Monthly Archives: June 2025

The South Did Rise Again

Let’s “get real,” as the kids might say. MAGA is the embodiment and resurgence of the Confederacy–a less geographically-bound version of the South that is determined to rise again. And this time, the war isn’t limited to Black folks–it includes all “others”–gays, women, Muslims, Jews…

The evidence is overwhelming.

The New York Times noted that Trump had made no statement about Juneteenth, the federal holiday that commemorates the end of slavery in the United States, despite the fact that lesser occasions routinely garner official proclamations.

On the day the Supreme Court ruled against gender-affirming care for transgender youth, the Trump administration ended specialized support for LGBTQ callers to the national suicide prevention hotline.

The Atlantic recently opined that

Five years ago, as the streets ran hot and the body of George Floyd lay cold, optimistic commentators believed that America was on the verge of a breakthrough in its eternal deliberation over the humanity of Black people. For a brief moment, perhaps, it seemed as if the “whirlwinds of revolt,” as Martin Luther King Jr. once prophesied, had finally shaken the foundations of the nation. In 2021, in the midst of this “racial reckoning,” as it was often called, Congress passed legislation turning Juneteenth into “Juneteenth National Independence Day,” a federal holiday. Now we face the sober reality that our country might be further away from that promised land than it has been in decades.

The administration’s frantic effort to defeat “woke-ism” and DEI–which it characterizes as bias against White Christian men–gives the game away. They aren’t trying to level the playing field–they are trying to return White men to social dominance. Consider just some of what this administration has done.

Trump’s Executive Order 14151 (“Ending Radical And Wasteful Government DEI Programs”) terminated DEI units, removed references to minority achievements, and purged employees involved in diversity efforts. Another Executive Order
Issued on the same day revoked LBJ’s historic affirmative action order, and stripped federal agencies of the authority to enforce non-discrimination in federal contracting.

Agencies like NASA, DOE, HHS, NIH, DOD, CIA, FBI, NSF, and DOE have all removed so-called “DEI content” from webpages and other materials. We’ve seen ships carrying the names of LGBTQ figures and women renamed. (That renaming is in line with Trump’s announced intention to restore the names of Confederate traitors to the army bases that shed them.)

The current EEOC Chair has followed Trump’s directives and “deprioritized” discrimination cases related to gender identity and pushed agencies to investigate and pressure law firms and corporations with DEI programs. The Department of Justice has been directed to probe corporate DEI policies criminally and has withdrawn previous civil rights settlements tied to equity.

The Pentagon has removed content honoring Blacks, Indigenous individuals, women, and LGBTQ+ service members. Examples include the Navajo Code Talkers, Jackie Robinson, and Harvey Milk. And it isn’t only Juneteenth; agencies have also canceled or muted celebrations of other identity-based holidays like Pride Month and Black History Month.

Trump canceled more than 2,100 NIH grants totaling an estimated ten billion dollars that the administration deemed tied to diversity and inclusion. (A judge has ruled those cuts illegal and discriminatory.) 

There’s more, but the pattern is unmistakable. Scholars attest that the removal of content celebrating minority achievements and history mimics the classic white supremacist tactic of erasing the narratives of marginalized groups. The historical parallels are striking: analysts and historians have drawn comparisons between Trump’s policies and Reconstruction-era actions by white supremacists, not to mention 1930s-era, fascist efforts to control historical narratives and redefine “meritocracy.” 

We are once again in a contest between tribalism and universalism, between racism and humanism. Tribalism, however, is the essence of anti-Americanism. Ours is not a “blood and soil” country, like Nazi Germany, with its ideal of a racially defined national body. 

MAGA, with its version of White Christian male supremacy, is today’s Confederacy. It wants to restrict who can be considered authentically American, and applauds Trump’s efforts to reclassify those despised “others” as–at best–guests of those entitled to the title. It is an effort that demeans what is truly “exceptional” about the United States–the philosophical base on which the country rests.

The nation established by the Founders–admittedly all White guys (albeit not all traditional Christians)–was something new to our quarrelsome globe: it was an IDEA. And over time, most of us who occupy this land have come to realize that the proper definition of an American is anyone–of any gender, color or belief– who accepts and endorses that Idea. 

The New Confederacy will go the way of the old one. We the People–all people– just need to step up the Resistance…

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Law Versus Power

There’s a tendency to confuse the rule of law with obedience to the rules of a regime.

Within that confusion lies one of the multiple, dangerous threats posed by our current administration–a threat that became manifestly clear when Trump pardoned the January 6th insurrectionists. Autocrats can devise rules; the rule of law, however, is defined as a durable system characterized by four universal principles: accountability, just law, open government, and accessible and impartial justice.

Those elements are entirely foreign to MAGA and Trump. (Let’s face it–Trump wouldn’t even be able to define those terms…)

The chaos of the Trump administration, and the breadth of its attacks on democratic governance, have operated to distract public attention from its ongoing assault on the rule of law, and its persistent substitution of rules benefitting plutocrats and autocrats for laws benefiting society.

A recent issue of the American Prospect addressed that under-appreciated assault.

A functioning economy depends on a basic principle: cheaters shouldn’t win. But Donald Trump has tossed aside that principle, and that has real consequences. When the rules disappear, the worst actors thrive and everyone else pays the price.

In our new print issue, we examine how the collapse of financial enforcement and consumer protection is opening the floodgates to a golden age of scams. Under Trump, the referees have left the field. Civil penalties go unenforced. White-collar fraudsters are rewarded with pardons. Entire arms of the government designed to prevent theft, abuse, and discrimination are being dismantled.

It’s an intentional choice to let exploitation run wild. If there’s a way to game the system, someone’s doing it—and now they’re doing it with the government’s blessing.

The issue documented a variety of scams that have gained new security against government enforcement. One article reported on the multiple ways in which the gutting of the CFPB–the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau–has facilitated a wide variety of rackets and frauds. Another article delved into the failures of the Department of Education under Trump to protect student loan recipients from predatory lenders.

An article titled “Three Coin Monte” described what the magazine calls “the greatest and most brazen tale of corruption in history”– Trump’s crypto project. That article outlined “how Trump is using his ‘shitcoin’ to monetize the presidency and create new avenues for influence peddling.”

There’s also an explanation of a scam involving merchant cash advances. These are transactions in which tycoons sell what are effectively payday loans to small businesses and ruin their livelihoods. (We are told that one of those “tycoons” was on Trump’s pardon list in 2020; he’s back in jail, for now.)

These investigative articles are just a few examples of what happens when government fails in what has always been considered a foundational task: to prevent some citizens from taking advantage of others, to prevent the strong (or unscrupulous) from harming the weak and/or naive.

Donald Trump’s government has corrupted the very concept of law. The evidence is overwhelming: the gutting of the Department of Justice, the indiscriminate labeling of immigrants as “criminals” as justification for masked ICE agents’ thuggish behaviors, the appalling arrests of elected lawmakers on transparently false premises, orders from the administration to the EPA directing the agency not to enforce environmental rules against fossil fuel companies, the Trump family’s failure to even try to mask its monetization of the Presidency…the list goes on.

When the rule of law is replaced with rules favoring the predatory, when people in positions of authority sneer at the very notion of ethics and ethical behavior, when elected members of Congress fail to exercise their constitutional oversight responsibilities, ordinary citizens lose respect for the very concept of law. Corrupt regimes encourage lawbreaking by people who wouldn’t otherwise be scofflaws. Cynicism explodes. The trust on which societies rely evaporates.

The central goal of Project 2025 was to replace the rule of law with rules allowing selected people to exercise unrestrained and arbitrary power–power to give their sycophants and fellow-travelers free reign to plunder, but–more fundamentally– to facilitate the remaking of America into the Lily-White “Christian” nation of Project 2025’s fantasies.

In Henry VI, Shakespeare wrote “First you kill all the lawyers.” The authors of Project 2025 understood why that’s wrong. First you kill the rule of law.

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Why Government By Idiots Is A Bad Idea

Well, our Mad would-be King has bombed Iran and–by any definition–taken us to war. Another unconstitutional and profoundly dangerous act.

Charlie Sykes recently considered what was then an Israeli-Iran conflict, and enumerated “things that can all be true at the same time.”

Here’s his list, with my commentary in italics:

  • America ought to stand with Israel, while recognizing that Benjamin Netanyahu (1) does not always deserve the benefit of the doubt, and (2) is an unreliable narrator. In this, Sykes echoes the opinion of a majority of American Jews. We support the right of Israel to exist, but we detest Netanyahu, who is a smarter version of Trump (granted, a low bar) and whose corrupt governance has done incalculable damage to Israel’s international support.
  • The world would be a vastly better and safer place if Iran does not have a nuclear weapon. Ditto for dismantling the terrorist regime. This week, the G7 nations reiterated that, “Iran is the principal source of regional instability and terror,” and “We have been consistently clear that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.” Hard to argue with this.
  • Achieving these goals through war will not be easy or achieved without great cost.
    War with Iran could unleash chaos throughout the region. And what comes afterward could be worse.
    The most dangerous scenarios involve miscalculations, misjudgments, and misinterpretations. (See World War I.) The truth of this is what keeps rational people up at night, and what should have concerned the ignoramus in the Oval Office. Understanding the risks involved in any decisions made by those in a position to make those decisions should have been a critical element of America’s response to this very significant threat to world peace.
  •  Moments like these requires the highest degree of skill and prudence — the most sober, strategic, and sagacious diplomatic and military minds we can muster. Instead, we have a reality tv host and a dipsomaniacal chode in charge of the world’s greatest military on the brink of war. Ok, I had to look up “chode,” which evidently refers either to a male organ or a stupid or contemptible man. Either way, seems appropriate. At a time when the country needs thoughtful, informed and adult leadership, power is being exercised by a group of immature, self-important ignoramuses who haven’t a clue and who display no willingness to heed the advice of people who do.
  • Instead of assembling a “coalition of the willing,” Trump and Israel were intent on going it alone, isolated and without the active support of allies. See “chode.”
  • As has become its wont, Congress remains a potted plant throughout this whole crisis. This is perhaps the most frustrating aspect of all of the threats we face today. The Republicans who hold a majority in the House and Senate repeatedly block efforts to assert the constitutional duties of those bodies. In the House, they evidently feel protected by gerrymandering and fear only challenges from the Right; the Senate is home to morons like Indiana’s Christian Nationalist Jim Banks and cowards like Todd Young. The fault ultimately lies with We the People, who have elected these pathetic excuses for public servants.

Bottom line, as Sykes notes, is that there are no adults in the situation room.

Because nothing ever really disappears from the Internet, social media sites have been flooded with former tweets by our embarrassing excuse for a President, a child-man who evidently thinks that posting grammatically-incorrect vulgarities and threats in ALL CAPS, like a five-year-old, is leadership. In 2013, he posted “Be prepared. There is a chance that our horrendous leadership could unknowingly lead us into WWIII.” (This post, at least, was grammatical…and potentially, frighteningly accurate.) Pundits have also reminded readers of Trump’s statement–made when he was still a reality television personality– that “Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly—not skilled!”

“Not skilled” is an apt–albeit massively understated–description of the unserious, unqualified cranks and clowns that We the People have installed in positions of authority.

Those totally unqualified clowns and cranks may just have triggered WWIII. Even if the consequences aren’t that horrific, they are likely to be incredibly damaging, both to the stability of the  world at large and–thanks to the mentally-ill buffoon in the White House– to America’s rapidly-diminishing role in that world.

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Discarding Medical Ethics

There really is no way to ignore the White supremacist and patriarchal roots of MAGA and the Trump administration. The behavior of ICE in conflating Brown skin with “illegal” status is one aspect; the bigoted nature of so many Trump’s insane Executive Orders is another. A recent federal court decision–handed down by a judge appointed by Ronald Reagan–expressed astonishment at the obvious discriminatory motive behind the administration’s NIH cuts. Etc.

Now, the administration is encouraging the VA to be “selective” in providing medical care to veterans. According to a recent report from The Guardian,

Doctors at Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals nationwide could refuse to treat unmarried veterans and Democrats under new hospital guidelines imposed following an executive order by Donald Trump.

The new rules, obtained by the Guardian, also apply to psychologists, dentists and a host of other occupations. They have already gone into effect in at least some VA medical centers.

Medical staff are still required to treat veterans regardless of race, color, religion and sex, and all veterans remain entitled to treatment. But individual workers are now free to decline to care for patients based on personal characteristics not explicitly prohibited by federal law.

Language requiring healthcare professionals to care for veterans regardless of their politics and marital status has been explicitly eliminated.

I sent this article to my cousin, a long-time cardiologist whose medical knowledge I sometime share on this site; he responded that this “goes against all the rules that guide the medical profession, not to mention against the guiding principles of this entire nation! It’s simply additional confirmation of Trump’s insanity, not that we needed it! “

According to the report, this permission of discrimination isn’t limited to patient care. “Doctors and other medical staff can also be barred from working at VA hospitals based on their marital status, political party affiliation or union activity.” The changes even apply to chiropractors, nurse practitioners, optometrists, podiatrists, licensed clinical social workers and speech therapists.

The administration claims that these changes were intended to support the president’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”. That executive order purported to eliminate existing government protections from transgender people, and since it was issued, the VA has stopped  providing most gender-affirming care.

The administration has also forbidden a long list of words, including “gender affirming” and “transgender”, from clinical settings.

The article quoted a former VA administrator who said the changes would allow doctors to refuse to treat veterans based on the reason they were seeking care, including allegations of rape and sexual assault. Refusal could also be based upon current or past political party affiliation or political activity, and on personal behaviors like alcohol or marijuana use.

Most Americans fail to recognize just how extensive the VA is. The Department of Veterans Affairs operates the nation’s largest integrated hospital system; it has more than 170 hospitals and more than 1,000 clinics, employs 26,000 doctors and serves 9 million patients annually. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that rule changes of this sort are likely to have profound consequences.

In an emailed response to questions, the VA press secretary, Peter Kasperowicz, did not dispute that the new rules allowed doctors to refuse to treat veteran patients based on their beliefs or that physicians could be dismissed based on their marital status or political affiliation.

Dr. Arthur Caplan, a prominent medical ethics expert, called the new rules “extremely disturbing and unethical.”

The changes are part of a larger attack on the independence of medicine and science by the Trump administration, Caplan said, which has included restrictions and cuts at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, last week fired every member of a key panel that advises the government on vaccines. The Guardian has earlier reported on a VA edict forbidding agency researchers from publishing in scientific journals without clearance from the agency’s political appointees.

Just one more drop in the ocean of ignorance and “othering” that characterizes MAGA and Trumpism. From the “very fine” people Trump insisted were among the bigoted rioters at Charlottesville, to his description of (majority Black) “shithole countries,” to his efforts to bar entry into America from Muslim countries, to his constant manifestations of racism, misogyny, and anti-Semitism, Trump has represented and ingratiated himself with the White “Christian” supremacists who form the base of his support.

America’s divisions aren’t political. They’re moral and ethical. And MAGA is on the wrong side of that divide.

 
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The Power Of Image

In the wake of No Kings Day, we’ve seen a number of columns and news reports estimating turnout (current count: five million nationally) and comparing the enthusiasm of the protests with Trump’s lackluster and sparsely-attended parade in Washington. Many of those articles were interesting and even illuminating; one of the best–as usual–came from Paul Krugman, who took time off from his usual economic analyses to reflect upon the impact of such mass peaceful protests.

Krugman began with an important–and mostly ignored–observation: America is currently experiencing what scholars call “competitive authoritarianism.” Competitive authoritarian regimes are those in which formal democratic institutions are retained–elections continue to be held, for example, and other “democratic rules” are given lip service–but Incumbents violate the rules so often and to such an extent that the regime fails to meet the minimum standards for democracy.

Krugman says we’re not there yet, but that we are “teetering on the edge.” He also claims that “one of the most important ways we can step back from that edge is for ordinary Americans to engage in mass protests.”

Why should that matter? Why does the contrast between the poor turnout for Trump’s underwhelming exercise (what Krugman labeled as a “box office bust”) and the  enormous, enthusiastic participation in the No Kings protests matter?

It matters, as he explains, “because competitive authoritarianism rests largely on self-fulfilling expectations.”

While there is a cadre of Trumpist true believers who will obey the Leader under any circumstances, most of those doing the dirty work of undermining democracy and the rule of law are cowards and opportunists. They’re willing to participate in the destruction of America as we know it because they believe that many others will do the same. As a result, they believe that they are unlikely to face any personal consequences for their actions and may even be rewarded for their lawbreaking.

And what of those who oppose Trumpism? While there are heroes willing to take a stand against tyranny whatever the personal cost, most anti-Trumpists are reluctant to stick their necks out unless they believe that they are part of a widespread resistance that will grant them some measure of safety in numbers.

In other words, the victory or defeat of competitive authoritarianism will depend to a large extent on which side ordinary people believe will win. If Trump looks unstoppable, resistance will wither away and democracy will be lost. On the other hand, if he appears weak and stymied, resistance will grow and — just maybe — American democracy will survive.

Those of us who have been politically active will recognize the parallel to election campaigns, where momentum or an aura of inevitability sways less-informed voters to the probable winner’s side. (This is a truism that annoys the hell out of those of us who would love to believe that citizens vote after careful consideration of the policy positions of the contending candidates; unfortunately, in the real world, the desire to back a probable winner vastly exceeds such idealized behavior…)

So what we saw on Saturday was more than just the juxtaposition of a poorly attended parade that was supposed to glorify the Leader against massive, enthusiastic protests. We also saw a body blow to Trump’s image of invincibility and a demonstration that millions of Americans are willing to stand up for democracy.

It isn’t just the optics of five million plus citizens turning out in protest; as Krugman reminds readers, the resistance is gathering steam. He cites the “remarkable comeuppance” of the major law firms that bent their knee to Trump’s threats and are now seeing partners and major clients depart for firms that refused to be cowed, and the growing resistance to ICE’s lawless roundups of immigrants (including people who “look like” immigrants).

This isn’t the end of the assault on American democracy. It isn’t even the beginning of the end. But it may well be the end of the beginning. Trump spent his first 6 months in office trying to steamroller over all opposition, creating the impression that resistance is futile. Clearly, he hasn’t succeeded. On the contrary, resistance is stiffening, and those who preemptively capitulated seem to be paying a higher price than those who showed some backbone.

Although the tide may be turning, MAGA isn’t simply going to roll over and slink away. On the contrary, the administration’s power grabs will become even more aggressive and desperate, with growing efforts to intimidate, prosecute and even physically harm political opponents, as well as widespread efforts to suppress dissent with force.

Nonetheless, despite the difficult times ahead, America has just passed an important test. May freedom ring.

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