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:
1.) Cutting funding for family planning.
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.
2.) Driving housing costs through the roof.
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.
3.) Making everything your child needs more expensive.
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.”
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.
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.
I saw the show where Rachel Maddow tried to understand why Trump sent troops to invade Venezuela, kidnap its President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and bring them to the U.S. to stand trial.
She reviews the usual reasons and determines that each of them is insufficient.
Heather Cox Richardson does a masterful job of drawing together the wildly disparate events of the past several days. Trump seems to be doing a good job of distracting the public, as he generates crises and then jumps into them.
HCR writes:
The news has seemed to move more and more quickly in the last week.
The story underlying all others is that the United States Congress passed a law requiring the Department of Justice to release all the Epstein files—the files from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s investigation into the activities of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein—no later than December 19, and it has not done so.
Epstein and President Donald J. Trump were close friends for many years, and the material the Department of Justice (DOJ) has released suggests that Trump was more closely tied to Epstein’s activities than Trump has acknowledged. Although Trump ran in 2024 on the promise of releasing the Epstein files, suggesting those files would incriminate Democrats, his loyalists in the administration are now openly flouting the law to keep them hidden.
Despite the clear requirement of the Epstein Files Transparency Act that they release all the files by December 19, to date they have released less than 1% of the material.
Another part of the backstory of the past week is that the Supreme Court on December 23, 2025, rejected the Trump administration’s argument that it had the power to deploy federalized National Guard troops in and around Chicago, a decision that seemed to limit Trump’s power to use military forces within the United States.
Yet another part of the backstory is that on New Year’s Eve, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee released a 255-page transcript of former special counsel Jack Smith’s December 17 closed-door testimony before the committee. In that testimony—under oath—Smith said that his office had “developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in a criminal scheme to overturn the results of the 2020 election and to prevent the lawful transfer of power. Our investigation also developed powerful evidence that showed that President Trump willfully retained highly classified documents after he left office in January of 2021, storing them at his social club, including in a ballroom and a bathroom. He then repeatedly tried to obstruct justice to conceal his continued retention of those documents.”
With pressure building over the Epstein files and Jack Smith’s testimony, and with the Supreme Court having taken away Trump’s ability to use troops within the United States, the administration went on the offensive.
Only a week ago, on January 3, the military captured Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores. After months of suggesting that he was determined to end what he called “narco-traffickers,” Trump made it clear as soon as Maduro was in hand that he wanted control of Venezuela’s oil.
Then, on January 6, the fifth anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters determined to keep Trump in office despite Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden’s majority of 7 million votes, Trump’s White House rewrote the history of January 6, 2021, claiming that the rioters were “peaceful patriotic protesters” and blaming the Democrats for the insurrection.
That same day, after the Supreme Court had cut off the administration’s ability to federalize National Guard soldiers and send them to Democratic-led cities, the administration surged 2,000 federal agents to Minneapolis in the largest federal immigration enforcement operation ever launched.
The next morning, ICE agent Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Good, and the administration responded by calling Good a domestic terrorist.
On Thursday, January 8, as protests broke out across the country, Republicans in both chambers of Congress began to push back against the administration. In the House, Representatives Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), the leading sponsors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, asked U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer to appoint “a Special Master and an Independent Monitor to compel” the DOJ to produce the Epstein files as the law requires. The House also passed a measure to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years.
The Senate advanced a bill to stop the Trump administration from additional attacks on Venezuela without congressional approval. And, just two days after Trump had reversed the victims and offenders in the January 6, 2021, insurrection, suggesting that Capitol Police officers had been among the offenders, the Senate unanimously agreed to hang a plaque honoring the police who protected the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Congress passed a law in March 2022 mandating that the plaque be hung, but Republicans until now had prevented its installation.
Friday was a busy day at the White House.
On Friday, Trump threatened Greenland, saying that he was “going to do something on Greenland, whether they like it or not.”
Trump’s threat against a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally has had American lawmakers and foreign allies scrambling ever since. In a joint statement, the leaders of Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain, and the United Kingdom said that “Greenland belongs to its people.” Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) released a video explaining that “what you are essentially talking about here is the United States going to war with NATO, the United States going to war with Europe. You’re talking about the U.S. and France being at war with each other over Greenland.”
Trump’s threats against Greenland came at a meeting with oil executives. When he attacked Venezuela to capture Maduro, Trump told reporters that United States oil companies would spend billions of dollars to fix the badly broken infrastructure of oil extraction in that country. But apparently the oil companies had not gotten the memo. They have said that they are not currently interested in investing in Venezuela because they have no idea how badly oil infrastructure there has degraded and no sense of who will run the country in the future.
What oil executives did suggest to Trump on Friday was that they would quite like to be repaid for their losses from the 2007 nationalization of their companies from the sale of Venezuelan oil Trump has promised to control. ConocoPhillips, for example, claims it is owed about $12 billion. “We’re not going to look at what people lost in the past, because that was their fault,” Trump told them. “That was a different president. You’re going to make a lot of money, but we’re not going to go back.”
Yesterday the government made public an executive order President Donald J. Trump signed on Friday, declaring yet another national emergency—his tenth in this term, by my count—and saying that any use of the revenue from the sale of Venezuelan oil to repay the billions of dollars owed to oil companies “will materially harm the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”
Specifically, the executive order says, such repayment would “interfere with our critical efforts to ensure economic and political stability in Venezuela” and, by extension, jeopardize U.S. foreign policy objectives including “ending the dangerous influx of illegal immigrants and the flood of illicit narcotics;…protecting American interests against malign actors such as Iran and Hezbollah; and bringing peace, prosperity, and stability to the Venezuelan people and to the Western Hemisphere more generally.” So, it appears, Trump wants to retain control of the money from the sale of Venezuelan oil.
Tonight Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he is under federal criminal investigation related to his congressional testimony about a $2.5 billion renovation of historic Federal Reserve buildings. On Friday the Department of Justice served the Federal Reserve grand jury subpoenas.
Powell, whom Trump appointed, released a video noting that he has kept Congress in the loop on the renovation project and saying that complaints about renovations are pretexts. Trump is threatening criminal charges against Powell because the Fed didn’t lower interest rates as fast as Trump wanted, instead working in the interest of the American people. “This is about whether the Fed will be able to continue to set interest rates based on evidence and economic conditions—or whether instead monetary policy will be directed by political pressure or intimidation.” Powell vowed to “continue to do the job the Senate confirmed me to do, with integrity and a commitment to serving the American people.”
The Federal Reserve is designed to be independent of presidents to avoid exactly what Trump is trying to do. The attempt to replace Powell with a loyalist who will give Trump control over the nation’s financial system profoundly threatens the stability of the country. Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC), who sits on the Senate Finance Committee, appeared to have had enough. He posted that “[i]f there were any remaining doubt whether advisers within the Trump Administration are actively pushing to end the independence of the Federal Reserve, there should now be none. It is now the independence and credibility of the Department of Justice that are in question.” He said he would “oppose the confirmation of any nominee for the Fed—including the upcoming Fed Chair vacancy—until this legal matter is fully resolved.”
Kyle Cheney of Politico observed that it is “[h]ard to overstate what a remarkable statement this is from a Republican senator…accusing the Trump White House of weaponizing DOJ to control the Fed.”
Over a picture of the demolished East Wing of the White House, conservative lawyer George Conway noted: “I also must say that it’s a bit rich that Trump and his DOJ think it’s a good idea to gin up a bullshit investigation about supposed illegalities in….{checks notes}…renovating a federal building.”
On social media tonight, Trump posted a portrait of himself with the title: “Acting President of Venezuela.”
In an interview with The New York Times, President Trump explained his hostility towards the civil rights laws meant to end discrimination against racial minorities and women and to expand opportunities for them in the workplace and in education.
He believes that civil rights protections have hurt white men. That is the rationale for his aggressive campaign to purge policies of DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) from all institutions receiving federal funding.
Trump is indifferent to the long history of slavery, racism, Jim Crow laws, bigotry, and segregation that harmed minorities, especially African Americans. He is equally indifferent to the long history of sexism and misogny that restricted the careers of women.
Erica Green reports:
President Trump said in an interview that he believed civil rights-era protections resulted in white people being “very badly treated,” his strongest indication that the concept of “reverse discrimination” is driving his aggressive crusade against diversity policies.
Speaking to The New York Times on Wednesday, Mr. Trump echoed grievances amplified by Vice President JD Vance and other top officials who in recent weeks have urged white men to file federal complaints with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
When asked whether protections that began in the 1960s, spurred by the passage of the Civil Rights Act, had resulted in discrimination against white men, Mr. Trump said he believed “a lot of people were very badly treated.”
“White people were very badly treated, where they did extremely well and they were not invited to go into a university to college,” he said, an apparent reference to affirmative action in college admissions. “So I would say in that way, I think it was unfair in certain cases.”
He added: “I think it was also, at the same time, it accomplished some very wonderful things, but it also hurt a lot of people — people that deserve to go to a college or deserve to get a job were unable to get a job. So it was, it was a reverse discrimination.”
Trump’s approach is calibrated to appeal to white men who blame their grievances on laws that protect racial minorities and women.
Carrying out Mr. Trump’s agenda is the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which was formed in 1965 under the Civil Rights Act. The commission’s chair, Andrea Lucas, issued a striking video message last month underlining the agency’s new posture.
“Are you a white male who has experienced discrimination at work based on your race or sex?” Ms. Lucas said in the video posted on X. “You may have a claim to recover money under federal civil rights laws. Contact the E.E.O.C. as soon as possible. Time limits are typically strict for filing a claim.”
“The E.E.O.C. is committed to identifying, attacking, and eliminating ALL forms of race and sex discrimination — including against white male applicants and employees,” she said.
In the video, Ms. Lucas pointed white men to the commission’s F.A.Q. on “D.E.I.-related discrimination,” which notes that D.E.I. “a broad term that is not defined” in the Civil Rights Act.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the nation’s primary litigator of workplace discrimination, and for decades has been a resource for minorities, women and other groups who have historically faced discrimination. But Ms. Lucas has endeavored to make it one of Mr. Trump’s most powerful tools against D.E.I., with a particular focus on remedying perceived harms against white men.
Trump has combatted DEI in universities by threatening to cut off the funding of institutions that implement affirmative action for students and faculty and that have programs to encourage minorities.
This is a clip from his post. Open the link and read it all.
Schmidt writes:
What is Stephen Miller?
He is, of course, deranged, unserious, bombastic, crude, shrill and violent, but that alone does not suffice when it comes to seeing him clearly.
Let’s travel back in time a bit.
Let’s set the dial to September 21, 2025, and head to Phoenix, Arizona, on the occasion of the fascist rally that was dressed up as a memorial service that opened the gates to the best years of Erika Kirk’s life.
These words mark Miller as a Nazi, which, of course, is appalling, given that he is a Jew, and no doubt the cause of his family’s denouncements.
Dorothy Thompson, the first American journalist to interview Hitler, and the first to be kicked out of Nazi Germany, was well acquainted with the mentality of the Nazis.
Among her greatest columns was this piece, entitled “Who goes Nazi?” published in Harper’s in August 1941.
Here is how it begins:
It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one’s acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times—in Germany, in Austria, and in France.
I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers.
And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis.
It is preposterous to think that they are divided by any racial characteristics.
Germans may be more susceptible to Nazism than most people, but I doubt it.
Jews are barred out, but it is an arbitrary ruling.
I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance.
There are Jews who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become “Honorary Aryans and Nazis”; there are full-blooded Jews who have enthusiastically entered Hitler’s secret service.
Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality.
It appeals to a certain type of mind.
Stephen Miller has a contaminated mind, as does Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem.
Covering the crimes of a pedophile and prosecuting innocent people are the fruit of a poisonous tree, as is animal cruelty, as is the deep hatred for human beings that Stephen Miller carries within him.
Their poisonous ideology is a disease of the spirit and a sickness of the soul.
Why do they hate so many so virulently?
Thompson offered a take 85 years ago, but imagine her living in the era of TikTok, X and the algorithm.
She continues:
It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation — the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war.
This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans.
It is the disease of the so-called “lost generation.”
Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work — a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature.
He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline.
He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions.
His body is vigorous.
His mind is childish.
His soul has been almost completely neglected.
A must-read Substack for me is Salty Politics with Julie Roginsky. She’s a brilliant writer, and a very accomplished Democratic campaign strategist, who has been personally sanctioned by Vladimir Putin.
He has banned her from Russia as Thompson was banned from Germany, with the difference that Roginsky was born in Russia.
I highly recommend that you follow her — and better yet — subscribe and support her work.
“We’ll Have Our Home Again” is a well-known neo-Nazi anthem.
The Toronto Holocaust Museum has documented it as a white nationalist song associated with a neo-Nazi fraternal group known as the Männerbund. When a federal law-enforcement agency adopts language drawn directly from white supremacist culture, it is not a coincidence. It is a signal.
If legacy media bothered to do its homework, this would be a national scandal. ICE is no longer even pretending to hide what it is. One almost expects the next recruitment poster to read “ICE Über Alles.”
I do have one minor disagreement with Julie’s observation.
It is not a signal.
It is a declaration.
Listen to the song. It is a Nazi marching song, and now it is the basis of the Department of Homeland Security Nazi recruiting campaign.
Josef Goebbels is an important figure for the MAGA gangsters who hold power because they are apostles of both his faith and greatest insight, which is that, as Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, “the broad masses of the nation more readily fall victim to a big lie than to a small lie.”
I must share something evil with you today, so that you may understand what Tony Dokoupil and Bari Weiss are apologists for, and what the MAGA party believes.
Why does Stephen Miller hate people with brown skin so much?
Why does he hate all Somalis, Mexicans, Venezuelans and Africans?
Why has Trump announced his hate for the people of what he calls “shithole nations?”
Goebbels explained to the world why the Nazis hated the Jews. It is a perfect window into why MAGA hates the Somalis, for example, and why JD Vance smeared Haitian immigrants in a peaceful Ohio town as “eating pets,” which was a pristine example of a Nazi calumny.
Goebbels was perfectly clear about where the hate came from when he published a paper entitled “Why are we enemies of the Jews?”
We are enemies of the Jews Somalis because we are warriors for the freedom of the German people.
The Jew Mexican is the cause and the beneficiary of our slavery.
He has used the social troubles of our broad masses in order to widen the split between the Right and Left among our people, he has split Germany into two halves.
Here is the real reason for the loss of the World War on one side and for the betrayal of the revolution on the other side.
For the record, Jews accounted for less than one percent of the German population and Somalians represent less than 0.1 percent of the US population.
The Jew Muslim has no interest in the solution of the questions regarding the German fate.
He can’t, since he exists only because they remain unsolved.
Once you turn the German people into a unified community and give them freedom on the world stage, there would no longer be a place among us for the Jew Somali.
He holds the better cards when a nation lives in domestic and foreign slavery than when it is free, hard-working, self-confident and united.
The Jew Venezuelan has caused our misery, and today he makes a living from it.
That is the reason why as nationalists and as socialists national conservatism we are enemies of the Jew Africans.
He has tainted our race, spread moral rot, undermined our morality, and broken our strength.
Thanks to him we are the pariahs of the entire world today.
As long as we were Germans, he was a leper among us.
Since we have forgotten our Germanic character, he has triumphed over us and our future.
The Jew Mexican is the malleable demon of decline.
Wherever he scents debris and rot, he comes out of hiding to begin his criminal butchery among the people.
He wears the mask of those whom he wants to deceive, pretends to be the friend of this victim, and before the unsuspecting victim knows it, he has broken his neck.
The Jew Muslim is uncreative.
He does not produce anything, he merely trades in goods.
With rags, clothes, pictures, precious stones, stocks and bonds, shares in mining operations, people and states.
And everything he trades in he has stolen somewhere at some point.
While he is launching an attack on a state, he is a revolutionary, yet as soon as he is in possession of power, he preaches peace and order so he can leisurely devour his prey.
What has antisemitism to do with socialism?
I’m asking in turn: what has the JewVenezuelan to do with socialism?
Socialism is the doctrine of work.
Who ever saw a Jew Somali work and not plunder, steal, sponge (schmarotzen) and profit from the sweat of another man’s brow?
As socialists we are enemies of the JewsMuslim because we see in the Hebrew the incarnation of capitalism, i.e. the abuse of the goods belonging to the people.
What has antisemitism to do with nationalism? I’m asking in turn: what has the Jew Mexican to do with nationalism?
Nationalism is the doctrine of blood, of race.
The Jew Somali is the enemy and the destroyer of unity created by blood, the deliberate destroyer of our race.
As nationalists we are enemies of the JewsHaitian because in the Hebrew we see the eternal enemy of our national honor and our national freedom.
“But Jews Mexican are human beings, too.”
Certainly, and none of us has ever doubted it.
We only doubt that he is a decent human being.
He doesn’t belong with us. He lives according to different inner and outer laws.
The fact that he is a human being is not a good enough reason for us to allow him to oppress and bully us in the most inhuman manner.
He is indeed a human being – but what kind?
If someone beat your mother in the face with a whip would you then say: “Thank you, he’s only human?”
That is no human being, that is a brute (Unmensch)!
How much worse has the Jew Somali done to our mother Germany and how much worse does he still do today?
[ . . . ]
Antisemitism is un-Christian. So that means that it is Christian to look on as the JewHaitian cuts bootstraps from our skin and to let him add insult to injury.
Being a Christian means: Love your neighbor as you love thyself!
My neighbor is of the same nationality and blood as I.
If I love him, then I must hate his enemies.
He who thinks like a German must despise the Jew Muslim. One results from the other.
Christ himself once saw that love is not the answer in all situations.
When he came across the jobbers and profiteers in the temple, he didn’t say: “Children, love each other!”
Instead he took a whip and drove the pack away.
We are enemies of the Jews Somalis because we stand up for the German people. The JewMexican is our greatest misfortune.
That is going to change, as sure as we are Germans.
ProPublica published this article by Megan O’Matz and Jennifer Smith Richards in October, but I somehow missed it. It’s still relevant because it nails the personnel that Trump and wrestling entrepreneur Linda MacMahon installed at the U.S. Department of Education. The common thread among them: they want to privatize public schools, and they want to emphasize the Christian mission of schools.
It starts:
The department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.
Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students….
To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.
Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration.
In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.
Although more than 80% of American students attend public schools, Burke predicted that within five years, a majority would be enrolled in private choice options. The impact of their policies, she believes, will lead to the closure of many public schools.
Accountability, once a watchword for conservatives, won’t be needed in the future that McMahon and Burke are building.
As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation….
Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.
Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.
Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”
McMahon has welcomedeaders of extremist rightwing groups into the Department, like Moms for Liberty and Parents Defending Education.
Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row [at McMahon’s confirmation hearings] from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first Trump administration.
Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.
AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”
The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity…”
AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.
Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.
Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.
Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.
The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.
These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.
Tiffany Justice, one of the co-founders of Moms for Liberty, is optimistic about the plans of MacMahon:
Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero….”
McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.
Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first Trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 