Archives for category: Immigration

Trump just announced the lowest immigration target in U.S. history. Only 7,500 immigrants will be admitted, and most will be White South Africans.

Ronald Reagan did not share Trump’s hatred of immigrants. In 1986, he offered amnesty to immigrants who had been in this country for at least four years. Almost 3 million undocumented immigrants gained a path to citizenship.

The last speech that Ronald Reagan gave during his presidency was on January 19, 1989.

He used that farewell speech to praise immigrants and their contribution to the success of America.

Here is the speech in full, as well as President Reagan’s presentation of the Medal of Freedom to two distinguished public servants, one was was a Republican, another to a prominent Democrat. Trump gives that honor only to people known for their allegiance to him.

Here is a video, containing the core of Reagan’s speech.

Please note that President Reagan did not lash out at his critics, of whom there were many; did not belittle the Democrats who preceded him in the Presidency: Jimmy Carter, Lyndon B. Johnson, John F. Kennedy; did not engage in partisan insults; did not ever say that he “hates Democrats.” Even in his dotage, even after the onset of Alzheimer’s, he had more class, more dignity than the current occupant of that office.

The President. When we finish this luncheon, I hope you’ll stick around a little while. We’re having a tag sale upstairs, and everything must go. [Laughter] But, really, thank you all for coming to be with us here today.

Truly, one of the privileges of this office which I’ve found greatest joy in exercising has been the opportunity to present our nation’s highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. To stand, as I have had the honor of doing, with the recipients of this award has been to stand with the flesh and blood and spirit that is the greatness of America, men and women who have so greatly served our nation and helped keep her free. The contribution of each recipient has been unique and noteworthy, and today is no exception, as we honor two remarkable Americans: Mike Mansfield and George Shultz.

Mike Mansfield has dedicated the entirety of a very long and productive lifetime to public service. He served in both Houses of Congress, spanning seven Presidents, and held the post of Senate majority leader longer than any other person. A former professor of Far Eastern history, he played an important part in shaping America’s Asian policy, serving on both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and then as our Ambassador to Japan. For a sizable portion of America’s history as a nation, Mike Mansfield has been in service to his country.*

George Shultz — why did my voice crack just as I got to you — [laughter] — George Shultz has been a marine, an academic, and a businessman, and a public servant. He has held four Cabinet-level posts, distinguishing himself as a Secretary of Labor, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, Treasury Secretary, and finally as one of America’s great Secretaries of State. Over the last 6\1/2\ years, in managing our foreign policy, he has served wisely and met great challenges and great opportunities. George Shultz has helped to make the world a freer and more peaceful place.

And there’s nothing so precious and irreplaceable as America’s freedom. In a speech I gave 25 years ago, I told a story that I think bears repeating. Two friends of mine were talking to a refugee from Communist Cuba. He had escaped from Castro, and as he told the story of his horrible experiences, one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.”

Well, no, America’s freedom does not belong to just one nation. We’re custodians of freedom for the world. In Philadelphia, two centuries ago, James Allen wrote in his diary that “If we fail, liberty no longer continues an inhabitant of this globe.” Well, we didn’t fail. And still, we must not fail. For freedom is not the property of one generation; it’s the obligation of this and every generation. It’s our duty to protect it and expand it and pass it undiminished to those still unborn.

Now, tomorrow is a special day for me. I’m going to receive my gold watch. And since this is the last speech that I will give as President, I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love. It was stated best in a letter I received not long ago. A man wrote me and said: “You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.”

Yes, the torch of Lady Liberty symbolizes our freedom and represents our heritage, the compact with our parents, our grandparents, and our ancestors. It is that lady who gives us our great and special place in the world. For it’s the great life force of each generation of new Americans that guarantees that America’s triumph shall continue unsurpassed into the next century and beyond. Other countries may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of the world, no country on Earth comes close.

This, I believe, is one of the most important sources of America’s greatness. We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our people — our strength — from every country and every corner of the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, we’re a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would soon be lost.

A number of years ago, an American student traveling in Europe took an East German ship across the Baltic Sea. One of the ship’s crewmembers from East Germany, a man in his sixties, struck up a conversation with the American student. After a while the student asked the man how he had learned such good English. And the man explained that he had once lived in America. He said that for over a year he had worked as a farmer in Oklahoma and California, that he had planted tomatoes and picked ripe melons. It was, the man said, the happiest time of his life. Well, the student, who had seen the awful conditions behind the Iron Curtain, blurted out the question, “Well, why did you ever leave?” “I had to,” he said, “the war ended.” The man had been in America as a German prisoner of war.

Now, I don’t tell this story to make the case for former POW’s. Instead, I tell this story just to remind you of the magical, intoxicating power of America. We may sometimes forget it, but others do not. Even a man from a country at war with the United States, while held here as a prisoner, could fall in love with us. Those who become American citizens love this country even more. And that’s why the Statue of Liberty lifts her lamp to welcome them to the golden door.

It is bold men and women, yearning for freedom and opportunity, who leave their homelands and come to a new country to start their lives over. They believe in the American dream. And over and over, they make it come true for themselves, for their children, and for others. They give more than they receive. They labor and succeed. And often they are entrepreneurs. But their greatest contribution is more than economic, because they understand in a special way how glorious it is to be an American. They renew our pride and gratitude in the United States of America, the greatest, freest nation in the world — the last, best hope of man on Earth.

The Medal of Freedom represents the reverence the American people have for liberty, and it honors the men and women who through their lives do greatest honor to that freedom. The lives of the two men we honor here today tell a story about freedom and all its possibilities and responsibilities, and, well, both those that inhere in each free man and woman and those that fall upon a great and free nation. Our honorees have dedicated their lives to preserving and protecting America’s freedom. They have engaged themselves in the larger cause, that of humanity and of the world, to help extend freedom to people of other lands. There is no task more fitting for Americans than that.

So, I will now read the citations for our two very distinguished award recipients and present to them their medals. Perhaps I should mention that our first recipient today — the one who calls me kid — [laughter] — is the son of immigrants, from a country called Ireland.

And now, if Michael Mansfield and George Shultz would please come forward. George, you’re due here.

“During World War I, Mike Mansfield, not yet 15, enlisted in the United States Navy, crossing the Atlantic seven times before he was discharged. His service to country would span seven decades and would help shape America’s destiny as a Pacific power. Through 34 years in Congress — including 16 as Senate majority leader — and with more than a decade as U.S. Ambassador to Japan, Mike Mansfield has set his indelible mark upon American foreign policy and distinguished himself as a dedicated public servant and loyal American.”

Ambassador Mansfield. Mr. President, First Lady, Mr. Secretary of State and Mrs. Shultz, Ambassador Matsunaga and Mrs. Matsunaga, my former colleagues from both the House and the Senate, our distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, I can’t begin to express in words, Mr. President, my deep appreciation for what you’ve said about me and the encouragement which you’ve given me in my post as your Ambassador, your personal representative, our country’s Ambassador to Japan.

However, I think that much of the credit should go to Maureen, my wife, who down through the years has been such a wonderful helpmate; whose advice, counsel, and understanding I appreciated; who worked harder at any job I’ve had and received little credit in the process. So, I want to say how much I owe to her, how much I’m indebted to her; how much I appreciate what the President has said — who has laid out a sound policy for our future in the Pacific and East Asia. I appreciate the advice and counsel that George Shultz has given to me from time to time. And I appreciate the fact that, for the first time in memory, that we have both a President of the United States and a Secretary of State who are actively interested in the Pacific, in Japan, and in East Asia. I anticipate that the policies these men have laid down will be continued.

In conclusion, we may recall that Robert Sandburg [Frost], one of our poets, said on a certain occasion, there are things to do, miles to go, and promises to keep before we sleep. Well, Maureen and I have traveled many miles. We have had and still have things to do. And we still have the promises we made over half a century ago when we were joined together. So, to her I want to give special thanks for all that she has been able to do with me. And to the President and Nancy, my thanks, my appreciation for their thoughtfulness and consideration. Thank you very much.

The President. “Unyieldingly dedicated to the protection of the American national interest, the advancement of freedom and human rights, the battle against tyranny, and reductions in nuclear arms, George P. Shultz has presided over the Department of State during one of the most critical periods in the history of this nation’s foreign policy. For years of public service and his vital part in inaugurating a new era of hope in foreign policy, his countrymen honor him.”

Secretary Shultz. Mr. President, you know, Obie [Helena Shultz] has been traveling a million miles around the world with me. So, it’s been a great partnership. But, Mr. President, I feel very special about receiving this award from you, and let me explain why. There’s a phrase that’s catching on — “the Reagan years.” There’s a ring to it. And, Mr. President, it is the ring of freedom. You have advocated it, fought for it. You have known that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance. You have known this is a matter of principle on which you don’t compromise. You have known that there are times when it requires action — sometimes, at least initially, not necessarily popular action — but you have to do it.

You have also known — and I’ve heard you say many times — that the strength comes from “We the People,” that we get our legitimacy and you get your legitimacy as President from the people. And you’ve never been in any doubt, and none of us have, about who we came here to serve: the American people.

And I see you there with your arm around Nancy. I had the privilege of going with Nancy a couple of months ago to the United Nations where she spoke about drugs. And she had the courage to say that one of the root causes of this worldwide problem is use of drugs in the United States. And we have to say no. So Nancy, too, has been a fighter for freedom — freedom from drugs. And we love you for it and revere you for it, Nancy.

So, all of these things make me especially proud to have served with you, to have been your Secretary of State. And to receive a medal from you called the Medal of Freedom has a significance for my life and Obie’s life and my children that we will never forget.

Thank you, Mr. President.

The President. Thank you. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I have been privileged to participate in this recognition of the service of these two gentlemen to this great country of ours. I’m glad that all of you could be here. And now my clock tells me that — like the letter I got the first week I was here from the little 11-year-old girl who told me all the things that I had to do and then said, “Now, get over to the Oval Office and go to work.” I see I’ve still got a few more hours of work ahead of me, and we’re a little behind schedule. And so, we’ll bid you all farewell, and thank you again for all being here and participating.

Note: The President spoke at 1:22 p.m. in the State Dining Room at the White House.

*Mike Mansfield’s life was even more remarkable than President Reagan described.

Michael Joseph (Mike) Mansfield was born on March 16, 1903, in New York City the first of three children of Irish immigrants Patrick and Josephine O’Brien Mansfield. Mike’s mother died in 1910, the same year that his father was seriously injured on a construction job. Because Patrick had no way to care for his motherless children, they were sent to live with Patrick’s Uncle Richard, a Great Falls, Montana, grocer. Mike’s childhood was troubled. Shuttled between public, parochial and reform schools, Mike dropped out by grade seven. In 1917, at age 14, Mike enlisted in the United States Navy. He crossed the sea seven times before officials discovered that he lied about his age. He was summarily discharged.

From 1919 to 1920 he served as a private in the Army, stationed in San Francisco. From 1920 to 1922, Mike enlisted in the United States Marine Corps where as a private first class he served in China, the Philippines and Siberia. At the conclusion of his service, Mansfield returned to Montana and worked in the Butte mines from 1922 to 1930.In 1927 Mike met Maureen Hayes, a teacher, who encouraged him to return to school. In 1932 the two married and were parents of one daughter, Anne. Mansfield first attended the Montana School of Mines in 1927 and 1928. In 1933 he graduated from Montana State University in Missoula (now the University of Montana) and worked as a graduate assistant. In 1934 he earned his Masters and became an instructor. During the summers of 1936 and 1937, Mike attended the University of California in Los Angeles. He was full professor of history and political science until 1942, specializing in Latin America and the Far East.In the early 1940’s Mansfield developed an interest in politics. He was elected to the United States House of Representatives as a Democrat and served with distinction from 1943 to 1953. In 1952 Mansfield was elected to the Senate and served continuously until 1977. He believed, in retrospect, that his most significant achievements were initiating the Watergate Committee leading to Richard Nixon’s resignation; extending voting rights to eighteen year olds; and creating a committee to investigate the abuses of the CIA. He was an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War.From 1977 to 1988 Mansfield served as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Japan. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.Mike Mansfield died on October 5, 2001, in Washington, D.C. His wife, Maureen, preceded him in death in 2000. Anne Mansfield Marris and one granddaughter survive him.

Categories History, Hope, Immigration

Trump Excoriates the United Nations, Praises Himself, Mocks Climate Change

By dianeravitch

September 23, 2025 //

Trump spoke at the United Nations today, where he put his personal opinions, his arrogance, and his vanity on display.

ABC reported:

President Donald Trump delivered a combative speech to the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday morning, lambasting the international body while touting the work of his administration.

Trump spared no criticism in the hourlong address, beginning with his predecessor former President Joe Biden before taking aim at world leaders on everything from migration to the Russia-Ukraine war.

“One year ago, our country was in deep trouble. But today, just eight months into my administration, we’re the hottest country anywhere in the world, and there is no other country even close,” he said at the top of his remarks.

Trump touted the U.S. as having the “strongest” borders, military and relationships around the world.

The president then turned his attention the United Nations, accusing it of not living up to its promise and even accused it of bringing on more problems.

“What is the purpose of the United Nations?” Trump asked. “It has such tremendous, tremendous potential. But it’s not even coming close to living up to that potential. For the most part, at least for now, all they seem to do is write a really strongly-worded letter and then never follow that letter up. It’s empty words and empty words don’t solve war. The only thing that solves war and wars is action.”

Trump accused the organization of ignoring conflicts around the world that he says he solved, casting himself as a peacemaker.

“Everyone says that I should get the Nobel Peace Prize for each one of these achievements,” Trump said. “But for me, the real prize will be the sons and daughters who lived to grow up with their mothers and fathers because millions of people are no longer being killed in endless and inglorious wars.”

Richard Drew/AP – PHOTO: President Donald Trump addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, Sept. 23, 2025.

Trump threatens Russia sanctions, but says Europe must do more

Trump said the United States is prepared to enforce a “very strong round of powerful tariffs” on Russia should Moscow not be ready to make a peace deal.

But he said other countries need to pull back on buying Russian oil and energy products “otherwise we’re all wasting a lot of time.”

“Europe has to step it up. They can’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia. It’s embarrassing to them,” Trump said.

Trump also took a moment to criticize China and India, calling them the main sponsors of the war in Ukraine because of their purchases of Russian oil.

The president has threatened for months to impose harsher economic penalties on Russia but has yet to do so. He didn’t say on Tuesday what it would take for him to determine Russia doesn’t want peace, though he said the war is “not making Russia look good, it’s making them look bad.”

Jeenah Moon/Reuters – PHOTO: President Donald Trump addresses the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly, in New York City, Sept. 23, 2025.

Trump bashes world leaders on migration, green energy

Trump said other countries should be modeling the U.S. on the issue of immigration.

“Not only is the U.N. not solving the problems it should, too often it’s actually creating new problems for us to solve,” Trump said. “The best example is the No. 1 political issue of our time, the crisis of uncontrolled migration. It’s uncontrolled. Your countries are being ruined.”

To leaders gathered in the conference hall, Trump said: “Your countries are going to hell.”

He also encouraged leaders to reject policies geared toward fighting climate change and global warming, calling climate change “the greatest con job ever” and touting his administration’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement.

“If you don’t get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail,” Trump said.

Shannon Stapleton/Reuters – PHOTO: President Donald Trump addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly at U.N. headquarters in New York City, September 23, 2025.

Trump demands Hamas release hostages, disagrees on Palestinian statehood

On Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, Trump said the world has to “come together” to “end the war in Gaza.” He reiterated that he wanted to see the hostages released immediately, but offered no clear path forward on progressing negotiations.

Trump continued to express his disagreement with countries moving to recognize Palestinian statehood. Several key U.S. allies, most recently France, have announced they are recognizing a Palestinian state.

“Now, as if to encourage continued conflict, some of this body is seeking to unilaterally recognize a Palestinian state. The rewards would be too great for Hamas terrorists for their atrocities,” Trump said.

Trump instead called for a united message from the body for Hamas to release hostages.

“Those who want peace should be united with one message: release the hostages now. Just release the hostages now. Thank you,” Trump said.

Trump also boasted about his poll numbers, which he said were the highest ever. His approval rating is 37%.

Categories Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, International, Trump

Kristi Noem Oversaw as ICE Broke into a Home at 5:30 AM and Arrested 2 U.S. Citizens

By dianeravitch

September 23, 2025 //

This post is about the brutal tactics of ICE. In the instance described, ICE agents broke into the home of a U.S. citizen at 5:30 am, smashing his doors. Five people were arrested, two of them American citizens. One who was handcuffed and shown on television being led away by ICE was the homeowner, an American citizen, born in Texas.

Every time I see one of these ICE videos, I get outraged. I have seen them knocking people to the ground who were photographing them. I have seen them smash car windows and drag people out through the window. I have seen them brutalizing people suspected of being illegal. I have seen them beat up protestors. All while wearing a mask, but not a badge or shield. and I keep wondering, “is this America?”

Joyce Vance served as the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. She knows the law and she has a deep love of justice, compassion, and America.

She writes a blog called Civil Discourse, where this excerpt appeared. She is appalled by ICE’s thuggish tactics, and also by Kristi Noem’s showboat tactics. Noem’s behavior towards others reminds us that she killed a young dog because she couldn’t train him. She is known as “Ice Barbie.”

Vance reminds us that ICE in earlier days followed the law. Now, many people object to its actions, specifically, snatching people off the street, throwing them into an unmarked van, disappearing them, all without a warrant. And the masks! Are they being arrested or kidnapped? No one knows. No wonder people call them “Trump’s Brownshirts.”

Vance writes:

For weeks now, the news has been a deluge, making it impossible to keep up with everything. This week so far has been no exception. We know that this is intentional, at least in part. It tends to distract from things like the fact that the Epstein Files have yet to be released. There’s a constant hum of Trump’s incessant push to grow a more muscular, imperial presidency that will allow the Article II branch of government to eclipse the Article I and Article III branches.

But some days, it can be helpful to stop and focus on one small incident to get a snapshot of what’s happening. Today, I focused on some reporting about ICE, one of the agencies under the control of DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

A lot has been written about how Trump has transformed ICE. I know many of you have seen that and are deeply concerned by it, as am I.

ICE’s congressionally designated mission focuses on immigration enforcement and transnational crime. When I was a prosecutor, we worked serious cases with ICE agents. They were competent investigators. They knew how to get cases done. We did some of the early crypto for crime cases with them and also international networks that were engaged in human sex trafficking, drug trafficking, and elder abuse. They worked computer intrusion cases that had a transnational aspect. We did immigration cases with them, focusing on prosecuting people who were illegally in the U.S. after a prior deportation and who had violent criminal history or were involved in gangs. But what we didn’t do was bust into an American citizen’s house at 5:30 a.m. with the DHS Secretary along.

Newsweek reported that Noem “joined federal immigration agents during an early morning operation in Elgin, Illinois, on Tuesday that resulted in multiple people being led away in handcuffs, and two U.S. citizens being briefly detained.” CBS reported that five people were arrested during the raid, among them two U.S. citizens, who were released after showing their papers.

Here is the report from CBS in Chicago.

It’s a simple, red brick, ranch-style house. Witness video, taken after a pre-dawn explosion was heard by neighbors, shows agents peeking into the home, a helicopter flying overhead with a spotlight right on the house in what people in the video describe as a “very quiet neighborhood.”

This is what Noem posted Tuesday morning, characterizing the men, including the two U.S. citizens who were subsequently released, as violent offenders.

By 8:30 a.m. local time, DHS was responding to these reports, tweeting that “No U.S. citizens were arrested, they were briefly held for their and officers’ safety while the operation in the house was underway. This is standard protocol. Please see our release on those arrested.”

American Immigration Council Senior Fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted that the man seen in the video was a U.S. citizen named Joe Botello. “They smashed in the doors, dragged him and his roommates out in handcuffs, then posted a video online suggesting he was a criminal, despite knowing he was released soon after,” he wrote, relying on a report from the Chicago Tribune. The agents were masked and armed when they made forcible entry into Botello’s home, destroying both his front door and a glass patio door, according to the Tribune. An agent asked the Texas-born Botello, “how he was able to speak English so well.”

It was another poorly executed raid where people’s rights, in this case, American citizens, were violated.

By the way, the Secretary’s presence might seem like a small thing here, but it’s not. It’s not amusing. It’s not cosplay. It’s not cute. It’s not shake your head and then look away. It’s dangerous. And it was done, apparently, for a photo op.

I spoke with my former colleague Sarah Saldaña, who served as the Director of ICE from 2014 to 2017 and as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Texas from 2011 to 2014. She was the last presidentially-appointed, Senate-confirmed Director of ICE. I asked her about participating in law enforcement actions. She told me, “ICE removal operations in the field are highly sensitive and potentially dangerous events. Enforcement removal officers are fully armed and trained to respond to various, often unexpected scenarios that they might encounter. Our focus in removal operations under the Obama Administration was on individuals who presented threats to national security and public safety, and those with convictions of serious criminal offenses. As Director and with training only as an attorney and agency manager, I would never have considered actually interjecting myself into the execution of such an operation. I could easily represent a distraction to officers and, without the proper training, present a danger to them, the persons sought, and to myself.”

Noem, too, should be concerned about the security risk her presence creates. Furthermore, if Noem accompanied agents to the scene, as the reporting indicates, she made herself a witness. If I’m a criminal defense lawyer for one of the men or a plaintiff’s lawyer in a civil suit, I’m cutting the subpoena for her testimony pronto. This is why smart prosecutors know better than to go along when a search warrant is executed, let alone an attorney general or a cabinet secretary. But Noem likes her photo ops. It’s just another sign of the less-than-professional way Trump’s appointees are running government, following Pam Bondi’s comments about prosecuting people for First Amendment-protected speech earlier this week.

Just as members of Congress challenged FBI Director Kash Patel during his oversight hearing on the Hill today, we have to continue to speak out and challenge Noem, Bondi, Kennedy, and others who aren’t up to doing the job the American people deserve. Americans speaking up is precisely what this administration doesn’t want. They want us to be overwhelmed by all the stories about all the things. They want us to be intimidated from exercising our right to speak, lest we fall under attack too. So, our job is to make sure that doesn’t happen. “Courage is contagious” is becoming one of our mottos for this administration. Keep focusing on the truth. Keep speaking out. Keep going.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Fascism, Immigration, Injustice, Resistance, Tyranny

Ta-Nehisi Coates Examines Charlie Kirk’s Bigotry

By dianeravitch

September 22, 2025 //

In a bipartisan vote, Congress passed a resolution to honor Charlie Kirk on October 14 as a National Day of Remembrance for him.

At a time when Republicans are canonizing Charlie Kirk, it’s useful to remember what he stood for, what he believed, what he advocated.

Here are some video clips of Charlie Kirk in his own words:

The Guardian.

Ta-Nehisi Coates, himself a controversial figure among some whites for his frank writings about racism, wrote an article in Vanity Fair about Charlie’s oft-expressed views.

Charlie was an unrepentant white supremacist. He was a male chauvinist who believed that a woman’s place was in the home, raising children and deferring to the authority of her husband. He was a proud and unrepentant bigot. He should not have been murdered. Political violence is poison to a democracy, which should rely on persuasion, not repression, censorship, or violence.

Coates reminds us that if Charlie’s views prevailed, we would abandon the rights of everyone who was not a straight white Christian male. That’s a majority of us.

Coates wrote:

Before he was killed last week, Charlie Kirk left a helpful compendium of words—ones that would greatly aid those who sought to understand his legacy and import. It is somewhat difficult to match these words with the manner in which Kirk is presently being memorialized in mainstream discourse. New York Times columnist Ezra Klein dubbed Kirk “one of the era’s most effective practitioners of persuasion” and a man who “was practicing politics in exactly the right way.” California governor Gavin Newsom hailed Kirk’s “passion and commitment to debate,” advising us to continue Kirk’s work by engaging “with each other, across ideology, through spirited discourse.” Atlantic writer Sally Jenkinssaluted Kirk, claiming he “argued with civility” and asserting that his death was “a significant loss for those who believe engagement can help bridge disagreements.”

The mentions of “debate” and “engagement” are references to Kirk’s campus tours, during which he visited various colleges to take on whoever come may. That this aspect of Kirk’s work would be so attractive to writers and politicians is understandable. There is, after all, a pervasive worry, among the political class, that college students, ensconced in their own bubbles, could use a bit of shock therapy from a man unconcerned with preferred pronouns, trigger warnings, and the humanity of Palestinians. But it also shows how the political class’s obsession with universities blinds it to everything else. And the everything-else of Kirk’s politics amounted to little more than a loathing of those whose mere existence provoked his ire.

It is not just, for instance, that Kirk held disagreeable views—that he was pro-life, that he believed in public executions, or that he rejected the separation of church and state. It’s that Kirk reveled in open bigotry. Indeed, claims of Kirk’s “civility” are tough to square with his penchant for demeaning members of the LGBTQ+ community as “freaks” and referring to trans people with the slur “tranny.” Faced with the prospect of a Kamala Harris presidency, Kirk told his audience that the threat had to be averted because Harris wanted to “kidnap your child via the trans agenda.” Garden-variety transphobia is sadly unremarkable. But Kirk was a master of folding seemingly discordant bigotries into each other, as when he defined “the American way of life” as marriage, home ownership, and child-rearing free of “the lesbian, gay, transgender garbage in their school,” adding that he did not want kids to “have to hear the Muslim call to prayer five times a day.” The American way of life was “Christendom,” Kirk claimed, and Islam—“the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America”—was antithetical to that. Large “dedicated” Islamic areas were “a threat to America,” Kirk asserted, and New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a “Mohammedan,” with Kirk supposing that anyone trying to see “Mohammedism take over the West” would love to have New York—a “prior Anglo center”—“under Mohammedan rule.”

Kirk habitually railed against “Black crime,” claiming that “prowling Blacks go around for fun to go target white people.” He repeated the rape accusations against Yusef Salaam, a member of the exonerated Central Park Five who is now a New York City councilman, calling him a “disgusting pig” who had gotten away with “gang rape.” Whatever distaste Kirk held for Blacks was multiplied when he turned to those from Haiti. Haiti was, by Kirk’s lights, a country “infested with demonic voodoo,” whose migrants were “raping your women and hunting you down at night.” These Haitians, as well as undocumented immigrants from other countries, were “having a field day,” per Kirk, and “coming for your daughter next.” The only hope was Donald Trump, who had to prevail, lest Haitians “become your masters.”

The point of this so-called mastery was as familiar as it was conspiratorial—“great replacement.” There was an “anti-white agenda,” Kirk howled. One that sought to “make the country more like the Third World.” The southern border was “the dumping ground of the planet,” he claimed, and a magnet for “the rapists, the thugs, the murderers, fighting-age males.” “They’re coming from across the world, from China, from Russia, from Middle Eastern countries,” he said, “and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in and they’re coming in…”

You can probably imagine where this line of thinking eventually went.

“Jewish donors,” Kirk claimed, were “the number one funding mechanism of radical open-border, neoliberal, quasi-Marxist policies, cultural institutions, and nonprofits.” Indeed, “the philosophical foundation of anti-whiteness has been largely financed by Jewish donors in the country.”

Kirk’s bigotry was not personal, but extended to the institution he founded, Turning Point USA. Crystal Clanton, the group’s former national field director, once texted a fellow Turning Point employee, “I HATE BLACK PEOPLE. Like fuck them all … I hate blacks. End of story.” One of the group’s advisers, Rip McIntosh, once published a newsletter featuring an essay from a pseudonymous writer that said Blacks had “become socially incompatible with other races” and that Black culture was an “un-fixable and crime-ridden mess.” In 2022, after three Black football players were killed at another college, Meg Miller, president of Turning Point’s chapter at the University of Missouri, joked (“joked”) in a social media message, “If they would have killed 4 more n-ggers we would have had the whole week off.”

Kirk subscribed to some of the most disreputable and harmful beliefs that this country has ever known. But it is still chilling to think that those beliefs would be silenced by a gunshot. The tragedy is personal—Kirk was robbed of his life, and his children and family will forever live with the knowledge that a visual record of that robbery is just an internet search away. And the tragedy is national. Political violence ends conversation and invites war; its rejection is paramount to a functioning democracy and a free society. “Political violence is a virus,” Klein noted. This assertion is true. It is also at odds with Kirk’s own words. It’s not that Kirk merely, as Klein put it, “defended the Second Amendment”—it’s that Kirk endorsed hurting people to advance his preferred policy outcomes…

Mere weeks before his death, Kirk reveled in Trump’s deployment of federal troops to DC. “Shock and awe. Force,” he wrote. “We’re taking our country back from these cockroaches.” And in 2023, Kirk told his audience that then president Joe Biden was a “corrupt tyrant” who should be “put in prison and/or given the death penalty for his crimes against America.”

What are we to make of a man who called for the execution of the American president, and then was executed himself? What are we to make of an NFL that, on one hand, encourages us to “End Racism,” and, on the other, urges us to commemorate an unreconstructed white supremacist? And what of the writers, the thinkers, and the pundits who cannot separate the great crime of Kirk’s death from the malignancy of his public life? Can they truly be so ignorant to the words of a man they have so rushed to memorialize? I don’t know. But the most telling detail in Klein’s column was that, for all his praise, there was not a single word in the piece from Kirk himself.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Immigration, Racism

Two Federal Judges Block Trump Effort to Exclude Undocumented Children from Headstart

By dianeravitch

September 16, 2025 //

Erica Meltzer of Chalkbeat reports that two federal judges issued injunctions against a new Trump rule that bars undocumented children from enrolling in Headstart. The rule may seem gratuitously cruel to some, but it’s business-as-usual for Trump. Interestingly, the judges who issued the rulings are both Republican appointees, one by George W. Bush and the other by Donald J. Trump. (How did they slip past Leonard Leo and Mitch McConnell)?

The Trump administration’s effort to prevent undocumented immigrant children from enrolling in Head Start preschool programs is on hold nationwide after federal judges issued injunctions in two separate lawsuits.

The Department of Health and Human Services in July declared that Head Start, along with a wide swath of health care services and workforce training programs, should be considered public benefit programs, a category of programs only available to U.S. citizens and immigrants with particular statuses, such as legal permanent residents and refugees.

Undocumented immigrants are already excluded from most welfare programs, but the rule changes abruptly expanded the list of programs that would need to verify participants’ immigration status.

The American Civil Liberties Union sued to block the rule change on behalf of four state Head Start associations as well as some parent groups. Twenty states and the District of Columbia filed their own lawsuit.

In both cases, federal judges ruled this week that the Trump administration had not followed appropriate procedures for changing rules; that in some cases the rule changes appeared to go against Congressional intent; and that providers, families, and state governments would suffer significant harm if the rules were allowed to go into effect.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Cruelty, Extremism, Immigration, Trump

Trump Regime Begins to Cancel Bilingual Education

By dianeravitch

August 22, 2025 //

The far-right has always hated bilingual education. They think everyone should speak English, and those who don’t should be deported.

The Trump administration is setting the stage to eliminate bilingual education. This move is of a piece with their plan to deport millions of hard-working, honest immigrants who strengthen the economy.

Their goal is to restore a nation that is dominated by white straight Christian men, with a few white Christian women like Pam Bondi in leadership roles, and to banish any programs that help people improve their lot. That’s what MAGA means: a return to the “good old days” when power was in the hands of people like Trump.

The Washington Post reported:

The Trump administration has quietly rescinded long-standing guidance that directed schools to accommodate students who are learning English, alarming advocates who fear that schools will stop offering assistance if the federal government quits enforcing the laws that require it.

The rescission, confirmed by the Education Department on Tuesday, is one of several moves by the administration to scale back support for approximately 5 million schoolchildren not fluent in English, many of them born in the United States. It is also among the first steps in a broader push by the Trump administration to remove multilingual services from federal agencies across the board, an effort the Justice Department has ramped up in recent weeks.

The moves are an acceleration of President Donald Trump’s March 1 order declaring English the country’s “official language,” and they come as the administration is broadly targeting immigrants through its deportation campaign and other policy changes. The Justice Department sent a memorandum to all federal agencies last month directing them to follow Trump’s executive order, including by rescinding guidance related to rules about English-language learners.

Since March, the Education Department has also laid off nearly all workers in its Office of English Language Acquisition and has asked Congress to terminate funding for the federal program that helps pay for educating English-language learners. Last week, education advocates noticed that the guidance document related to English learning had a new label indicating it was rescinded and remains online “for historical purposes only.”

On Tuesday, Education Department spokeswoman Madi Biedermann said that the guidance for teaching English learners, which was originally set forth in 2015, was rescinded because it “is not in line with Administration policy.” A Justice Department spokesman responded to questions by sending a link to the July memorandum and said he had no comment when asked whether the guidance would be replaced.

For decades, the federal government has held that failing to provide resources for people not proficient in English constitutes discrimination based on national origin under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

In rescinding the guidance, the Trump administration is signaling that it may stop enforcing the law under that long-standing interpretation. The Education and Justice departments have been responsible for enforcing the law….

“The Department of Education and the Department of Justice are walking away from 55 years of legal understanding and enforcement. I don’t think we can understate how important that is,” said Michael Pillera, an attorney who worked at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights for 10 years and now directs the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

Without pressure from the federal government to comply with the law, it is possible that some school districts will drop services, Pillera said, particularly as many districts struggle with financial pressures.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Immigration, Language, Literacy, Trump

Rachel Maddow: Our Worst Fears Have Come True

By dianeravitch

August 11, 2025 //

This is one of Rachel Maddow’s best clips. She says that we worried about what Trump might do if he won re-election. Wonder no more. It is happening. He is a full-fledged authoritarian, intent on smashing the Constitution and our rights. what can we do? She has some ideas.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Immigration, Trump

Jennifer Berkshire: A New Path, with Less Opportunity and Less Social Mobility

By dianeravitch

July 29, 2025 //

Jennifer Berkshire sums up the malicious goals that are embedded in Trump’s One Big Ugly Budget Bill. It will widen the distance between those at the bottom and those at the top. It will reduce the number of students who can pay for graduate degrees. All to assure that the very rich get a a tax break.

While the media may have moved on from the big awful bill that is now the law of the land, I continue to mull over its mess and malice. The single best description I’ve come across of the legislation’s logic comes from the ACLU’s Stefan Smith, who reminds us that the endless culture warring is all a big distraction. The real agenda when you add up all of the elements is “creating more friction for those climbing up the economic ladder in order to ease competition for those already there.” In the future that this legislation entrenches, rich kids will have an even greater advantage over their poor peers, of whom there will be now be many more. Smith calls this “reordering pipelines;” moving the rungs on the ladder further apart or kicking the ladder away works too. However you phrase it, our ugly class chasm just got wider by design.

This is why, for instance, the legislation includes seemingly arbitrary caps on how much aspiring lawyers and doctors can borrow in order to pay for school. By lowering that amount, the GOP just narrowed the pipeline of who can, say, go to med school. As Virginia Caine, president of the National Medical Association, bluntly put it: “Only rich students will survive.” Indeed, college just got more expensive and a lot less accessible for anyone who isn’t a rich student. Meanwhile, cuts to federal Medicaid funding will lead to further cuts in spending on higher education—the sitting ducks of state budgets—meaning higher tuition and fewer faculty and programs at the state schools and community colleges that the vast majority of American students attend. All so that the wealthiest among us can enjoy a tax cut.

This is also the story of the federal school voucher program that has now been foisted upon us. While the final version was an improvement over the egregious tax-shelter-for-wealthy-donors that the school choice lobby wanted, the logic remains the same, as Citizen Stewart pointedly points out:

It’s a redistribution of public dollars upward. And it’s happening at the exact moment many of the same politicians championing school choice are cutting food assistance, slashing Medicaid, gutting student loan relief, and questioning whether children deserve meals at school.

In their coverage of the new program, the education reporters at the New York Times, who’ve been pretty awful on this beat of late, cite a highly-questionable study finding that students who avail themselves a voucher are more likely to go to college. In other words, maybe vouchers aren’t so bad! Except that this sunny view misses the fast-darkening bigger picture: as states divest from the schools that the vast majority of students still attend, the odds of many of those students attending college just got steeper. That’s because as voucher programs balloon in cost, states confront a math problem with no easy answer, namely that there isn’t enough money to fund two parallel education systems. (For the latest on where the money is and isn’t going, check out this eye-opening report from FutureEd.)

Add in the Trump Administration’s decision to withhold some $7 billion from school districts and you can see where this is headed. In fact, when the folks at New America crunched the numbers, they turned up the somewhat surprising finding that the schools that stand to lose the most due to the Trump hatchet are concentrated in red states. Take West Virginia, for example, which is home to 15 of the hardest-hit districts in the land. The state’s public schools must 1) reckon with $30 + million in federal cuts even as 2) a universal voucher program is hoovering up a growing portion of state resources while 3) said resources are shrinking dramatically due to repeated rounds of tax cuts for the wealthiest West Virginians. That same dynamic is playing out in other red states too. Florida, which is increasingly straining to pay for vouchers and public schools, just lost $398 million. Texas, where voucher costs are estimated to reach $5 billion by 2030, just lost $738 million. While 28 states are now suing the administration over the funding freeze, no red state has spoken up.

Shrinking chances

On paper, budget cuts can seem bloodless. Part of the Trump Administration’s strategy is to bury the true cost of what’s being lost in acronyms and edu-lingo, trusting that pundits will shrug at the damage. But as states struggle with a rising tide of red ink, what’s lost are the very things that inspire kids to go to school and graduate: extra curriculars, special classes, a favorite teacher, the individualized attention that comes from not being in a class with 35 other kids. That’s why I’ve been heartened to see that even some long-time critics of traditional public schools are now voicing concern over what their destabilization is going to mean for students. Here’s Paul Hill, founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, warning that the explosion of vouchers in red states is going to have dire consequences, not just for students in public schools but for the states themselves:

Enrollment loss will likely reduce the quality of schools that will continue to educate most children in the state. States will be left with large numbers of students who are unprepared for college and career success.

David Osborne, who has been banging the drum for charter schools since the Clinton era, sounds even more worried.

Over time, as more and more people use vouchers, the education market in Republican states will stratify by income far more than it does today. It will come to resemble any other market: for housing, automobiles or anything else. The affluent will buy schools that are the equivalent of BMWs and Mercedes; the merely comfortable will choose Toyotas and Acuras; the scraping-by middle class will buy Fords and Chevrolets; and the majority, lacking spare cash, will settle for the equivalent of used cars — mostly public schools.

Meanwhile, the billions spent on vouchers will be subtracted from public school budgets, and the political constituency for public education will atrophy, leading to further cuts.

We’ve seen this movie before

Well, maybe not the exact same movie but a similar one. Anybody recall Kansas’ radical experiment in tax cutting? Roughly a decade ago, GOP pols slashed taxes on the wealthiest Kansans and cut the tax rate on some business profits to zero. Alas, the cuts failed to deliver the promised “trickle-down” economic renaissance. What they did bring was savage cuts in spending on public schools. As school funds dried up, programs were cut, teachers were pink slipped, and class sizes soared, all of which led to a dramatic increase in the number of students who dropped out. Meanwhile, the percentage of high schoolers going to college plunged.

Young people in the state “became cannon fodder in the fight to redistribute wealth upward,” argues Jonathan Metzl, a scholar and medical doctor, who chronicled the impact of Kansas’s tax-cutting experiment in Dying of Whiteness. Just four years of school budget cuts was enough to narrow the possibilities for a generation of young Kansans.

But by taking a chainsaw to the public schools, the GOP also gave rise to a bipartisan parent uprising. And not only were lawmakers forced to reverse the tax cuts and restore funding for schools, but voters, who could see with their own eyes what the cuts had meant for their own kids and kids in their communities, threw the bums out the next time they had a chance. Today we’re watching as a growing number of states, with the aid of the federal government and the ‘big beautiful bill,’ embark on their own version of the Kansas experiment—slashing spending, destabilizing public schools, and limiting what’s possible for kids. They’re betting that red state voters will fall in line, sacrificing their own schools, and even their own kids, to ‘own the libs.’ That’s what the ideologues in Kansas thought too.

As I’ve been arguing in these pages, Trump’s education ‘action items’ represent the least popular parts of his agenda. Eliminating the Department of Education is a loser with voters, while cutting funds to schools fares even worse. The idea of cutting funds in order to further enrich the already rich has exactly one constituency: the rich. As the MAGA coalition begins to fragment and fall apart, we should keep reminding voters of all colors and stripes of this fact.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Cheating, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Economics, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fake, Fake News, Higher Education, Ignorance, Immigration, NPE Action Fund, Privatization, Propaganda, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, School Choice

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Distractions from Epstein Files Are Not Working

By dianeravitch

July 23, 2025 //

Heather Cox Richardson makes two important points in this post:

Trump’s poll numbers have gone down on his deportation policy (the public wants him to deport criminals, not honest, hard-working non-citizens) and on his tariff policy.
Trump has thrown red meat to his base (stripping Rosie O’Donnell’s citizenship, telling Coke to change to cane sugar, demanding that two sports teams return to their original names, which were offensive to Native Americans), but his distractions have not worked.

I wonder: How can we survive another 3 and one-half years of this craziness?

No matter what Trump does or says, he will stil be President. The Republicans who control the House and Senate will not impeach him, no matter what. His Cabinet of lapdogs will not invoke the 25th Amendment to remove him. The best we can hope for is a Democratic sweep of both houses of Congress in 2026 so Trump is not allowed to get away with lying and grifting and destroying the global economy.

Richardson writes:

On Friday, G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers reported that “polls show Trump’s position plummeting.” On Friday morning, the average job approval rating for Trump was 42.6% with 53.5% disapproving.

Those numbers break down by policy like this: Gallup polls show that only 35% of Americans approve of Trump’s immigration policy with 62% opposed. A new poll out from CBS News/ YouGov today shows that support for Trump’s deportations has dropped ten points from the start of his term, from 59% to 49%. Fifty-eight percent of Americans oppose the administration’s use of detention facilities. The numbers in a CNN/SSRS poll released today are even more negative for the administration: 59% of Americans oppose deporting undocumented immigrants without a criminal record while only 23% support such deportations, and 57% are opposed to building new detention facilities while only 26% support such a plan.

American approval of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is unlikely to rise as news spreads that last Monday, the government gave ICE unprecedented access to the records of nearly 80 million people on Medicaid, allegedly to enable ICE to find undocumented immigrants. Kimberly Kindy and Amanda Seitz of the Associated Press reported that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services signed an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security that enables ICE to access Medicaid recipients’ name, ethnicity and race, birthdate, home address, and social security number.

Undocumented immigrants are not eligible for Medicaid, although they may use it in an emergency to cover lifesaving services in a hospital emergency room. The release of personal information from Medicaid lists is unprecedented. Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) warned: “The massive transfer of the personal data of millions of Medicaid recipients should alarm every American…. It will harm families across the nation and only cause more citizens to forego lifesaving access to health care.”

Trump’s tariffs are not popular. An Associated Press–NORC poll on Thursday found that 49% of Americans thought Trump’s policies have made them worse off while only 27% think his policies have helped.

And then there are the Epstein files.

A YouGov poll from Tuesday showed that 79% of Americans think the government should release all the documents it has about the Epstein case while only 4% think it should not. Those numbers included 85% of Democrats, but also 76% of Independents and 75% of Republicans. And that was BEFORE the publication of the Wall Street Journal article detailing the lewd and suggestive birthday letter Trump apparently contributed to Epstein’s fiftieth birthday album.

As Morris notes, Trump is underwater on all the issues of his presidency, but he is most dramatically underwater over Epstein.

You don’t need polls to see that Trump, at least, is panicking. He is throwing red meat to his base in what appears to be an attempt to regain control of the narrative. After his July 12 threat to strip comedian and talk show host Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship (she was born in New York, and he does not have that power), he has kept up a stream of social media posts that seem designed to distract his wavering followers from the news around them.

On Wednesday, Trump announced on social media: “I have been speaking to Coca-Cola about using REAL Cane Sugar in Coke in the United States, and they have agreed to do so. I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them—You’ll see. It’s just better!”

But Coca-Cola had apparently not gotten the memo. It uses cane sugar in a number of foreign markets but has used high-fructose corn syrup in U.S. products since 1985. On its website, it wrote: “We appreciate President Trump’s enthusiasm for our iconic Coca‑Cola brand. More details on new innovative offerings within our Coca‑Cola product range will be shared soon.”

Social media users posted memes of Coke bottles emblazoned with the words “Trump is on the List” and, in small letters below, “Now with cane sugar.”

On Thursday, after observers had noted both the president’s swollen ankles and what appeared to be makeup covering up something on his hand, the White House announced that Trump has been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency, a condition that his physician described as a “benign” and common condition in which veins don’t move blood back to the heart efficiently.

Trump has never offered any information about his health, and his doctors have presented accounts of his physical exams that are hard to believe, making observers receive this announcement at this moment with skepticism. “Chronic venous insufficiency is a condition where the veins in the legs have difficulty drawing attention from the fact that the Epstein Files still haven’t been released,” one social media meme read.

Today, Trump posted on social media: “The Washington ‘Whatever’s’ should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this. Likewise, the Cleveland Indians, one of the six original baseball teams, with a storied past. Our great Indian people, in massive numbers, want this to happen. Their heritage and prestige is systematically being taken away from them. Times are different now than they were three or four years ago. We are a Country of passion and common sense. OWNERS, GET IT DONE!!!”

Hours later, he posted that his post “has totally blown up, but only in a very positive way.” Then he threatened to block the deal to move the Commanders back to Washington, D.C., from a Maryland suburb unless they “change the name back to the original ‘Washington Redskins.’”
At the turn of the last century, those worried that industrialization was destroying masculinity encouraged sports to give men an arena for manly combat. Sports teams dominated by Euro-Americans often took names that invoked Indigenous Americans because those names seemed to them to harness the idea of “savagery” in the safe space of a playing field. By the end of the twentieth century, the majority of Americans had come to recognize the racism inherent in those names, and colleges started to retire Native American team names and mascots. In 2020 the Washington football team retired its former name, becoming the Commanders two years later. At about the same time, the Cleveland baseball team became the Cleveland Guardians in honor of the four pairs of art deco statues installed on the city’s Hope Memorial Bridge in 1932.

Trump’s attempt to control the narrative didn’t work. “The thing about the Redskins and Indians is that Donald Trump is on the Epstein list,” one social media user wrote. The post was representative of reactions to Trump’s post.

Today marked the end of the first six months of Trump’s second term, and he marked it with a flurry of social media posts praising his performance as “6 months of winning,” and attacking those he sees as his opponents. He again went after the Wall Street Journal, which ran the story about Epstein’s birthday album. He complained the paper had run a “typically untruthful story” when it said Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had had to explain to Trump that firing Fed chair Jerome Powell would be bad for markets. Trump took exception to the idea he did not understand the interplay of the Fed and markets, despite his repeated threats against Powell.

“Nobody had to explain that to me,” he wrote. “I know better than anybody what’s good for the Market, and what’s good for the U.S.A. if it weren’t for me, the Market wouldn’t be at Record Highs right now, it probably would have CRASHED! So, get your information CORRECT. People don’t explain to me, I explain to them!”

Tonight, Trump’s social media posts seemed to project his own fears on Democrats he perceives as enemies. He once again claimed Senator Schiff, who managed one of the impeachment cases against Trump when he was a representative, had falsified loan documents in 2011 and should go to prison. In 2023, a judge determined that the Trump Organization had falsified loan documents. Trump posted: “Adam Schiff is a THIEF! He should be prosecuted, just like they tried to prosecute me, and everyone else—the only difference is, WE WERE TOTALLY INNOCENT, IT WAS ALL A GIANT HOAX!”

On Late Night with Stephen Colbert last night, Schiff said: “Donald, piss off…. But Donald, before you piss off, would you release the Epstein files?”
Trump also posted an image of intelligence agents and politicians in prison garb as if in mug shots, and reposted both an image of what appears to be lawmakers in handcuffs and an AI-generated video showing former president Barack Obama being arrested by FBI agents and then being held in a jail cell.

Meidas Touch posted: “The crazy thing about Donald Trump posting an AI video of Obama getting arrested is that Trump once had someone organize a party for him and invite a bunch of ‘young women’ and it turned out Jeffrey Epstein was his only other guest.” Alan Feuer and Matthew Goldstein broke the story of that party in Saturday’s New York Times.
—

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Immigration, Obama, Opinion Polling, Scandals, Stupid, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Everything You Need to Know About Immigration Law

By dianeravitch

July 16, 2025 //

Before he was elected President, John F. Kennedy published a book titled “A Nation of Immigrants.” He celebrated the fact that his family was descended from Irish immigrants, and almost every one else (excluding native Americans) was descended from immigrants. At the time, our immigrant heritage was widely acknowledged. Most celebrated their heritage, others embraced America because it rescued them from tyrannies.

Today, thanks to Donald Trump, we live in an era where immigrants are treated as invaders and enemies. He wants to deport millions of them and has even hinted that he has the power to expel American citizens, even to strip them of their citizenship.

Heather Cox Richardson points out that the American people do not share his visceral hatred for immigrants.

Trump appointees insist they have a “mandate” to drive undocumented immigrants out of the U.S. and prevent new immigrants from coming in, and are launching a massive increase in Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and detention facilities to do so. But a poll released Friday shows that only 35% of American adults approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, while 62% disapprove.

The poll shows a record 79% of adults saying immigration is good for the country, with only 17% seeing it as bad. Only 30% of American adults say immigration should be reduced.

The poll shows that 85% of American adults want laws to allow “immigrants, who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children, the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time.” Seventy-eight percent of American adults want the law to allow “immigrants living in the U.S. illegally the chance to become U.S. citizens if they meet certain requirements over a period of time.” Only 38% want the government to deport “all immigrants who are living in the United States illegally back to their home country.”

The poll shows Americans eager to fix a problem that stems from a bipartisan 1965 law that reworked America’s immigration laws.

In 1924, during a period of opposition to immigration that fueled the second rise of the Ku Klux Klan, Congress had passed the nation’s first comprehensive immigration law. That law, known as the Johnson-Reed Act, limited immigration according to quotas assigned to each country. Those quotas were heavily weighted toward western Europe, virtually prohibiting immigration from Asia and Africa and dramatically curtailing it from southern Europe.

The Johnson-Reed Act simply taxed workers coming to the U.S. from Mexico, because from the time the current border was set in 1848 until the 1930s, people moved back and forth across it. Laborers in particular came from Mexico to work for the huge American agribusinesses that dominate the agricultural sector, especially after 1907 when the Japanese workers who had been taking over those jobs were unofficially kept out of the country by the so-called “Gentlemen’s Agreement.” Later, during World War I, the government encouraged immigration to help increase production.

The Depression, when the bottom fell out of the economy, coupled with the Dust Bowl, when the bottom fell out of the western plains, made destitute white Americans turn on Mexican migrants (as well as on their poor white neighbors, as John Steinbeck wrote about in The Grapes of Wrath). The government rounded up Mexicans and shipped them back over the border.

World War II created another shortage of laborers, and to regularize the system of migrant labor, the U.S. government in 1942 started a guest worker policy called the Bracero Program that ultimately brought more than 4 million Mexican workers to the U.S. The program was supposed to guarantee that migrant workers were well treated and adequately paid and housed. But it didn’t work out that way. Employers hired illegal as well as legal workers and treated them poorly. American workers complained about competition.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower returned about a million illegal workers in 1954 under “Operation Wetback,” only to have officials readmit most of them as braceros. Under pressure both from labor and from reformers who recognized that the system was exploitative at the same time that mechanization began replacing workers, President John F. Kennedy initiated the process that ended the Bracero Program in 1964. In 1965 the government tried to replace migrant labor with American high school students, but the “A-TEAM” project—“Athletes in Temporary Employment as Agricultural Manpower”—failed.

The end of the Bracero program coincided with congressional reworking of the 1924 Johnson-Reed Act. In the midst of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, Congress wanted to end the racial quota system of immigration and replace it with one that did not so obviously discriminate against Asia and Africa. In 1965, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, or the Hart-Celler Act. It opened immigration to all nations, setting a general cap on total immigration levels.

But southern congressmen, appalled at the idea of Black immigration, introduced a provision that privileged family migration, arguing that “family unification” should be the nation’s top priority. They expected that old-stock immigrants from western Europe would use the provision to bring over their relatives, which would keep the effect of the 1924 law without the statute. But their provision had the opposite effect. It was new immigrants who wanted to bring their families, not old ones. So immigration began to skew heavily toward Asia and Latin America.

At the same time, Hart-Celler put a cap on immigrants from Mexico just as the guest worker program ended. The cap was low: 20,000, although 50,000 workers were coming annually at that point, and American agribusiness depended on migrant labor. Workers continued to come as they always had, and to be employed, as always. But now their presence was illegal.

In 1986, Congress tried to fix the problem of border security between the U.S. and Mexico by offering amnesty to 2.3 million Mexicans who were living in the United States and by cracking down on employers who hired undocumented workers. But rather than ending the problem of undocumented workers, the new law exacerbated it by beginning the process of guarding and militarizing the border. Until then, migrants into the United States had been offset by an equal number leaving at the end of the season. Once the border became heavily guarded, Mexican migrants refused to take the chance of leaving.

Since 1986, U.S. politicians have refused to deal with this disconnect, which grew in the 1990s when the North American Free Trade Agreement flooded Mexico with U.S. corn and drove Mexican farmers to find work, largely in the American Southeast. But by 2007, as Mexico’s economy stabilized and after U.S. border enforcement tightened significantly under President Bill Clinton, more Mexican immigrants were leaving the U.S. than coming.

Between 2007 and 2017, the U.S. saw a net loss of about 2 million Mexican immigrants. In 2017 about 5 million undocumented Mexicans lived in the United States; most of them—83%—were long-term residents, here more than ten years. Only 8% had lived in the U.S. for less than five years. Increasingly, undocumented immigrants were people from around the world who overstayed legal visas, making up more than 40% of the country’s undocumented population by 2024.

In 2013 the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform measure by a bipartisan vote of 68 to 32. The measure provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants and increased border security. It also proposed to increase visas for immigrant workers. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the measure would reduce the federal deficit by $197 billion over 10 years and $700 billion over 20 years.

The measure had passed the Senate by a wide margin and was popular with the public. It was expected to pass the House. But then–House speaker John Boehner (R-OH) refused to bring the measure up before the chamber, saying it did not have the support of a majority of Republicans.

About that time, undocumented migration across the southern border was changing. By 2014, people were arriving at the U.S. border from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, where violence that approached warfare—much of it caused by gangs whose members had been socialized into gang culture in the U.S.—and economic stress from that violence created refugees. These migrants were not coming over the border for economic opportunity; they were refugees applying for asylum—a legal process in the United States.

Before the 2014 midterm elections, Republicans highlighted the new migrants at the southern border, although immigration numbers remained relatively stable. They also highlighted the death from the Ebola virus of a Liberian visitor to the U.S. and the infection of two of his nurses. They attacked the Democratic administration of President Barack Obama for downplaying the danger of the disease to the U.S. public and suggested foreigners should be kept out of the U.S. (In fact, the only Americans who contracted the virus in the U.S. were the two nurses who treated the Liberian visitor.)

Despite his own history of using undocumented workers at his properties, Trump followed this practice of using immigration against the Democratic administration for political points, launching his presidential campaign in 2015 by claiming Mexico was sending “people that have lots of problems…. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” He promised mass deportation and to build a wall across the southern border and make Mexico pay for it.

In fact, Trump’s administration deported significantly fewer undocumented immigrants than Obama’s had, at least in part because Immigration and Customs Enforcement under Obama focused on deporting those who had been convicted of crimes, a much easier deportation process than that for immigrants without convictions. But it was still legal to apply for asylum in the U.S., a fact MAGA Republicans opposed as they embraced the “Great Replacement” theory: the idea that immigration destroys a nation’s culture and identity.

The covid pandemic enabled the Trump administration in March 2020 to close the border and turn back asylum seekers under an emergency health authority known as Title 42, which can be invoked to keep out illness. Title 42 overrode the right to request asylum. But it also took away the legal consequences for trying to cross the border illegally, meaning migrants tried repeatedly, driving up the numbers of border encounters between U.S. agents and migrants and increasing the number of successful attempts from about 10,000–15,000 per month to a peak of more than 85,000.

Title 42 was still in effect in January 2021, when President Joe Biden took office. Immediately, Biden sent an immigration bill to Congress to modernize and fund immigration processes, including border enforcement and immigration courts—which had backlogs of more than 1.6 million people whose cases took an average of five years to get decided—and provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

His request got nowhere as MAGA Republicans demanded the continuation of Title 42 as a

general immigration measure to keep out migrants and accused Biden of wanting “open borders.” But Title 42 is an emergency public health authority, and when the administration declared the covid emergency over in May 2023, the rule no longer applied.

In the meantime, migrants had surged to the border, driven from their home countries or countries to which they had previously moved by the slow economic recoveries of those countries after the worst of the pandemic. The booming U.S. economy pulled them north. To move desperately needed migrants into the U.S. workforce, Biden extended temporary protected status to about 472,000 Venezuelans who were in the U.S. before July 31, 2023. The Biden administration also expanded temporary humanitarian admissions for people from Cuba, Haiti, and Nicaragua.

Then, in October 2023, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) injected the idea of an immigration bill back into the political discussion when he tried to stop the passage of a national security measure that would provide aid to Ukraine. He said the House would not consider the Senate’s measure unless it contained a border security package. Eager to pass a measure to aid Ukraine, the Senate took him at his word, and a bipartisan group of senators spent the next several months hammering out an immigration bill that was similar to Title 42.

The Senate passed the measure with a bipartisan vote, but under pressure from Trump, who wanted to preserve the issue of immigration for his 2024 campaign, Johnson declared it “dead on arrival” when it reached the House in February 2024. “Only a fool, or a Radical Left Democrat, would vote for this horrendous Border Bill,” Trump posted about the measure.

And then Trump hammered hard on the demonization of immigrants. He lied that Aurora, Colorado, was a “war zone” that had been taken over by Venezuelan gangs—Aurora’s Republican mayor and police chief said this wasn’t true—and that Haitian immigrants to Springfield, Ohio, were “eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating—they are eating the pets of the people that live there.” A Gallup poll released Friday shows the MAGA attacks on immigration worked: in 2024, 55% of American adults wanted fewer immigrants in the country.

Trump was reelected in part because of his promise to strengthen border security, but now his administration is using attacks on immigrants to impose a police state. As Andrew Perez and Asawin Suebsaeng reported Saturday in Rolling Stone, the administration is fighting to impose its will on wrongly-deported Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom it rendered to a terrorist prison in El Salvador, because if they are forced to back down, “it could set a precedent that opens the floodgates to other legal challenges” to Trump’s other executive power grabs.

“The last thing you want to do here is contribute to a domino effect of decisions where suddenly you’re admitting you’re wrong about everything,” a close Trump advisor told the reporters. “That is why you gotta stand your ground on everything against the left, including on the [Abrego Garcia] situation.”

But it appears the American people simply want to fix a sixty-year-old mistake in the nation’s immigration laws.

Categories History, Immigration

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