a billionaire yet, but on her way with an acquired $15 million. She claimed last week that Americans could save money by aligning their meals with the new Department of Health and Human Services dietary guidelines. They could simply eat“a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli”, “a corn tortilla” and “one other thing”.
She states this while McMahon told FOX News:
“…too many schools have moved away from teaching the basics of what it means to be an American — from understanding the Constitution to showing respect for the nation’s symbols — warning that America’s sense of national identity is quickly fading.
We don’t teach love of country. We don’t say the Pledge of Allegiance. We are not creating that same sense of patriotism. …in some districts, the word patriot was actually crossed out of some of the curriculum in some of our schools.
History Rocks is a national partnership with the following religiously connected groups:
It’s not clear which 50 national and state organizations are involved, although America 250 lists many. Here are a few:
Celia Clarke, a PBS reporter, covering McMahon’s visit to a New York high school, described History Rocks:
She was there as part of a national tour she’s doing. She’s going to visit every state, and they call this the History Rocks! Trail To Independence Tour, where McMahon is visiting, as I said, one school in each state. This whole thing is organized by a private coalition in partnership with the Department of Education, and it’s a coalition of conservative groups like the Heritage Foundation and Turning Point USA. These groups have a goal of using education to promote patriotism, but in a very specific way, which includes adding a particular Christian perspective on American history.
McMahon doesn’t appear to understand the history behind patriotism and public education. If she did, she would know there has been a long history of controversy.
Leo Tolstoy said:
Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government’s ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery.
Albert Einstein stated:
Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism – how passionately I hate them!
Teaching patriotism in public schools has always been debated. In 2006, Diane Ravitch penned “Should We Teach Patriotism?” She didn’t endorse a special class for patriotism but instead proposed:
Students who study American history will learn about the sacrifices of previous generations who sought to safeguard our liberties and improve our society, and they will learn about the men and women of all races and backgrounds who struggled to create a land of freedom, justice, and opportunity. Students must learn too about the failings of our democracy, about the denials of freedom and justice that blight our history.
But to deprive students of an education that allows them to see themselves as part of this land and its history and culture would be a crying shame. Just as students must learn to value themselves as individuals, to value their families, and to value their community, so too should they learn to value the nation of which they are citizens. To love one’s country does not require one to ignore its faults. To love one’s country does not require one to dismiss the virtues of other countries. Indeed, those who are patriotic about their own country tend to respect those who live elsewhere and also love their respective countries.
That last part about not dismissing the virtues of other countries eerily rings true today, as the President seeks to take over other countries, ignoring the great needs, especially those of America’s children in the United States.
On this MLK day, consider where we’ve been as a nation, and where it looks like we’re sadly going, and what it must mean to America’s children, every one of them.
Linda McMahon’s billionaire patriotism is not right. It does nothing to help American children live good lives where they can become successful, Republican or Democrat.
References
Ravitch, D. (2006). Should we teach patriotism? Phi Delta Kappan, 87(8), 579–581.
Hail and farewell, 2025!
Before that year is entirely forgotten, I want to say that it was one of the worst years in my life.
I learned in college that a sample of 1 is not useful for science, but it means plenty to me.
A year ago, a monstrous, lying braggart was sworn into office. A grifter and conman returned to fill his pockets and those of his family and friends, to double his net worth and to accept emoluments from foreign countries, send armed men to inflict brutality on blue cities, disregarding the Constitution.
In only one year, he has shredded our nation’s standing in the world, inflicted terror on our cities, alienated our allies, abandoned efforts to improve the environment, attacked our schools and universities, gloried in bigotry, and devastated the federal civil service.
He sends federal agents or the National Guard into urban districts, to terrorize the residents. People are snatched from their cars, their workplaces, the streets, even as they protest that they are citizens, that they have rights, that they want a lawyer. Their protests are ignored as a pack of masked men grab them, handcuff them, throw them to the ground, punch and kick them in their heads and bodies. Some are detained and disappeared into a network of prisons, then deported without due process. Some are imprisoned for days or weeks, then released.
Is this America? Never in my life have I been stopped by military officers and asked for my papers,
The cold-blooded murder of Renee Good was followed not by an investigation or apology but by smearing her and her wife as terrorists who were somehow responsible for her fate and deserved to die.
Who are these masked men? Why are they so violent? Are they Proud Boys? KKK? J6 insurrectionists?
Every day, I wonder if this is how decent Germans felt as Hitler took power and destroyed civil society.
What is happening to my country? To our Constitution? To the rule of law?
As I watch our values and rights degraded by power-mad politicians, I fight to preserve my body.
In the spring, I learned after my annual mammogram that I had breast cancer. I learned that I had invasive ductal cancer in my right breast, which required surgery. The post-surgery analysis revealed that not all the cancer was removed. The “margins” were not clear. So back I went for another surgery on the same site.
Radiation–five straight days of it–followed. it left me tired, but otherwise apparently successful.
I was reluctant to take a daily pill of anti-cancer medicine because of the numerous side effects. But I did and I suffered the predicted side effects. I had pain in my hips and joints. That was November.
Meanwhile I had a new mammogram. It showed that I had a new cancer, this time in my left breast. The surgeon recommended another surgery, and this time she got it all out. It was a tiny tumor, different from the first one. But a cancer nonetheless.
Radiation begins today, January 20, the first anniversary of Trump’s return to office. What a coincidence, cancer in my body, cancer in our nation.
It has been a nightmare year, for the country and for me personally. To make matters worse, our beloved dog Mitzi died. Through all of the personal trauma, my wife Mary stood by me steadfastly, through thick and thin, demonstrating her determination and love.
In a few weeks, we expect to get another dog. We will survive.
It remains to be seen whether our country will survive a second Trump term, another round of brutality inflicted on our norms, our values, our fellow citizens and our neighbors, our faith in our electoral system and our laws.
Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote regularly for The New York Times. Now he writes a blog at Substack. In this post, he characterizes the deepening dysfunction of our president, Donald Trump.
Things are not going well politically for Donald Trump. The polls show him underwater on every major issue. And while he insists that these are fake, it’s clear that he knows better. He recently lamented that the Republicans will do badly in the midterms and even floated the idea that midterms should be canceled.
And as January 6th 2021 showed, Trump simply can’t stand political rejection. He will do anything, use any tool or any person at his disposal, to obliterate the sources of that rejection.
So as we head into the 2026 midterm season, the best way to understand U.S. policy is that it’s in the pursuit of one crucial objective: Propping up Trump’s fragile ego.
What was the motivation for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro? It wasn’t about drugs, which were always an obvious pretense. By Trump’s own account it wasn’t about democracy. Trump talks a lot about oil, but Venezuela’s heavy, hard-to-process oil and its decrepit oil infrastructure aren’t big prizes. The Financial Timesreports that U.S. oil companies won’t invest in Venezuela unless they receive firm guarantees. One investor told the paper, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.”
The real purpose of the abduction, surely, was to give Trump an opportunity to strut around and act tough. But this ego gratification, like a sugar rush, won’t last long. Voters normally rally around the president at the beginning of a war. The invasion of Iraq was initially very popular. But the action in Venezuela hasn’t had any visible rally-around-the-flag effect. While Republicans, as always, support Trump strongly, independents are opposed:
And now the story of the moment is the atrocity in Minneapolis, where…an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good by shooting her in the head.
Trump and his minions responded by flatly lying about what happened. But their accounts have been refuted by video evidence which show an out-of-control ICE agent gunning down a woman who was simply trying to get away from a frightening situation. Yes, MAGA loyalists will fall into line, preferring to believe Trump rather than their own lying eyes. But public revulsion over Good’s murder and Trump’s mendacity are high and growing.
A president who actually cared about the welfare of those he governs would have taken Good’s killing as an indication that his deportation tactics have veered wildly and tragically off course. He would have called for a halt of ICE actions and made sure there would be an objective and timely federal investigation into this national tragedy.
But for Trump, ICE’s violent lawlessness is a feature, not a bug. Sending armed, masked, poorly trained, masked and out-of-control armed thugs into blue cities is, in effect, a war on Americans, just as January 6thwas a war on American institutions. In effect, Trump would rather savage his own people than be held accountable for his actions.
So in Trump’s mind, Renee Nicole Good’s murder is at most collateral damage, in service to his insatiable need to dominate and feel powerful — so insatiable that he is attempting to create an alternate reality, claiming that that Good ran over an agent although there is irrefutable video evidence that she didn’t.
And when one set of lies doesn’t work, he switches tactics – changing the topic, deflecting, and spouting even more lies. Thus, just hours after Good’s death, Trump proclaimed that he was seeking a huge increase in military spending:
It’s a near certainty that Trump’s assertion that he arrived at an immediate 50% increase in the military budget after “long and difficult negotiations” is yet another lie. There’s been no indication whatsoever that a massive increase in defense spending was on anyone’s agenda before he suddenly posted about it on Truth Social.
So what was that about? Given the timing, it’s clear that Trump’s announcement was yet another exercise in self-aggrandizement, as well as an attempt to grab the headlines away from Good’s killing. But what’s also important to realize from Trump’s announcement is that he is now clearly conflating the size of the US military with his ego. Evidently the sugar rush of Maduro’s capture has left him wanting more and more military validation, particularly as his poll numbers tank.
So here’s a warning to the US military: if you continue to indulge the sick fantasies of this man, he will drag this country into more and deeper international morasses to feed his need for glory. Do what Admiral Alvin Holsey, an honorable man, did – stand down and refuse an illegal order. Here’s a warning to the Republicans: if you continue to allow this man to perpetrate war against his own people with impunity through the actions of ICE, you will be remembered as cowards and hypocrites. Here’s a warning to all his other enablers: if you do not do something to stop this madman, you will go down in history as traitors to this country.
And here’s a warning to those directly perpetrating Trump-directed atrocities: He will not be in power forever, and I expect and hope that you will be held accountable, personally, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.
The Trump administration is making life harder for young parents, says blogger “Home of the Brave.” Trump’s boasts about the economy don’t help families who are struggling to pay for groceries and to buy a home. Trump has even slashed funding for in vitro fertilization, which some families need to have children.
Donald Trump has dubbed himself “the fertilization president” and stacked his administration with self-described pro-natalists—most notably JD Vance—who say they’re concerned with increasing America’s birth rates. Trump has bragged, falsely and bizarrely, about being the “father of IVF” and said on the campaign trail that “we want more babies.”
Here’s the reality beyond the rhetoric: Trump’s presidency is a disaster for new parents and young families. If you’re looking to start a family today, Trump’s making that harder. And if you’re a new parent, Trump’s going out of his way to make that harder, too. Here are just some of the ways they’re doing it:
Trump’s DOGE cuts have gutted federally-funded IVF programs. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eliminated its Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance program, firing six researchers who tracked IVF effectiveness nationwide. People involved with the program told NBC News it was “a tremendous resource” and called its closure an “immediate loss.”
According to the Cleveland Clinic, since 1978 more than 8 million children have been born thanks to IVF, making it the most common type of fertility treatment available, and one of the most effective. Roughly 5 percent of couples experiencing infertility turn to the treatment, and it can offer life-changing results. For millions of Americans, IVF is their best hope for starting a family.
Far from being the “father of IVF,” Trump has made the treatment harder to get for ordinary Americans. When he originally came out in favor of IVF, many of Trump’s social conservative allies in the Republican Party were outraged, calling on him to “walk back” his remarks. They can rest easy now that they know that—as in so many other cases—Trump was lying.
Houses have become costlier year over year due to limited housing supply. With fewer houses on the market, demand from buyers—especially growing families—outpaces supply. This imbalance drives up prices, freezing out younger and less established homebuyers. To combat this, there’s bipartisan agreement on the need for millions of units worth of new home construction—and fast.
But Trump’s policies are making it harder to build anything. A large portion of the lumber used in American home construction comes from Canada. Steel, another critical building material, is imported predominantly from Japan. Trump has imposed steep tariffs on both countries, making the foundational materials needed to build homes more expensive, which drives up production costs and increases the final price. Regular American families bear the brunt of these increases.
On top of that, as many as 30 percent of construction workers in the United States are immigrants, and Trump’s campaign against immigration is shrinking the available labor supply for construction projects. Masked ICE agents are conducting jump-out raids on unsuspecting contractors and construction workers, in some cases trapping them on freezing cold job sites for hours. As a result, the construction industry is starting to see worsening labor shortages.
Trump built his image on being a real estate magnate, promising on the campaign trail that his administration would be “cutting the cost of a new home in half.” Instead, he’s the biggest obstacle to young parents and new families getting a roof over their heads.
Any parent will tell you that you’re always buying something for your kids: babies grow out of clothes constantly, toddlers break toys, you’re forever restocking diapers and formula. It’s a never-ending cycle that is hard to budget for even in the best of times. Trump’s tariffs have made essential baby items—clothes, formula, cribs, strollers, car seats, toys—even more expensive than they already were.
Prices for toddler clothes have gone up 3.3 percent in recent months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose non-political and widely-respected commissioner Trump recently fired for reporting accurate statistics. Other baby essentials have experienced similar jumps thanks to Trump’s tariffs. The Baby Center, a digital resource for parents, wrote that, unless diapers and other goods “are excluded from the tariffs, prices could increase … because manufacturing equipment, packaging, and materials may all be imported.”
Despite Trump’s “America First” monomania, we can’t source every single part of every single baby product here in the United States. It would make everything prohibitively expensive and undercut businesses’ bottom lines. And even if businesses were onboard with this scheme, it would take years or decades to re-shore all the necessary components to US soil. This is what happens when Trump’s economic illiteracy meets reality….
Trump has boasted about his lack of involvement in his children’s lives. He said tasks like changing the kids’ diapers were “just not for me” and he admitted in 2005 that he “won’t do anything to take care of” his children. According to Vanity Fair, his son Don Jr. told him, “You don’t love us! You don’t even love yourself. You just love your money.”
The pattern is clear: The “fertilization president” and “father of IVF” is systematically making it harder and more expensive for American families to have and raise children. He’s gutted IVF programs, driven up housing costs, made baby essentials more expensive, and even taxed parents’ coffee—all while breaking his campaign promises.
American parents shouldn’t have to suffer because Trump was a lousy dad and an even worse president.
Heather Cox Richardson obtained a pamphlet written during World War II for our troops overseas. Its purpose was to explain the tactics of fascists: how they gain power, how they lie to distort reality, how they use hatred to divide and conquer.
The pamphlet is insightful, incisive, and remarkably relevant to the world we live in now.
What we are learning is that “It can happen here.” We must arm ourselves with knowledge to preserve our democracy.
Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”
“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”
Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”
“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.
Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”
Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”
Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”
The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:
First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”
Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”
Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”
It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”
The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.
“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
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Notes:
https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks
War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up
Margaret Hoover is host of a weekly program about public affairs every Friday night on PBS. It’s called “Firing Line,” the same title as William Buckley’s talk show of decades back.
Margaret, a direct descendant of Herbert Hoover, is a Republican but is not especially conservative.
On this program, she interviews Elliot Abrams.
Elliot Abrams is an expert on foreign affairs and national security. He worked for President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President Trump, in his first term. Abrams is known as a hawk.
What’s fascinating about the conversation is that Abrams is highly critical of Trump’s invasion.
He acknowledges that Maduro was a ruthless, brutal dictator who ran the Venezuelan economy into the ground and caused millions of Venezuelans to flee the country. Some of maduro’s top leaders have hidden bank accounts in which they have stowed hundreds of millions of dollars.
He asks why Trump failed to consult Congress.
He wonders why Trump ordered the arrest of Maduro and his wife but not the others who were indicted and are now running the country.
He wonders why Trump left the leaders of this corrupt regime in place. He assumes they will wait Trump out and continue to reap the rewards of their corruption. Given the cost and difficulty of reviving Venezuela’s oil industry, he doubts that any of the major American oil companies will risk doing so.
It’s a fascinating conversation. I urge you to watch.
Diane Ravitch's blog 