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  1. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:content="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/content/" xmlns:atom="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" version="2.0" xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:maz="http://www.mazdigital.com/media/" xmlns:snf="http://www.smartnews.be/snf"><channel><title><![CDATA[The New Republic]]></title><description><![CDATA[The New Republic]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com</link><image><url>https://assets.newrepublic.com/assets/favicons/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png</url><title>The New Republic</title><link>https://newrepublic.com</link></image><generator>Mariner</generator><lastBuildDate>Sun, 11 May 2025 11:41:49 GMT</lastBuildDate><atom:link href="https://newrepublic.com/rss.xml" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml"/><language><![CDATA[en]]></language><item><title><![CDATA[The Democrats Have an Age-Old Problem]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>It goes without saying that Democratic voters have developed some <a href="https://www.splinter.com/the-democrats-are-a-social-club-for-gerontocrats-who-love-losing" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">grave misgivings</a> about the party’s gerontological bent. Well before President Joe Biden’s advanced age took him out of the 2024 presidential race, a Pew poll <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/10/04/most-americans-favor-maximum-age-limits-for-federal-elected-officials-supreme-court-justices/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">found</a> that 79 percent of Americans favored some kind of age limit on elected officials. The fever for fresh blood and fighting energy has only advanced since then. As <em>The Washington Post</em> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/06/young-democrats-age-leadership/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported last month</a>, “Younger Democrats are treating their party’s age issue with more urgency after” Biden’s loss. </p><p><em>The Wall Street Journal</em><span> </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/politics/house-democrats-are-having-a-public-fight-about-their-oldest-lawmakers-d99519c1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">added</a><span> fuel to the fire last week with a story that pitted younger House Democrats against their elders. “Age is a bigger headache for Democrats than Republicans for one central reason: Democrats have a lot more old members,” the </span><em>Journal</em><span> noted. This has come at a cost recently: Five House Democrats have died in office in the past 11 months. All were 65 or older; younger replacements might have been able to kill key GOP bills, had some key vacancies been filled. Another aging Democrat, Gerry Connolly, will have to give up his </span><a href="https://www.jezebel.com/75-year-old-democrat-who-beat-aoc-for-key-role-resigns-after-4-months" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recently claimed</a><span> ranking membership of the House Oversight Committee because the severe cancer diagnosis he was dealing with at the time of his ascension did not magically get better.</span></p><p><span>The </span><em>Journal</em><span> suggests that tensions are spiking: “Now, some younger Democrats are pushing to oust older party lawmakers, citing the need to connect more closely with the next generation of voters and energetically spar with Trump.” Representative James Clyburn went on the record to offer some wan pushback. “Nancy left her seat. Steny left his seat. I left my seat. What the hell I’m supposed to do now?” said Clyburn, who is 84, when asked about promoting younger members. “What do you want—me to give up my life?” There are many good reasons to vote for someone, but doing so to allow an aging grandee to cling to relevance deep into retirement age isn’t among them. </span></p><p>I’m sensitive to the argument that we cannot just discount experience and hard-won knowledge, and anyway, age isn’t the Democrats’ main fault line. What I’m seeing emerge among the Democratic base isn’t so much a tension between old and young but between inertia and the <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/progressives-justice-democrats-david-hogg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">willingness to fight hard</a> against Trumpian misrule. And that’s going to make for some strange bedfellows: Right now, the octogenarian Senator Bernie Sanders and the much younger Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are raising hell <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/192744/bernie-sanders-anti-oligarchy-tour-trump-victims" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">on an anti-oligarchy tour</a>; they’re going to end up basically in the same trenches against Trump as would-be presidential candidate and current Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, who is—let’s face it—pretty much an oligarch himself. Still, these are three Democrats <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/us/politics/jb-pritzker-2028-new-hampshire-trump-democrats.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">raring for a fight</a>, while others either blanch at the prospect of open conflict or simply <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193888/gretchen-whitmer-trump-tariff-trap" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">accommodate Trump</a>.</p><p><span>It may be that age really is only a number. But having the ability to nimbly adapt to a new way of doing political business, in a media-information environment unlike the one with which we began this century, is what should determine if someone has a place in the Democratic Party’s ranks. In that sense, Clyburn is asking the right question: “What am I supposed to do now?”</span></p><p><span>I’m happy to assist. The most important thing any Democratic elected official can do today is wake up each morning planning to relentlessly criticize and discredit the president and his party, who give Democrats a lot to work with. This is a task that needs far greater participation among Democrats than I’m currently seeing, especially on the economic front. As I said last week, we are </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194705/trump-scarcity-tariffs-recession-economy" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">headed into the Summer of Scarcity</a><span>, which means barren shelves, shuttered businesses, lost jobs, and a deep recession. For Democrats too afraid to talk about anything but “kitchen table issues,” this is your moment. Get after it!</span></p><p><span>I worry a lot when Clyburn </span><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/media/5257246-james-clyburn-media-democratic-party-messaging/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">says stuff like</a><span>, “I think the message coming from the Democratic Party is a good message.… The problem we’ve got, I’ll say, is that we have to depend upon the media to deliver it.” Sorry, Jim, but I’ve been over this. We aren’t reforming mass media anytime soon. We have to use the cynical one we’ve got, and that means </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193255/signalgate-teach-democrats-take-down-musk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">giving it what it wants</a><span>: conflict, controversy, cheap shots. If you want your message in the media, you have to load up the cannon and fire. You have to give up the high road and get in the gutter, where the big political battles are fought these days. Instead of trying to beat Trump with gauzy appeals to high-flown principles, you need to follow <i>The New Republic</i>’s Tori Otten’s advice: </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/193486/democrats-messaging-timid-mean-voter-rage" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Get mean and stay petty</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>The Democratic Party also needs some of its members and best-known figures to start seeding the earth with the future they envision if they return to power. This begins with paving the way for “CTRL+Z 2028”—a promise to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193596/fight-post-trump-future-walz-booker" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">undo the damage done</a><span> to the civil service with the same alacrity and doggedness with which Trump and his flunky Elon Musk destroyed it. Those plans, by the way, emerged into public view </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/167842/schedule-f-civil-service-trump-republican-plot" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">two years before</a><span> the presidential election—</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/14/technology/republican-trump-peter-thiel.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">numerous reports</a><span> </span><a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/04/inside-the-new-right-where-peter-thiel-is-placing-his-biggest-bets" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">revealed the magnitude</a><span> of </span><a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/23/donald-trump-news-schedule-f-executive-order" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">right-wing schemes</a><span> to dismantle the government, and numerous figures were excited to talk about the shock-and-awe tactics they were going to deploy. If we aren’t soon seeing similar stories about Democratic plans for renewal, then something is deeply wrong.</span></p><p><span>Lastly, in the middle ground between quickfire attacks and long-range vision there is the basic task of holding the Republican Party accountable. As federal jobs get cut, grants get gutted, and the important work of keeping Americans safe and healthy goes undone, Democrats need to be counting up the costs to ordinary people and raising holy hell about the harms that the Trump administration is unleashing. In fact, they allegedly have a plan to do just that: Back on April 4, the Democratic National Committee’s Ken Martin </span><a href="https://democrats.org/news/dnc-chair-ken-martin-launches-peoples-cabinet-to-fiercely-counter-trump-administration-chaos-and-lies/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced</a><span> that the party would be launching a “People’s Cabinet,” as part of an effort to “fiercely counter Trump’s chaos and lies.” But here we are, a month later, and no such shadow Cabinet has emerged on the scene. I suspect I know why this has foundered: The party is still too in thrall to what’s known as “</span><a href="https://prospect.org/coronavirus/unsanitized-iron-law-of-institutions-mcconnell-pelosi-stimulus/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the iron law of institutions</a><span>,” and cannot nimbly start creating positions of perceived influence without first walking through a minefield of seniority, entitlement, and ego.</span></p><p><span>Democrats need their own anti-DOGE, they need their own Project 2025, and they need to get this People’s Cabinet—or something else with the same goals—off the ground. What we need less of is navel-gazing, pissing and moaning about your cable news coverage, sops in the direction of “working with Trump” and “reaching across the aisle,” defending outdated norms, and heeding the suggestions of political consultants who haven’t made a correct observation since last century, if ever. If you’re up for the real job of uprooting Trump and building a better future, then I say it’s fun for all ages. But if you’re only suited for the latter set of tasks, then it doesn’t matter if you’re 25 or 75—politics just isn’t your bag.</span></p><div><i>This article first appeared in Power Mad, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by deputy editor Jason Linkins. <a href="https://newrepublic.com/politics?blinkaction=newsletter!Power_Mad_Newsletter" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Sign up here</a>.</i></div><div><br></div></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195034/democrats-age-problem-clyburn-2028</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195034</guid><category><![CDATA[J.B. Pritzker]]></category><category><![CDATA[James Clyburn]]></category><category><![CDATA[Elon Musk]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2028]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[Bernie Sanders]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]]></category><category><![CDATA[Civil service]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[doge]]></category><category><![CDATA[Power Mad]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Jason Linkins]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sun, 11 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4905cf63b2a541ee6f449105057353826655022d.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4905cf63b2a541ee6f449105057353826655022d.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Representative Jim Clyburn</media:description><media:credit>Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
  2. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[New York City Is About to Make a Huge Mistake ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Speaking at a Black church in Brooklyn last September, Andrew Cuomo tested the message that would quickly become the centerpiece of his campaign to be mayor of the country’s largest city. “We’re on the decline,” the former New York governor <a href="https://www.wsj.com/us-news/andrew-cuomo-for-nyc-mayor-former-governor-prepares-for-possible-comeback-9874feff" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>. “Things are getting worse; quality of life is getting worse. Things are feeling out of control.” The subtext was barely that: New York City was increasingly broken and lawless, and it needed an experienced leader at the helm.&nbsp;</p><p>That message has resonated. Less than two months until the Democratic primary, Cuomo holds a <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/news/time-running-topple-cuomo-york-163009333.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">substantial polling lead</a> over his myriad opponents, who are <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/05/cuomo-new-york-city-rivals-00326474" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">struggling</a> to break through against a front-runner whose name recognition is so superior that he’s&nbsp;acting as if he is running unopposed. At the same time, Cuomo has relentlessly pushed a dystopian (and quite Trumpian) <a href="https://x.com/andrewcuomo/status/1895891752864924012" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">vision of a city in chaos</a>—caused by rampant crime, homelessness, an influx of immigrants, and <a href="https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2025/03/27/candidate-cuomos-e-bike-restrictions-demonize-those-who-need-them" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">even e-bikes</a>—and presented himself as the lone solution, given that he has experience that his rivals can’t match.&nbsp;</p><p><span>Ever since he was elected state attorney general in 2006 and especially during his nearly decade-long stint as governor, Cuomo has cultivated an image of himself as someone uniquely adept at managing complex bureaucracies and messy politics. For Cuomo and the slavish aides who surround him, no one is better at the arm twisting—and dark arts—that are required to get anything done in a state as notoriously dysfunctional as New York. In truth, that’s a myth Cuomo himself created. He is not a cunning dealmaker, skilled manager, or inspiring leader—but he <i>is</i> masterful at selling himself as all of the above. As Democrats slowly mount a resistance against Trump’s second administration, there is no worse person to elevate than a shameless self-promoter with an inflated sense of his political gifts and accomplishments.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>When Cuomo officially announced his campaign for governor two months ago, he implied that he deserved a spot in the pantheon of Democratic leaders of the last century. “F.D.R., John Kennedy, L.B.J., Mario Cuomo, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama taught us what it meant to have a true progressive government: It wasn’t about rhetoric, but results,” Cuomo <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/03/us/politics/andrew-cuomo-ny-mayor-democrats.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>. “They focused on issues that mattered to people in their day-to-day lives, issues that were relevant to them, and then they actually made life better for people. And that is what Democrats must do once again.”&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>If that seems arrogant to you—and it should, given that the only non-president in that field is Cuomo’s father, another former governor of New York—then consider this shorter spin on the same subject from 2019. After turning his fire on state progressives, who were attempting to push through a raft of legislation after retaking the legislature, Cuomo <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/22/nyregion/andrew-cuomo-democrat-progressive-ny.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>, “I believe I am the most progressive, or one of the most progressive leaders in the state.” Then, pushed on his recent criticism of the state’s actual progressives, Cuomo shrugged and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%27%C3%89tat,_c%27est_moi#" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">echoed</a> Louis XIV. “I am the left,” he said.</span></p><p><span>Running for mayor, he and his allies are fond of reminding voters of the legislation that he signed into law, presenting him as a no-nonsense leader who gets things done. It’s true that Cuomo did sign a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/01/nyregion/andrew-cuomo-timeline.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">number of bills</a>—on gun control, same-sex marriage, and marijuana—and oversaw the completion of several infrastructure projects, including the Second Avenue subway and a replacement for the Tappan Zee Bridge, which he named after his father. But Cuomo’s stint as governor was more notable for what didn’t happen than what did.&nbsp;</span></p><p>For much of his reign, Cuomo presided over a divided government thanks to a group of renegade Democrats, the&nbsp;Independent Democratic Conference,&nbsp;who caucused with Republicans in the state Senate. Cuomo frequently used this coalition as evidence of his own political prowess—he could make divided government work, as few could!—but it was all a sham. As <i>The New Republic</i>&nbsp;reported in 2017,&nbsp;Cuomo himself <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/142670/andrew-cuomo-profits-republican-senate" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">perpetuated that divided government</a> by supporting the creation of the IDC in 2011. His reasoning was as simple as it was malevolent: He wanted to stymie New York City Democrats, who he believed would push progressive legislation. For a new governor with presidential ambitions, that simply would not do, so he propped up what was effectively a Republican majority in the Senate that held until 2018, when&nbsp;the benevolent governor ordered its dissolution.&nbsp;</p><p><span>When examined closely, Cuomo’s record of competence is similarly less impressive. As Politico’s Nick Riesman wrote in a <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/23/andrew-cuomo-mayor-campaign-competence-00305450" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">damning account</a> of the governor’s long record of mismanagement in late April, “His team has asserted his consistent polling advantage is based on his reputation as an effective manager, but as he vies to oversee the nation’s largest school district, trash collection operation and police force, he is glossing over his mistakes and betting voters won’t remember.” Some of the infrastructure projects Cuomo presided over were far less impressive than they seem. The Mario Cuomo bridge was plagued by issues—bolts were <a href="https://www.pef.org/articles/news/faulty-cuomo-bridge-bolts-not-the-only-crack-in-new-yorks-infrastructure/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reportedly flying off</a>&nbsp;it around the same time its namesake’s son celebrated its completion.&nbsp;</span></p><p>At first blush, the completion of the Second Ave subway—a project decades in the making—was definitive proof of Cuomo’s singular prowess as a manager. But his obsession with finishing the line helped exacerbate a crisis in New York City’s subway system that led to months of brutal delays.&nbsp;“Shifting the MTA’s priorities and accelerating construction of the Second Avenue Subway led to a system-wide subway crisis in 2017,” <a href="https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-hall/story/2020/01/15/new-book-argues-cuomos-2nd-avenue-subway-push-exacerbated-mtas-2017-decline-1251383#:~:text=Gov.,by%20a%20respected%20urban%20planner." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a>&nbsp;Philip Mark Plotch, in his book <i>The Last Subway</i>. Indeed, the MTA’s long-standing funding crisis was aided by Cuomo, who deliberately underfunded mass transit in the city: If anyone deserves blame for the shambolic state of city’s subways today, it is him.&nbsp;</p><p>Cuomo’s mayoral campaign, meanwhile, suggests that his trademark quality—arrogance—is as strong as ever. Given the cloud of corruption hanging over New York City Mayor Eric Adams, you would expect any reputable challenger to emphasize ethics and good government in their campaign. Not Andrew Cuomo. He has <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/28/cuomo-wont-release-consulting-clients-00310212" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">refused to disclose the names of the clients</a> of his legislative consulting firm and <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/02/cuomo-nuclear-stock-options-00324323" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">failed to reveal</a>&nbsp;<span>to an ethics board&nbsp;</span><span>that he holds millions in stock in a nuclear start-up.</span></p><p>At the same time, he has treated the Democratic primary as a coronation, refusing to debate his opponents and largely eschewing campaigning altogether in favor of glitzy events with donors. And there’s a troubling sloppiness to his campaign that belies his self-image as an effective manager and experienced politician. His housing plan was apparently written with the help of artificial intelligence. He lost out on nearly $3 million in public campaign funding because his campaign blew a deadline. And his campaign keeps <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/05/andrew-cuomo-warned-notes-super-pac-00329971" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">coordinating</a>&nbsp;with a pro-Cuomo associated super PAC, even though that’s illegal in New York City. Cuomo doesn’t care; he’s always acted as though the rules don’t apply to him.</p><p>That defiance is apparently serving him well with voters as he attempts a political comeback that would have been unimaginable several years ago. In August 2021, he resigned as governor amid several scandals, most prominently the multiple allegations of sexual harassment by women who worked with him. On the campaign trail, he has <a href="https://www.jezebel.com/andrew-cuomo-still-doesnt-get-why-his-workplace-harassment-was-offensive" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">repeatedly insisted</a>&nbsp;that he was punished for being a handsy Italian American from an older generation.&nbsp;“You see all this behavior, for a 25-year-old or younger woman with different mores and sensitivities, it’s ‘Don’t touch me’ and ‘Ciao bella is offensive’ and ‘honey’ is offensive and ‘sweetheart’ is offensive, and that is a legitimate school of thought,” he&nbsp;<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/why-does-andrew-cuomo-want-to-be-mayor-of-new-york-city.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a>&nbsp;<i>New York </i>magazine&nbsp;at the end of March. “I heard that intellectually, and I got it—but I just didn’t actually get it enough.” It’s clear that he still doesn’t get it enough.&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p>Since Cuomo resigned from office, his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic—once thought to be&nbsp;one of his major accomplishments—has been exposed as a sham. It was revealed that he had ordered aides to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/books/cuomo-book-penguin-random-house.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">work on a memoir</a> celebrating his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic while they were <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/10/books/cuomo-book-penguin-random-house.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">supposed</a> to be doing government work—like helping to fight the pandemic, which was still raging. And he was accused of covering up nursing home deaths during the pandemic.&nbsp;(Republicans on the House Oversight Committee recently referred&nbsp;Cuomo to the Department of Justice for prosecution relating to <a href="https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-refers-former-new-york-governor-andrew-cuomo-to-trump-doj-for-criminal-prosecution/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">allegedly false statements</a> he made to Congress on the subject. It’s a political move, no doubt, but the committee’s investigation was not without merit.)</p><p><span>And yet, despite this damning record, Cuomo is on the precipice of returning to power. This would be depressing even if Kamala Harris had triumphed over Donald Trump in November. With Trump in the White House, it’s potentially disastrous. Like the president, Cuomo is an incompetent politician, a malicious bully, and an inveterate braggart. He will cast himself as a foil to the president and a leader of his party, just as he did as governor. But we know the whole truth about him now. There’s no excuse for letting this political cretin rise again.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194972/andrew-cuomo-mayor-new-york-city-huge-mistake</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194972</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Andrew Cuomo]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Coronavirus]]></category><category><![CDATA[Covid-19]]></category><category><![CDATA[pandemic]]></category><category><![CDATA[New York City]]></category><category><![CDATA[Eric Adams]]></category><category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category><category><![CDATA[infrastructure]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Alex Shephard]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4d8147ea6cb5725cf29843e69c427e37017ffb4f.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4d8147ea6cb5725cf29843e69c427e37017ffb4f.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Former Governor Andrew Cuomo last June</media:description><media:credit>Al Drago/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Angry Trump Kills “Woke” Program—and Accidentally Screws MAGA Voters]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The other day, during his intensive daily reading of complex policy papers, President Donald Trump noticed that a government initiative created by his predecessor had the word “equity” in its title. Naturally, this caught his attention. As he appeared to conclude, this could only mean the initiative was designed to help undeserving minorities.</p><p>Which presented Trump with a ripe opportunity to demagogue about supposed reverse racism against white people. As Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114474136573150113" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">just announced</a> on Truth Social, he has canceled the program, raging that it’s “RACIST.” He fumed: “No more woke handouts based on race!”</p><p>Except there’s a problem here. The program in question, the Digital Equity Act, contained huge amounts of money for governments in GOP-run states, as well as Democratic ones, to expand high-speed internet access in underserved communities—very much including red states’ rural areas.</p><p>What’s more, every red state government <a href="https://www.ntia.gov/press-release/2024/biden-harris-administration-allocates-more-800-million-increase-digital-inclusion-efforts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">had submitted proposals</a> designed to garner their states large amounts of this funding. These proposals were explicitly designed by these GOP governments partly to serve their states’ rural areas. </p><p>While much of that money has already been approved, large sums still have not, according to the office of Senator Patty Murray, who is monitoring these expenditures as ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee. With Trump moving to block these funds, these states now could be denied some or possibly all of that money, Murray’s office says.</p><p>Murray’s office says this cutoff is illegal, and some of these states will likely sue. “Democrats will fight this every step of the way,” Murray said in an emailed statement.</p><p>In this saga, we once again see Trump—who is supposed to be remaking the GOP into a “working-class party”—employing precisely the same race-mongering scam that Republicans have used for a very long time to downsize “Big Government” in ways that hurt their own voters.</p><p>The Digital Equity Act—which was part of the bipartisan infrastructure law that former president Joe Biden signed in 2021—appropriated over $2 billion for grants to states to improve internet access. As <i>The New York Times</i> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/us/politics/trump-biden-digital-equity-act.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reports</a>, states were already in the process of submitting plans to access that grant money, red ones included.</p><p>Here’s where the story gets funny—or perhaps sad. Under the law, the federal government recognizes “covered populations” that are underserved by high-speed internet. Each state’s plan is supposed to be designed to use federal money to expand access to those populations. </p><p>One of these populations is “members of a racial or ethnic minority.” Plainly, that’s what constitutes the “woke handouts based on race” that triggered Trump. After all, it <i>sounds</i> woke, doesn’t it?</p><p>But as it happens, some of the other “covered populations” include “veterans” and “people living in rural areas,” as well as “low-income households.” Guess what: Those aren’t necessarily minorities, and red states have a lot of people in those categories too! </p><p>Indeed, as the <i>Times</i> story <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/us/politics/trump-biden-digital-equity-act.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">details</a>, the racial component of the law was actually pretty negligible. “The law barely mentions race at all,” the <i>Times</i> observes.</p><p>But here’s the real rub of the matter. A number of red states’ proposals—submitted, again, to access federal money for themselves—explicitly detailed how <i>they</i> intend to use that money to expand digital access to <i>their</i> veterans and to <i>their</i> rural residents. You can see that in proposals submitted by <a href="https://broadband.arkansas.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Arkansas-Digital-Skills-and-Opportunity-Plan-Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Arkansas</a>, <a href="https://www.in.gov/indianabroadband/files/Indiana-DE-Plan.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Indiana</a>, <a href="https://dam.assets.ohio.gov/image/upload/broadband.ohio.gov/04292024_Ohio_Digital_Opportunity_Plan.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Ohio</a>, <a href="https://www.kansascommerce.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DE-PLAN-FINAL.wo-appdx.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Kansas</a>, and many others. </p><p>“Individuals living in rural areas face the most urgent needs for broadband availability,” <a href="https://adeca.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/Alabama-Statewide-Digital-Opportunity-Plan.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Alabama’s proposal</a> reads. And <a href="https://dom.iowa.gov/media/517/download?inline" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Iowa’s proposal</a> laments the internet “accessibility gap” that persists “particularly in rural communities.”</p><p>Here’s the other rub of the matter. As of now, under the law, the federal government has approved tens of millions of dollars to <a href="https://www.ntia.gov/press-release/2024/biden-harris-administration-allocates-more-800-million-increase-digital-inclusion-efforts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">well over a dozen red states</a>, along with a lot of blue states. But many of these states don’t have full access to that money, pending their completion of further steps in the approval process, Murray’s office tells me.</p><p>This is where Trump entered the picture. He <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114474136573150113" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">tweeted</a>:</p><blockquote><p>I have spoken with my wonderful Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and we agree that the Biden/Harris so-called “Digital Equity Act” is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL. No more woke handouts based on race! The Digital Equity Program is a RACIST and ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway. I am ending this IMMEDIATELY, and saving Taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!</p></blockquote><p><span>It’s anybody’s guess how serious Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick really is about this. But if the Commerce Department, which is implementing this law, follows Trump’s command, it will do all it can to halt these payments.</span></p><p>Murray’s office estimates that as much as hundreds of millions of dollars has still not been formally approved. </p><p>“It’s insane that Trump is blocking resources to help make sure kids in rural school districts can get online all because he doesn’t like the word ‘equity,’” Murray, who originally sponsored this law, said in her statement. “My Republican colleagues will need to explain to their constituents why the rural schools they represent won’t get this funding for hotspots or laptops in the meantime.”</p><p><span>The irony here is that lack of digital access is a good example of a serious inequity (there’s that “woke” word again!) that impacts <i>both</i> low-income minorities <i>and</i> low-income rural whites in a similar way. This lack of access constitutes an unfairness embedded in the nation’s patchwork infrastructure, something the federal government is well positioned to try to rectify <i>across</i> racial lines. So it’s degenerate nonsense for Trump to pluck out the tiny fraction of this effort aimed at minorities and cast it as racism against white people.</span></p><p>“In today’s world, everything is online, and yet folks in rural areas, low-income households, and racial and ethnic minorities all suffer from the same challenge—barriers that keep people offline,” Amy Huffman, policy director at the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, told me. “It’s absurd to say this is reverse racism.”</p><p>For decades, Republicans have demagogued about Big Government giving handouts to racial minorities, in order to justify slashing government programs in myriad ways that hurt their own voters. This has often been communicated in couched language: For Ronald Reagan <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welfare_queen" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">it was</a> “welfare queens.” For Mitt Romney, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/fact-checker/post/mitt-romney-caught-on-video-tape/2012/09/17/38578a5e-012f-11e2-b257-e1c2b3548a4a_blog.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">it was</a> the “47 percent” who were “dependent on the government.” For Paul Ryan, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/07/opinion/krugman-the-hammock-fallacy.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">it was</a> the “hammock that lulls able-bodied citizens to lives of dependency.”</p><p>We constantly hear that Trumpism is supposed to represent a break with that old form of Reaganesque, drown-government-in-the-bathtub, plutocratic GOP ideology, as part of its supposed project to remake the GOP as “working class.” But the reality is that MAGA often takes that old race-baiting trick and, if anything, supercharges its racist overtones. This latest move is a case in point: Once again, here we see Trump carrying out precisely that same old swindle. And once again, GOP voters may very well get screwed by it.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195097/angry-trump-kills-woke-program-and-accidentally-screws-maga-voters</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195097</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Howard Lutnick]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Sat, 10 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/822c6d31ee6cfb083c5a0f0a7e07d9f3f8b228c5.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/822c6d31ee6cfb083c5a0f0a7e07d9f3f8b228c5.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Stephen Miller Has a Dangerous New Idea About Habeas Corpus]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The White House is “actively looking” at ending habeas corpus as it continues its massive deportation crusade, according to deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.</p><p><span>Habeas corpus requires authorities to justify an individual’s confinement.</span></p><p><span>“Well, the Constitution is clear—and that of course is the supreme law of the land—that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,” Miller </span><a href="https://x.com/RonFilipkowski/status/1920917576281887077" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a><span> reporters at the White House Friday.</span></p><p><span>The Trump administration has leaned on the </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192813/trump-japanese-internment-law-deport-venezuelans" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Alien Enemies Act</a><span> of 1798 to justify its immigration crackdown while ignoring immigrants’ due process rights, sometimes defying court orders in the process. Donald Trump has </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192833/tom-cotton-fox-judges-donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">defended</a><span> the infractions by claiming that immigration into the country is tantamount to an “invasion,” and has described the current era as a “time of war.”</span></p><p><span>But continuing that rhetoric flies in the face of direction by the Supreme Court, which ruled immigrants must be allowed to challenge their deportations under the centuries-old act via habeas corpus. </span></p><p><span>Judges in several cases have so far ruled against the Trump administration’s interpretation of the law, deciding that the executive branch was illegally leveraging the Alien Enemies Act to deport residents it perceived to be threats.</span></p><p><span>Last week, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez ruled that Tren de Aragua’s presence did not constitute an “invasion,” as Trump had claimed.</span></p><p><span>“The Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez decided. “[Administration officials] do not possess the lawful authority under the AEA, and based on the Proclamation, to detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country.” </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195100/stephen-miller-donald-trump-habeas-corpus</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195100</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stephen Miller]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mass Deportations]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court Watch]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alien Enemies Act of 1798]]></category><category><![CDATA[Habeas petition]]></category><category><![CDATA[Habeas corpus]]></category><category><![CDATA[Constitution]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 21:54:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/d36807585b4efad9d418ad4f4ea7e6bf200ac2d1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/d36807585b4efad9d418ad4f4ea7e6bf200ac2d1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[David Souter Changed Supreme Court Nominations Forever
  3. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>David Souter, who <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/press/pressreleases/pr_05-09-25" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">died on Thursday</a> at age 85, was perhaps the most important Supreme Court justice of the late twentieth century. His appointment to the high court in 1990 was meant to cement the conservative legal counterrevolution, washing away the heady liberalism of the 1950s and 1960s in favor of right-wing constitutional theories.</span></p><p>Nobody seemed to ask Souter if he was interested in such a role in American legal history, however, and when given the opportunity to play it, he declined. <i>Roe v. Wade</i> survived an additional 29 years—more than half of its ultimate lifespan—solely because he defied expectations by not voting to overturn it in 1993. The counterrevolution was not stopped, but it struggled for another two decades until more loyal foot soldiers could be found. Souter was not the most influential or powerful justice of his era, but he may be the one most essential to understanding the court today.</p><p>George H.W. Bush nominated Souter to the high court in 1990 expecting him to be a reliable conservative vote. He was, though not in the way that Bush and other legal conservatives expected. Souter’s conservatism was instinctual, not ideological. As the Rehnquist court pushed constitutional law to the right, his preference for judicial restraint led him to drift toward the court’s liberal wing over his 19-year tenure on the high court.</p><p>The Constitution, Souter told a class of Harvard graduates in 2010, was not a document that could be read in terms of absolutes or clear meanings but a “pantheon of values” that had to be understood—even if not perfectly shared—by each generation. The constitutional requirement that senators be 30 years old is easy to interpret, he conceded. But most of the text defied the popular understanding that deciding cases was a “straightforward exercise of reading fairly and viewing facts objectively.”</p><p>“These are reasons enough to show how egregiously it misses the point to think of judges in constitutional cases as just sitting there reading constitutional phrases fairly and looking at reported facts objectively to produce their judgments,” he <a href="https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/text-of-justice-david-souters-speech/#:~:text=Judges%20have%20to%20choose%20between,even%20more%20to%20answer%20for." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">explained</a>. “Judges have to choose between the good things that the Constitution approves, and when they do, they have to choose, not on the basis of measurement, but of meaning.”</p><p><span>Souter spent his life as a priest of sorts in the American civic faith, enjoying a semi-ascetic life without a spouse or children. Washington, D.C., with its elbow-rubbing, peacocking social culture, was never a good fit for him. When he retired, he first sought to live in his family farmhouse in Weare, New Hampshire, but had to </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/04/us/04souter.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">purchase a new place</a><span> in a quiet nearby town for a very Souterian reason: The two-story farmhouse could not structurally support the weight of the thousands of books that he owned.</span></p><p>His disdain for D.C. and its politicking eventually extended to the court itself. His most bruising moment came halfway through his tenure, when the Supreme Court effectively decided the result of the 2000 presidential election in <i>Bush v. Gore.</i> In his book <i>The Nine,</i> Jeffrey Toobin recounted how the quiet New Englander experienced something like a crisis of faith over how his colleagues handled the case and considered resigning over it.</p><p>“His whole life was being a judge,” Toobin wrote. “He came from a tradition where the independence of the judiciary was the foundation of the rule of law. And Souter believed <i>Bush v. Gore</i> mocked that tradition. His colleagues’ actions were so transparently, so crudely partisan that Souter thought he might not be able to serve with them anymore.” Only at the behest of “a handful of close friends” did he decide against resigning in protest.</p><p><span>Another painful experience came when the court first heard </span><i>Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission</i><span> in 2009. The case centered, at least at first, on a documentary about Hillary Clinton during the 2008 election cycle and whether video-on-demand films violated the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act’s restrictions on election spending by nonprofits. As the justices heard the case, however, it transformed into a wide-ranging attack on the constitutionality of federal campaign-finance restrictions.</span></p><p>Souter, by that point, had already announced his retirement from the court at the end of its 2008–2009 term, having barely waited a few months into Barack Obama’s first term before bolting for the door. He was assigned to write the original main dissent in <i>Citizens United</i>, and while it has never been made public, Souter’s draft was reportedly an uncharacteristic barn burner by the mild-mannered departing justice.</p><p>“Souter wrote a dissent that aired some of the court’s dirty laundry,” Toobin wrote in a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/05/21/money-unlimited" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">2012 article on <i>Citizens United</i></a> for <i>The New Yorker.</i> “By definition, dissents challenge the legal conclusions of the majority, but Souter accused [Chief Justice John Roberts] of violating the court’s own procedures to engineer the result he wanted.” Roberts responded by bouncing the case to be reheard during the court’s 2009–2010 term, thereby putting the constitutional question at the heart of the case—and keeping Souter’s dissent from going public.</p><p><span>It was a symbolically potent finale for Souter’s tenure. His nomination came at a pivotal time in the Supreme Court’s history. After decades of dominance, conservatives did not control the Supreme Court for most of the mid-to-late twentieth century. Franklin D. Roosevelt had appointed all nine sitting justices over his 12-year presidency by the time he died in 1945. Democrats held the White House for all but eight of the next 24 years.</span></p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/e9f3c7fc57317c8b4718d91688360c7b686e58de.jpeg?w=1400" alt="President George H.W. Bush introducing Souter at the White House in 1990" width="1400" data-caption="President George H.W. Bush introducing Souter at the White House in 1990" data-credit="Diana Walker/Getty Images"><p><span>Even Dwight D. Eisenhower’s picks during that two-term gap did not shift the balance: Justice William Brennan became the intellectual leader of the court’s liberal wing, while </span><span>Eisenhower’s</span><span> choice for chief justice, California Governor Earl Warren, gave his name to the court’s most progressive era. The Warren court effectively dragged the United States into liberal democracy by ending racial apartheid in the South, adopting the “one person, one vote” principle for redistricting, and incorporating most of the Bill of Rights against the states.</span></p><p>But the river turned after 1968. Richard Nixon managed to appoint four justices in his first term, ending the court’s liberal era and placing its moderates in control. Ronald Reagan’s administration, particularly the Justice Department under Edwin Meese, became a launching pad for many legal conservatives. As the Warren-era liberals died or retired, they hoped to replace them with justices committed to originalism, the conservative legal movement’s preferred method for constitutional interpretation.</p><p>Brennan’s retirement in 1990 would be a particularly savory triumph. He had either written or shaped most of the Warren court’s most famous liberal rulings, and he had spent the last two decades dissenting from the court’s turn away from them. Democrats had not nominated a Supreme Court justice to the high court since the 1967 appointment of Thurgood Marshall, who would step aside one year after Brennan.</p><p>The nature of Supreme Court nominations had also changed significantly. New Deal liberalism’s political dominance in the 1950s and 1960s had translated into the legal profession. Shifting that tide required immense energy and funding. The conservative legal movement’s initial coalition read like a roster of those who’d lost out in the Warren era: ex-segregationists who opposed further expansions of civil rights laws, cultural conservatives who lamented the end of prayer and Bible study in public schools, tough-on-crime politicians who chafed at broad interpretations of the Fourth Amendment, and corporate leaders who resented unions and regulations.</p><p>By 1990, the conservative legal movement was ascendant but not yet dominant. A powerful sign of its limits came three years before Souter’s nomination. Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork, one of the movement’s intellectual leaders, to fill a vacancy left by a retiring moderate justice in 1987. Bork’s nomination floundered after intense opposition from liberal interest groups and Democratic senators—a break from tradition in an era when Supreme Court nominees regularly received unanimous or near-unanimous approval.</p><p>Legal conservatives to this day insist that Bork was unfairly maligned by liberal senators during the process. But Bork’s greatest enemy may have been himself. The outspoken legal scholar had opined on a wide range of constitutional issues over the years: He had denounced <i>Roe v. Wade</i> as “a serious and wholly unjustifiable judicial usurpation of state legislative authority,” rejected the notion that there was a right to privacy in the Constitution, and opposed the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (He later said he had changed his mind on the last one.)</p><p>When Brennan announced his retirement in 1990, the George H.W. Bush administration wanted to avoid a similar fate. They sought a conservative jurist who was Bork’s opposite: a minimal paper trail, a scant record of controversial rulings, and a less confrontational demeanor. (Bork’s hairstyle and deep, resonant voice evoked an Old Testament prophet.) They found Souter, who had just begun serving on the First Circuit Court of Appeals after almost a decade on the New Hampshire Supreme Court.</p><p>Legal conservatives were uneasy with Souter, especially after he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1990/09/23/weekinreview/the-nation-no-one-is-sure-of-souter-so-there-s-hope-of-harmony.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">declined to publicly endorse originalism</a> during his confirmation hearing, but their doubts were dismissed by Bush and two close New Hampshire allies, chief of staff (and former New Hampshire governor) John Sununu and Senator Warren Rudman. Souter largely voted with the court’s conservatives during his first few years on the bench but started to drift leftward after he found his footing. His vote to save <i>Roe v. Wade</i> in the 1993 case <i>Planned Parenthood v. Casey</i> proved to be the final breaking point.</p><p>The conservative legal movement has an extensive mythology about the judicial wars, to the degree that a judge’s name alone is a potent symbol. To “Bork” someone is to maliciously and unfairly ruin their reputation; perceived apostates from the one true method of constitutional interpretation are deemed to be “Souters.” So great was Souter’s psychological impact on legal conservatives that they restructured their movement to prevent someone like him from happening again. Modern legal conservatism, as I <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/192501/amy-coney-barrett-conservative-legal-movement" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">noted</a> in a profile of Justice Amy Coney Barrett earlier this year, is replete with constant ideological checks and socializations of each other to ensure they don’t put any more “Souters” on the bench. The court’s current radicalism is, in many ways, a downstream effect of its failure to double-check that Souter was actually part of their movement.</p><p>I do not know how Souter felt about his name being used as a derisive epithet. After his retirement, he made almost no public appearances, aside from serving again on the First Circuit Court of Appeals. (Supreme Court justices are allowed to hear cases in lower appeals courts after they retire, and he apparently relished the opportunity to do so.) I tried to interview him a few times over the years to no avail; his clerks made clear he was done with all that. In an era when the Supreme Court’s conservative majority is inventing “presidential immunity” out of constitutional thin air and clearing the path for insurrectionists to hold public office, I would hope that he took their battle cry of “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB112173866457289093" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">No More Souters</a>” as a badge of honor.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195095/david-souter-obituary-changed-supreme-court-nominations-forever</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195095</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[David Souter]]></category><category><![CDATA[Law]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category><category><![CDATA[George H.W. Bush]]></category><category><![CDATA[Roe V. Wade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Abortion]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Ford]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 20:22:30 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/24c7cf3dacc8d621b9d23f440444a9701650439e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/24c7cf3dacc8d621b9d23f440444a9701650439e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Souter in 2003</media:description><media:credit>David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[ICE Arrests Democratic Mayor Trying to Check on Detention Facility]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was </span><a href="https://x.com/amandaleetv/status/1920919030505894223" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>arrested</span></a><span> by Immigration and Customs Enforcement Friday after gaining entry to Delaney Hall, which ICE opened as a detention facility this week against the city’s wishes. <br></span></p><p><span>Baraka and other city officials repeatedly tried to </span><a href="https://documentedny.com/2025/05/06/newark-mayor-ice-delaney-hall-detention-center-geo-group/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>visit the facility</span></a><span> this week to serve a representative of its operating company, Geo Group, with summonses over </span><a href="https://www.nj.com/essex/2025/05/newark-mayor-confronted-by-armed-ice-officers-at-private-detention-center.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>code violations</span></a><span>, including refusing to grant access to the facility and failing to have an evacuation plan in place. They were denied entry. </span><span><br></span></p><p><span>On Friday, three Democratic members of Congress from New Jersey—Representatives Rob Menendez, Bonnie Watson Coleman, and LaMonica McIver—were admitted to tour the facility, and brought Baraka with them. After the mayor gained entry past the gate, the representatives tried to </span><a href="https://x.com/amandaleetv/status/1920919030505894223" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>include</span></a><span> Baraka in conversations. At least one of them was shoved by agents, and Baraka was subsequently arrested.</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Video shared w/ <a href="https://twitter.com/axios?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@Axios</a> of the moment Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was arrested: <a href="https://t.co/Spvhs7LygX" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://t.co/Spvhs7LygX</a> <a href="https://t.co/AEUXmmSmbk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pic.twitter.com/AEUXmmSmbk</a></p>— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) <a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewSolender/status/1920925336725766469?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">May 9, 2025</a></blockquote><p><span>The acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey and Donald Trump’s former lawyer, Alina Habba, announced the arrest on X, </span><a href="https://x.com/AlinaHabba/status/1920918181951971563" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>saying</span></a><span> that Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon.”</span></p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/8265febae541357f3aaa6e87d2788421fb6b6e63.png?w=1176" alt="X screenshot Alina Habba @AlinaHabba: The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. NO ONE IS ABOVE THE LAW. 3:05 PM · May 9, 2025 · 366.7K Views" width="1176" data-caption="" data-credit=""><p><span>Baraka is currently running in the Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey, and in April, the city of Newark </span><a href="https://www.northjersey.com/story/news/2025/04/02/newark-lawsuit-company-blocked-ice-detention-center-inspection/82773288007/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">filed a lawsuit</a><span> against the opening of Delaney Hall, seeking to allow the facility to be inspected. Currently, a federal judge is </span><a href="https://whyy.org/articles/newark-nj-immigration-detention-center-delaney-hall/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">considering</a><span> whether to block the opening of the facility, and it’s unclear whether anyone is being held there right now.</span></p><p><span>Coleman said that she and her colleagues, as well as Baraka, were assaulted by guards.</span></p><p><span>“What we experienced was the weaponization, is the abuse of power.… They know who we are … they manhandled us and arrested the mayor,” Coleman </span><a href="https://x.com/HenryRosoff/status/1920933174386839676" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span>, adding </span><a href="https://x.com/HenryRosoff/status/1920933906284421488" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>that</span></a><span> “if they can treat members of Congress like that, imagine how they treat people on the streets.”</span></p><p><span>It’s the first arrest of a sitting U.S. mayor by the Trump administration over immigration. Last month, the FBI </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194416/fbi-arrests-judge-immigration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>arrested</span></a><span> a judge in Milwaukee for allegedly “obstructing an immigration operation.”</span></p><p><span><i>This story has been updated.</i></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195096/ice-arrests-democratic-mayor-new-jersey-detention-facility</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195096</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[New Jersey]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]]></category><category><![CDATA[ICE]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ras Baraka]]></category><category><![CDATA[Newark]]></category><category><![CDATA[Delaney Hall]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 20:04:17 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/dfea36fa034623bd84a44a7e62f6bef64398cdd4.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/dfea36fa034623bd84a44a7e62f6bef64398cdd4.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Mayor Ras Baraka of Newark confronts ICE agents outside an immigrant detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey,
  4. on May 7.</media:description><media:credit>TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Karoline Leavitt Sends Ominous Warning to Recently Freed Tufts Student]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Trump administration remains delusionally committed to its abuse of executive power, doubling down on threats to Tufts University student Rümeysa Öztürk after a federal judge ordered her release on Friday.</span></p><p><span>In March, Öztürk, a Turkish Ph.D. student on a Fulbright scholarship, was </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193212/ice-arrest-abduct-tufts-university-student-video" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>disappeared</span></a><span> from the Boston area by masked, plainclothes ICE agents after she wrote an op-ed that called for Tufts to acknowledge the ongoing genocide in Palestine and to divest from Israel. Her release—after six weeks in ICE detention—is a direct rebuke of the Trump administration’s actions, as was the release of Palestinian student activist </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194604/donald-trump-legal-blow-pro-palestine-protester-mohsen-mahdawi-freed" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Mohsen Mahdawi</span></a><span> last month.</span></p><p><span>Press secretary Karoline Leavitt was tasked with answering for the Trump administration’s legal loss.</span></p><p><span>“Does the administration have any response to the news today that a federal judge has ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk from detention?” a reporter </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920907129801896410" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>asked</span></a><span> Leavitt on Friday afternoon. “Particularly his comments that the government submitted no evidence other than an op-ed that Öztürk wrote last year?”</span></p><p><span>Leavitt defaulted to one of her go-to answers: It’s the judges who are crazy.</span></p><p><span>“I think our overall feeling—we’ve made quite clear lower level judges should not be dictating the foreign policy of the United States, and we absolutely believe that the president and the Department of Homeland Security are well within their legal rights to deport illegal immigrants,” Leavitt </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920907129801896410" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>replied</span></a><span>. “As for visa revocations, the secretary of state has the right to do that as well. It is a privilege not a right to come to this country on a visa.”</span></p><p><span>This is one of </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193082/judge-boasberg-donald-trump-deportation-alien-enemies" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>many</span></a><span> </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194934/donald-trump-team-reason-not-return-kilmar-abrego-garcia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>examples</span></a><span> of the Trump administration only considering the courts valid when they agree with the rulings they make. Green card holder </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-demands-trump-officials-detail-legal-grounds-deporting-palestinian-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Mahmoud Khalil</span></a><span>, who missed the birth of his child while being detained in Louisiana, and Georgetown student </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192988/trump-administration-war-academia-escalating" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Badar Khan Suri</span></a><span>, who is now held in a Texas detention center, are still in custody.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195094/karoline-leavitt-freed-tufts-student-rumeysa-ozturk</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195094</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category><category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Genocide]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel-Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tufts University]]></category><category><![CDATA[Massachusetts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Turkey]]></category><category><![CDATA[International Students]]></category><category><![CDATA[Students]]></category><category><![CDATA[justice]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Karoline Leavitt]]></category><category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category><category><![CDATA[free speech]]></category><category><![CDATA[First Amendment]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 19:30:12 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/084327674d84fdb502d024cb91ae5c0e758ad493.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/084327674d84fdb502d024cb91ae5c0e758ad493.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Republicans Back John Fetterman After Flood of Damning Reports]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Senate Republicans are defending their Democratic colleague, John Fetterman, after a series of reports called into question his </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194783/john-fetterman-health-danger" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>mental fitness</span></a><span> to remain in office.</span></p><p><span>Senators </span><a href="https://x.com/TomCottonAR/status/1920861952118571054" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Tom Cotton</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://x.com/ChuckGrassley/status/1920898715272794474" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Chuck Grassley</span></a><span>, and fellow Pennsylvanian </span><a href="https://x.com/SenMcCormickPA/status/1920791240804556814" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Dave McCormick</span></a><span> all defended Fetterman in a series of posts on X Thursday, rallying behind the Democrat who has alienated his staff and his constituents by hawkishly </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194776/john-fetterman-continue-senate-israel-gaza" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>supporting Israel</span></a><span> in its massacre of Gazans and taking a </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/18/john-fetterman-democrat-trump-progressive" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>softer line</span></a><span> with President Trump.</span></p><p><span>Democratic Representative Ritchie Torres, who has also </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/182367/ritchie-torres-vs-left" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>alienated much of the left</span></a><span> with his stance on Israel, </span><a href="https://x.com/RitchieTorres/status/1920880669229805948" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>accused</span></a><span> Fetterman’s critics of attacking him for his “unapologetic pro-Israel politics.”</span></p><p><span>Reports from </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194776/john-fetterman-continue-senate-israel-gaza" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span><i>New York</i> </span><span>magazine</span></a><span> and </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194996/john-fetterman-explodes-union-meeting-freaking-staff" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span><i>The Philadelphia Inquirer</i></span></a><span> </span><span>over the past week exposed how Fetterman frequently loses his temper and patience and has become disengaged from his duties as a senator, missing meetings and votes. Fetterman also reportedly avoids colleagues and spends many hours alone in his Washington, D.C., office. </span><span><i>New York</i> </span><span>reported that Fetterman even misses regular medical check-ups, drives erratically, and has diminished spatial awareness.</span></p><p><span>Despite these worrying reports, Republicans may be trying to rally around Fetterman because they smell blood in the water. Politico </span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/09/senator-fetterman-poll-pittsburgh-pennsylvania-00337505" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reports</span></a><span> that a recent internal poll shows Fetterman losing support from Democratic voters in his own home area of Pittsburgh. While Fetterman has defended Trump in the past few months, he still is a relatively reliable Democratic vote in the Senate, and the GOP could see an opportunity to replace him in 2028 with one of their own.</span></p><p><span>Republicans could also be trying to convince Fetterman not to resign from the Senate. The </span><span><i>New York</i> </span><a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/john-fetterman-struggle-mental-health-clinical-depression.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>profile</span></a><span> mentioned tension between Fetterman and his wife, Gisele, a formerly undocumented immigrant from Brazil, over his turn </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/18/john-fetterman-democrat-trump-progressive" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>toward Trump</span></a><span> and his vehement support for Israel—and it’s conceivable that Fetterman chooses to resign, citing health or family reasons.</span></p><p><span>A replacement senator appointed by Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro would result in a more solid Democratic vote and hurt Republican chances to retake the Pennsylvania Senate seat in 2028. Whatever the reason for the sudden show of support, Republicans probably have an ulterior motive. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195091/republicans-support-john-fetterman</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195091</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[John Fetterman]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pennsylvania]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 19:11:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/526a7c5c98117f4dc9c64877fef3711722a577e1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/526a7c5c98117f4dc9c64877fef3711722a577e1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Karoline Leavitt Snaps When Asked About Trump Profiting Off Presidency]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The White House doesn’t want you looking too closely at Donald Trump’s business deals in the Middle East.</p><p><span>On Wednesday, the president said that he was considering renaming the Persian Gulf (which is thousands of miles away from U.S. shores) the “</span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194954/donald-trump-rename-persian-gulf-arabia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Arabian Gulf</a><span>,” just days after his family announced billions of dollars in forthcoming real estate deals in the region. (As a side note, Iran has warned of “</span><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/05/07/iran-warns-trump-renaming-persian-gulf-will-bring-the-wrath-of-all-iranians/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrath</a><span>” for Trump’s geopolitical meddling.)</span></p><p><span>But on Friday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt tried to brush that under the rug, scolding the press for questioning whether Trump had something personal to gain out of the pitch or his upcoming trip to the Middle East. Instead, she implored Americans to believe that Trump—a renowned crook and court-determined fraudster—is completely selfless in his pursuit of power.</span></p><p><span>“I think it’s frankly ridiculous that anyone in this room would even suggest that President Trump is doing anything for his own benefit,” Leavitt said. “He left a life of luxury and a life of running a very successful real estate empire for public service, not just once but twice.”</span></p><p><span>“The American public reelected him back to this White House because they trust he acts in the best interests of this country and putting the American public first,” Leavitt continued. “This is a president who has actually lost money for being president.”</span></p><p><span>But that’s a lie. The Trump family has made </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/195068/trump-family-corruption-crypto-memecoin-richer" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">plenty of money</a><span> thanks to Trump’s return to power. Scott Galloway, an NYU Business School professor and </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/style/scott-galloway.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">podcaster</a><span>, told MSNBC Thursday that within the first three months of Trump’s second term, his family had become “$3 billion wealthier.” </span><a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/03/31/how-truth-social-and-crypto-helped-donald-trump-double-his-fortune-in-just-one-year/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Forbes</i></a><span> estimated in March that, in the preceding 12 months, Trump had effectively doubled his fortune, bringing it from $2.3 billion to $5.1 billion.</span></p><p><span>“So that’s a billion dollars a month,” Galloway said, describing the current administration as a “kleptocracy that would make Putin blush.”</span></p><p><span>The Trump family’s Middle East real estate plans include a Trump-branded golf course in Qatar (as part of a $5.5 billion development project), a $1 billion Trump hotel and residence in Dubai, and a $2 billion cryptocurrency investment by an Abu Dhabi firm in one of Trump’s cryptocurrency projects, the World Liberty Financial Coin. </span></p><p><span>The family also revealed in December that they would be expanding their presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing </span><a href="https://x.com/EricTrump/status/1866831899131617513" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Trump Tower Jeddah</a><span>. The price tag for the building has not been made public, but one of the developers on the project, Dar Global, compared it to another $530 million Trump Tower in the city, reported </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-organization-plans-second-saudi-arabian-tower-regional-expansion-2024-12-12/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Reuters</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>The Trumps have held deep financial ties to the region for years. After Trump’s first term, Saudi Arabia invested $2 billion in a firm belonging to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.</span></p><p><span>Trump is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia next week, where it’s anticipated that he’ll make the “Arabian Gulf” rumor official, according to two officials who spoke with the </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-persian-gulf-saudi-arabia-ce30874c27bc01426d93ad3c65a18844" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Associated Press</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>As a reminder, it’s actually </span><a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C8-3/ALDE_00013206/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">unconstitutional</a><span> for presidents to profit from or receive compensation from foreign governments. The White House has contested that the deals are not a conflict of interest since the president’s assets are managed by his eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. But Trump’s pockets will undoubtedly be lined by the deal—even if he has to wait a handful of years before he’s out of office to see the cashflow. In the meantime, he’ll receive myriad personal benefits from his relationships in the Middle East for arranging the deal.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195088/karoline-leavitt-snaps-donald-trump-profiting-off-presidency</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195088</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Press Secretary]]></category><category><![CDATA[White House]]></category><category><![CDATA[Money]]></category><category><![CDATA[Money in Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrency]]></category><category><![CDATA[Business]]></category><category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 18:25:44 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b2d07e0f18a5e8fcc2adf22b3a7aeca3bd11ee95.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b2d07e0f18a5e8fcc2adf22b3a7aeca3bd11ee95.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Has Total Meltdown After MSNBC Exposes Tariffs Disaster]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>A two-minute-long </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1920878476837449764" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>takedown</span></a><span> of his trade policies on MSNBC sent the president into a rage on Friday.</span></p><p><span>“Donald Trump is backed into a corner,” said MSNBC business host Stephanie Ruhle. “His grand plans of ‘tariffs, tariffs, tariffs,’ aren’t working. You’re seeing day in and day out more business leaders—whether it’s Warren Buffett, or Jamie Dimon, or Ken Griffin—on big global stages saying, ‘This is going to crush us economically.’ And then you’ve got congressmen, senators from every state, saying to this White House, ‘Our small businesses are strangling, are dying here.’ I’m not saying Donald Trump has changed what he thinks in his heart, but he’s backed into a corner and he needs to get off this crazy tariff train, and he knows it.”</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">"Unless he turns this around, three weeks from now, you walk into a store and we're going to have a covid-like supply chain crisis, and Trump is looking for an exit" -- here's the <a href="https://twitter.com/SRuhle?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">@SRuhle</a> commentary that triggered a Trump Truth Social meltdown <a href="https://t.co/hzmP9uGTqu" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pic.twitter.com/hzmP9uGTqu</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1920878476837449764?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">May 9, 2025</a></blockquote><p><span>“So what did we see with England.… You’ve got a P.M. there who is a close ally of Donald Trump, and they’re saying, ‘Let’s put on a show, let’s create a theater, and let’s say we’ve got a deal.’ Yes, there aren’t any details to it, there is still a 10 percent tariff, which is why Jay Powell is not cutting rates, cuz 10 percent is more than triple what it was, so it’s still going to be painful, especially for small business,” Ruhle continued. “But what’s most important is the language around China. A week ago, China was like, ‘We’re not showing up unless you lower the tariffs,’ and [they] didn’t. Forty-eight hours ago Donald Trump said, ‘We’re not gonna lower the tariffs.’ Yesterday he said, ‘Yeah, maybe.’ And today things are softening even more.… Donald Trump is looking for some sort of exit here.”</span></p><p><span>“Look at the cargo ships coming into Seattle, the Port of Los Angeles; pick the port. We’re getting fewer and fewer ships with less and less cargo. And unless he turns this around, three weeks from now you walk into a store and we’re going to have a Covid-like supply chain crisis, and Trump is looking for an exit.”</span></p><p><span>Ruhle brilliantly exposed the president’s waffling on tariffs, introducing them with strongman language and massive guarantees while the reality is far more uncompelling. He introduced a trade deal with the U.K. on Thursday that </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/195005/trump-admits-no-trade-deal-uk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wasn’t even finished</span></a><span>. By Friday, he walked back his tariffs on China before even negotiating, announcing a steep </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/195049/trump-china-concession-tariffs-talks-trade-deal" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>65 percent drop</span></a><span> in tariffs is on the table (making it a still outrageous rate of 80 percent tariffs on the country).</span></p><p><span>Ruhle’s analysis clearly bothered the president, who took to Truth Social to express his disgust.</span></p><p><span>“I just watched an exhausted, highly neurotic Stephanie Ruhle spew LIES about Tariffs, as do many others, in order not to give me the Victory that they all see coming. Few people know Stephanie Ruhle, but I do, and she doesn’t have what it takes,” he </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114478780390671313" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span>, personally attacking the MSNBC host. “Our Deal with the United Kingdom yesterday was AMAZING for both Countries and, in addition to everything else, British Airways just ordered $10 Billion Dollars worth of new Boeing planes. We’re going to make a fortune with Tariffs, only smart people understand that, and Stephanie was never known as a ‘High IQ’ person. MSDNC has become the Voice of the Democrat Party, and they should be treated as a Political Advocate with all of the Taxes and Penalties therefrom. Their Ratings are terrible, but Brian Roberts and his crew should be forced to TELL THE TRUTH. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”</span></p><p><span>Trump chooses not to engage with any of Ruhle’s arguments, instead choosing to focus on her demeanor and her workplace. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195085/trump-meltdown-msnbc-segment-tariffs</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195085</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[China]]></category><category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[MSNBC]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stephanie Ruhle]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 18:14:34 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/73222111791559da423d7121fa1a8952171cc4f9.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/73222111791559da423d7121fa1a8952171cc4f9.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Columbia Just Suspended Four Student Journalists]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Columbia University’s crackdown on free speech just got even worse: The school tried to suspend four student journalists who covered a pro-Palestinian protest at Butler Library this week, according to<i> <a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/05/09/barnard-suspends-wkcr-and-spectator-reporters-who-covered-butler-library-protest/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Columbia Spectator</a>. </i></p><p>Columbia College and Barnard College issued interim suspensions to one reporter at the <i>Spectator</i> and three student journalists at WKCR, the student-run radio station that has provided consistent on-the-ground coverage of the student demonstrations at the university—including the massive raid by police at the Gaza solidarity protest in Hamilton Hall last year.</p><p>Disciplinary emails obtained by the <i>Spectator</i> cited “information received” from Public Safety, which indicated that Sawyer Huckabee (class of 2026), Natalie Lahr (class of 2028), Celeste Gamble (class of 2027), and <i>Spectator</i> reporter Luisa Sukkar (class of 2026) had been involved in the demonstration in the Lawrence A. Wien Reading Room at Butler Library Wednesday afternoon. However, the student journalists at WCKR wore prominently displayed press placards and Huckabee identified herself as a journalist to public safety officers before leaving the building, the <i>Spectator</i> reported. </p><p><span>New York City Police were dispatched to the university, and </span><a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2025/05/08/nypd-confirms-78-arrests-at-butler-library-protest-all-released-from-custody/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">78 students</a><span> were arrested.</span></p><p><span>Columbia lifted its suspension on one reporter only five hours after its initial notification Thursday afternoon, but the other three students remained suspended until Friday at 9 a.m. </span></p><p><span>In an email to alumni Wednesday, Acting President Claire Shipman touted a commitment to free speech while admitting that the university had called the police on its own students. Shipman also made the disturbing move of blaming the protesters for the targeting of its international students.</span></p><p><span>“I am deeply disturbed at the idea that, at a moment when our international community feels particularly vulnerable, a small group of students would choose to make our institution a target,” Shipman wrote. </span></p><p><span>But it’s the institution, not the students, that has refused to shield its own community from the Trump administration’s immigration and free speech crackdown. After Donald Trump rescinded $400 million in federal funding, the university administration </span><a href="https://president.columbia.edu/sites/default/files/content/03.21.2025%20Columbia%20-%20FINAL.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">agreed</a><span> to the president’s outrageous demands for a complete overhaul of the school’s protest policies, as well as the adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, among several other concessions that severely undermined academic independence from the federal government. </span></p><p><span>Secretary of State Marco Rubio </span><a href="https://x.com/SecRubio/status/1920293818194178397" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> in a post on X Wednesday night that the administration was “reviewing the visa status of the trespassers and vandals who took over Columbia University’s library.” </span></p><p><span>“Pro-Hamas thugs are no longer welcome in our great nation,” he added. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195081/columbia-student-journalists-pro-palestine-protest</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195081</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[First Amendment]]></category><category><![CDATA[Freedom of Speech]]></category><category><![CDATA[Freedom of the Press]]></category><category><![CDATA[Free Press]]></category><category><![CDATA[Protests]]></category><category><![CDATA[Columbia University]]></category><category><![CDATA[Students]]></category><category><![CDATA[student protest]]></category><category><![CDATA[campus protests]]></category><category><![CDATA[Journalism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Journalists]]></category><category><![CDATA[journalist]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category><category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel-Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 18:07:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/2b8979166591a467bc5d72b995bb9cfc09d9c271.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/2b8979166591a467bc5d72b995bb9cfc09d9c271.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Lokman Vural Elibol/Anadolu/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Gives Failed Pro-Nazi D.C. Attorney Pick Another Powerful Job ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as permanent U.S. attorney for Washington will soon start walking in a different direction.</p><p><span>Ed Martin has served as acting U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., since Trump’s inauguration. But </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194960/maga-republican-senator-tillis-trump-nominee-ed-martin" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">mounting pressure</a><span> from Senate Republicans, who seemed increasingly unlikely to advance Martin’s nomination to keep the job, forced the White House to look elsewhere.</span></p><p><span>Martin, a conservative political operative from Missouri who garnered national attention for his staunch support of January 6 rioters, had used his time at the U.S. attorney’s office to help Trump transform the key prosecutor’s chair into a tool for the president’s political retribution. He threatened to investigate some of Trump’s purported enemies, including Democratic lawmakers, universities and schools, and critics of tech billionaire Elon Musk. But on Thursday, Martin found out that his time at the office was coming to an end.</span></p><p><span>Instead, he’d be the recipient of an entirely different title.</span></p><p><span>“Ed Martin has done an AMAZING job as interim U.S. Attorney, and will be moving to the Department of Justice as the new Director of the Weaponization Working Group, Associate Deputy Attorney General, and Pardon Attorney,” Trump wrote on </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114474760680232575" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Truth Social</a><span> Thursday evening. “In these highly important roles, Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims. Congratulations Ed!”</span></p><p><span>In Martin’s place, Trump tapped ex–Fox News host Jeanine Pirro. The former prosecutor has been one of Trump’s most ardent defenders at a network that already has an apparent soft spot for him. In </span><a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/630052456/Fox-Dominion-lawsuit-Exhibits-401-500?secret_password=xx5huh8xX15sfsEFB3cr#page=179" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">internal emails</a><span> made public by the conservative media behemoth’s lawsuit with Dominion Voting Systems, Pirro’s former executive producer once described the election conspiracist’s beliefs as “completely crazy.” Pirro has not held a law enforcement job in roughly two decades.</span></p><p><span>But the tap-and-replace strategy may have an underlying motive.</span></p><p><span>“By replacing one interim U.S. attorney with another, the Trump administration appears to be trying a legal tactic that could essentially eliminate any need to submit U.S. attorney picks to the Senate for confirmation,” assessed </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/08/us/politics/jeanine-pirro-us-attorney-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The New York Times</i></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Martin isn’t the only member of Trumpverse to receive a cozy new assignment. After he publicized massive national security risks in the Trump administration’s communication channels by accidentally inviting a journalist to a Signal group chat, former national security adviser </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194681/donald-trump-mike-waltz-signalgate-war-plans-group-chat" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mike Waltz</a><span> was “promoted” to the role of U.N. ambassador.</span></p><p><span>Trump was reportedly sensitive to the idea of ousting Waltz, believing that doing so would be interpreted as a bend to public pressure. One source familiar with the situation at the National Security Council told </span><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mike-waltz-alex-wong/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">CBS News</a><span> last week that the president believed enough time had passed that the administration could reasonably reframe Waltz’s departure as part of a larger “reorganization.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195079/donald-trump-pro-nazi-nominee-ed-martin-another-federal-job</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195079</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Nominations]]></category><category><![CDATA[U.S. attorney]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington D.c.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ed Martin]]></category><category><![CDATA[Nazis]]></category><category><![CDATA[neo-Nazism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jeanine Pirro]]></category><category><![CDATA[Justice Department]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 17:34:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f8190e716a85829861feba8e66079649bb82377e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f8190e716a85829861feba8e66079649bb82377e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Valerie Plesch//The Washington Post/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Judge Frees Tufts Student Arrested for Op-Ed in Huge Loss for Trump]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>A federal judge ruled Friday that Tufts University doctoral student <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193321/democrats-letter-ice-international-students" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Rümeysa Öztürk</a> must be released from detention “<a href="https://x.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1920890689711218692" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">immediately</a>.” </p><p><span>U.S. District Judge William Sessions ruled that Öztürk, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over an </span><a href="https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">op-ed</a><span> she wrote advocating for the school to make good on student resolutions to acknowledge the genocide in Gaza and to divest from Israel, had made “</span><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/cristianfarias.com/post/3loqwjnwefs26" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">substantial claims</a><span>” that her constitutional rights had been violated. </span></p><p><span>“That literally is the case. There is no evidence here as to the motivation absent the consideration of the op-ed,” Sessions said, independent journalist Adam Klasfield </span><a href="https://x.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1920887777089982905" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a><span> on X. Sessions said that there was no evidence that </span><span>Öztürk</span><span> had engaged in violent acts or advocated for violence.</span></p><p><span>“Her continued detention chills the speech of the millions and millions of people who are not citizens,” Sessions </span><a href="https://x.com/KlasfeldReports/status/1920890505501495741" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">added</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Öztürk</span><span> was arrested in March, even after the State Department had </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/04/13/tufts-student-rumeysa-ozturk-rubio-trump/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">determined</a><span> that the Trump administration had no evidence linking her to antisemitic activity. After her </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193212/ice-arrest-abduct-tufts-university-student-video" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">shocking abduction</a><span> on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts, by masked federal agents, she was moved to an immigration facility in Basile, Louisiana, where she attended the bail hearing remotely. </span></p><p><span>Öztürk’s</span><span> lawyers argued that their client, who suffers from asthma, faced “significant health risks” staying in the facility, and asked Sessions to grant her bail immediately, according to </span><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rumeysa-ozturk-bail-hearing-tufts-student/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">CBS News</a><span>. </span><span>Öztürk</span><span> is now free to travel back to Massachusetts and Vermont.</span></p><p><span>The judge’s ruling represents a huge defeat for the Trump administration, which has sought to crack down on pro-Palestinian speech by targeting international students for deportation, alleging that they had engaged in vague “antisemitic activities.” The students targeted by these efforts have committed no crime.</span></p><p><span>Last month, a federal judge </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194641/judge-warning-freed-pro-palestine-protester-mohsen-mahdawi" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ordered</a><span> the release of Mohsen Mahdawi, a graduate student at Columbia University who had been arrested at his citizenship interview. Mahdawi, who was involved in pro-Palestinian organizing on campus, explicitly </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194008/donald-trump-antisemitism-ice-arrest-mohsen-mahdawi" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">denounced antisemitism</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Green card holder </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/judge-demands-trump-officials-detail-legal-grounds-deporting-palestinian-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mahmoud Khalil</a><span>, who missed the birth of his child while being detained in Louisiana, and Georgetown scholar </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192988/trump-administration-war-academia-escalating" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Badar Khan Suri</a><span>, who is now held in a Texas detention center, still remain in custody.</span></p><p><span><i>This story has been updated.</i></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195084/donald-trump-palestine-judge-frees-tufts-student</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195084</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel-Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category><category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Rumeysa Ozturk]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tufts University]]></category><category><![CDATA[judge]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><category><![CDATA[free speech]]></category><category><![CDATA[Freedom of Speech]]></category><category><![CDATA[First Amendment]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 17:26:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/6f5b30075054941abb8711db728e894c5d4439c0.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/6f5b30075054941abb8711db728e894c5d4439c0.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Jared Kushner Is Back—Just Before Trump’s Middle East Trip]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Jared Kushner is back to advising Donald Trump, ahead of the president’s trip to the Middle East.</span></p><p><span>Kushner is reportedly advising administration officials in negotiations with Arab leaders, CNN </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/09/politics/jared-kushner-trump-middle-east-trip" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reports</span></a><span>, citing sources in the White House and people close to the president’s son-in-law. While Kushner isn’t expected to travel with Trump, he has been talking to foreign leaders, including Saudi Arabia’s, about normalizing relations with Israel.</span></p><p><span>While Trump’s stated priority for the trip is to make trade deals with Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, Kushner and others in the White House are trying to use the trip to expand the Abraham Accords, which Kushner negotiated during Trump’s first term. The accords led to the normalization of relations between Israel and several Arab countries, including Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco, and Sudan.</span></p><p><span>Kushner has specifically been advising Trump officials on how to approach Saudi Arabia regarding normalizing relations with Israel, with the administration hoping for progress on that front. They don’t expect a deal to come from the trip, though.</span></p><p><span>“We fully expect other countries to sign (agreements) first before Saudi,” a senior Trump administration official </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/09/politics/jared-kushner-trump-middle-east-trip" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>told CNN</span></a><span>, adding that there are discussions with a “wide range of countries.”</span></p><p><span>“When it comes to the Middle East, Jared is an expert,” another administration official said. “He knows all the players and is one of the few people who has the ear of the Arab leaders, as well as the Israelis.”</span></p><p><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/189278/trump-tower-corruption-business-saudi-arabia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Like</span></a><span> his </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194722/trump-corruption-2-billion-crypto-deal-uae" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>father-in-law,</span></a><span> Kushner has extensive business dealings in the Middle East, raising ethical concerns. He is pocketing billions from Saudi Arabia and reportedly speaking with the country’s </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/186788/jared-kushner-saudi-arabia-mbs-israel" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>crown prince</span></a><span> every week. Also </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191994/trump-ai-video-whats-next-gaza" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>like Trump</span></a><span>, Kushner has </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/179947/jared-kushner-palestinians-gaza-real-estate-opportunity-waterfront" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>praised</span></a><span> Gaza’s waterfront beachfront property as “very valuable,” a troubling sign given Israel’s vote this week to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194869/israel-take-over-gaza-trump-visit" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>occupy</span></a><span> the territory.</span></p><p><span>It’s anyone’s guess as to what Kushner’s actual agenda is in advising the Trump administration. It could be to line his own pockets or to further a real estate development project in Gaza. Either way, it presents a host of ethical issues. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195078/jared-kushner-advise-trump-middle-east-trip</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195078</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jared Kushner]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category><category><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category><category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel-Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Qatar]]></category><category><![CDATA[United Arab Emirates]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 16:45:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/8387942e089b589ecaa87b9a9ecaaa82a3fe957e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/8387942e089b589ecaa87b9a9ecaaa82a3fe957e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Jared Kushner and Donald Trump in 2020</media:description><media:credit>Drew Angerer/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cognitive Decline? Try to Decipher Trump’s Rant on Taxing the Rich]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The messages Donald Trump is sending about a proposal to increase taxes on the wealthiest Americans aren’t just mixed; they’re actually inscrutable. </p><p><span>In a </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114477701321152097" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">post</a><span> on Truth Social Friday, the president appeared torn about whether he planned to actually follow through on his proposal to hike taxes on the superrich. </span></p><p><span>“The problem with even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming, ‘Read my lips,’ the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!” Trump wrote. </span></p><p><span>Trump was referring to President George H.W. Bush’s famous campaign promise, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” Ultimately, Bush left income tax alone but </span><a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,959176,00.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">raised</a><span> other levies on oil and chemicals, increased fees on international travel, and moved up the collection dates for certain taxes. Trump seemed unwilling to break his campaign promises to lower taxes for Americans.</span></p><p><span>But it was Trump who reportedly pitched House Speaker Mike Johnson Wednesday on creating a new 39.6 percent tax bracket for individuals earning at least $2.5 million, or couples making $5 million, people familiar with the discussions told </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-05-08/trump-seeks-tax-hike-on-wealthy-who-earn-2-5-million-or-more" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bloomberg</a><span>. Trump has been adamant that his sweeping reciprocal tariffs will replace the federal funding lost by eliminating the income tax. </span></p><p>Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Bloomberg Television’s <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-05-08/lutnick-says-uk-trade-deal-shows-tariff-framework-video" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Balance of Power</i></a><i> <br></i>Thursday that higher taxes for the rich could help offset other tax cuts.</p><p><span>During his first term, Trump slashed rates “from 39.6 to 37. So, if he just goes back to what he did last time, I’m in favor of that,” Lutnick </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-05-08/lutnick-says-uk-trade-deal-shows-tariff-framework-video" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span>. “I think it’s smart, as long as it is a redistribution to his priorities of no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195073/donald-trump-rant-taxing-rich</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195073</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Taxes]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tax Reform]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tax Cuts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Wealth]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cognitive]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[mental health]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 16:11:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/123d0dc5afd5a306740b580acdbd0272882807c6.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/123d0dc5afd5a306740b580acdbd0272882807c6.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Manufacturers Say Trump Has Made Opening U.S. Factories Impossible]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The Trump administration’s tariff scheme appears less and less likely to bring manufacturing jobs back to U.S. shores.</p><p><span>Businesses across the country are crunching the numbers and realizing that, despite Donald Trump’s insistence, they can’t balance out his tariff hikes across the supply chain.</span></p><p><span>“Some manufacturers who had plans to open factories in the country say the new duties are only adding to the significant obstacles they already faced,” </span><a href="https://t.co/MeGbeaPFNe" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bloomberg</a><span> reported Friday. </span></p><p><span>That’s because the supply chain to produce those goods in the United States simply isn’t there, requiring companies to import raw materials and factory equipment—which Trump’s tariffs have made unaffordable—from abroad.</span></p><p><span>And Trump’s unpredictable approach to announcing and enacting or even retracting his tariffs has added confusion and significant volatility to the market, making businesses less likely to invest in large, long-term projects such as factory development. </span></p><p><span>Nora Orozco, the owner of footwear company Evolutions Brands, wants to open a Texas factory that would create 200 jobs. But the nitty-gritty of Trump’s so-called “</span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/05/icymi-trumps-tariffs-are-lifting-some-u-s-manufacturers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">manufacturing renaissance</a><span>” just doesn’t work, according to the small-business owner.</span></p><p><span>“I like the idea of onshoring, but this makes it impossible for us,” Orozco told Bloomberg.</span></p><p><span>Reinvigorating American manufacturing has been a tall order for both political parties since the country offshored and automated the bulk of those jobs decades ago. But 2022 did see a spike in job announcements for reshored manufacturing gigs, according to the </span><a href="https://reshorenow.org/content/pdf/2022_Data_Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Reshoring Initiative</a><span>, a U.S. manufacturing advocacy nonprofit. </span></p><p><span>That was thanks to President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which passed with zero Republican support at the time, and his CHIPS and Science Act. Biden’s landmark legislative victory is currently on the chopping block as conservative lawmakers look to make room in the federal budget for an extension to Trump’s tax plan.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195070/donald-trump-tariffs-manufacturers-opening-factories</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195070</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Company Investment]]></category><category><![CDATA[Manufacturing]]></category><category><![CDATA[Factories]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jobs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Job Creation]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 16:03:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ff0fffcd237f85585bf494f7a627e9935841d75a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ff0fffcd237f85585bf494f7a627e9935841d75a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Decides to Punish Rural America With Slower Internet]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Trump thinks providing poor and rural Americans with high-speed internet is “racist” and “woke.”&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>The president has decided to end the Digital Equity Act, Biden-era legislation that aims to expand high-speed internet across the country.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“I have spoken with my wonderful Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, and we agree that the Biden/Harris so-called ‘Digital Equity Act’ is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL,” Trump </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114474136573150113" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on Truth Social Thursday. “No more woke handouts based on race! The Digital Equity Program is a RACIST and ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway. I am ending this IMMEDIATELY, and saving Taxpayers BILLIONS OF DOLLARS!”</span></p><p><span>The Act does not explicitly mention race. All it says is that people can’t be blocked from using the Act “on the basis of actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability.”&nbsp; This language is straight from the Civil Rights Act of 1964.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>The law provided many red states with grants to create and implement plans to make internet access more accessible. These plans have already been approved in conservative states like </span><a href="https://www.in.gov/indianabroadband/files/Indiana-DE-Plan.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Indiana</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://adeca.alabama.gov/wp-content/uploads/Alabama-Statewide-Digital-Opportunity-Plan.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Alabama</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://broadband.arkansas.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Arkansas-Digital-Skills-and-Opportunity-Plan-Final.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Arkansas</span></a><span>, </span><a href="https://dom.iowa.gov/media/517/download?inline" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Iowa</span></a><span>, and </span><a href="https://www.kansascommerce.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/DE-PLAN-FINAL.wo-appdx.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Kansas</span></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Internet access is a massive barrier to education, opportunity, and upward mobility. This legislation attempted to remedy that for people everywhere, especially in regions that went heavily for Trump. How is that a racist, woke handout?</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195075/trump-high-speed-internet-program-racist</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195075</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Internet]]></category><category><![CDATA[Black Americans]]></category><category><![CDATA[African-Americans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 15:49:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/223ca16f2404cb4c9c0333a5baa7a7ed127127a3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/223ca16f2404cb4c9c0333a5baa7a7ed127127a3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Win McNamee/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[You Won’t Believe How Much Richer the Trumps Have Gotten This Year]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Nicolle Wallace had Scott Galloway on her MSNBC show Thursday. She began by asking him what he makes of this moment in which we find ourselves. Galloway, a </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/02/style/scott-galloway.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">business professor and popular podcaster</a><span>, could have zigged in any number of directions with that open-ended question, so I was interested to see the direction he settled on: “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”</span></p><p>Stop and think about that. A presidency lasts, of course, 48 months (at most, we hope). Trump has been enriching himself at an unprecedented scale since day one of his second term—actually, since just before, given that he announced the $Trump meme coin a few days before swearing to protect and defend the Constitution. </p><p>And now, we know that he’s <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194420/trump-memecoin-dinner-corrupt-president" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">having a dinner at Mar-a-Lago</a> in two weeks for his top $Trump investors, whose identities we may never know. How might these people influence his decisions? This whole arrangement is blatantly corrupt. And <i>The New York Times</i> had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/us/politics/eric-donald-jr-trump-family-deals.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a terrific report</a> this week about Don Jr. and Eric going around the world (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) making deals from which their father will profit. </p><p>I read these stories, as I’m sure you do, and I think to myself: How on earth is he getting away with this? It’s the right question, but we usually concentrate on the wrong answer.</p><p>For most people, they think first of the Democrats, because they’re the opposition, and by the traditions of our system they’re the ones who are supposed to stop this, or at least raise hell about it. Second, we might think about congressional Republicans, who, if they were actually upholding their own oaths to the Constitution, would be expressing alarm about this.</p><p>They both shoulder some blame, but neither of those is really the answer. Every time I ask myself how he gets away with this, I remember: Oh, right. It’s the right-wing media. Duh.</p><p>After the election, I <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/188197/trump-media-information-landscape-fox" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote a column</a> that went viral about how the right-wing media made Trump’s election possible. Fox News, most conspicuously, but also Newsmax, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/195042/trump-maga-propaganda-voice-america-kari-lake-one-america-news" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">One America News Network</a>, Sinclair, and the rest, along with the swarm of right-wing podcasters and TikTokers, created a media environment in which Trump could do no wrong and Kamala Harris no right. </p><p>Think back—I know you’ve repressed it—to that horror-clown-show Madison Square Garden rally Trump held the week before the election. It was, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/27/us/trump-msg-rally.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the <i>Times</i> put it</a>, a “carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.” A generation or two ago, that would have finished off his campaign. Last year? It made no difference. No—it <i>helped</i>. And it helped because a vast propaganda network—armed with press passes and First Amendment protections—spent a week gabbing about how cool and manly it was.</p><p>Newsflash: They’re still at it.</p><p>First of all, Fox News is basically the megaphone of the Trump administration. In Trump’s first 100 days in office, key administration officials, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/key-trump-officials-appeared-more-500-times-fox-networks-first-100-days-his-presidency" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reports Media Matters for America</a>, appeared on Fox 536 times. That, obviously, is 5.36 times per day; in other words, assuming that a cable news “day” runs from 6 a.m. to midnight, that’s one administration official about every three hours. I’ve seen occasional clips where the odd host challenges them on this point or that, but in essence, this is a propaganda parade. </p><p>I tried to do some googling to see how Fox is covering the meme coin scandal. Admitting that Google doesn’t catch everything, the answer seems to be that it’s not. On the network’s website, there was a bland January 18 article reporting that he’d launched it; an actually interesting January 22 piece summarizing a critical column by <i>The Washington Post</i>’s Catherine Rampell, who <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-columnist-suggests-trump-may-use-crypto-token-take-foreign-bribes" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">charged</a> that it was an invitation to bribery; and finally, an April 24 <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/trumps-meme-coin-soars-president-offers-dinner-top-holders" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a> that the coin surged in value after Trump announced the upcoming dinner—“critics” were given two paragraphs, deep in the article. (Interesting side note: Predictably, other figures on the far right have aped Trump by <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/far-right-media-figures-are-launching-their-own-crypto-coins" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">launching their own coins</a>, among them former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.)</p><p>But it’s not just Fox, and it’s not just on corruption. It’s all of them, and it’s on everything. You think any of them are mentioning Trump’s campaign promise to bring prices down on day one, or pointing out that all “persons” in the United States have a right to due process? Or criticizing his shambolic tariffs policies? I’m not saying there’s never criticism. There is. But the thrust of the coverage is protective and defensive: “Expert Failure &amp; the Trump Boom” was the theme of <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/donald-trump/far-right-media-figures-are-launching-their-own-crypto-coins" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">one recent</a> Laura Ingraham segment.</p><p>So sure, blame Democrats to some extent. A number of them are increasingly trying to bring attention to the corruption story, but there’s always more they could be doing. (By the way, new DNC Chair Ken Martin <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/dncs-peoples-cabinet-idea-real-potential-rcna200027" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced the creation</a> one month ago of a new “People’s Cabinet” to push back hard against Trump. Anybody heard of it since?) </p><p>And of course, blame congressional Republicans. Their constitutional, ethical, and moral failures are beyond the pale, and they’re all cowards.</p><p>But neither of those groups is the reason Trump can throw a meme coin party and nothing happens; can send legal U.S. residents to brutal El Salvador prisons; can detain students for weeks because they wrote one pro-Palestinian op-ed; can shake down universities and law firms; can roil the markets with his idiotic about-faces on tariffs; can whine that bringing down prices is harder than he thought; can empower his largest donor, the richest man in the world, to take a meat-ax to the bureaucracy in a way that makes no sense to anyone, and so much more. </p><p>It’s all because Trump and his team operate within the protective cocoon of a media-disinformation environment that allows just enough criticism to retain “credibility” but essentially functions as a Ministry of Truth for the administration that would have shocked Orwell himself. </p><p>And just remember—a billion dollars a month. </p><p><i>This article first appeared in Fighting Words, a weekly TNR newsletter authored by editor Michael Tomasky. </i><a href="https://newrepublic.com/?blinkaction=newsletter!fighting_words" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span class="s2"><i>Sign up here</i></span></a><i>.</i><br></p><div><br></div></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195068/trump-family-corruption-crypto-memecoin-richer</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195068</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category><category><![CDATA[FOX News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[Business]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrency]]></category><category><![CDATA[Fighting Words]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Michael Tomasky]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 15:08:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/8f8e790b66e264e53d4f09ea266177f1dc34efcd.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/8f8e790b66e264e53d4f09ea266177f1dc34efcd.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Kamala Harris 2028? Hard Pass.
  5.  
  6. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Kamala Harris has emerged from her den, apparently refreshed. Last week, she delivered </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4vQMy0JJYc" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a winsome keynote</a><span> at a benefit gala in San Francisco, then made a </span><a href="https://www.vogue.com/article/kamala-harris-off-white-met-gala-2025" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">surprise appearance</a><span> at the Met Gala, the party of the year for New York City high society, and this week headlined a </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kamala-harris-headline-democratic-fundraiser-ramps-public-appearances/story?id=121521191" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">closed-door benefit</a><span> for the Democratic National Committee. She </span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/07/kamala-harris-california-governor-decision-deadline-00216737" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reportedly</a><span> will decide by the end of the summer whether to run for California governor.</span></p><p>It’s a lot of Kamala, and the sudden wave of public appearances—after a monthslong political hibernation following her November defeat to Donald Trump—has prompted discussions within the Democratic Party about her possible return as a presidential candidate in 2028. </p><p>Democrats are <a href="https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=617099331349732" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">“divided”</a> about it. There are many skeptics, but others are leaving the door open. “Time will tell,” Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5280304-kamala-harris-senate-democrats-2028-race/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told <i>The Hill</i> this week</a>. “Every election is different.” Others express doubt that there is a better candidate, or say she was unfairly disadvantaged by the brevity of the 2024 campaign and could succeed in a more conventional election cycle. </p><p>Please, no. </p><p>Living under a far-right authoritarian regime that is gutting every American institution that keeps people safe, alive, and connected to a thriving civilization, we have to keep asking ourselves how we got here—and how we can get out. And the most important factor in Donald Trump’s win was that Kamala Harris lost. </p><p>Trump has run for president three times, and Harris is the only person to have lost the popular vote to him. In 2024, he had no special magic; if anything, he was marred as a felon and a failed coup leader. A major part of the problem was Harris, who embodies the change-nothing politics of Hillary Clinton without the latter’s political savvy and the cautiousness of Joe Biden without his populist instincts.</p><p>Harris is not lacking in charisma. She has better fashion sense than most politicians (see again: <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/style/kamala-harris-met-gala-2025.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Met Gala</a>), a great smile, and can deliver a decent speech. But she embodies the stereotype of the out-of-touch political elite that Democrats should be rejecting. She’s in the news right now <i>precisely</i> because she attended fancy parties in New York and San Francisco. Her proximity to the Silicon Valley rich kept her from embracing even a Biden-level of populism and helped her lose the 2024 election. Her <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/08/01/kamala-harris-tony-west-president-campaign" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">brother-in-law, Tony West</a>, a lawyer with deep corporate connections, had considerable influence on her campaign, which emphasized <a href="https://www.axios.com/2024/08/01/kamala-harris-tony-west-president-campaign" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">“freedom”</a> rather than voters’ material well-being, wealth redistribution, and curbing oligarchic power. </p><p>This inattention to the working class was even a departure from Bidenism. One reason Harris lost was that she failed to embrace what was sometimes popular about her own administration: investing in American jobs (the CHIPS Act, among others), capitalist-friendly pro-climate policy (the Inflation Reduction Act and aggressive agency-level regulation of pollutants); making people’s lives better and more economically stable (child tax credits and countless pandemic-era measures). Harris didn’t talk much about any of that during the campaign. </p><p>Harris also failed to distance herself from what was unpopular about the Biden administration. The administration never took responsibility for inflation or put forth a convincing plan to curb high prices. Harris was part of that collective error. Even worse, she never distanced herself from Biden’s foreign policy, especially his indefensible enabling of the Israeli genocide in Gaza. (One postelection <a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/biden-voters-passed-kamala-harris-because-gaza-new-poll-shows" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">poll</a> showed that anger over Gaza may have contributed to many Biden 2020 voters’ decision to stay home in 2024.) </p><p>Perhaps worst of all, Harris has shown no real leadership during the second Trump administration, when the Democratic Party has been sorely in need of it. These recent speeches at high-dollar benefits are the first anyone has heard from her in a while. (In April she <a href="https://www.essence.com/news/money-career/leading-women-defined-summit-2025/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">attended</a> a summit on Black women leadership at a Ritz-Carlton in Orange County, California, and in March an <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/03/11/us-news/kamala-harris-mocked-over-bizarre-doritos-word-salad-during-ai-speech-three-wines-deep/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">AI conference</a> in Las Vegas.) Sure, it was heartening that, in her remarks at the Emerge gala, she praised the courage of figures like Representatives Maxwell Frost, Jasmine Crockett, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen—but why hasn’t she been among them?</p><p>The next party leader should not come from the social circles of the coastal superrich, especially not when there are others doing the important work of visibly talking to people in red states, like Bernie Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez; traveling to El Salvador to free the unjustly imprisoned, like Van Hollen and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/more-democratic-lawmakers-visit-el-salvador-to-see-abrego-garcia-wrongly-deported-by-trump-administration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">some members of Congress</a>; disrupting business as usual, like <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193422/cory-booker-anti-trump-senate-floor-speech" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Senator Cory Booker</a>; or simply refusing to go into hiding after a crushing election defeat, like Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, Harris’s wrongly sidelined veep candidate, who has been speaking out against Trumpism for months.</p><p>It may have been the right decision for the party to nominate Harris for 2024. She was the sitting vice president, and the Biden team was in such deep denial about his viability, and for so long, that a dramatic change of course seemed messy if not impossible, given the election calendar. And for a few weeks—remember “Brat Summer”?—many of us enjoyed her fashion sense and optimistic vibe, and hoped for the best. It seemed like maybe she could win.</p><p>Alas.</p><p>For the Democrats to even discuss Harris 2028 makes them look weak, like they’re out of ideas about how to counter Trumpism. They should buck up: Their bench is not that shallow! Many potential candidates are being <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5256736-2028-democratic-contenders-rankings/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">mentioned</a> already—<a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/5256736-2028-democratic-contenders-rankings/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this article</a> alone mentions 17—and it seems certain that many more will emerge in the coming year. </p><p>Republicans’ delight over Harris’s reemergence should tell us all we need to know. Fox News hosts were <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/democratic-senators-reportedly-wary-potential-kamala-harris-2028-presidential-run" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">visibly joyful</a> at the idea of Harris running for president again. “This is such great news,” said Trump adviser Jason Miller. “This is like Christmas in May.” Or as White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt <a href="https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14669275/karoline-leavitt-donald-trump-kamala-harris-dance.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>, beaming, “I think I speak for everyone at the White House: We encourage Kamala Harris to continue going out and speaking.”</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195065/kamala-harris-2028-president-hard-pass</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195065</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kamala Harris]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2020]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category><category><![CDATA[Bernie Sanders]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]]></category><category><![CDATA[Chris Van Hollen]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cory Booker]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2028]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Liza Featherstone]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 14:53:59 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/c046d0446a65bf99dd49031a05fd751b2f06a992.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/c046d0446a65bf99dd49031a05fd751b2f06a992.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Kamala Harris at the Emerge 20th Anniversary Gala in San Francisco on April 30</media:description><media:credit>CAMILLE COHEN/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[ICE Sparks Chaotic Fight After Trying to Arrest Mom Holding Her Baby]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers </span><a href="https://www.mediaite.com/news/watch-furious-residents-surround-ice-agents-trying-to-arrest-mom-clinging-to-baby/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>faced</span></a><span> a crowd of opposition while attempting to arrest a mother clinging to her baby on the streets of Worcester, Massachusetts, Thursday morning.</span></p><p><span>The brazen arrest, in which ICE agents were swarmed by close to 25 onlookers demanding a warrant and identification, was captured on video. Agents </span><a href="https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/harrowing-video-shows-worcester-police-hold-girls-face-on-ground-during-ice-operation/3708641/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>attempted</span></a><span> to control the crowd as they formed a “human ring” around the ICE vehicle holding the detained woman. Local police were called to the scene amid the chaos.</span></p><p><span>“The crowd was unruly,” police said in a statement. They claimed that some individuals “put their hands on federal agents and Worcester officers.”</span></p><p><span>The woman’s daughter, a 16-year-old, was left holding her baby sister and stood in front of the agents’ car at one point, trying to block it. She allegedly kicked the car after handing the baby to someone else, and now </span><a href="https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/05/08/two-arrested-after-neighbors-try-to-stop-ice-agents-from-detaining-worcester-mother/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>faces</span></a><span> four criminal charges, including reckless endangerment of a child, disturbing the peace, disorderly conduct, and resisting arrest.</span></p><p><span>Also </span><a href="https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/05/08/two-arrested-after-neighbors-try-to-stop-ice-agents-from-detaining-worcester-mother/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>arrested</span></a><span> was a Worcester School Committee candidate, Ashley Spring, who allegedly threw an unknown liquid substance on police officers and pushed them while they tried to arrest the 16-year-old.</span></p><p><span>Worcester City Councilor Etel Haxhiaj was among the residents who protested the arrest.</span></p><p><span>“As an elected official, it is my obligation to stand up for my constituents,” Haxhiaj said in a statement. “The way immigrants in Worcester and across the Commonwealth are being targeted and terrorized by this federal administration for deportation is absolutely unconstitutional.”</span></p><p><span>It’s only the latest brazen action from immigration agents attempting a deportation arrest. The Trump administration’s immigration officers have tried to </span><a href="https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2025/05/08/two-arrested-after-neighbors-try-to-stop-ice-agents-from-detaining-worcester-mother/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>detain</span></a><span> other immigrants in the street without warning, identification, or the production of a warrant. Last month, in another Massachusetts </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194117/ice-officers-smash-car-window-arrest-wrong-man" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>arrest</span></a><span>, ICE agents smashed a car window to detain an immigrant with no criminal record. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195061/ice-fight-arrest-mom-holding-baby</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195061</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[ICE]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Massachusetts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Children]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[justice]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 14:42:58 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a6a030cdf7200458d989000a01fe49236f1e9c25.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a6a030cdf7200458d989000a01fe49236f1e9c25.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Supposed U.K. Trade Deal Gets Trashed by Surprising Person]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Not even people on Donald Trump’s side think that his trade negotiations with the United Kingdom have gone well.</p><p><span>Conservative radio show host and far-right influencer Erick Erickson blasted the Trump administration’s deal with one its longest and strongest international allies Thursday, likening the minimum rate tariff to permanent taxes on the American people.</span></p><p><span>“It’s actually a pretty shitty deal with the UK,” </span><a href="https://x.com/EWErickson/status/1920502511586148667" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> Erickson on X. “First, they told us the 10 [percent] tariff was just a baseline for negotiations to get to free trade deals. Now we’re being told the 10 [percent] tariff is for keeps.</span></p><p><span>“That’s just a tax on the American people,” he noted.</span></p><p><span>The U.K. deal—</span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-u-s-uk-reach-historic-trade-deal/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced</a><span> Thursday—was the first handshake that Trump had secured since announcing his sweeping tariff plans last month. But even the two countries’ “special relationship” (per deceased British Prime Minister Winston Churchill) could not spare the U.K. from a seemingly permanent 10 percent baseline tariff.</span></p><p><span>“Under the deal, the U.K. can export 100,000 vehicles each year at a 10 percent rate, with any additional vehicles facing 25 percent duties. British steelmakers and the aluminum industry will be able to export tariff-free, down from the 25 percent rate that the U.S. imposed in February,” reported </span><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/09/trumps-deal-with-the-uk-sends-a-clear-message-10percent-tariffs-are-here-to-stay.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">NBC News</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>The 10 percent hike is just the tip of the iceberg, according to Trump, who called it a “low number” for future deals.</span></p><p><span>“They made a good deal,” he continued. “Some will be much higher because they have massive trade surpluses.”</span></p><p><span>Trump has argued that tariffs are the best solution to closing the country’s trade deficits, which he has incorrectly likened to taxpayer-backed “subsidies” for other nations. He has claimed that without tariffs, the U.S. is transferring wealth to other countries while receiving nothing in exchange. He has also pitched that hiking tariffs on other nations would bring jobs and manufacturing opportunities back to American shores, but economists don’t agree with either point. </span></p><p><span>Instead, droves of financial and economic experts have insisted that tariffs on other nations will only serve to harm America and its markets, making products more expensive stateside and making American consumers less likely to spend their money (something that Trump doesn’t seem to have any problem with, actually). The Harvard Kennedy Business School even </span><a href="https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty-research/policy-topics/public-finance/explainer-how-do-tariffs-work-and-how-will-they" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">floated</a><span> in April that America’s trade deficit basically doesn’t matter, writing that “Americans earn more from, or earn just about as much from, their total investments abroad as foreigners earn in the United States.” </span></p><p><span>“So if you look historically, we have felt no additional pressure about sustainability of our position,” the school wrote in an early stage tariff explainer. “As long as we borrow the money and use it productively to increase investment in the United States, it is eminently sustainable, as with any investment.”</span></p><p><span>The president’s tariff shenanigans have not boded well for his popularity. The </span><a href="https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/survey-research/cpr-polltracker/inside-trump-slump-young-latino-independent-voters" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Cook Political Report</a><span> observed Wednesday that Trump’s net job approval rating had plummeted since just April 15, dropping by seven points from -3.9 percent to -10.7 percent. </span></p><p><span>An </span><a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/americans-have-negative-economic-outlook-even-many-feel-their-personal-economic-situation-hasnt" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ABC News/<i>Washington Post</i>/Ipsos poll</a><span> published last month found that Trump’s approval rating had sunk to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.</span></p><p><span>And an April </span><a href="https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence/press/CCI-Apr-2025" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a><span> by the Conference Board found that its consumer confidence index had fallen by 7.9 points, bringing overall U.S. consumer confidence to 86 points. Consumer futures were brought to a 13-year low, with outlooks on the economy dropping by 12.5 points to 54.5 points—well below the threshold of 80 that “usually signals a recession ahead,” according to the Conference Board.</span></p><p><span>The root cause of the instability was “high financial market volatility in April” that hit American consumers’ stock portfolios and retirement savings hard and fast, per the Conference Board’s report. That was almost singularly due to Trump’s machinations in the White House, which included releasing (and stalling) a sweeping and vindictive tariff proposal plan that economists observed (and the White House eventually confirmed) was founded on </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193521/donald-trump-calculated-tariffs-rates" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">bad math</a><span>. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195064/donald-trump-uk-trade-deal-trashed-surprising-person</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195064</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade deal]]></category><category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category><category><![CDATA[Erik Erikson]]></category><category><![CDATA[Far Right]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 14:41:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4e34c2fb8bcef44a8f24feaecd7ec4d005e4791b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4e34c2fb8bcef44a8f24feaecd7ec4d005e4791b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Makes Carveout in Refugee Ban—for White South Africans]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Trump administration is treating Afrikaners, white descendants of mainly Dutch colonizers in South Africa, as “refugees” and plans to bring them to the United States next week, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/09/world/africa/trump-afrikaner-refugees.html?partner=slack&amp;smid=sl-share" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>according to</span></a><span> </span><span><i>The New York Time</i>s.</span></p><p><span>Trump is even planning on a welcome delegation of government officials to greet the first 54 people as they arrive at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., on Monday.</span></p><p><span>The 54 Afrikaners were given priority status, meaning they waited no more than </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193000/trump-offered-refugee-status-thousands-responded" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">three months</a><span> for their resettlement. Many refugees from other countries are forced to wait 18 to 24 months, and sometimes even years, for their resettlement assignment. This comes as Trump banned virtually all other refugees on his first day in office.</span></p><p><span>“We are profoundly disturbed that the administration has slammed the door in the face of thousands of other refugees approved by D.H.S. months ago, notwithstanding courts ordering the White House to let many of them in,” Mark Hetfield, president of a Jewish resettlement organization, told the </span><span><i>Times</i>. </span><span>“That’s just not right.”</span></p><p><span>Afrikaners in South Africa claim that they are being racially discriminated against, that they can’t get jobs and don’t feel safe with the current government and its progressive, redistributive policies. The South African government currently has a program that allows it to seize land from Afrikaners without providing compensation—the very same thing white colonizers did when they arrived, forcing Black South Africans from their land for nothing and relegating them to second- and even third-class citizenship. </span></p><p><span>Some feel as if the Afrikaners are simply using the reversal of the apartheid-era systems that they’ve benefited from for generations as justification for their resettlement in the U.S., casting themselves as victims in a situation where they’ve historically been the victimizers.</span></p><p><span>“Historically, in fact, farmers have been quite oppressed in South Africa, but those are Black farmers. Those are the people whose land was alienated over centuries of colonization and who, in many cases, worked as really poorly remunerated menial laborers in horrific conditions on white-owned farms,” </span><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-historical-reality-of-land-ownership-in-south-africa-amid-trumps-criticisms" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> Yale professor Daniel Magaziner. “And so in many ways, what [Trump is] doing is he is implicitly, not explicitly, but implicitly downplaying the reality of South African history.”</span></p><p><span>“You do have the reality that a lot of Black South Africans are still without any wealth, are still in very deep poverty and saying, hey, since the end of apartheid, those scales have not been equaled,” </span><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/the-historical-reality-of-land-ownership-in-south-africa-amid-trumps-criticisms" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> John Eligon, </span><span><i>The New York Times</i>’ </span><span>Johannesburg bureau chief.</span></p><p><span>Some on the Black South African left have a sharper view of the situation.</span></p><p><span>“Due to global and local economic processes, the rich continue to get richer, and the poor get poorer. Most of the white—of the farmland, more than 70 percent of it is owned by white farmers. So, basically, they are sitting pretty,” </span><a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2025/2/10/trump_south_africa" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> activist Trevor Nganwe. “You know, there’s a saying, ‘The guilty are afraid.’ Perhaps they know that this unjust situation, where a tiny minority enjoys most of the country’s wealth and resources, is not tenable, and sooner or later, it will have to end.”</span></p><p><span>The influence of Elon Musk, who grew up under the benefits of apartheid in South Africa, cannot be understated. In March, he replied “</span><a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1903557940188942776" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>absolutely!</span></a><span>” to a post that incorrectly claimed that white Afrikaners are facing genocide—a deeply ironic statement given the historical context of the country. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195059/trump-welcome-afrikaner-white-south-african-refugees</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195059</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[refugees]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category><category><![CDATA[White Supremacy]]></category><category><![CDATA[White People]]></category><category><![CDATA[Afrikaners]]></category><category><![CDATA[South Africa]]></category><category><![CDATA[apartheid]]></category><category><![CDATA[unitd states]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Elon Musk]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 14:31:39 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1b4be3913f79ec2234220377e034a2056eca08fd.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1b4be3913f79ec2234220377e034a2056eca08fd.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Elon Musk and Donald Trump</media:description><media:credit>Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[RFK Jr. Caught Lying About New Surgeon General Nominee]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is lying about the qualifications of his pick for surgeon general.</p><p><span>During an appearance on Fox News Thursday night, Kennedy attempted to defend his choice of </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194997/trump-surgeon-general-wellness-influencer-casey-means" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Casey Means</a><span>, a wellness influencer and author who has no active medical license and never completed her physician residency. But, as is typical for the anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, in lieu of evidence, Kennedy just made stuff up. </span></p><p><span>“She was the top of her med—the very top of her medical class at Stanford,” Kennedy </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920606388566511941" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>“She is in every—during her residency, she won every award that she could win. She walked away from traditional medicine because she was not curing patients. She couldn’t get anybody within her profession to look at the nutrition contributions to illness,” Kennedy said.</span></p><p><span>But it would’ve been impossible for Means to be at the top of her class at the Stanford School of Medicine, because students aren’t actually ranked there. A spokesperson from the school </span><a href="https://x.com/ddale8/status/1920620191110648097" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a><span> CNN’s Daniel Dale that medical students are graded on a pass-fail system. </span></p><p><span>Kennedy’s claim that Means quit her residency to walk away from traditional medicine is also untrue.</span></p><p><span>Dr. Paul Flint, a former chair of otolaryngology/head and neck surgery at Oregon Health and Science University, who helped oversee Means during her five-year residency program, provided a completely different explanation for why she had walked away from it after four and a half years. </span></p><p><span>“She wasn’t even sure she wanted to be in medicine. She wanted to do something different. She wanted to resign,” Flint told the </span><a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2025-05-08/trump-taps-casey-means-los-angeles-holistic-doctor-as-surgeon-general" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Los Angeles Times</i></a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Means was under so much anxiety that she was given three months paid time off. “She did that, came back and decided she wanted to leave the program. She did not like that level of stress,” Flint said.</span></p><p><span>Flint said there was “a lot of anxiety around” being a surgeon. “You become much more responsible the more senior you get,” he explained. Now Means may become the surgeon general, the highest-ranking doctor in the country. Or in her case, the highest ranking non-practicing “doctor.” </span></p><p><span>Kennedy argued in a </span><a href="https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1920531616499208409" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">post</a><span> on X Thursday that Means’s lack of qualifications were exactly what made her such a great fit with his Make America Healthy Again agenda. No, seriously. </span></p><p><span>“The attacks that Casey is unqualified because she left the medical system completely miss the point of what we are trying to accomplish with MAHA. Casey is the perfect choice for Surgeon General precisely because she left the traditional medical system—not in spite of it,” he </span><a href="https://x.com/SecKennedy/status/1920531616499208409" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span>. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195057/robert-f-kennedy-jr-lying-new-surgeon-general-nominee</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195057</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health Care]]></category><category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Health and Human Services]]></category><category><![CDATA[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Surgeon General]]></category><category><![CDATA[Casey Means]]></category><category><![CDATA[Wellness]]></category><category><![CDATA[Influencers]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stanford]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stanford University]]></category><category><![CDATA[Medicine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alternative Medicine]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 14:21:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/6f003318fa6153f92e3cbcf5ea18af2ddb68d744.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/6f003318fa6153f92e3cbcf5ea18af2ddb68d744.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Picks Most Unhinged Fox News Host for Top D.C. Job]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Donald Trump has decided to </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/jeanine-pirro-washington-dc-fox-news-ed-martin-d654d957a15045a4b904224c2c97c059" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>appoint</span></a><span> one of his favorite Fox News hosts, Jeanine Pirro, as interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., and she has quite a history.</span></p><p><span>Pirro has spent the last two decades with the conservative TV network as a legal analyst and host of the weekend show </span><span><i>Justice With Judge Jeanine</i></span><span><i>,</i> and later co-host of </span><span><i>The Five</i></span><span><i>.</i> During that time, she has shared some outrageous statements and views, including election denialism.</span></p><p><span>During Trump’s first term, Pirro </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nMljE90rag" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> that the FBI and Justice Department were full “of individuals who should not just be fired but who need to be taken out in handcuffs.” She has not held back in sycophantic praise of the president, </span><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/jeanine-pirro/new-book-jeanine-pirro-compares-trump-saquon-barkley-and-speed-light" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>calling</span></a><span> Trump “a nonstop, never-give-up, no-holds-barred human version of the speed of light.” Pirro also </span><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/sean-hannity/sean-hannity-and-end-fox-news-standards-charade" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>spoke</span></a><span> onstage at a campaign rally for Trump, seemingly violating network policy (without getting punished).</span></p><p><span>On MSNBC Thursday night, Chris Hayes aired a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1Awdp_msiY" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>montage</span></a><span> of some of Pirro’s craziest takes, including how she’d make a deal with the devil to get opposition research on an opponent.</span></p><p><span>Pirro is only getting the job because Trump’s previous pick, Ed Martin, faced too much </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194923/republican-senator-tillis-trump-nominee-ed-martin-dc-prosecutor" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Republican opposition</a><span> in the Senate over his connections to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, as well as his own election denialism. Martin also used his brief time as acting U.S. attorney to make legal threats against everyone from </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/03/05/dc-us-attorney-ed-martin-georgetown-law-dei/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Georgetown University</a><span> to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191714/trump-us-attorney-investigation-chuck-schumer" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Democratic</a><span> members of </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191787/trump-doj-threatens-democratic-congressman-garcia-elon-musk-dick-pic" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Congress</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>What will Pirro do as the top federal prosecutor in the nation’s Capitol? Her rhetoric as a TV host rivals Martin’s insane background, and it remains to be seen how she’ll handle the position—or even if the Senate decides to confirm her at all. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195052/trump-fox-news-host-jeanine-pirro-dc-attorney</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195052</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jeanine Pirro]]></category><category><![CDATA[Conservative Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[FOX News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington D.c.]]></category><category><![CDATA[justice]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 13:19:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b13478df65d89eced857e31edc2be42d21376aed.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b13478df65d89eced857e31edc2be42d21376aed.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>John Lamparski/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Gives China Major Tariffs Concession Before Talks Even Begin]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Trump is lowering his tariffs on China before he even sits down at the negotiating table. </span></p><p><span>“CHINA SHOULD OPEN UP ITS MARKET TO USA — WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR THEM!!!” he </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114477610338144415" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>posted</span></a><span> on Truth Social Friday morning. “CLOSED MARKETS DON’T WORK ANYMORE!!!”</span></p><p><span>“80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.,” he </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114477628854583525" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>posted</span></a><span> just minutes later, referring to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.</span></p><p><span>Eighty percent tariffs is still a humongous number for taxes on imports, but it is a significant decrease from Trump’s current 145 percent tariffs on the country. </span></p><p><span>The unprompted concession suggests that Trump does not have as much leverage with China—which accounts for </span><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/09/trump-china-tariffs-trade-talks.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>$143.5 billion in U.S. exports and $438.9 billion</span></a><span> in U.S. imports—as he thinks he does. Or at least he doesn’t have as much leverage as he wants us to think he does. </span></p><p><span>Bessent and U.S. trade representative Jameson Greer are set to meet with Chinese officials in Switzerland this weekend to discuss a potential trade deal.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195049/trump-china-concession-tariffs-talks-trade-deal</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195049</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[China]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 12:58:18 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/2f9dbe9977fd25caaad1d4f1b44682d358cb4b5a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/2f9dbe9977fd25caaad1d4f1b44682d358cb4b5a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Win McNamee/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Transcript: MAGA Fury Boils Over at New Pope’s “Anti-Trump” Views]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><i>The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 9 episode of the</i> Daily Blast<i> podcast. Listen to it <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</i></p><p><b>Greg Sargent: </b>This is <i>The Daily Blast </i>from <i>The New Repub</i><i>lic, </i>produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.</p><p> MAGA personalities are very, very unhappy about the new pope. Right after the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/08/world/pope-conclave-news" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">news broke</a> that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet <a href="https://meidasnews.com/news/jd-vance-is-wrong-new-pope-leo-xiv-has-a-history-of-criticizing-trump-and-vance-on-immigration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">produced lots of evidence</a> that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/jack-posobiec/jack-posobiec-criticizes-pope-leo-xiv-promoting-anti-trump-and-anti-bukele-articles-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">attacking</a> <a href="https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1920549149029621847" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the new pope</a> as anti-Trump, pro–open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers. All this is fraught territory for people with godless upbringings like myself. So we figured we’d talk it through with someone who was both raised in the Catholic Church and is an <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Political-Theory-Liberal-Socialism/dp/103264723X" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">excellent</a> <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Political-Theory-Liberal-Socialism/dp/103264723X" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">political theorist</a>. Matt McManus <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/conservatism-inequality-mcmanus-reagan-burke-de-maistre" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">regularly wrestles with the intellectual roots</a> of today’s right wing, including in his excellent 2023 book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Books-Matthew-McManus/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AMatthew%2BMcManus" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Political Right and Equality</a>.</i> Matt, it’s great to have you on, man.</p><p><b>Matt McManus: </b>Yeah, it’s a real pleasure to be here.</p><p><b>Sargent: </b>So the first American pope has taken the name Pope Leo XIV. He has apparently shared a number of articles critical of JD Vance; in particular, one that said Vance was wrong in claiming that Catholic teachings support the MAGA worldview and agenda. The pope also shared an article criticizing Trump’s hostility to immigrants and shared a tweet about the need to pray for George Floyd. Matt, what do we know about this new pope’s views, and how do they fit into Catholic teaching more generally?</p><p><b>McManus: </b>Well, I’m sure we’re going to learn a lot more about the new pope’s views over the next couple days as people scour everything he is ever written and everything that he is ever said. The choice of the name Leo is itself significant. Pope Leo was widely regarded as the “People’s Pope” or the “Workers’ Pope” because he is one of the founders of Catholic social teaching. Now, to be clear, the O.G. Pope Leo was by no means a socialist or a Marxist, the way they, say Laura Loomer, is trying to imply that the current Pope Leo is a Marxist. But he did stress that there were significant problems with capitalism that led to the emergence of things like atheistic socialism and atheistic Marxism and called for a conciliation between workers and capitalists that would favor the workers—or at least better their conditions. <span>So I think that in itself is telling about the direction that he is planning on going in.</span></p><p><span>But if you look at some of the stuff he said over the past couple years, he is very clearly pro-immigrant. Back in 2015, he stated that he was opposed to the death penalty. He spent a long time in Peru, by all accounts living in quite modest circumstances and demonstrating an unusual level of concern for the poor. So that’s all a positive sign. </span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, MAGA is not happy about any of it. Charlie Kirk accused the pope of “retweeting George Floyd propaganda.” Laura Loomer erupted over the idea that the Pope seemed to endorse the need to pray for Floyd, calling him a “career criminal” and “drug addict.” MAGA figure Sean Davis called the Pope anti-Trump and pro–open borders. Listen to this from MAGA influencer Jack </span><span>Posobiec.</span></p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><span><b>Jack</b> </span><b>Posobiec (audio voiceover): </b><span><i>What I’m seeing from his social media does not bode well for Trump supporters, because we’re seeing things here where he’s attacking JD Vance and not years ago, very recently, promoting anti-Trump and anti-Bukele articles regarding the deportations of criminal illegals to the United States. He was attacking that less than three weeks ago. We even see him posting anti-Trump articles from when Trump first ran for office. I’m not going to mince words, folks. I’m not going to mince words. This is not the election that conservatives wanted. God save the church.</i></span></p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>So the problem with the pope is apparently that he doesn’t hate criminal illegals enough and attacks the idea of states having borders. Matt, I don’t claim to know that much about Catholic teaching, but it sure seems like these MAGA types don’t know much about it either. Can you talk a little bit about what Catholic doctrine says about our duty to immigrants?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Sure. Well, I don’t think you can do better than the late Pope Francis; my grandmother was a big fan of, not coincidentally. Francis stresses that it is important for states to have borders and for those borders to be taken seriously, but he also points out that Christ himself was a refugee to the kingdom of Egypt when his family was under significant threat and calls upon us to remember the Samaritan lesson. That when asked, “Who is our neighbor?” our neighbor is anybody who follows religious teachings and demonstrating the level of care and love to another person that we’re supposed to. And not coincidentally, the pope in February implied very strongly that Vance and the current administration, put it gently, weren’t exactly living up to these Catholic ideals.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, I want to bring up JD Vance here because he got into a direct dustup—if you can get into a dustup with a pope—with Francis. Vance is a high-profile convert to Catholicism. Recently, he claimed that the Trump-MAGA agenda can be defended with the Catholic doctrine known as <i>o</i></span><span><i>rdo amoris, </i></span><span>which refers to the ordering of our ethical obligations outward. The basic idea is that even if God calls on us to love all people, the practical limitations on the help we can offer to others requires us to prioritize aid to those nearest to us. That’s theoretically the idea anyway. Now, the previous pope criticized this and the new pope tweeted out an article that also criticizes it. Matt, it seems to me that you can’t defend the Trump-MAGA agenda this way because it’s not as if Trump is carefully ordering our ethical obligations outward. He systematically abandoning any and all obligations to the global poor across the board. Can you talk about that in the context of Catholic teaching?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Well, there’s a lot of controversy about how <i>o</i></span><span><i>rdo amoris</i></span><span> is meant to be interpreted and, indeed, how far back the history of the idea goes. Some people relate it back to the Pauline kind of dictum about looking after your family and those close to you. A lot of people associate it with Thomistic thought—the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas as it developed in the medieval ages. In a lot of ways, <i>ordo amoris</i> is pretty commonsensical—this injunction that we should look after those close to us as a practice become more ethical and spiritually aligned persons strikes me as extremely wise. But the pope, quite rightly, chastised Vance and Trump for interpreting <i>ordo amoris</i> in this miserly way: the idea being that we only have so much love that we have to give so we have to prioritize who we’re going to give it to.</span></p><p><span>Let’s be very clear, even by this constipated understanding of what<i> ordo amoris </i>stands for, the current administration isn’t doing a particularly good job ’cause it’s not exactly like JD Vance and the Trump administration are showing an awful lot of love to their fellow American citizens. I don’t think that shopping Medicare and Medicaid benefits to the very poor or sending American citizens to rot in jails far away from here is exactly expressing a great deal of love to our fellow citizens. </span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, there are basically three lanes you can criticize Vance on, and I’d like to try to work through each of them. The first is the one you just said, which is that it’s not as if Trump and Vance actually recognize moral obligations to all Americans. Trumpism, and as you’ve written in one of your great pieces, is really all about casting a large segment of American citizens as an internal enemy and really, essentially, turning loose the state on them. So there’s that one. The second is that Vance basically, as you say, offers a miserly interpretation of Catholic teaching. But then there’s a third, which is that there’s no way to actually say that what Trump has done is in any sense an ethical obligation ranking outward, right? He suspended all refugee admissions. He’s ending protected status in the U.S. for hundreds of thousands of immigrants facing disasters in their home country, trying to deport millions who are not serious or violent criminals. They’re absolutely slaughtering foreign aid, creating deaths abroad, humanitarian horrors. Is there any way to describe that as a concentric ranking of obligations outward? It’s a foreswearing off of ethical obligations entirely. That’s MAGA.</span></p><p><span><b>McManus:</b> Yeah, absolutely. There’s always a way of defending anything, right? There are people who have defended Nazism, fascism, you name it, over the course of history, Marxist authoritarianism. But I think that any person who is genuinely concerned to get Catholic social teaching, or just basic ethics, right will look at what the administration is doing and say, <i>Not no way, not no how.</i> Just to give one good example, one of the greatest Catholic thinkers of our current age is Charles Taylor from McGill University, formative influence on me amongst others. Taylor has reprimanded the Trump administration time and time again for a lack of ethical seriousness. And that’s not meant to be a joke, right? It’s not like there’s anything funny about this. These are people who just think about the basic moral duties that most of us have and see them as not applying to them. And I think that any person who is concerned to be a good person—let alone a good Christian—should take a pause and think about whether or not it’s right to support this administration given all that. </span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>OK, I want to talk about what Pope Francis said about Vance in the context of the Parable of the Good Samaritan. In his letter criticizing Vance’s <i>ordo amoris</i> statement, Francis questioned the whole ethical schema by saying that an extended meditation on the Parable of the Good Samaritan will undermine what Vance was saying. Now, what I took from that—and again, I was raised godlessly, and I don’t claim to have a lot of knowledge of this topic, but what I took from what Francis was saying is that the good Christian attempts, through reflection, to expand his or her appreciation of the situation of others, to evermore distant and far away rings of strangers and others because of the dignity of every human person. Can you talk about that? Is that an interpretation of the Parable of the Good Samaritan that’s fair? And doesn’t it cut pretty strongly against MAGA generally and against Vance’s theology particularly? </span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Oh God, yes, to coin a bad pun there. The Parable of the Good Samaritan is taught to every Christian child from a very young age; I think I got my first crack at it when I was four or five or something when they gave me one of those kids books on the Bible. And the basic injunction there is: Someone is attacked on a road and several of his own countrymen basically walk by and don’t want to have anything to do with them, and then the Samaritan comes and sees that this person needs help and helps him out. And the lesson is, according to Christ, when you’re asked, “Who is my neighbor?” the answer is anyone who acts like your neighbor. And you’re supposed to act like everyone’s neighbor, if at all possible, right? Now again, that does not mean that you’re supposed to be so self-denying that you don’t look after yourself or you don’t look after your family or you don’t look after your kids or whatever it happens to be ’cause you’re so busy sending money to someone else’s kids. It’s </span><span>Mrs. Jellyby</span><span> altitude like we find in Charles Dickens.</span></p><p><span>But it suggests that what we’re supposed to do is, again, not be miserly in our love and in our generosity, but instead use those who are approximate to us in our ethical relationships to then cultivate a richer love that then flows outward—like a river, to invoke a metaphor that’s often used—and becomes richer and more developed over time. And again, can’t really see that very much with MAGA, which seems to be trying to restrain or constrain how many people we’re supposed to care about a little more every day.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Right. Isn’t the basic concept that you’re supposed to, through meditation and reflection, try to appreciate the situation, the plight, the humanity of people on evermore distant rings of these concentric circles? Isn’t that the concept?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Yeah, that’s exactly right. So you have kids, you have a wife, you have a family. Interacting with them every day is very important, and treating them well is exceptionally important. But you’re also supposed to start to think, <i>Well, there are other people and other children and other families all around the world that are an awful lot like mine and are equal to mine. It’s certainly in the eyes of God. Maybe I should be concerned about them.</i> And you’re supposed to cultivate in yourself the spiritual and emotional attitude that enables you to love more effectively—and for that matter, also your social and physical capabilities to love people more effectively.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, let’s close this out by talking about post-liberalism more broadly, which you write wonderfully about. Matt, I thank you for all your work on that stuff. I have learned so much from it, I can’t tell you. I recommend it to people. So what would the post-liberals say in response to us? O</span><span>bviously, there’s a heavy Catholic component to a lot of the post-liberal thinkers. What would they respond to our characterization of MAGA and the inapplicability of Catholic doctrine to it?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Well, I think a lot of them would say just what JD Vance tried to say in that interview, which is that fundamentally we have duties to our families, our neighbors, our communities, and then our nations and our nation citizens first, and only then should we show any concern for people in the rest of the world. I think what’s wrong with that argument is if you actually look at this administration, again, it’s very clear that they don’t particularly care about the poorest American citizens and they definitely don’t give a damn about other people in the rest of the world. If anything, their attitude is, <i>We are allowed to do whatever it is that we want to the people of the rest of the world to advance our interests. And if that screws them over in any way, shape, or form, then tough shit.</i> And you can call that whatever it is that you want. I like to quote </span><span>Thucydides a</span><span>nd the </span><span>Melian Dialogue</span><span> to say that it basically boils down to them saying “the strong will do as they will and the weak will suffer what they must.” But it is not a Christian ethic. I wouldn’t even call it an ethic of any sort whatsoever.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Matt, what happened to Athens after that?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Athens was defeated by its enemies, humiliated, and collapsed into the ash heap of history. That should be a caution to anybody who decides that that’s a dictum that is worth following.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, MAGA is certainly not a movement that embraces humility in any sense, is it?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus:</b> No. No. I think that if you were to say anything about Trump, humility would be very far down the list of the very few virtues that he happens to have, if any. </span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>And Trumpism as well. I just want to make a point about this, which is that MAGA and Trumpism thrives—it gets its energy, its spiritual energy, if that’s the right term for it—from meanness to the outsider, hostility to the outsider, demonization of the outsider. The post-liberal rights simply won’t reckon with this in any real sense, will they? What do they say about that obvious fact? Do they have anything to say about it at all?</span></p><p><b>McManus: </b>Sure. A lot of them will point out that the Lord works in mysterious ways, that sometimes a very imperfect vessel can nonetheless be a vehicle for advancing justice. Pat Deneen sometimes even talks about using Machiavellian means to achieve Aristotelian virtues.<b> </b>And my response to that would be that ethics, and Christian ethics particular, is an ideal. You don’t achieve an ideal by compromising it every chance you get to obtain power—let alone to try to do the cruel things that are on display to everyone day in and day out. So I just can’t think that there’s any way of making this intellectually palatable, even if it is something that is deeply desired by a lot of people on the Christian right, who, again, seem much more concerned with worshiping America than with worshiping anything that actually looks recognizably like the Christian God, as far as I’m concerned.</p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, MAGA America, anyway. That’s the topic of worship.</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>Yeah, exactly. David Bentley Hart put this very well where he said that for a lot of people on the Christian life, what they’re concerned with and what they worship is America first, or at least their own understanding of it, America tomorrow, and America forever. And you could say whatever it is that you want about this, but it is not an ethically demanding outlook.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, just to finish up, all these MAGA influencers are not what you would call intellectuals, but they actually do drink pretty heavily from the stream of post-liberalism in some sense, right? If you look at someone like Charlie Kirk or Jack Posobiec, or even Laura Loomer, the ones we talked about and the things they’re saying now, what’s the continuity between the intellectual roots of the post-liberal right and what we see from these rather colorful figures there?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>I think that the core continuity is this connection that they draw between their understanding of Christianity and nationalism and American nationalism in particular. Now again, I want to be clear. Some of the more intellectually refined post-liberals have a different idea of where they think the administration should go than maybe the people in the administration themselves. But that is not stopping them from getting behind and offering a theological and a philosophical gloss on these really contemptuous policies. And that’s picked up by a lot of the people who are downstream, the more intellectually rarefied ends of this movement. It’s why you see people like Charlie Kirk or Chris Rufo echoing, or JD Vance, a lot of these post-liberal ideas. And that’s why I think we need to take this movement seriously but very critically, because it’s had a very negative effect on justice in this country.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>When these right-wingers say things like the new Pope is a George Floyd fanatic, and George Floyd was a drug dealer and a criminal, and that the new pope is pro–open borders and pro-illegals, isn’t that itself downstream from these intellectual movements? How do you draw that link from the intellectual roots of the new right, the post-liberal right? How does that flow right into the ugliness we see from these influencers?</span></p><p><span><b>McManus: </b>I think that what you see in a lot of forms of Christian nationalism is a distinct sense of moral superiority. Angelia Wilson wrote about this very artfully in her book, <i><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Hate-Christian-Engagement-Democratic/dp/1439926387" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Politics of Hate</a>, </i>which I recommend people look at. If you have this sense of moral superiority, which may Christian nationalists do, it becomes very, very easy to judge others in a way that you’re not supposed to. If you take Christian ethics seriously, and I don’t mean to judge them but to suppose that you are entitled to condemn them and to treat them in the worst possible terms ... And again, you can call that whatever it is that you want, but you can’t characterize in any honest way as a Christian ethic. Certainly, it’s not the Christianity that I was brought up in or that my grandma taught me to take seriously.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>So the heaping of disdain and abuse on immigrants illegals, George Floyd, that’s downstream of Christian nationalism, basically.</span></p><p><b>McManus: </b>Absolutely, right? Look, I’m not opposed to a gentle kind of patriotism, right? I’m from Canada, and I, myself, I felt a little bit patriotic recently. But that’s very different than this ethnochauvinist attitude that says <i>because we are the best or because we are better, we are entitled to do whatever it is that we feel we need to not just in order to protect ourselves but to advance our interest. And if that means being extraordinarily selfish and extraordinarily cruel, then so be it. We’re entitled to do that. </i><span>Well, to go back to that Melian doctrine, we’ve seen time and time again where that leads a country, and it is never to a good place.</span></p><p><b>Sargent:</b> Matt McManus, thank you so much for coming on. I recommend Matt’s books to all of you, and his articles. Like I said, I’ve learned a ton from him. Thanks so much for coming on, Matt.</p><p><b>McManus: </b>Yeah, thanks buddy. Let’s do it again sometime.</p><p><b>Sargent: </b>You’ve been listening to <i>The Daily Blast</i> with me, your host, Greg Sargent. <i>The Daily Blast</i> is a <i>New Republic </i>podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195048/transcript-maga-fury-boils-new-pope-anti-trump-views</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195048</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Catholic Church]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 12:16:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/813a6f363933722f3c535564be7c2a4cb2b2646b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/813a6f363933722f3c535564be7c2a4cb2b2646b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>The newly elected Pontiff, Pope Leo XIV is seen for the first time from the Vatican balcony on May 8, 2025.</media:description><media:credit>Christopher Furlong/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Trump Atrocity Happening in Plain Sight on the Media’s Watch]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>A <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/journals/eclinm/article/PIIS2589-5370(25)00165-8/fulltext" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recently published study</a> in the prestigious British medical journal <i>The Lancet</i> reports that the Trump administration’s evisceration of the landmark President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, program that has long been a bulwark in the fight to combat global HIV/AIDS has already sentenced tens of thousands of people in Africa to death, and with each week that passes with the program stuck in limbo, many thousands of needless deaths will follow.</p><p><span>PEPFAR is, by far, the most successful U.S. foreign aid program in history. Since George W. Bush launched it in 2003, it has provided life-giving anti-retroviral, or ARV, medications that have already saved an </span><a href="https://www.state.gov/pepfar/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">estimated 26 million lives,</a><span> mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. That 26 million figure is no exaggeration or guesstimate—it has been confirmed in multiple scientific reports. PEPFAR has also prevented some 5.5 million mother-to-child transmissions of the deadly virus.</span></p><p><span>For these reasons, it’s shocking that the U.S. mainstream media is barely reporting on the PEPFAR crisis. This media malpractice contrasts decisively with the American press’s blanket coverage some decades ago, when HIV/AIDS was scything its way across Africa, killing more than two million people a year. The lack of attention now raises the uncomfortable suspicion that people in the global south are interesting to the American media only when they are dying in large numbers. </span></p><p><span>Beyond the millions of lives saved, PEPFAR is also a wildly successful extension of U.S. soft power, the absence of which will only create a vacuum for others to fill. As a former U.S. ambassador to Zambia warns, ending PEPFAR is, in this way, a substantial blow to American national security because it opens up space to both China and Russia to expand their already growing influence on the African continent. </span></p><p><span><i>The Lancet</i> study offers up some grim details of the near future. Its 23 co-authors looked at nine countries in sub-Saharan Africa—which is only about half the nations that are most affected by the gutting of the program. Still, it concluded that Trump’s January 27 suspension of PEPFAR in those countries alone would eventually cause 60,000 additional deaths, even if the program were restarted after only 90 days. Those 90 days passed on April 27, and there are no signs that PEPFAR is about to be revived. </span></p><p><span>Those of us with firsthand experience in Africa, who witnessed both the scourge of AIDS and then the miraculous recovery though PEPFAR, are terrified at what we are seeing.</span></p><p><span>The program’s current status is not at all clear. First, the Trump administration canceled it entirely; then there was talk of a “waiver,” which was then apparently rescinded. This is where the mainstream U.S. media failure is particularly damaging, because firsthand reporting could answer these questions about what is actually happening in nations like Kenya, Zambia, and Tanzania. <i>The New York Times</i> has five correspondents in Africa; <i>The Washington Post</i> has two; the American cable news networks seem to have no problem sending their reporters to Ukraine or Israel-Palestine, but somehow Africa’s dire health emergency is passing unnoticed.</span></p><p><span>It was not always so. A quick search of <i>The New York Times</i>’ website for 1999 and 2000, back when HIV/AIDS was sweeping across the continent, revealed roughly 88 reports and opinion pieces over that two-year period. But now, since January 1, 2024, the grand total of articles is around 11.</span></p><p><span>It’s maddening that PEPFAR should find itself in political peril. The program was established by a Republican president, and has typically enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support in Congress until recently. Among its most enthusiastic backers are evangelical Christians, both in America and Africa; evangelicals have long been deeply involved in health care in Africa and actually run a number of the hospitals there that help dispense the life-giving medications. They, and others, point out that the program has been a tremendous success, untouched by significant corruption scandals, despite its huge size. </span></p><p><span>Today, Shepherd Smith is part of a vigorous evangelical effort to persuade the U.S. Congress to revive PEPFAR. He and his wife, Anita Moreland Smith, started doing HIV/AIDS relief work in Africa back in the mid-1980s; they’ve been there more than 60 times. They head an organization based in Washington, D.C., called Children’s AIDS Fund International. </span></p><p><span>Smith told me that no one seems to know with any precision about the current status of PEPFAR programs across Africa. “I do hear a lot, but there’s no good information anywhere,” he said. “It’s an absolute mess. We do know that some PEPFAR programs are still operating, while others have closed. Virtually all of the orphan and vulnerable children’s sites have been closed.” </span></p><p><span>He estimates that PEPFAR right now is functioning at no better than one-third of its former capacity. And he warns that the Trump shutdown has done tremendous damage in only three months. “Many treatment sites had to let all their workers go,” he said. “Reconstructing a supply chain that has never been the very best is going to be extremely difficult.”</span></p><p><span>Smith and his allies are concentrating on lobbying conservative Republican members of Congress to restore PEPFAR to the budget legislation that is currently under consideration. He is optimistic. “We still have a lot of support in Congress,” he said. “On international HIV issues, the faith community is the strongest voice on the Hill.”</span></p><p><span>He encourages the public to lobby their own senators and members of Congress to revive the program. </span></p><p><span>Smith is also worried about the lack of U.S. media coverage about the PEPFAR crisis. “Will it take 25 million people in Africa dying to get people’s attention again?” he asked, “when enough attention now can prevent that from happening?” </span></p><p><span>Dan Foote was the U.S. ambassador to Zambia from 2017 to 2020, and was in charge of the PEPFAR program there. He echoes Smith’s concern that the Trump administration has already done critical damage. “Part of my job was to make sure that the ARV medications got from the capital, Lusaka, into the villages,” he told me. “I spent a lot of time going out into the countryside. You need to push the drugs out to where the people need them. It took time, but we were finally at the point where the distribution was working. But as soon as you disrupt that exceptionally complex supply chain, the chain breaks.”</span></p><p><span>Foote cautions that restarting the ARV distribution will not happen overnight. He warns that Trump’s threatened tariffs could further interfere with the procurement of the ARV drugs, which are imported from around the globe. “Turning the supply chain back on, full blast, could take as much as a year,” he said.</span></p><p><span>The former envoy also warns that ending PEPFAR could revive a global HIV/AIDS epidemic. “People in Zambia and in Africa who take the ARVs regularly have reduced their viral loads to an ‘undetectable’ level,” he explains. “That means you cannot transmit AIDS to others. Cut off the medications, and millions of people can spread the illness again. We live in a time of expanding international travel. HIV/AIDS will explode globally and eventually reach the United States.” </span></p><p><span>Foote also explained that the ARV drugs are expensive. “Maybe 2 percent of the Zambian people could afford them,” he said. </span></p><p><span>One of Foote’s most passionate pro-PEPFAR arguments is that the program is actually vital to America’s national security. “In order to have strong national security, we need to have robust alliances around the globe,” he said. “We need to have access to governments to build those alliances. So we need to do something for them. As ambassador, my only job was to promote America’s national interests, and PEPFAR was vital to that.”</span></p><p><span>He continued: “Both China and Russia are expanding their influence in Africa. When China wants to see senior government officials there, they get in the door by bringing a suitcase full of $100 bills. I got in by reminding them about PEPFAR.”</span></p><p><span>Foote concluded, “I can’t even calculate how much cutting PEPFAR has damaged America’s national security over the past 105 days.”</span></p><p><span>Those of us who witnessed the before and after with PEPFAR are horrified. Back in the early 1980s, I spent years based in the southern African nation Swaziland, now called Eswatini, reporting on apartheid and war across the region. Swaziland was one of the countries hit hardest by HIV/AIDS; I’ve made several return visits over the years since the disease first ravaged the population. In 2008, before PEPFAR took full effect, the epidemic was on the verge of destroying the country. Death notices filled the newspapers every single day. One friend, a professor at the national university, told me at the time: “Sometimes I look at the students in my biggest lecture course, who are 19, 20, 21 years old. There they are—talking, giggling, full of life, just as students always have been. And I think that if nothing changes, 10 years from now, one out of three of them will be dead.”</span></p><p><span>I went back to Swaziland eight years later, after the PEPFAR program had arrived in force. Precious Dube, a 50-year-old nurse matron, told me with feeling: “People in America have saved the Swazi Nation. If you had not helped us, our people would be sleeping in the streets and dying of disease and hunger. Instead, now, we are about to contain AIDS.” Millions of people across sub-Saharan Africa would echo Precious Dube’s gratitude. When will mainstream American journalists find them, and publish or televise what they have to say?</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194710/press-trump-pepfar-atrocity-africa</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194710</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of State]]></category><category><![CDATA[Marco Rubio]]></category><category><![CDATA[AIDS]]></category><category><![CDATA[HIV/AIDS]]></category><category><![CDATA[PEPFAR]]></category><category><![CDATA[The Insecurity Complex]]></category><category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[James North]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3362291ea186f91c1d60cfca9ba7df6925802c03.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3362291ea186f91c1d60cfca9ba7df6925802c03.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>HIV advocates carrying mock coffins protest in front of the U.S. State Department, demanding the full restoration of the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, in Washington, D.C.
  7. </media:description><media:credit>Jim Watson/Getty Images
  8. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Forget Fertility Rates—Here’s What a Baby Bonus Would Mean for Poverty]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Donald Trump has reasserted his ostensible support for policies that conservative proponents believe will encourage parents to have more children, within a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/us/politics/trump-birthrate-proposals.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">“pronatalist” framework</a> that has been embraced by the likes of Vice President JD Vance and billionaire Elon Musk. Some of these policies incorporate an economic element, such as a one-time payment upon the birth of a child that some conservatives hope would incentivize married couples to have children.</p><p>But while it’s uncertain whether such policies would fulfill the explicit pronatalist objective of countering the falling American birth rate sought by the administration and its allies, they could have a significant economic impact by helping to alleviate the high costs of raising children in the United States. Leah Sargeant, a senior analyst for social policy at the Niskanen Center who recently <a href="https://www.niskanencenter.org/newborn-needs-the-case-for-an-american-baby-bonus/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote a report</a> exploring the benefits of a $2,000 baby bonus, argued that the support it would offer to families is more relevant than questions of increasing fertility rates.</p><p>“What it’s intended to do is to get families who want a baby more of a reason they feel they can sustain the risk,” said Sargeant. “Having a baby is always opting into uncertainty, and the goal is to make it feel like you’re a little more stable to handle the tougher end of the spectrum of what could happen.”</p><p>Child-rearing in the United States is expensive, from the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jan/16/why-does-it-cost-32093-just-to-give-birth-in-america" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">price of a hospital childbirth</a> to <a href="https://blog.dol.gov/2024/11/19/new-data-childcare-costs-remain-an-almost-prohibitive-expense" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">increasingly high childcare costs</a>. Moreover, unlike other developed countries, the United States does not have a paid family leave program. The expenses continue to add up through childhood: One <a href="https://www.lendingtree.com/debt-consolidation/raising-a-child-study/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recent study</a> found that raising a child through age 18 costs parents roughly $300,000. A one-time payment of $5,000, of the sort that Trump proposed on the campaign trail, is not sufficient to single-handedly alleviate the economic shocks of childbearing.</p><p>However, this kind of grant could still be a significant boost for new parents at a particularly vulnerable period. One <a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/demography/article-abstract/57/4/1271/168097/The-Dynamics-of-U-S-Household-Economic?redirectedFrom=fulltext" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recent study</a> found that poverty rates increase by roughly one-third in the first month of childhood, a trend particularly affecting Black, Latina, and first-time mothers. Poverty in early childhood can have significant negative consequences, as poor children may have <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5765853/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lower cognitive development</a>, as well as worse <a href="https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/the-pressing-problem-of-child-poverty-and-poor-health/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">health</a> and <a href="https://publications.aap.org/pediatrics/article-abstract/143/6/e20183426/76812/Poverty-and-Early-Childhood-Outcomes" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">educational</a> <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00027162241264412" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">outcomes</a>, than their higher-income peers.</p><p>A federal grant given to new parents upon birth could help absorb the economic shocks and dramatically reduce poverty rates in that first month of childhood. One <a href="https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/sites/povertycenter.columbia.edu/files/content/Publications/Case-for-federal-birth-grant-CPSP-2023.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">2023 study</a> found that a $1,800 baby bonus would cut the poverty rate among mothers of newborns from roughly 26 percent to under 3 percent in the month of birth. That decrease would be even more significant if it was paired with a monthly expanded child tax credit, akin to what was temporarily implemented for six months in 2021.</p><p>While useful, a baby bonus should not be considered a replacement for other proposals to offer support to families, said Megan Curran, director of policy at the Center on Poverty and Social Policy at Columbia University. “Where it starts to get a little bit more problematic is if it’s assuming that can be the only policy in place,” she said.</p><p>Moreover, when considering ways to encourage a higher birth rate through financial incentives, some conservatives believe an expanded <a href="https://newrepublic.com/tags/child-tax-credit" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">child tax credit</a> may be a more effective policy to provide economic certainty, which may in turn grant families the cushion to have more children.</p><p>“I think a baby bonus would be nice. It would be lovely to have one, but a one-time payment in the year of birth is not, I think, a credible pathway to long-term stabilization of family incomes,” said Lyman Stone, director of the Pronatalism Institute at the Institute for Family Studies.</p><p>The first Trump administration did oversee a significant expansion of the child tax credit, which was approved as part of his massive 2017 tax cuts legislation. That measure doubled the credit, increased the portion of the credit that is refundable, and raised the earning threshold of the credit’s phaseout. However, under that policy, families need to have an annual earned income of $2,500 to qualify for the full credit; because of this requirement, 25 percent of all children under age 17 <a href="https://povertycenter.columbia.edu/sites/povertycenter.columbia.edu/files/content/Publications/Children-left-behind-by-Child-Tax-Credit-in-2023-CPSP.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">were ineligible</a> for the full credit in 2023.</p><p>A baby bonus could help adjust for some of the issues with the current child tax credit. Because the credit is received in a lump sum during tax filing season, it benefits families with children born later in the year. For example, the parents of a child born in December 2025 would receive the child tax credit payment only a few months after birth, in early spring of 2026. But the parents of a child born in January 2025 would need to wait more than a year before claiming the credit.</p><p>If a baby bonus were structured to be a stand-alone benefit granted closer to a child’s birth, it would sidestep that timing issue. “If you want things to be easier for parents when they’re undergoing that income shock, you want the money to come right when the baby is born,” said Sargeant.</p><p>The efficacy of a baby bonus would also depend on whether it is subject to the same eligibility requirements as the current child tax credit—which would exclude the lowest-income families from receiving the full bonus along with the full credit. </p><p>“If you’re tying some kind of baby payment under the same criteria, then it’s questionable the degree to which it’s going to be helpful,” said Curran. “I think probably families would always welcome flexible cash, especially around that time, but you definitely wouldn’t see the same type of impact … in terms of keeping child poverty really, really low during the first year of life and moving forward.”</p><p>The first Trump-era expansion of the child tax credit is set to expire at the end of this year, and congressional Republicans are looking to act before that deadline with a massive bill to extend the 2017 tax cuts and dramatically slash government spending. However, that measure—which needs to pass through an arcane process called “reconciliation” to avoid the 60-vote threshold for approving legislation in the Senate—is still being written, and it’s unclear what the final product will look like.</p><p>Stone believes that the child tax credit could be bigger—“however large Congress has the stomach to find pay-fors for,” to be specific—and thinks that eligibility could be expanded by lowering the income threshold, while still tying it to work by connecting the credit to payroll taxes. But he pushed back against Republican critics who might see expanding the child tax credit as creating a welfare state.</p><p>“This is not a welfare program. It literally phases in with income, not out. That’s true even if you expand the refundability by some margin,” Lyman argued.</p><p>There is some appetite for bipartisan expansion of a child tax credit in Congress; the Republican-led House approved a measure crafted by GOP and Democratic lawmakers increasing the credit amount last year, although it was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/senate-democrats-will-force-vote-expand-child-tax-credit-gop-oppositio-rcna164499" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">torpedoed by Republicans</a> in the Senate. Democrats and Republicans have also separately expressed support for one-time baby bonuses, although there is a difference in the primary motivation behind implementing them: supporting a policy that makes child-rearing more affordable with the underlying goal of encouraging traditional family formation for conservatives, or as a method of reducing child poverty for progressives.</p><p>In the wake of the Supreme Court’s overturning of <i>Roe v. Wade</i> in 2022, some abortion opponents have expressed support for economic policies that they argue would encourage people to have children. This could further incentivize Republicans to support a one-time federal grant at birth. Sargeant noted that <a href="https://www.guttmacher.org/fact-sheet/induced-abortion-united-states" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">women who seek abortions</a> are often low-income and already have a child at home.</p><p>“Anything that can cushion that impact of a baby in that first year, I think, is attractive to Republicans who prioritize pro-life concerns, and I think it can be a real priority for Democrats as well, who want to retain abortion access but also want to make sure moms have reproductive justice and support when they want to have the kid they’ve conceived,” said Sargeant.</p><p>But even if Republicans included some kind of baby bonus along with an extension of the current child tax credit in the reconciliation bill—whether it is increased or remains largely static—it still raises questions about how helpful such a policy would actually be. GOP lawmakers are mulling dramatic cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as food stamps, which would affect the low-income children who might otherwise benefit from such policies. Moreover, the Trump administration has <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5266568-ivf-access-trump-reproductive/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">gutted programs</a> related to maternal health and reproductive medicine, raising questions about the depths of his commitment to making having a child easier.</p><p>“A one-time baby bonus is not going to be able to cover health care that they might lose, or cover food bills for the family,” said Curran. </p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195031/fertility-rates-baby-bonus-poverty</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195031</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Child Tax Credit]]></category><category><![CDATA[Baby bonus]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pronatalism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category><category><![CDATA[Reconciliation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Grace Segers]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/0ca6acd7b76096991852ea97de67892f004f4a68.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/0ca6acd7b76096991852ea97de67892f004f4a68.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>President Donald Trump takes questions outside the West Wing of White House.</media:description><media:credit>Jim Watson/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Here’s the Deranged MAGA Propaganda Coming to Voice of America]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>While Donald Trump attempts to <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/cpb-fires-back-trumps-executive-order-pulling-funding/story?id=121400535" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">bypass Congress</a> in <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194763/trump-attacks-npr-pbs-funding" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">cutting funding</a> to NPR and PBS, his senior adviser to the U.S. Agency for Global Media, perennial <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/169506/kari-lake-arizona-failed-coup" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">election</a> <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/187727/kari-lake-ruben-gallego-arizona-senate" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">loser</a> Kari Lake, <a href="https://x.com/KariLake/status/1919946331818205610" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced</a> on X earlier this week that she’s struck a deal with One America News to “provide” the right-wing outlet’s “newsfeed services” to the government-funded outlets her agency oversees—Voice of America being the <a href="https://www.usagm.gov/networks/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">most prominent among them</a>. Lake touted the deal as “an enormous benefit to the American taxpayer,” since OAN, which has a TV channel and website, agreed to provide its newsfeed “free of charge.” “We are grateful for their generosity,” she wrote. Yet the generosity might actually be flowing in the other direction, as Lake’s move will allow OAN to tap into VOA’s weekly audience of <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/05/07/nx-s1-5389453/kari-lake-says-oans-far-right-coverage-will-fuel-voice-of-america" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">360 million</a> people around the world—and turn a once unbiased global beacon of American journalism into a <i>Pravda</i> for the Trump regime.</p><p>VOA was first created in 1942 to help combat fascism and Nazi disinformation. As it notes in its <a href="https://www.insidevoa.com/p/5831.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">mission statement</a>, “An essential guarantee of the journalistic credibility of Voice of America content is the ‘firewall’ enshrined in the 1994 U.S. International Broadcasting Act. The firewall prohibits interference by any U.S. government official in the objective, independent reporting of news, thereby safeguarding the ability of our journalists to develop content that reflects the highest professional standards of journalism, free of political interference.” That’s not exactly OAN’s approach to journalism. Scour its content (if you dare), and you’ll find stories that seem engineered for the White House’s new <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wire/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Drudge Report–style propaganda feed</a>. Some merely put a MAGA spin on the news (“<a href="https://www.oann.com/commentary/trump-april-jobs-report-shatters-expectations-as-native-born-workers-win-big/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Trump April Jobs Report Shatters Expectations as Native-Born Workers Win Big</a>”) or heap laughable praise on Dear Leader (“<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0w3ioWJjLE" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Trump is just as much of a lion as Churchill</a>”), while others are pure fiction (“<a href="https://www.oann.com/video/pearsonsharpreports/doge-team-exposes-millions-of-illegal-aliens-voting-in-elections/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">DOGE Team Exposes Millions of Illegal Aliens Voting in Elections</a>”).<b></b></p><p>Worshipful coverage of the GOP has always been part of OAN’s DNA, but the network, which launched<span> in 2013,</span><span> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/12/08/newsmax-one-america-news-gain-prominence-they-push-trumps-baseless-theories/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hitched its wagon to MAGA</a> as the movement descended (further) into </span><span>conspiracy theories in </span><span>the wake of the 2020 election. Founder Robert Herring insisted that anchors promote Trump’s </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-oneamerica-founder/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">claims</a><span> of election fraud and barred them from referring to Biden as “president.” It was a poor business decision. YouTube suspended it for misinformation in 2020 (read all about it <a href="https://www.voanews.com/a/usa_youtube-suspends-us-network-misinformation/6198817.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">at VOA</a>!), and in 2022 DirecTV <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/14/media/oan-directv/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">dropped it entirely</a>. Over the past two years, </span><span>OAN has settled two <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/05/media/dominion-exec-oan-lawsuit-settlement/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">defamation</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/16/media/oan-smartmatic-settlement/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lawsuits</a> related to its election denialism.</span></p><p><span>But perhaps nothing better explains OAN’s values these days than the fact that it gave a </span><a href="https://www.oann.com/shows/themattgaetzshow/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">weeknight show</a><span> to former Florida Representative Matt Gaetz, who is so detestable that even many Republicans have distanced themselves from him. Trump nominated Gaetz for attorney general late last year, but Gaetz was forced to withdraw after a House ethics </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0mvpmnm9gno" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a><span>—led by Republicans, mind you—found “substantial evidence” that during his time in Congress he had sex with a 17-year-old, paid women for sex, and accepted gifts exceeding congressional limits.</span></p><p><span>All of that doesn’t stop Gaetz from presenting false and misleading information and spewing xenophobic, anti-LGBTQ, and racist rants every night. In one </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31UYBM5mQbM" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recent segment</a>,<span> he claimed that, under Biden, “Democrats let around 20 million people into America—chaotically, illegally.” (There are about </span><a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/what-we-know-about-unauthorized-immigrants-living-in-the-us/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">11 million</a><span> undocumented immigrants, and they have arrived over decades.) Gaetz, a lawyer, argued these people aren’t entitled to any due process, despite </span><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/what-the-constitution-says-about-noncitizens-rights-as-trump-doubts-need-for-due-process" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Supreme Court</a><span> rulings stating otherwise, adding, “What due process did Americans get when our communities, hospitals, schools, and jails were overrun by the Third World?” He giddily described Trump’s $1,000 self-deportation offer (“It’s called America First, and if you don’t like it, you can self-deport too”) and then turned to Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to an El Salvador prison. The show <a href="https://images.newrepublic.com/c1b54e8262ae58b7b267c85f9c75fa5b8bdac837.png" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">posted an image</a> riffing on Shepard Fairey’s famous Obama <i>Hope</i> poster—but featuring Abrego Garcia with an Obama <i>O </i>on his shoulder and the label “MS-13,” despite </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194010/kilmar-abrego-garcia-case-trump-deported-error-another-hit" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">spurious evidence</a><span> that he was ever a member of the Mara Salvatrucha gang.</span></p><p>Another host, the oft-mendacious Dan Ball, frequently espouses conspiracy theories and has a regular “This Week in Woke America” segment that makes misleading charges against liberals like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whom he calls “champagne liberals.” He’s brought on disgraced doctor <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/03/technology/robert-malone-covid.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Robert Malone</a> to defend Robert F. Kennedy’s <a href="https://www.oann.com/video/real-america-video/rfk-jr-holds-presser-on-cause-of-autism/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">unfounded claim</a> that vaccines may be causing autism. He’s also welcomed Steven Friend, a former FBI agent who, before becoming an adviser to FBI Director Kash Patel, had his security clearance <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/conservative-ex-fbi-agents-kash-patels-ear-rcna189611" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">revoked</a> after he refused to arrest anyone involved in the January 6 attack. In a <a href="https://www.oann.com/video/real-america-video/biden-regime-scheme-to-spy-on-americans/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">segment</a> on “Biden’s scheme to spy on Americans,” Friend claimed that the former president’s spying “laid the groundwork for them to debank people,” “coordinate with universities to repress free speech,” and alert the military that “pro-lifers were potentially terrorists.” Ball called it a form of “tyranny”—the kind, he said, that Democrats accuse Trump of doing, but “he’s not.”</p><p>It’s not just what you’ll find on OAN that’s the problem, though. It’s also what you won’t find: criticism of the president. The network observed Trump’s 100th day in office with a <a href="https://www.oann.com/newsroom/celebrating-100-days-in-notable-accomplishments-in-the-second-trump-administration/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fawning piece</a> titled, “Celebrating ‘100 Days’ In: Notable Accomplishments in the Second Trump Administration,” which credited Trump with a slight decline in inflation and decent jobs reports while failing to mention that the stock market has <a href="https://www.factcheck.org/2025/05/trumps-stock-market-blame-shifting/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">declined 5 percent</a> since inauguration. It also praises toothless, culture-war executive orders such as “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” and “Restoring ‘Truth and Sanity’ to American History.” </p><p>OAN is unabashed about its mission, which has nothing to do with independent journalist that tells the truth, free of political interference. The network is literally independent, as a business entity, but figuratively it’s an arm of Trump’s propaganda network. OAN <i>runs</i> political interference on his behalf, and does such a good job of it that Trump himself, back in 2023, sent them a thank-you <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CR-mWZdTblU" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">video</a>. “To all of the great views and people of OAN, you’ve been my friend and I’ve been your friend for a long time,” he said. “These are brave people that are doing this. I want to just congratulate them.… I really believe we owe them a big debt of gratitude.” Now Trump is repaying that debt. Spreading OAN content via Voice of America might not cost U.S. taxpayers a dime, but it will impoverish the minds of anyone around the world who listens to it seeking the truth.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195042/trump-maga-propaganda-voice-america-kari-lake-one-america-news</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195042</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[Voice of America]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kari Lake]]></category><category><![CDATA[One America News Network]]></category><category><![CDATA[Business]]></category><category><![CDATA[Matt Gaetz]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2020]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ross Rosenfeld]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a2a72f6b5b029eaa068444dd1e883dad40a88a27.png?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a2a72f6b5b029eaa068444dd1e883dad40a88a27.png?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>This is the answer to the question, “Where is Matt Gaetz now?”</media:description><media:credit>YouTube/One America News Network</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Mallory McMorrow Wants Power—and Yes, That Is a Good Thing
  9.  
  10. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>As she sometimes does, Mallory McMorrow sighed and paused just a beat to think before responding to a blunt question with a pointed answer. Now that President Donald Trump’s minions have <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194416/fbi-arrests-judge-immigration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">arrested a Wisconsin judge</a> in his crackdown on immigration, what does McMorrow make of Trump’s increasing intimidation?</span></p><p>“It’s scary,” said McMorrow, a charismatic 38-year-old state senator in Michigan who is running for her state’s open U.S. Senate seat in the 2026 midterm election. “I mean, every day, the decisions that he makes are scary. There is supposed to be a separation of powers, and this is just Project 2025 come to life.”</p><p>McMorrow said this on a recent Sunday morning in Plymouth, Michigan, in western Wayne County, outside Detroit, where she gave a pep talk to young Democratic staffers. Put out by the Heritage Foundation, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/tags/project-2025" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Project 2025</a> outlined Trump’s second-term blueprint even as he denied knowing about it.</p><p>At the Democratic National Convention last summer, McMorrow was given a plum assignment by the organizers: She was the first of four speakers on the convention’s successive nights to try to impress upon the audience the dangers of Project 2025. So, that Monday night, she carried onstage a massive mock-up of the Heritage book. Surprised by its size—she’d used a smaller book in rehearsal—McMorrow said the prop weighed at least 30 pounds and she balanced it on her hip the way she carries her 4-year-old daughter. After slamming the big book on the lectern, McMorrow spoke with prescience to the largest live audience she’d ever faced.</p><p>“If Donald Trump gets back into the White House, he’s going to fire civil servants, like intelligence officers, engineers, and even federal prosecutors if he decides that they don’t serve his personal agenda,” McMorrow predicted. “They’re talking about replacing the entire federal government with an army of loyalists who answer only to Donald Trump. Under Project 2025, Donald Trump would be able to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after political opponents. He could even turn the FBI into his own, personal police force.” You could say she threw the book at him. Much of what she predicted has come to pass in Trump’s first 100-plus days. </p><p>Now, with the retirements of Democratic Senators Gary Peters, 66, in Michigan and Dick Durbin, 80, in Illinois, the Democratic Party may be nearing a generational transition, at least in this neck of the woods.</p><p>And McMorrow is not the only relatively youthful female candidate on the Democratic side. Also vying for the nomination is Haley Stevens, 41, a fourth-term member of the U.S. House of Representatives.</p><p>Compared to McMorrow, Stevens is a centrist and an experienced Washington veteran. Filling the progressive lane are McMorrow, in her second, four-year term in the state capital of Lansing, and Abdul El-Sayed, 40, a former Wayne County health director and <a href="https://newrepublic.com/authors/abdul-el-sayed" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">TNR contributor</a>, who ran for governor in 2018. A fourth possibility might be Joe Tate, 44, an African American who served as the speaker in the Michigan House before Republicans took the majority last year.</p><p>On the Republican side, the one declared candidate is Mike Rogers, a former congressman who narrowly lost last year to Democrat Elissa Slotkin to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring Debbie Stabenow, 75.</p><p>Although less experienced than some primary rivals, McMorrow may be the most dynamic presence, both in person and before television cameras. She speaks with confidence and passion in a controlled tone that varies in the low register and in volume but does not scold, as some Democrats are accused of doing. In some ways, McMorrow’s style resembles that of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in terms of her relative youth, her make-no-apologies speaking style, and her view of Trump. </p><p>McMorrow has long, red hair that she usually wears down, over her shoulders. Her skinny-fit physique is that of a dedicated runner who trains three to five miles every day to run in half-marathons. (She also goes on women’s yoga retreats.) But her words carry weight, and she offered several heavy observations in an interview in a coffee shop near Woodward Avenue in her Eighth District, which includes several of Detroit’s northern suburbs in Oakland County. When asked about AOC, who is touring with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and hearing cheers from progressives, McMorrow offered only limited praise.</p><p>“There’s obviously a ton of energy they are bringing to the events, but what’s the sustained power?” she said. “I would love to see them figure out how do we actually leverage that power so that when they leave a stop, there is sustained energy.” McMorrow has often said time and money are best spent on humble local races and not on national celebrities.</p><p>Of the Democratic Party at large, she said, “We’ve kind of micro-targeted ourselves to death. So, if you’re a woman, you must care about abortion. If you’re Latino, you must care about immigration.” Her party, she said, tried to “patchwork all these policy ideas together, and it didn’t have an overarching vision” in last year’s campaign. “The Democratic Party, too often, treats people like you need it more than it needs you. The MAGA movement is successful because it treats people like it needs them. I want to get back to a place where we’re not patronizing to people.”</p><p>She said she understands Trump’s success and why some see Democrats as out of touch. “What Donald Trump has done really well is tap into people’s very rightful anger with a system that has not worked for them,” McMorrow said. “What he’s done is convince you it’s someone else’s fault. I think that micro-targeting of policies is almost an oversimplification of people. And I also want to make sure we’re not just adding to the noise. I don’t think we need a Nancy Mace of the Democratic Party.”</p><p>McMorrow said she understands and feels empathy for the concerns of both the middle-aged and the middle class. “I come at this being a millennial, having graduated from college right into the middle of the recession, having tens of thousands of dollars of loan debt, no health care, and I applied to hundreds of jobs,” she said. “I talk to way too many people my age who would love to start a family but just can’t afford it. And it’s too expensive to save for retirement.… People right now are just feeling helpless and want to feel like they have agency in their own future.”</p><p>She also listens to older generations who remember better days for her state’s economy and prestige. “I had a lot of residents in my district saying, ‘You remind me a lot of my daughter who left and went to New York or Denver or Cincinnati,’’’ McMorrow said. “‘What can you do to bring my kids back?’” </p><p>As Democratic whip in the Michigan Senate, McMorrow led the 2024 enactment of Michigan’s Red Flag law, which allows authorities, with permission of a judge, to take guns from a person thought to be a danger to themselves or to others. Calling the recent mass shooting at Florida State University “just another day in America,” McMorrow added: “I’m going to be leaning in very heavily on ending gun violence.” </p><p>Among her political motivations, McMorrow cited the first election of Trump in 2016 as having filled her with “a sense of existential dread. I just felt so powerless. Frankly, you get to a point where you wish somebody else would fix it. And then you realize: Why isn’t anybody else fixing it? And I guess if nobody else is going to fix it, why not me?”</p><p>McMorrow’s current book—<i>Hate Won’t Win</i>—is more candid than most campaign autobiographies. Subtitled “Find Your Power &amp; Leave This Place Better Than You Found it,” it chronicles sexual harassment from a fellow state senator in her first year, during a break in a class about—yes, really—sexual harassment.</p><p>“(My) body entered fight-or-flight mode desperately seeking escape,” she writes of her encounter with Peter Lucido, who is now the Macomb County prosecutor. “Grasping my hand tight enough to indicate he didn’t want me going anywhere … he pulled back slightly and looked me up and down, still holding both my hand and low back. ‘I can see why,’ Lucido told me with a smirk after I’d felt his eyes assess every inch of my body and score me in his mind like a purebred at a dog show.”</p><p>Three years later, McMorrow drew national attention after a fellow female state senator—a Republican named Lana Theis—ridiculed McMorrow’s defense of sex education in public schools as well as her support for LGBTQ rights and for teaching accurate facts about the racial history of the United States. In campaign literature, Theis wrote: “Progressive social media trolls like Senator Mallory McMorrow (D-Snowflake) … are outraged they can’t teach, can’t groom and sexualize kindergarteners or that 8-year-olds are responsible for slavery.”</p><p>McMorrow’s powerful Senate-floor response went instantly viral. “I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme,” McMorrow said to Theis, without naming her. “You are targeting marginalized kids. You dehumanize and marginalize me. You say, ‘She’s a groomer. She supports pedophilia. She wants children to believe they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they’re white.’” </p><p>Instead of conceding the moral high ground to the “evangelicals” of the religious right, McMorrow stressed her Catholic faith and said her mother sometimes missed Sunday mass to work instead at a soup kitchen. Christianity, McMorrow said, means serving the community, not just filling up a pew one day per week. “So who am I?” McMorrow asked in her speech. “I am a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom.… Call me whatever you want. We will not let hate win.”</p><p>Reflecting on the overwhelmingly positive national reaction to her Senate speech in the coffee-shop interview, McMorrow said: “The reason that speech resonated was I was able to puncture through the culture wars.”</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p>McMorrow grew up in Whitehouse, New Jersey, before heading out to Indiana for college and graduating from Notre Dame. She worked in industrial product design, with a passion for automobiles. Ray Wert, then editor of Jalopnik, a website about car culture, ran a story about her when, he said, “She designed a concept car that was carved out of clay live onstage at the L.A. Auto show.” After Wert took a high-ranking job at Gawker, he reconnected with McMorrow at a San Diego convention for Comic-Con. “I didn’t know whether to hire her or marry her,” Wert said in a telephone interview. So he did both. </p><p>In that they are both auto buffs, McMorrow said Wert won her hand with an offer she couldn’t refuse. “My husband proposed to me with a 2014 Cadillac CTSU Wagon,” she said. “It was one of two, in blue, with red brake calipers with a manual transmission. So it was rare.” He offered her a package deal. “It was, ‘Look at this car,’” she recalled. “‘Will you marry me?’”</p><p>They were wed in 2017. Although they lived in both Los Angeles and New York, both said McMorrow urged them to settle down in Michigan, Wert’s home state, where he now works as vice president for communications and marketing for Radiant Nuclear, a company that builds micro reactors. Among other things, McMorrow said she was charmed by the state when she and her husband visited it each summer, joining fellow travelers for 1,000-mile road rallies around The Mitten. They bought a house in Royal Oak, a suburb north of Detroit, to raise their daughter, Noa. </p><p>That name is Israeli, McMorrow said, and her husband is Jewish. She acknowledged the irony of living in a suburb famously remembered as home of the “Radio Priest,” Father Charles Coughlin, who preached antisemitism over the air to a national audience in the 1930s. Back then, McMorrow said, she and Wert probably could not have bought a home in Royal Oak because of their mixed marriage. Now, she said, they observe both Passover and Easter and teach their daughter to be open-minded.</p><p>“I was very nervous for many years to talk about my religious upbringing,” McMorrow said. “My relationship with Catholicism is complicated, like a lot of people’s is. On top of that, I’m married to a Jewish man. But I realized when we don’t talk about it, we leave the vacuum for Republicans to really have a monopoly on religion.”</p><p>McMorrow said she raised a million dollars on the day of her announcement, with donations from all 50 states and all 83 counties in Michigan. “What I am most proud of,” she added, “is that it was from more than 12,000 individual donors. The response is incredible. People are reaching out from all over the state.”</p><p>Her campaign theme, thus far, is “The New American Dream” because, she said, “I think about that as a direct counter to ‘Make America Great Again,’ this idea that we can go backwards. We can’t go back to the past.”</p><p>One of the lessons she learned from the last election, she said, is that “it is not enough to be anti–Donald Trump. What I heard from voters is ‘We know who he is. We don’t know what you stand for or what you’re going to do for us.’” In that Trump’s troops are now capturing immigrants with no due process and imprisoning them in foreign countries while verbally attacking many judges, McMorrow vowed to campaign in part on “fundamental civil rights. You will not be targeted and discriminated against or sent to a foreign prison because of who you are.”</p><p>Reflecting on Trump’s executive orders and other shock waves emanating from the White House, McMorrow said the best way to fight back is not to complain to each other in social media silos but rather to get out, organize, and work. “For too long, too many of us took for granted that the framework of the country and the Constitution itself would protect it,” she said. “But they are just words on paper. If we don’t actively participate, we’ve seen it (the Constitution) is not going to protect itself.”</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195013/mallory-mcmorrow-michigan-senate-campaign-power</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195013</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Michigan]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mallory McMorrow]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Joe Lapointe]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/6a3f7f846a4d270e73ab03d317c01f273d91f421.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/6a3f7f846a4d270e73ab03d317c01f273d91f421.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Michigan state Senator Mallory McMorrow at the 2024 Democratic National Convention</media:description><media:credit>Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[AI Execs Are Demanding Government Support—No Questions Asked]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>One of the only things Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on in Washington these days is the importance of AI. Immediately after taking office, Donald Trump signed an</span><span> </span><a target="_blank" class="c-link" href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/removing-barriers-to-american-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence/" rel="nofollow">executive order</a><span> </span><span>aimed at solidifying America’s “position as the global leader in AI” so as to “secure a brighter future for all Americans,” after which he announced White House support for a</span><span> </span><a target="_blank" class="c-link" href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/21/tech/openai-oracle-softbank-trump-ai-investment/index.html" rel="nofollow">$500 billion partnership</a><span> </span><span>between OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle to build data centers and other infrastructure meant to expand </span><span>the capabilities of large language models like ChatGPT. Democratic <a href="https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/qa-max-read-agi-artificial-general-intelligence-new-york-times-ezra-klein-kevin-roose.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pundits</a> and <a href="https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2024/10/24/memorandum-on-advancing-the-united-states-leadership-in-artificial-intelligence-harnessing-artificial-intelligence-to-fulfill-national-security-objectives-and-fostering-the-safety-security/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">politicians</a> have been enthusiastic too, emphasizing the need for U.S. leadership. “</span><span>If America falls behind China on AI,” Chuck Schumer</span><span> </span><a href="https://www.democrats.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/leader-schumer-floor-remarks-on-the-need-to-expand-bipartisan-efforts-to-meet-ais-sputnik-moment-for-america" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">warned</a>,<span> </span><span>earlier this year, “we will fall behind everywhere: economically, militarily, scientifically, educationally, everywhere.” </span><span> </span></p><p><span class="c-mrkdwn__br"></span><span>On Thursday morning, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation hosted a</span><span> </span><a target="_blank" class="c-link" href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/2025/5/winning-the-ai-race-strengthening-u-s-capabilities-in-computing-and-innovation_2?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&amp;stream=top" rel="nofollow">hearing</a><span> </span><span>on “Winning the AI Race.” Featuring some of that industry’s biggest names, like OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Microsoft vice chair and president Brad Smith, the panel explored “regulatory barriers on the AI supply chain” so that the U.S. can “secure U.S. dominance in the 21st century global industrial revolution” over China, specifically. Like most D.C. chatter about the importance of AI, though, the hearing was light on answers to a few seemingly basic questions: What exactly is “artificial general intelligence,” or AGI, as the experts kept referring to it? What value are these companies’ products providing, and what will they do in the future that makes them so essential to U.S. national security?</span></p><p>Senators didn’t ask those kinds of questions. And the executives they’d invited to Capitol Hill didn’t volunteer answers, preferring the sorts of quasi-religious generalizations that have become a hallmark for the industry. Altman conceded in his <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/6B937B74-31EE-4777-B004-3D6DC0DC3FBA" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">prepared testimony</a> that AGI is “weakly defined” but suggested that it was enough to describe it as “a system that can tackle increasingly complex problems, at human level, in many fields.” It will be, he argued, “the most powerful tool ever created,” enabling people to “build incredible things for each other and improve their quality of life.” It can usher in a future that “can be almost unimaginably bright, but only if we take concrete steps to ensure that an American-led version of AI, built on democratic values like freedom and transparency, prevails over an authoritarian one.” Smith <a href="https://www.commerce.senate.gov/services/files/148A94E5-DB50-4EE0-BD16-C52E07F8D3AE" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">vowed</a> that AI “has the potential to become the most useful tool for people ever invented.” </p><p><span>Altman’s prepared testimony listed out a few similarly broad-strokes examples of how it’s currently being used. U.S. National Laboratories are employing OpenAI products to “accelerate breakthroughs in areas like energy,” while ChatGPT is helping state employees in Pennsylvania “do administrative tasks more quickly.” In his opening remarks, however, Altman mostly focused on how much he liked having a computer when he was a kid. </span></p><p>The ways people use these products in real life, meanwhile, are plain. Social media platforms are clogged with AI-generated slop and photos made to resemble Studio Ghibli productions. Email platforms push users to generate AI summaries of one-line emails. As the <i>Harvard Business Review</i> <a href="https://hbr.org/2025/04/how-people-are-really-using-gen-ai-in-2025" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">notes</a>, the top usage of AI technology is for therapy and companionship. People rely on large language models for life advice, and for help crafting texts to their friends and crushes. A recent <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/openai-chatgpt-ai-cheating-education-college-students-school.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>New York </i>magazine feature</a> catalogs the widespread use of OpenAI’s ChatGPT by college students, who call on it to write essays and even respond to professors’ prompts asking them to introduce themselves. “Massive numbers of students are going to emerge from university with degrees, and into the workforce, who are essentially illiterate,” said a Cal State Chico ethics professor who has spent the “the better part of the past two years grading AI-generated papers.” The tool makes practically every academic task easier with no obvious downside. It is, as the article points out, impossible for growing numbers of students to resist. </p><p>If Altman and Smith are vague about the soaring potential of AI, they’ve been comparatively specific about how they’d like policymakers to help them. Winning the “AI innovation race,” Smith argued on Thursday, “will require massive data centers and AI infrastructure that need federal support to expand and modernize the electrical grid on which they depend.” Last year, OpenAI spent <a href="https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/01/21/1110260/openai-ups-its-lobbying-efforts-nearly-seven-fold/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$1.76 million</a> lobbying the federal government, up from just $260,000 the year before. Its demands have been precise. In a <a href="https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/ostp-rfi/ec680b75-d539-4653-b297-8bcf6e5f7686/openai-response-ostp-nsf-rfi-notice-request-for-information-on-the-development-of-an-artificial-intelligence-ai-action-plan.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">15-page comment</a> on Trump’s second executive order on the subject of artificial intelligence, OpenAI requested that the federal government override state attempts to regulate the company or limit infrastructure development; implement export controls so as to keep their products out of China, preventing additional competition there; and loosen intellectual property protections so as to allow the company’s large language models to train on more material. It called for a National Transmission Highway Act to expand the construction of transmission lines, fiber connectivity, and gas pipelines, and asked to use the Defense Production Act to “shorten timelines for data center power infrastructure projects.” OpenAI also argued that AI developers should be granted access to massive amounts of government data. In exchange for that access, the authors of the comment wrote, “developers using this data could work with governments to unlock new insights that help it develop better public policies.”</p><p>At Thursday’s hearings, Republicans and Democrats alike appeared credulous about the virtues of AI. They certainly didn’t inquire about why the companies gathered before them seem to be so bad at making money off it. OpenAI, for instance, lost <a href="https://www.wheresyoured.at/wheres-the-money/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$5 billion</a> last year. And although Microsoft has demanded that governments roll out the red carpets for new data centers, over the last six months it’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/microsoft-pulls-back-more-data-center-leases-us-europe-analysts-say-2025-03-26/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">walked back</a> plans for two gigawatts’ worth of data center projects in the U.S. and Europe, thanks to an oversupply relative to its current demand forecast. Given AI developers’ allegedly urgent and expanding needs for land, electricity, and control over local governments, however, there’s been relatively little public debate about the already mounting harms being posed by these technologies: the degradation of future generations’ abilities to read, write, and think critically; the filling up of our digital lives with ugly garbage; the impairment of our capacity to form and maintain relationships with other human beings. If artificial intelligence is so important to the United States, in other words, then why does it also seem to be making so many parts of life here so shitty?</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195029/ai-execs-demanding-government-support-no-questions-asked</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195029</guid><category><![CDATA[Climate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Artificial Intelligence]]></category><category><![CDATA[Environment and Energy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Kate Aronoff]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/22e3c84c11c1a1fdb385ba0ac7a21686cbaa166b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/22e3c84c11c1a1fdb385ba0ac7a21686cbaa166b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>On May 8, Sam Altman testified in a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee hearing about artificial intelligence. </media:description><media:credit>Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[MAGA Rage Erupts as New Pope’s Views of Trump Prove Unexpectedly Harsh]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Right after the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/08/world/pope-conclave-news" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">news broke</a> that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet <a href="https://meidasnews.com/news/jd-vance-is-wrong-new-pope-leo-xiv-has-a-history-of-criticizing-trump-and-vance-on-immigration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">produced lots of evidence</a> that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. <span>That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new pope as anti-Trump, pro–open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/jack-posobiec/jack-posobiec-criticizes-pope-leo-xiv-promoting-anti-trump-and-anti-bukele-articles-0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Media Matters</a> <a href="https://x.com/MattGertz/status/1920549149029621847" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">documented</a>. We talked to the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Political-Theory-Liberal-Socialism/dp/103264723X" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">excellent </a></span><span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Political-Theory-Liberal-Socialism/dp/103264723X" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">political theorist</a> Matt McManus, who was raised in the church and <a href="https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/conservatism-inequality-mcmanus-reagan-burke-de-maistre" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">regularly wrestles with the intellectual roots</a> of today’s right wing, including in his 2023 book, </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Books-Matthew-McManus/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AMatthew%2BMcManus" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The Political Right and Equality</i></a><span><i>.</i> He explains what Vance gets wrong about Catholic teaching, why it’s so inimical to Trumpism, and how today’s pro-Trump</span><span> influencers and “post-liberal” Catholic intellectuals alike are refusing to reckon with what MAGA has truly become.</span><span> Listen to this episode </span><a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a><span>. A transcript is <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/195048/transcript-maga-fury-boils-new-pope-anti-trump-views" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195039/maga-rage-erupts-new-pope-views-trump-prove-unexpectedly-harsh</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195039</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Daily Blast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Catholic Church]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Fri, 09 May 2025 09:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e3d0e1abd8036cb10b02aa6ceae0ccc022f13de1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e3d0e1abd8036cb10b02aa6ceae0ccc022f13de1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Newly elected Pope Leo XIV, Robert Prevost, arrives on the main central loggia balcony of St Peter’s Basilica for the first time, after the conclave in The Vatican, on May 8.</media:description><media:credit>Alberto Pizzoli/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Vance Just Made Trump’s Dolls Comment Even Weirder]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Vice President JD Vance has his own particularly bad explanation for Donald Trump’s already ridiculous way of dismissing the rising prices of consumer goods. </p><p><span>In an interview on Fox News Thursday, host Martha MacCallum asked Vance what he thought about the president’s strange warning that American children might need to only have </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194638/trump-buy-less-toys-kids" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">two dolls, instead of 30</a><span>, in the face of his sweeping reciprocal tariff policy.</span></p><p><span>“Do you tell the people of this country that you need to make some sacrifices in order to reorganize this bad trade relationship?” MacCallum asked. </span></p><p><span>“Well, I think the president’s point here is that yeah, we do need to become more self-reliant, and that’s not gonna happen overnight, and it’s not always gonna be easy, Martha,” Vance </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920565609294934351" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">replied</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>“But what I’d ask people is not whether they want two dolls, or five dolls, or 20 dolls for their kids, I’d ask American moms and dads, ‘Would you like to be able to go into a pharmacy and know that the drugs your kids need are actually available to you as an American parent?’” Vance continued. </span></p><p><span>“Would you like to—God forbid—if your country goes to a war, and your son or daughter are sent off to fight, would you like to know that the weapons that they have are good American-made stuff, not made by a foreign adversary?” he said. </span></p><p><span>But Vance’s weird pivot to fearmongering about war legitimately makes no sense. America is already the world’s largest arms exporter, accounting for a whopping 43 percent of global weapons exports between 2020 and 2024, according to </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/10/business/us-weapons-exports-europe-intl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">CNN</a><span>. Trump’s </span><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-military-budget-grunts_n_58d0459ae4b0be71dcf74bdd" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">past efforts</a><span> to invest in weapons production benefited defense contractors more than soldiers. </span></p><p><span>As for Vance’s remark about pharmacies, it’s not evident that Trump’s tariffs will actually help increase access to drugs. Trump has said that he plans to make a decision on pharmaceutical tariffs within the next two weeks, but the Trump administration’s efforts to boost the domestic manufacturing of medicines may come at a cost to the people who need them, while U.S. manufacturing struggles to meet demand. Ahead of Trump’s announcement, imports of pharmaceuticals have seen a </span><a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/05/07/tariffs-imports-drugs-pharmaceuticals" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">significant spike</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>One by one, different members of the Trump administration have attempted to make sense of the president’s weird “dolls” comment. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194669/stephen-miller-donald-trump-dolls-prices-tariffs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">argued</a><span> that Trump wanted a higher degree of quality for American-made goods, while in the same breath promising that the president would strip the very regulations that ensure that quality in an effort to make production less expensive. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194951/donald-trump-treasury-scott-bessent-dolls-good-cause" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">insisted</a><span> that a little pain now would lead little girls to a “better life,” while sidestepping concerns that economic damage Trump was threatening now could last generations. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195037/jd-vance-donald-trump-dolls-comment-weirder</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195037</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[J.D. Vance]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Dolls]]></category><category><![CDATA[Weapons]]></category><category><![CDATA[Manufacturing]]></category><category><![CDATA[American military]]></category><category><![CDATA[Defense contracts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Shortages]]></category><category><![CDATA[Scott Bessent]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stephen Miller]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 21:16:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5f76229906a53041d0850ba24f07f319a56d7179.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5f76229906a53041d0850ba24f07f319a56d7179.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Sacks FEMA Chief One Day After He Tried to Save the Agency]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>President Trump’s acting FEMA chief was </span><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5290399-fema-administrator-fired/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>fired</span></a><span> Thursday for apparently wanting the agency to continue functioning. </span></p><p><span>On Wednesday, Cameron Hamilton was asked at a congressional hearing what he thought about the Trump administration’s reported plans to get rid of the emergency management agency. His answer was probably the reason why he was axed. </span></p><p><span>“I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton said to members of Congress, adding that he wasn’t in a position to decide the agency’s future. </span></p><p><span>Trump has said on </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191408/donald-trump-confusing-disastrous-plan-fema" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>multiple</span></a><span> occasions that he wants to get rid of FEMA, including </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191408/donald-trump-confusing-disastrous-plan-fema" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>days</span></a><span> after he was sworn in as president while Los Angeles County was struggling to cope with massive wildfires.</span></p><p><span>“I like, frankly, the concept when North Carolina gets hit, the governor takes care of it. When Florida gets hit, the governor takes care of it. Meaning the state takes care of it,” Trump said at the time. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is in charge of overseeing FEMA, has also called for </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194930/trump-destroying-data-keeps-country-running" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>eliminating</span></a><span> FEMA. </span></p><p><span>“The president has indicated he wants to eliminate FEMA as it exists today, and to have states have more control over their emergency management response,” Noem said this week to Congress. “He wants to empower local governments and support them and how they respond to their people.”</span></p><p><span>The White House has already </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194571/trump-cuts-making-natural-disasters-deadlier" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>slashed</span></a><span> funding for natural disaster recovery and preparedness, putting the country at serious risk. Hurricane season is only weeks away with the start of summer, and the southeastern U.S. is still recovering from Hurricanes Helene and Milton. The president’s budget proposal calls for cutting $646 million to FEMA.</span></p><p><span>The Trump administration is already trying to deny FEMA relief on a selective basis. The White House was found to have </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193650/trump-administration-just-violated-another-court-order" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>violated a court order</span></a><span> by withholding FEMA relief to at least 19 states, all of whom have Democratic attorneys general. States that were particularly affected were those with immigration policies conflicting with Trump’s priorities.</span></p><p><span>Hamilton’s firing is a bad sign for the future of FEMA, and an even worse sign for disaster response in the U.S. The past few decades have seen some big government mistakes in disaster relief, notably </span><a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4331330.stm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Hurricane Katrina</span></a><span> in 2005 in Louisiana and </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/159051/hurricane-maria-everything-was-destroyed" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Hurricane Maria</span></a><span> in Puerto Rico during during Trump’s first term eight years ago. Now, we’re about to see what will happen after massive cuts to emergency disaster relief. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195036/trump-fires-fema-administrator</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195036</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Climate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Environment]]></category><category><![CDATA[Natural Disaster]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[FEMA]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cameron Hamilton]]></category><category><![CDATA[Federal Emergency Management Agency]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kristi Noem]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Homeland Security]]></category><category><![CDATA[DHS]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 20:29:16 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3057b98bb37ca845f03d4da1f7e3ad7a1dd48ac1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3057b98bb37ca845f03d4da1f7e3ad7a1dd48ac1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Acting FEMA administrator Cameron Hamilton was recently fired by Donald Trump.</media:description><media:credit>Pete Marovich/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Big Winner of Trump’s Much-Hyped Trade Deal Is ... Not the U.S.]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Trump administration reached what it’s calling a “</span><a href="https://www.barrons.com/news/trump-touts-breakthrough-trade-deal-with-uk-40807a6a" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">breakthrough trade deal</a><span>” Thursday with the United Kingdom. I’m very pleased for the United Kingdom, from which my paternal great-great grandfather Moses Noah emigrated in July 1863 and my maternal grandmother, Jean Robertson, in October 1922. </span><span>My wife and I recently enjoyed watching </span><a href="https://www.pbs.org/show/wolf-hall/?gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=22496558785&amp;gbraid=0AAAAAooDyp2UH78L5YHcpSYhncfafqkaZ&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjwrPHABhCIARIsAFW2XBMDmh4BA0mq9svdTDep-kjnz3FqQDTzxbQakQiMmV_L3G1ezDZAJogaAlCSEALw_wcB" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the second season of <i>Wolf Hall</i></a><span> on PBS. Rule Britannia and all that.</span></p><p><span>But at the risk of spoiling the party, the U.K. is not a country with which the United States has much of a trade problem. A trade problem, as defined (somewhat simplistically) by the Trump administration, occurs when another country sells more stuff to us than we sell to them. Our biggest trade problem, everyone agrees, is China. China sells us </span><a href="https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$295 billion more in goods</a><span> than we sell to them. Slapping a 145 percent minimum tariff on all Chinese goods is not an intelligent solution to the problem, but it </span><i>is</i><span> a problem, all the same. </span></p><p><span>It is therefore good news that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will finally </span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/bessent-greer-to-meet-with-chinese-trade-officials-later-this-week-00332271" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">initiate trade talks</a><span> with China this weekend—talks that Trump </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/china-waives-tariffs-some-us-goods-denies-trumps-claim-that-talks-are-underway-2025-04-25/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">previously claimed</a><span> were already taking place, but weren’t. One remarkable development since Trump moved back into the White House is that statements from the habitually mendacious Chinese government are now more credible than statements from the president of the United States. But set that aside. If you want to call something a “breakthrough,” sitting down with Chinese trade officials is a much bigger deal than sitting down with a bunch of people who talk like Anthony Hopkins.</span></p><p><span>We don’t have much of a trade problem with the U.K. because </span><a href="https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/europe-middle-east/europe/united-kingdom" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">we sell $12 billion more worth of stuff</a><span> to them than they sell to us. This is our fifth-largest trade surplus, </span><a href="https://www.fool.com/research/us-trade-balance/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">according to</a><span> The Motley Fool, after the Netherlands ($56 billion), Hong Kong ($22 billion), the United Arab Emirates ($19 billion), and Australia ($18 billion). Most of the other places with which we have trade imbalances are underdeveloped countries. </span></p><p><i>We</i> don’t have much of a trade problem with the U.K., but the U.K. has a big trade problem with <i>us</i>, because <i>our</i> trade surplus is <i>their</i> trade deficit. Also, we are, among nations, the U.K.’s <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF11123.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">biggest trading partner</a>, whereas the U.K. is only our <a href="https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/IF11123.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">seventh-largest trading partner</a>. We’re just not that into them. </p><p><span>Compounding the U.K.’s trade difficulties is Brexit, the U.K.’s spectacularly self-destructive decision to depart the European Union, which took effect in 2020. The U.K. did manage before that breakup to negotiate a free trade deal with the EU, eliminating the risk of tariffs being imposed on its imports or exports to the EU. But even so, the U.K.’s exports to the EU, which (as a bloc rather than a nation) is the U.K.’s biggest trading partner, are down by </span><a href="https://www.aston.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-09/Full%20Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">as much as 30 percent</a> <span>compared to where they would be had Brexit never occurred. This has left the U.K. a bit frantic to cut trade deals elsewhere, and especially with the U.S.</span></p><p><span>Trump’s trade deal with the U.K., which exists only in rough outline, makes Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s life somewhat easier. Starmer’s diplomatic strategy has been to flatter Trump at every turn—which can’t have been easy for him—and to get King Charles to invite Trump to visit him at Dumfries House or Balmoral Castle, both situated near Trump golf courses in Scotland. This charm offensive has now been rewarded with a reduction in tariffs, </span><a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/landmark-economic-deal-with-united-states-saves-thousands-of-jobs-for-british-car-makers-and-steel-industry" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">from 27.5 to 10 percent</a><span>, on Jaguars, Land Rovers, and other British automobiles exported to America, and the complete elimination of tariffs on the U.K.’s struggling steel industry. In addition, the U.K. will be permitted to export, tariff-free, up to 13,000 metric tons of beef. All British exports, however, will still be subjected to the same across-the-board 10 percent tariff Trump is imposing on all countries. </span></p><p><span>In return, the U.S. receives … not much. Some </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c15ng4g5g0eo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reductions on agricultural tariffs</a><span>, including tariffs on American beef, although apparently the U.K. will continue not to import any beef from cattle that have been fed growth hormones (the Trump White House </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/05/fact-sheet-u-s-uk-reach-historic-trade-deal/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">refers to this</a> <span>as “non-science-based standards that adversely affect U.S. exports”). There is no deal on pharmaceuticals, on which Trump has threatened to impose a 25 percent tariff. There, the U.S. has a </span><a href="https://www.fool.com/research/pharmaceutical-tariffs-imports/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">trade deficit</a><span> of $1.4 billion with the U.K., but the paramount consideration must be to keep it easy to get foreign-made drugs to American patients and American-made drugs to British ones, because human health is more important than political one-upmanship on trade.</span></p><p><span>The U.S. came into being as a result of a trade dispute with Great Britain, and in those days the game really was rigged to benefit the mother country at the expense of the colonies. Lately, though, the U.S. has had the upper hand—so much so that Trump’s idea of levying heavy tariffs on the U.K. was kind of cruel. The benefit of Trump’s Thursday announcement is mainly that the U.S. can feel a little bit less like the neighborhood bully. That’s worth something. But there’s a reason most of the champagne corks are popping across the Atlantic in </span><a href="https://shakespeare.mit.edu/richardii/richardii.2.1.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England</a><span>. In the U.K., there’s reason to celebrate. Here in the U.S., it’s just another day.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/195028/trump-uk-trade-accord-tariffs</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195028</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category><category><![CDATA[Keir Starmer]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[The Insecurity Complex]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Brexit]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Timothy Noah]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 19:48:50 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1606ce3b75cbe09949d40f283069b0328f946b98.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1606ce3b75cbe09949d40f283069b0328f946b98.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and President Donald Trump shake hands during a joint press conference in the East Room at the White House.</media:description><media:credit>Chen Mengtong/Getty Images
  11. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[We Just Got a New Pope—and MAGA Is Already Losing Its Mind]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Within just a few hours of white smoke rising out of the Vatican, MAGA is already fuming over the new pope.</p><p><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/195017/new-pope-robert-prevost-lgbtq-immigration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Cardinal Robert Prevost</a><span> was elected the new leader of the Catholic Church Thursday, becoming the first American pontiff. But like any American, Pope Leo XIV seems to have his </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/195020/new-pope-robert-prevost-trump-jd-vance" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">own opinions</a><span> about President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance. (Spoiler alert: He doesn’t seem like a fan!)</span></p><p><span>Charlie Kirk, the </span><a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/charlie-kirk-turning-point-usa-pivots-to-christian-nationalism-1234740083/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Christian nationalist</a><span> founder of Turning Point USA, started out </span><a href="https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1920537648004759889" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">backing</a><span> Prevost’s selection, pointing to his apparent Republican voting record, but seemed to descend into </span><a href="https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1920538594810216461" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">doubt</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>In a </span><a href="https://x.com/charliekirk11/status/1920544432601936310" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">video</a><span> posted to X, Kirk initially appeared nonplussed as he aired his concerns about Pope Leo’s “not-so-great tweets.” The right-wing fanatic was referring to several old reposts by an X account associated with the name Robert Prevost, which has been confirmed as belonging to the new pope.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Kirk mused that perhaps an American pope had been selected because “they want a voice that is also for the opening of American borders while we have President Trump!”</span></p><p><span>“God Save the Church,” Jack Posobiec, the pitiable MAGA activist covering the papal conclave for <i>The Charlie Kirk Show,</i> </span><a href="https://x.com/JackPosobiec/status/1920539567414780077" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> in a post on X.</span></p><p><span>The “End Wokeness” account on X </span><a href="https://x.com/EndWokeness/status/1920539693214572679" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">posted</a><span> screenshots of reposts from Prevost’s account, including posts that criticized Trump’s first-term immigration polices, </span><a href="https://x.com/igorbobic/status/1920532632133111996" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">one</a><span> that advocated for gun reform, and another that advocated to “end racism in our hearts and in society,” in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.</span></p><p><span>While Kirk seemed less certain about what exactly Pope Leo’s appointment meant for the future, far-right internet troll Laura Loomer was decidedly more … decided. “Just another Marxist puppet in the Vatican,” she </span><a href="https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1920537118041854297" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> in a post on X. “Catholics don’t have anything good to look forward to.”</span></p><p><span>Loomer spread her vitriol across several posts about the new pope’s supposed online activity. “The new Pope once retweeted a post about how we need to keep praying for career criminal &amp; drug addict George Floyd,” she </span><a href="https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1920542936535576842" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> in another post. “The tweet said, ‘May all hatred, violence and prejudice be eradicated.’ What prejudice? Is that another way to spell FENTANYL OVERDOSE? MARXIST POPE!”</span></p><p><span>In another post, she simply </span><a href="https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1920538289183785420" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span>, “WOKE MARXIST POPE.”</span></p><p><span>This is the same woman who met with the president last month to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193554/trump-just-let-far-right-troll-laura-loomer-purge-national-security-council" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">advise</a><span> that he oust multiple staffers on his National Security Council—and he did. &nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Other MAGA voices weren’t quite as disturbed—even the really far-right ones. Ryan Girdusky, a political consultant who </span><a href="https://x.com/justinbaragona/status/1851108125027303528" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">previously wrote</a><span> for notorious neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, counseled caution, in a post on X.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Trying to fit the ideology of the Pope in the context of American politics is a fruitless endeavor,” he </span><a href="https://x.com/RyanGirdusky/status/1920538259739840656" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span>. “If you’re Catholic, pray that he’s a good steward of the Church and defends the throne of Christ as the successor of Peter.”</span></p><p><span><i>This story has been updated.</i></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195023/new-pope-maga-already-losing-mind</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195023</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[make america great again]]></category><category><![CDATA[maga]]></category><category><![CDATA[Laura Loomer]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pope]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pope Francis]]></category><category><![CDATA[pope leo]]></category><category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[J.D. Vance]]></category><category><![CDATA[Wokeness]]></category><category><![CDATA[LGBTQ]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 19:24:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a2d1e0ab7b708213b6c770d73d1bbeb1a12f2040.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a2d1e0ab7b708213b6c770d73d1bbeb1a12f2040.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Christopher Furlong/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Deportation Plans to Libya Involve Some Chilling Threats]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Trump administration’s plan to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194950/trump-plans-deportations-libya-hellscape-prisons" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>deport</span></a><span> immigrants to Libya was even more extensive and disturbing than initial reports suggested. </span></p><p><span>Under the plan, nationals from countries including Cambodia, the Philippines, Vietnam, and even </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-may-soon-deport-migrants-libya-military-flight-sources-say-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Mexico</span></a><span> were to be sent to the north African country still recovering from a civil war. According to </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25932820-libyatromotdvd050725/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>court filings</span></a><span> from immigration rights advocates, who filed an emergency request in Boston federal court to halt the deportations, ICE gathered one Vietnamese national, one Laotian, and four other detainees and demanded they sign paperwork agreeing to be sent to Libya. </span></p><p><span>When all six refused, they were handcuffed and placed into </span><a href="https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1920218630882513274" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>solitary confinement</span></a><span>. Later on Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/07/libya-trump-migrants-plane-deportations/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>ruled</span></a><span> that any deportations to Libya of third-country nationals without the opportunity to object over torture concerns “would violate this Court’s Order.”</span></p><p><span>Libya’s two rival governments each </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/world/middleeast/libya-us-migrants-deal.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>denied</span></a><span> on Wednesday that they had agreed to accept deported immigrants from the U.S. When asked about the plan Wednesday, Trump </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194980/trump-answer-deportations-libya" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>himself</span></a><span> said, “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the Department of Homeland Security.”</span></p><p><span>The idea that immigrants in the U.S. could be deported to a country like Libya, where “</span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-rights/executions-torture-and-slave-markets-persist-in-libya-u-n-idUSKBN1GX1JY/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>open slave markets</span></a><span>” exist and where immigrants are detained in conditions described as a </span><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/libya-horrific-violations-in-detention-highlight-europes-shameful-role-in-forced-returns/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>“hellscape”</span></a><span> by Amnesty International, is shocking in itself. Even more shocking is that neither of the two entities who control Libya even agreed to accepting any immigrants from the U.S. </span></p><p><span>But the Trump administration has already taken an unprecedented step in sending immigrants to countries to which they have no connection, such as </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194702/bukele-abrego-garcia-rights-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>El Salvador</span></a><span> and </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194312/trump-deportation-rwanda" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Rwanda</span></a><span>. While a court order appears to have at least put a temporary brake on deportations to Libya, the White House will probably keep trying to skirt the law in trying to expel as many immigrants as possible.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195021/trump-deportations-libya-threats</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195021</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cambodia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Vietnam]]></category><category><![CDATA[Phillipines]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 19:16:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/76bc4c1ab3cc836e77af39e9a59b432ac8401415.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/76bc4c1ab3cc836e77af39e9a59b432ac8401415.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Here’s What the New Pope Really Thinks (Beside Hating Trump)]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>When white smoke began pouring from the Sistine Chapel’s chimney Thursday, after as few as four ballots, many assumed that meant the sitting Catholic cardinals had selected the consensus front-runner Pietro Parolin, who had served as Pope Francis’s secretary of state since 2013, as the new pope. If there’s one thing you have to hand to the assembled leaders of the Catholic Church, it’s this: They do know how to surprise you.&nbsp;</p><p>When the curtains of a balcony on St. Peter’s Basilica were drawn an hour later, Parolin did emerge—to announce that Robert Francis Prevost had been elected pope. Few had thought that the Chicago-born Prevost—now known as Pope Leo XIV—was a contender. But there he was: the <a href="https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2025-05/cardinal-elected-pope-papal-name.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">first American pope</a> in the history of the Catholic Church.&nbsp;</p><p>Prevost, like Parolin, was a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0ln80lzk7ko" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">close ally</a> of Francis. Ordained in 1982, he has spent much of his time in Peru and was appointed by Francis as bishop of Chiclayo in 2014. In 2023, he was appointed to the influential position of&nbsp;<span>prefect of the Dicastery for Bishops. As with Parolin, Prevost is seen as a continuity pick, given his close ties to his predecessor.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>In his opening speech, the newly anointed Pope Leo XIV paid tribute to Francis, who had last been seen speaking on the same balcony shortly before Easter.&nbsp;</span><span>“Let us keep in our ears the weak voice of Pope Francis that blesses Rome,” Leo XIV <a href="https://www.cnn.com/world/live-news/new-pope-conclave-day-two-05-08-25#:~:text=Leo%20XIV%20pays%20tribute%20to%20Francis%20in%20first%20words%20as%20pope&amp;text=%E2%80%9CLet%20us%20keep%20in%20our,God%20loves%20us." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“The pope who blessed Rome, gave his blessing to the entire world that morning of Easter. Allow me to follow up on that blessing. God loves us. God loves everyone. Evil will not prevail,” he said in Italian as he addressed a massive, multinational crowd of more than 100,000 people.&nbsp;</span><br></p><p>Prevost is seen as <a href="https://www.thepinknews.com/2025/05/08/pope-robert-prevost-lgbt/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">being to Francis’s right</a> on LGBTQ issues. In 2013, shortly after assuming the papacy, Francis expressed openness toward gay parishioners, saying,&nbsp;<span>“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Prevost, meanwhile, has been critical of what he has called the “homosexual lifestyle” and culture, which encourages&nbsp;</span><span>“sympathy for beliefs and practices that are at odds with the Gospel.”&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Like Francis, he is deeply critical of “gender ideology,” which he has said “seeks to create genders that do not exist.” Prevost’s record on what is arguably the single biggest issue in the church—rampant sexual abuse by clergy—is troubling. He not only <a href="https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/vatican-congregation-member-allowed" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">provided housing</a> to a priest who had been accused of abuse but provided him a residence that was near a Catholic school.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>He is, nevertheless, considerably more moderate on social issues than many other contenders. Like Francis, he is outspoken about the danger posed by climate change and the need to provide ministry, support, and sympathy to migrants and the poor. Last year, in an interview with the Vatican’s news outlet, he distilled his vision of the church, which is one in which leaders are constantly in communion with the poor.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“The bishop is not supposed to be a little prince sitting in his kingdom,” he said, but is “called authentically to be humble, to be close to the people he serves, to walk with them, to suffer with them.”&nbsp;</span></p><p>Much has been made of Prevost’s X account, which was recently <a href="https://x.com/roccopalmo/status/1920550627987333136" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">confirmed</a> to belong to the new pontiff by journalist Rocco Palmo. That account is mostly fairly standard Catholic stuff—pictures of church gatherings and community events. But it is outspoken on one subject: That JD Vance, the Catholic convert who is currently vice president, has views on migration that deviate substantially from the Gospels. Prevost has posted and reposted several posts and articles attacking Vance’s treatment of migrants. Pope Leo XIV will continue his predecessor’s work in one other notable way as well: By hating JD Vance.&nbsp;</p><p><span>It’s clear that Pope Leo XIV cares deeply about the plight of migrants, like Francis before him. Whether he has strong feelings about deep-dish pizza or the Chicago Bears quarterback situation is another matter altogether.&nbsp;</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195017/new-pope-robert-prevost-lgbtq-immigration</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195017</guid><category><![CDATA[Papacy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pope Francis]]></category><category><![CDATA[pope leo]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Alex Shephard]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 18:40:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/25422d4d9580d28556764004ae9bc0457ded33da.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/25422d4d9580d28556764004ae9bc0457ded33da.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Pope Leo XIV presses his hands together while standing on the balcony of the Vatican</media:description><media:credit>Antonio Masiello/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[The New Pope Doesn’t Seem to Be a Huge Fan of Trump or JD Vance]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The first American-born pope is not a fan of the Trump administration.</span></p><p><span>Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who is now Pope Leo XIV, has multiple posts on his X account that criticize or outright rebuke the words and policies of President Trump.</span></p><p><span>In February, he </span><a href="https://x.com/drprevost/status/1886469097560719594?s=46&amp;t=lbgTgs3AIIJsYI51PVJfTA" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>shared</span></a><span> an article from the </span><i><span>National Catholic Reporter</span></i><span> </span><a href="https://www.ncronline.org/opinion/guest-voices/jd-vance-wrong-jesus-doesnt-ask-us-rank-our-love-others" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>titled</span></a><span> “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” in response to Vance’s bastardization of the concept of </span><span><i>ordo amaris</i></span><span><i>,</i> a narrow interpretation of love that Pope Francis himself </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191401/pope-trump-mass-deportations-jd-vance-fake-christianity" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>admonished</span></a><span>.</span></p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/046299d92b43dff89d32c0a80cd090896ebc83f7.png?w=1176" alt="X screenshot Robert Prevost @drprevost JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others https://ncronline.org/node/292716 via @NCRonline Feb 3, 2025" width="1176" data-caption="" data-credit=""><p><span>In April, he reposted Catholic writer Rocco Palmo, who </span><a href="https://x.com/roccopalmo/status/1911914220850946211" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span>, “As Trump &amp; Bukele use Oval to [aid] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident, once an undoc-ed Salvadorean himself, now-[</span><span>Auxiliary Bishop Evelio Menjivar of Washington, D.C.]</span><span> asks, “Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?”</span></p><p><span>Pope Leo was also critical of Trump’s family separation policy. In 2018, he retweeted a scathing post from Cardinal Cupich: “There is nothing remotely Christian, American, or morally defensible about a policy that takes children away from their parents and warehouses them in cages. This is being carried out in our name and the shame is on us all.”</span></p><p><span>The new pope also has </span><a href="https://x.com/BpOlsonFW/status/1266545533247578112" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>multiple</span></a><span> </span><a href="https://x.com/BishopBurbidge/status/1266702595793485827" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reposts</span></a><span> showing sympathy and </span><a href="https://x.com/drprevost/status/1266783036953317377" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>support</span></a><span> for George Floyd, the Black man whose police murder was a catalyst for racial justice movements in 2020. He reposted words in </span><a href="https://x.com/roccopalmo/status/825800641259900929/photo/1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>opposition</span></a><span> to Trump’s refugee ban and Muslim ban, as well as articles on “</span><a href="https://x.com/drprevost/status/1500478731638476802" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>rivers of blood</span></a><span>” flowing from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the Russian </span><a href="https://x.com/SpesUkraine/status/1513547053737164800" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>attack</span></a><span> on a Catholic missionary headquarters in Mariupol.</span></p><p><span>The pope is expected to strike a Francis-like chord on issues of immigration and poverty, two things the current administration is directly opposed to. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195020/new-pope-robert-prevost-trump-jd-vance</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195020</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[J.D. Vance]]></category><category><![CDATA[robert prevost]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pope Leo IVX]]></category><category><![CDATA[Catholic Church]]></category><category><![CDATA[Catholicism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Christianity]]></category><category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Conservatives]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 18:28:26 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/59c09cdb32d2345aea9868efe8a36b1a102a6621.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/59c09cdb32d2345aea9868efe8a36b1a102a6621.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Exposes Own Idiocy With Comment About Looming Shortages]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Donald Trump said Thursday that it was “a good thing, not a bad thing” that he’d crippled the international economy, putting workers’ livelihoods in jeopardy.</p><p><span>During a press briefing in the Oval Office, Trump downplayed concerns over job security sparked by a significant drop in cargo volumes as a result of his sweeping tariff policy and ongoing trade negotiations with China.</span></p><p><span>One reporter </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1920501678001754526" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span> that traffic at U.S. ports “has really slowed, and now thousands of dockworkers and truck drivers are worried about their jobs,” before being interrupted by the president. </span></p><p><span>“That means we lose less money, you know? When I see that, that means we lose less money,” Trump </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1920501678001754526" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">replied</a><span>. He claimed that China had been making “over a trillion, 1.1 trillion, in my opinion.” </span></p><p><span>“And frankly if we didn’t do business, we would have been better off,” Trump continued. “So, when you say it slowed down, that’s a good thing, not a bad thing.</span></p><p><span>Trumpian algebra dictates that shrinking trade with China may curtail the country’s trade deficit, but he doesn’t even know what a trade deficit is, let alone how big it is. </span></p><p><span>Unlike Trump’s enormous estimate, America’s trade deficit with China was just </span><a href="https://ustr.gov/countries-regions/china-mongolia-taiwan/peoples-republic-china" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$295.4 billion</a><span> in 2024. The president has previously </span><a href="https://time.com/7280129/donald-trump-fact-check-2025-interview/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">claimed</a><span> that the U.S. is losing $2 trillion a year on trade, but the country’s trade deficit with the rest of the world was $917.8 billion in 2024.</span></p><p><span>All of this comes back to Trump’s fundamental misunderstanding of economics. A deficit isn’t money lost but an indication that the U.S. has imported more goods and services than it exports. Economists say that having a trade deficit is </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/04/03/nx-s1-5349574/are-trade-deficits-bad-no-economist-says" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">not an inherently bad thing</a><span> at all, because the U.S. simply can’t and shouldn’t make everything. </span></p><p><span>Trump’s continued insistence we’ve been taken for a ride betrays a fundamental </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193614/donald-trump-tariffs-dumb-history-income-tax" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">misunderstanding</a><span> of economics, built off a dislike of other countries. Crucially, when he says that the U.S. would be “better off” if they hadn’t done business with China, what he actually means is that China would be worse off, which to him is the same thing. </span></p><p><span>But what gets lost in Trump’s phony economic model? Actual workers, whose jobs at U.S. ports undoubtedly will be </span><a href="https://www.usfunds.com/resource/u-s-ports-face-massive-slowdowns-as-trump-tariffs-bite-hard/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">affected</a><span> by a sudden reduction in trade. </span></p><p><span>In Seattle, port commissioner Ryan Calkins </span><a href="https://x.com/kaitlancollins/status/1920301150806389121" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a><span> CNN Wednesday night that there were “no container ships at berth.”</span></p><p><span>“That happens every once in a while at normal times, but it’s pretty rare,” Calkin said. “And so to see it tonight is I think a stark reminder that the impacts of the tariffs have real implications.”</span></p><p><span>Ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, California, have already seen a 44 percent drop in docked vessels from the same time last year, according to </span><a href="https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/ports-of-los-angeles-long-beach-44-percent-drop-in-docked-vessels/3694112/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">NBC4 News</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Trump also has no concern for consumers, who soon will begin to see shortages on goods from other countries, and an inevitable price increase on the scant products that remain. The president has suggested that concerns over shortages are as trivial as having </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194938/trump-dolls-weird-tariffs-scarcity" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fewer dolls and pencils</a><span>. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195015/donald-trump-comment-looming-supply-shortages</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195015</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[shipping]]></category><category><![CDATA[Shortages]]></category><category><![CDATA[supply chain]]></category><category><![CDATA[Costs]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 17:10:25 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/bc672b0300d89552b5f043f80822be3002bf50fe.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/bc672b0300d89552b5f043f80822be3002bf50fe.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Bonnie Cash/UPI/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s FBI Director Grilled on What He Thinks Fifth Amendment Says]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>FBI Director Kash Patel seems to be interpreting the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution how he sees fit, contradicting legal precedent.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>At a Senate hearing Thursday, Patel was asked by Senator Jeff Merkley if people deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 had the constitutional right to due process, which the Trump administration claims is not the case.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Are you gonna launch an investigation of the reported violation of the due process of several hundred individuals?” Merkley asked Patel. The FBI director’s answer was not comforting, as he began by saying, “It’s not for me to call the balls and strikes on it.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Your position is that every one of those individuals is by constitutional right afforded due process. I don’t know the answer to that,” Patel </span><a href="https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1920487407385764309" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>replied</span></a><span>, before questioning whether immigrants sent to El Salvador were afforded due process.&nbsp;</span></p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/1b4e8c5dfc246b7c79ce19a018d0081b1a161e1c.png?w=1160" alt="Transcript of exchange between Patel and Merkkley" width="1160" data-caption="" data-credit=""><p><span>“You haven’t read the Constitution? It says ‘all persons,’” Merkley said, adding that “it concerns me you’re not familiar with the core concept of due process applying to all persons.”&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Patel was </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1920486916559966258" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">evasive</a><span> on whether he would enforce the law against other agencies found to be violating the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, claiming that no government agencies were doing so and the Supreme Court had not ruled to that effect.&nbsp;</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">MERKLEY: Are you gonna launch an investigation of the reported violation of the due process of several hundred individuals?<br><br>PATEL: It is not for me to call the balls and strikes on it<br><br>MERKLEY: You haven't read the Constitution? It says 'all persons' ... it concerns me you're… <a href="https://t.co/T70s28Yn6b" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pic.twitter.com/T70s28Yn6b</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1920486916559966258?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">May 8, 2025</a></blockquote><p><span>Patel’s stance shows that the Trump administration is interpreting the law, and even federal court rulings that are supposed to be binding, to serve its own mass deportation agenda. Already, the administration </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194934/donald-trump-team-reason-not-return-kilmar-abrego-garcia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">continues to defy</a><span> a Supreme Court ruling urging the return of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador, where he was mistakenly deported in March.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>As a Trump appointee with very little law enforcement experience, it’s not surprising that Patel is pushing legal limits, and probably crossing them, to defend Trump expelling as many people from the United States as possible. It’s funny that Patel sees this as his job as head of the FBI, even as he isn’t </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194986/kash-patel-fbi-trump-law" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>living up</span></a><span> to many of his other responsibilities. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195011/fbi-director-kash-patel-fifth-amendment-due-process</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195011</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kash Patel]]></category><category><![CDATA[FBI]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[due process]]></category><category><![CDATA[Fifth Amendment]]></category><category><![CDATA[Constitution]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 16:38:15 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f06995ae7c65c325d652ff4f71cf91552c64e376.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f06995ae7c65c325d652ff4f71cf91552c64e376.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[John Roberts Sends Pathetic Message to Trump on Takeover of Courts]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Chief Justice John Roberts offered a gentle rebuke of Donald Trump’s escalating attacks on the judiciary.&nbsp;</p><p><span>During a </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920304331951419703" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fireside chat</a><span> Wednesday night marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York in Buffalo, Roberts emphasized the importance of judicial independence.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“In our Constitution, judges and the judiciary is a coequal branch of government separate from the others with the authority to interpret the constitution as law, and strike down, obviously, acts of Congress or acts of the president,” Roberts </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920304331951419703" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span>. “And that innovation doesn’t work if the judiciary is not independent.</span></p><p><span>“Its job is to, obviously, decide cases, but in the course of that, check the excesses of Congress or of the executive, and that does require a degree of independence,” he said.</span></p><p><span>The chief justice’s impartial recounting of the nation’s founding document flies in the face of the Trump administration’s efforts to sidestep the checks and balances provided by the judiciary.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Roberts also doubled down on his </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192876/john-roberts-warns-trump-impeach-judges" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">rare public criticism</a><span> of Trump, after the president called to impeach a federal judge who ruled against his illegal deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Well, I’ve already spoken to that, and impeachment is not how you register disagreement with decisions,” Roberts </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920259062681514035" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span>.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>But Roberts’s mild criticism may not be enough, as the administration has escalated into making direct threats. When </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114452025916969327" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announcing</a><span> his inane plan to reopen Alcatraz Sunday, Trump listed “judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals” alongside the “criminals” and “thugs” he hoped to imprison there.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Josh Gerstein, a senior legal affairs reporter at Politico, suggested that there may be a method to Roberts’s missing madness.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Subdued Roberts seemed to be keeping his powder dry since many of the big fights, like law firms, deportations, contempt, are making their way to the court or already there,” Gerstein </span><a href="https://x.com/joshgerstein/status/1920473547069120802" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> on X Thursday.&nbsp; “A reasonable strategy, but that’s not some rousing defense of the judiciary or separation of powers.”</span></p><p><span>Gerstein </span><a href="https://x.com/joshgerstein/status/1920473545584296045" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">noted</a><span> that Roberts’s “‘judicial independence’ stuff” was “thinner” than his </span><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/publicinfo/year-end/2024year-endreport.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">2024 Year End report</a><span> on the federal judiciary, which had </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/189785/john-roberts-supreme-court-political-bias" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">compared</a><span> political bias to doxxing and disinformation as some of the “illegitimate activity” that threatens independent judges. At the time, his comments seemed to echo Trump’s complaints about critics who went after judges that ruled in his favor. Now the Trump administration has taken to attacking so-called “activist” judges who rule against him.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Roberts’s refute is comparatively limp when held beside Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s recent </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194781/supreme-court-justice-ketanji-brown-jackson-finally-just-stood-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">indictment</a><span> of the right-wing campaign of threats being used to intimidate judges.</span></p><p><span>“The threats and harassment are attacks on our democracy, on our system of government. And they ultimately risk undermining our Constitution and the rule of law,” Jackson said last week.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195008/supreme-court-john-roberts-message-donald-trump</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195008</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Law]]></category><category><![CDATA[judge]]></category><category><![CDATA[Judiciary]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court Watch]]></category><category><![CDATA[John Roberts]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 15:55:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3668db4ca28393f8c9eeaffa344f90769e41edb0.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3668db4ca28393f8c9eeaffa344f90769e41edb0.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Admits He’s Wildly Exaggerating Benefits of U.K. Trade Deal]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Trump had a </span><a href="https://www.c-span.org/event/white-house-event/president-trump-announces-us-uk-trade-deal/433073" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>press conference</span></a><span> Thursday to explain to everyone that the beautiful, spectacular trade deal that he’s made with Britain is actually unfinished.</span></p><p><span>“The final details are being written up in the coming weeks; we’ll have it all very conclusive, but the actual deal is a conclusive one,” Trump said to reporters with British Prime Minister Keir Starmer on the other line. “We think just about everything has been approved, so good for both countries.”</span></p><p><span>While details remain extremely unclear, this “deal” is said to include greater market access and mutually lowered tariffs.</span></p><p><span>Trump taking a victory lap for an unfinished, undefined deal immediately raised eyebrows. </span></p><p><span>“Why Britain? And why now? … You’ve described this deal as a full and comprehensive deal, and yet … clearly, there’s much more work left to do,” said James Matthews of Sky News. “With respect, are you overstating the reach and significance of this deal, because you’re a president who needs a result at a difficult time?”</span></p><p><span>Trump proceeded to ramble, almost completely avoiding Matthews’s question.</span></p><p><span>“I think that it’s a great deal for both parties.… It opens up a tremendous market for us. It works out very well, very well. A lot of assets, you see the chart. Those are tremendous assets. But we’ve been trying, and when you say, ‘Why us?’ meaning your country; we’ve been trying for years, and they’ve been trying for years to make a deal.… This is a maxed-out deal, not like you said it, really incorrectly. This is a maxed-out deal that we’re gonna make bigger. And we’ll make it bigger through growth.”</span></p><p><span>The </span><i><span>framework</span></i><span> of the deal that has been announced would reduce U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 0 percent and reduce auto tariffs to 10 percent, while leaving in a baseline 10 percent tariffs on all other products. Trump also bragged about greater market access in the United Kingdom for American beef, before being reminded by a reporter that the U.K. doesn’t accept American beef because of its higher food standards.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195005/trump-admits-no-trade-deal-uk</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195005</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[United Kingdom]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 15:45:40 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a2765ea8663dc9cf61a8a02599c31d6918728296.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a2765ea8663dc9cf61a8a02599c31d6918728296.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit> Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Deports Two More U.S. Citizen Children After Tricking Their Mom]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Trump administration apparently </span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-border-czar-tom-homan-secretly-deported-two-us-citizen-children-to-mexico/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>deported</span></a><span> two U.S. citizen children—ages 5 and 4—after surreptitiously luring their mother to an immigration appointment.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Denisse Parra Vargas and her husband, Omar, had just dropped off their three children at school in Austin, Texas, last Thursday when they were pulled over by Texas state troopers ostensibly for having an expired license plate. But then, the police officers turned the couple over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement as suspected undocumented immigrants.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Omar was sent to an ICE detention center and then deported to Mexico, but Parra Vargas was fitted with an electronic bracelet and told to report to a processing center near Austin on Tuesday. An Austin-based criminal justice and immigration advocacy organization, Grassroots Leadership, said to the </span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-border-czar-tom-homan-secretly-deported-two-us-citizen-children-to-mexico/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Daily Beast</span></a><span> that “she was told that if she showed up, then she would be eligible for asylum as well as a work permit.”</span></p><p><span>Parra Vargas complied, and showed up on Tuesday with her three children, two of whom are U.S. citizens, for what she thought was a routine appointment. But then she and all of her children seemed to disappear in ICE custody. Grassroots Leadership scrambled its legal team to try to find them.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“We were just trying to figure out where she was,” a spokesperson for the organization said. “ICE was not giving us information.”</span></p><p><span>Even entering Parra Vargas’s information into ICE’s online detainee locator wasn’t showing any results. Then Parra Vargas called the organization to tell them that she had been deported to Mexico with her three children.</span></p><p><span>“When she called from the other side of the border, she said that she signed a paper, but she wasn’t sure exactly what it was,” the spokesperson said. “She did not understand what she was signing.”</span></p><p><span>ICE seems to have disregarded the fact that two of Parra Vargas’s children are citizens and could have stayed in the U.S. with a caretaker. She does not appear to have been informed of her options, Grassroots Leadership said.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“She never had a chance to consult with anybody,” the organization’s spokesperson told the Daily Beast. “Any efforts from our end to be able to advocate for her release, or even for our legal team to be able to work on her release, none of that was possible because we weren’t even able to locate her.”</span></p><p><span>Parra Vargas’s situation fits a pattern of haphazard and cruel immigration actions from the Trump administration. Her two U.S. citizen children aren’t the first Americans to be swept up by ICE or even deported in President Trump’s second term. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old U.S. citizen with learning disabilities, was </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194303/us-citizen-detained-10-days-dhs-lied" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>detained</span></a><span> by a Border Patrol officer while visiting Tucson, Arizona, and spent 10 days in ICE detention before being released.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Late last month, the Trump administration was caught </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194547/ice-lied-deported-us-citizen-kids-lawyers" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>lying</span></a><span> about undocumented immigrant women being deported with their U.S. citizen children. Similar to Parra Vargas, the women were prevented from communicating with legal counsel while in ICE custody. It appears that in order to get around the pesky constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, the Trump administration is deporting them anyway if they’re kids.&nbsp; <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/195004/trump-deports-two-us-citizen-children-mom-texas</link><guid isPermaLink="false">195004</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[ICE]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mexico]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Texas]]></category><category><![CDATA[u.s. citizens]]></category><category><![CDATA[Citizenship]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 14:53:55 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/970086ddec304a36081705f54059050c9e1061d1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/970086ddec304a36081705f54059050c9e1061d1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[RFK Jr.’s Ex–Running Mate Warns Someone Is “Controlling” Him]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>RFK Jr.’s old running mate thinks someone is controlling him—and it isn’t Trump.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Former vice presidential candidate Nicole Shanahan was both surprised and dismayed by the nomination of </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194997/trump-surgeon-general-wellness-influencer-casey-means" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Casey Means</span></a><span>, a pseudoscientific doctor with zero clinical experience, for U.S. surgeon general.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Yes, it’s very strange. Doesn’t make any sense. I was promised that if I supported RFK Jr. in his Senate confirmation that neither of these siblings would be working under HHS or in an appointment (and that people much more qualified would be). I don’t know if RFK very clearly lied to me, or what is going on,” Shanahan </span><a href="https://x.com/NicoleShanahan/status/1920308773979353102" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on X Wednesday evening. “It has been clear in recent conversations that he is reporting to someone regularly who is controlling his decisions (and it isn’t President Trump). With regards to the siblings, there is something very artificial and aggressive about them, almost like they were bred and raised Manchurian assets.”</span></p><p><span>The other sibling Shanahan is referring to is Means’s brother Calley, who is an adviser to RFK Jr.</span></p><p><span>There’s a lot going on here. What’s actually strange is how shocked and betrayed Shanahan seems to feel about this. The man whose ticket she ran on has for decades pushed conspiracy theories about vaccines causing </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192488/rfk-jr-cdc-study-vaccines-autism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>autism</span></a><span>, Black people having naturally </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/05/rfk-jr-hearing-black-people-immune-systems" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>stronger immune systems</span></a><span>, and the Covid-19 pandemic being </span><a href="https://www.nzz.ch/english/robert-kennedys-new-book-is-full-of-covid-19-conspiracy-theories-ld.1658762" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>prolonged</span></a><span> by Dr. Anthony Fauci and Bill Gates, among other views. This all sounds perfectly in line with someone like Means, a </span><a href="https://www.statnews.com/2024/10/07/calley-means-casey-means-conservative-voices-of-chronic-disease-crisis/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>snake oil salesman</span></a><span> who has called vaccine mandates “criminal.”&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>And who does she possibly think is controlling RFK Jr. if not Donald Trump? Laura Loomer? QAnon? His MAHA disciples? The remnants of the </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/181389/robert-f-kennedy-jr-brain-worm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>worm in his brain</span></a><span>? It’s likely RFK Jr. is just lying to Shanahan in these “recent conversations” they’ve had. She might even be lying to herself.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“Calley and Dr. Casey Means, siblings on a mission to end corruption and help Make America Healthy Again,” Shanahan </span><a href="https://x.com/NicoleShanahan/status/1832073710561345806" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> in response to a post from Calley Means last September. Means thanked her and called her an inspiration. What changed between now and then?</span></p><p><span>Someone here is misrepresenting their views on the Means nomination. It’d be helpful if Shanahan started naming some names as to who this mysterious puppet master controlling RFK Jr. is.&nbsp; <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194999/nicole-shanahan-someone-controlling-rfk-jr</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194999</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Casey Means]]></category><category><![CDATA[Surgeon General]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[HHS]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Health and Human Services]]></category><category><![CDATA[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Nicole Shanahan]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 14:35:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a89358c1fdeabeff567b33164ec0ebf198247abb.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a89358c1fdeabeff567b33164ec0ebf198247abb.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit> David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Melts Down Over Federal Reserve’s Five-Alarm Warning on Economy]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump threw yet another tantrum Thursday about Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s latest alert that the president’s tariffs will cripple economic growth.</p><p><span>“‘Too Late’ Jerome Powell is a FOOL, who doesn’t have a clue,” Trump </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114471750357100883" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> on Truth Social. “Other than that, I like him very much!</span></p><p><span>“Oil and Energy way down, almost all costs (groceries and ‘eggs’) down, virtually NO INFLATION, Tariff Money Pouring Into the U.S.—THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF ‘TOO LATE!’ ENJOY!” Trump added. </span></p><p><span>The Federal Reserve chair issued a </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194985/federal-reserve-powell-trump-economy-tariffs-stagflation" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fresh warning</a><span> Wednesday about inevitable stagflation. “If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they’re likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment,” said Powell. </span></p><p><span>Since first imposing his sweeping “reciprocal” tariff policy, Trump has repeatedly attacked Powell for not lowering the interest rates to offset any economic damage, dubbing him “Mr. Too Late” and “a major loser,” and even calling for his </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114352766082542122" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">termination</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>As tariff tensions rise, Trump has taken to pushing his own lies about prices. </span></p><p><span>While the price of oil has </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/05/06/nx-s1-5387426/oil-prices-falling-tariffs-opec" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">been falling</a><span>, it </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/oil-prices-steady-after-dropping-economic-uncertainty-supply-concerns-weigh-2025-05-08/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">spiked</a><span> Thursday, buoyed by optimism about trade talks between the U.S. and China. That has not, however, translated into cheaper prices at the gas pump. Trump has repeatedly </span><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/05/where-trump-is-likely-getting-his-1point98-gas-price-figure.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">claimed</a><span> the price of gas is only $1.98, but U.S. drivers were actually paying more than $3 a gallon as of Monday.</span></p><p><span>Trump’s claims about the falling price of groceries are also questionable. </span></p><p><span>“I’m not aware of any data that supports that,” said Tucker Balch, a finance professor at Emory University, who spoke to </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Business/trump-claims-grocery-gas-prices-falling-experts-misleading/story?id=121410734" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ABC News</a><span> about Trump’s claims of lowered prices in the checkout aisle. The already high prices of groceries have stayed relatively stable throughout the first 100 days of Trump’s presidential term, according to data from the </span><a href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cpi.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">federal government</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Trump has also lied about how much money his tariffs are actually making. In April, he claimed that they were raking in $2 billion per day. In reality, they’d collected closer to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194081/donald-trump-tariffs-how-much-money" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$250 million</a><span> each day, according to Customs and Border Protection. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194998/donald-trump-federal-reserve-warning-economy</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194998</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Inflation]]></category><category><![CDATA[stagflation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gas Prices]]></category><category><![CDATA[food prices]]></category><category><![CDATA[eggs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Groceries]]></category><category><![CDATA[US Federal Reserve]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jerome Powell]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 13:59:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/d544dccfdb5c86ca20d66b346af885abe5327646.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/d544dccfdb5c86ca20d66b346af885abe5327646.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[John Fetterman Completely Loses It in Meeting With Union Leaders]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Last week, Senator John Fetterman held what would normally be a friendly meeting with Pennsylvania’s largest teachers’ union.</span></p><p><span>Representatives from the Pennsylvania State Education Association and the National Education Association </span><a href="https://www.inquirer.com/politics/john-fetterman-staff-concerns-voting-record-20250508.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>praised</span></a><span> Fetterman for defending public education. But when the subject turned to asking Fetterman to take stronger actions against the Trump administration’s education cuts, the senator’s mood took a turn.</span></p><p><span><i>The Philadelphia Inquirer</i> </span><span>reported that Fetterman started yelling and banging his fists on a desk at the five union representatives before him, asking them what they wanted from him. He </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/john-fetterman-trump-democrats-senate-pennsylvania-8129e206ed9479ad8534eac3fd128abe" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>shouted</span></a>,<span> “Everybody is mad at me,” “Why does everyone hate me?” and “What did I ever do?” beginning to repeat himself.</span></p><p><span>The meeting quickly fell apart, with a staffer for the senator ushering the representatives into the hallway before she broke down in tears. The outburst from Fetterman seemed to show a disturbing pattern in the senator’s mental health, especially as just one day later, a story was published by </span><span><i>New York</i></span><span> magazine </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194783/john-fetterman-health-danger" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>painting a picture</span></a><span> of Fetterman as unrecognizable to his own staff following a 2022 stroke.</span></p><p>In a statement to the <i>Inquirer,</i> Fetterman defended the meeting as “a spirited conversation about our collective frustration with the Trump administration’s cuts to our education system.</p><p><span>“As a proud product of PSEA, I will always support our teachers, and I will always reject anyone’s attempt to turn Pennsylvania’s public schools into a voucher program,” the statement read.</span></p><p><span>The </span><i><span>Inquirer</span></i><span> spoke to several former Fetterman staffers anonymously who said that Fetterman wasn’t living up to his duties as a senator. His sharp, zero-sum advocacy for Israel and antipathy toward Palestinians amid Israel’s war on Gaza has </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194776/john-fetterman-continue-senate-israel-gaza" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>alienated</span></a><span> staff and constituents. He frequently misses meetings and votes, avoids colleagues, and spends many hours on Capitol Hill alone in his office.</span></p><p><span>“It’s pretty impossible to overstate how disengaged he is,” said one former Fetterman staffer. “He doesn’t read memos, he’s taking very few meetings.… The job is just a platform for him to run for president; that’s all he cares about.”</span></p><p><span>Fetterman has the third-worst voting attendance record in the Senate this year, missing 29 of 236 votes, and in the past two years, he has the lowest voting attendance record of any senator. He’s only made one public appearance in Pennsylvania since August. It’s a shocking turn for a man who started </span><a href="https://www.ydr.com/story/news/2016/01/08/braddocks-mayor-john-york-native-eyes-us-senate/77894878/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>his political career</span></a><span> as the mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania, helping to rebuild the Rust Belt town. Now, it seems that he ought to leave politics and focus on his health and well-being.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194996/john-fetterman-explodes-union-meeting-freaking-staff</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194996</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[John Fetterman]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pennsylvania]]></category><category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Hafiz Rashid]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 13:27:31 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/de328403bab333a829ba13846df5138ffb208c2a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/de328403bab333a829ba13846df5138ffb208c2a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Pool/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Surgeon General Pick Is Wellness Influencer With No Med Degree]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Trump’s nominee for U.S. surgeon general is beyond unqualified. The president has selected Casey Means, a self-described “wellness influencer” from the Make America Healthy Again ranks, to serve as highest public health official in the land.</span></p><p><span>“I am pleased to announce that Dr. Casey Means, will be nominated as our next Surgeon General of the United States of America,” Trump </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114468502752133916" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on Truth Social Wednesday. “</span><span>Casey has impeccable ‘MAHA’ credentials, and will work closely with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to ensure a successful implementation of our Agenda in order to reverse the Chronic Disease Epidemic, and ensure Great Health, in the future, for ALL Americans. Her academic achievements, together with her life’s work, are absolutely outstanding. </span><span>Dr. Casey Means has the potential to be one of the finest Surgeon Generals in United States History. Congratulations to Casey!”</span></p><p><span>Trump’s original nominee, Dr. Janette Nesheiwat, was axed for not being sufficiently kooky enough for the likes of Laura Loomer.</span></p><p><span>“[Nesheiwat] used her access to Fox News to promote the dangerous Covid vaccine, which is now killing millions of people,” Loomer </span><a href="https://x.com/LauraLoomer/status/1919180558355013817" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on X this week. “She tried to shame people who didn’t take the vaccine by calling them global health threats. Vaccines are a matter of PERSONAL HEALTH FREEDOM.”</span></p><p><span>Means has no active medical license, as she dropped out of her residency after becoming “disillusioned” with basic medicine. She instead decided to commit herself to alternative medicine.</span></p><p><span>She also has unsurprisingly controversial views on vaccination.</span></p><p><span>“I have said innumerable times publicly I think vaccine mandates are criminal. I think corruption in the FDA is overwhelming. I think RFK is doing God’s work in calling all this out,” Means </span><a href="https://x.com/CaseyMeansMD/status/1852407731983884309" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on X last November.</span></p><p><span>“There is no benefit to the baby or the wider population for a child to get this vaccine who is not at risk for sexual or IV transmission. There is only risk. Kids who don’t have this unnecessary pharmaceutical can’t go to school in many states,” she </span><a href="https://x.com/CaseyMeansMD/status/1820614949334589582" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> in August, referring to the hepatitis B vaccine. “EVERYONE should become curious about why these interventions are institutionally jammed down our throats and people are made to be heretical whackos for questioning it.”</span></p><p><span>Actual medical professionals raised immediate alarm after news of Means’s nomination broke.</span></p><p><span>“Casey Means is a grifter who dropped out of ENT residency &amp; start a company selling glucose monitors &amp; health all to non-diabetics. She doesn’t know basic science, yet claims she’s a metabolism expert,” scientist Dr. Andrea Love </span><a href="https://x.com/dr_andrealove/status/1920259709551981053" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on X. “Incomplete ENT residency ≠ expert. Of course she’s up for Surgeon General.”</span></p><p><span>More information about Means’s confirmation hearing schedule is expected in the coming weeks.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194997/trump-surgeon-general-wellness-influencer-casey-means</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194997</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cabinet]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[HHS]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Health and Human Services]]></category><category><![CDATA[Surgeon General]]></category><category><![CDATA[Casey Means]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 13:10:52 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e3465d3b31a30fa323087e96d34d6a7a7cbdac71.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e3465d3b31a30fa323087e96d34d6a7a7cbdac71.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit> Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Transcript: Trump Erupts as Top DOJ Pick Implodes in Huge Blow to MAGA]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><i>The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 8 episode of the</i> Daily Blast<i> podcast. Listen to it <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</i></p><p><b>Greg Sargent: </b>This is <i>The Daily Blast </i>from <i>The New Repub</i><i>lic, </i>produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.</p><p>Suddenly, President Donald Trump is on the verge of losing a big one. Ed Martin, his hand-picked nominee for U.S. Attorney for Washington, D.C., a major MAGA loyalist and insurrectionist sympathizer, is in trouble after a key GOP senator announced his opposition. Remarkably, this comes as Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114457993936599790" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">erupted</a> on Truth Social this week, demanding that GOP senators confirm Martin. <span>And that also comes as Trump has reportedly been <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/05/politics/ed-martin-trump-us-attorney-dc" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">privately calling</a> GOP senators to demand their support. Lost in this whole saga has been the basic question of why we don’t want a MAGA-brained January Sixer to be U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., in the first place; it’s kind of an important job when it comes to maintaining the rule of law. So we’re talking about all this with someone who knows the Justice Department: former federal prosecutor Kristy Parker, n</span><span>ow counsel at Protect Democracy. Kristy, thanks for coming on.</span></p><p><b>Kristy Parker:</b> Thanks for having me.</p><p><b>Sargent: </b>This week, Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/06/ed-martin-senate-republican-opposition/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced</a> his opposition to Ed Martin, who’s currently interim U.S. attorney and is hoping for Senate confirmation. Tillis’s main objection is that Martin is a 2020 election denier who was at the Capitol during Trump’s January 6 insurrection. <span>Martin has also suggested the people who attacked cops that day were part of a false flag operation. And Tillis specifically criticized Martin for siding with Trump on the pardon of some of the worst January 6 attackers. Kristy, how often do we hear Republicans do what Tillis just did, and why is it so important?</span></p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>Well, I certainly think it is not unprecedented for members of the United States Senate who are from the same party as the president to exercise their independent advice and consent roles. So from that point of view, this is just run-of-the-mill Senate doing its constitutional job, which no one should really be that surprised by. However, t</span><span>his is a highly political time that we live in with a president who demands loyalty from the rest of the party. So in that sense, it can be seen as somewhat remarkable for this moment.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>It’s being treated as a massive story that a Republican is breaking with Trump on this. I would go further and say Trump demands absolute fealty from the Republican Party’s </span><span>most important players. He essentially subjugates them, no matter how high their stature is in the party. And so it seems to me we’re seeing something remarkable here.</span></p><p><b>Parker: </b>Well, again, I think my rejoinder to that would be simply is that it really shouldn’t be remarkable. What we should be focused on is that we have three branches of government. They each have a job to do. The president is the head of one of those branches of government. He is not the king. So when we see things like we’ve seen for the last two months—courts saying, <i>X thing is unlawful. You cannot do this thing</i>—or now seeing a member of the Senate who has a constitutional duty to provide advice and consent doing that, that really shouldn’t be remarkable. That should be something that we’re all happy to see, that every member of our government should celebrate—because that is the system that our founders put in place so that we would have a democratic republic and not a monarchy. </p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, I’m certainly celebrating it. I hope it lasts. We should clarify that right now, the opposition from Tillis, who’s a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, means Ed Martin’s nomination can’t get out of the committee for the time being. A</span><span>nd other GOP senators <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/06/ed-martin-senate-republican-opposition/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">are</a> <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/06/politics/ed-martin-nomination-trump-dc-prosecutor" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">suggesting</a> it might not be able to happen at all. While that could always change, for now he looks like he’s in real trouble. But Kristy, let’s step back. Can you tell us more broadly a little bit about the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Washington, D.C., what its role is, and why it matters so much for the rule of law? </span></p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>Sure. So there are 93 or maybe 94 U.S. attorney’s offices in the country that are </span><span>arms of the Department of Justice, but they are very individually important everywhere. They are federal law enforcements in their individual jurisdictions, and they are primarily responsible for executing the laws and enforcing the criminal laws in their jurisdictions. While all of them are important, some of them have more prominence than others. </span><span>And certainly, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia is a very important one because it is the one that is in the seat of our government. Lots of cases are going to come through that office: national security related cases, cases relating to operations of the federal government, complex criminal cases that you wouldn’t necessarily see on a day-to-day basis </span><span>in some of the other offices. So it has always performed an outsized role in the constellation of U.S. attorney’s offices and is considered one of the most prominent presidentially appointed positions outside of Main Justice.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Which I think really gets at the nub of the story. </span><span>Beyond Martin’s insurrectionism, he’s also used this very powerful office—which again, he’s interim—to threaten Trump’s enemies. He threatened an investigation of Chuck Schumer, though he subsequently backed off of that. He also threatened to investigate the law firm </span><span>Covington &amp; Burling</span><span> </span><span>for giving legal advice to Jack Smith. </span><span>Kristy, can you explain why that’s appalling public conduct in the U.S. attorney?</span></p><p><b>Parker: </b><span>Well, it’s really important for a U.S. attorney to </span><span>observe the rules of the Department of Justice—and the Department of Justice has some pretty clear rules about making public comments on potential investigations or, certainly, active investigations. And those are all under the umbrella of the Constitution itself and of the importance of protecting </span><span>due process and the integrity of cases. So it’s very important for people who occupy those positions to be very careful in the way in which they conduct themselves so that they don’t prejudice cases that might be very legitimate cases, and also so that they don’t abuse the very significant law enforcement powers of the Justice Department.</span></p><p>When we see things that have been reported about Mr. Martin making these [comments]—we’ve seen them be published in the press—those are things that don’t comport with the department’s policies on remaining circumspect and being fair when it comes to initiating investigations.<b> </b>Like the things that, for instance, James Comey was criticized for—<span>what seems so many years ago now—making public statements about a person who had not yet been charged with a crime, you know, this all falls within that ambit. And these are things that are not just necessarily damaging to the individuals who are named but, again, also potentially things that could destroy the conduct of legitimate cases. </span><span>So you really want </span><span>people in those positions who are going to be very careful in making sure that all of the I’s are dotted and the T’s are crossed.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>I want to bear down a particular thing that Martin did toward Covington &amp; Burling. The news emerged again that this law firm had given legal advice to Jack Smith, and Martin <a href="https://x.com/USAEdMartin/status/1890571723965390922" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">tweeted</a> something like “Save your receipts,” which is really a menacing thing to do. And I want to try to get at why that, </span><span>as public conduct in a prosecutor, is not acceptable. Can you talk a little bit about that?</span></p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>Well, first and foremost, that is the sort of thing that does not comport with the department’s policies about making public statements about anything they are even considering doing with a person who has not been charged with a crime. </span><span>But another reason that those policies exist besides simply protecting the cases themselves is it’s important not to create a chilling effect on people who are exercising their constitutional rights or who are doing things that are perfectly lawful. So for instance, there is nothing </span><span>wrong with a law firm—and this has come up repeatedly in the cases that have been filed with respect to the executive orders that the president has issued, and federal judges have repeatedly now reiterated this—representing a client simply because that client </span><span>is seen as politically opposed to the people in charge of the U.S. government. We have a First Amendment, and that is pretty core conduct that strikes at the heart of the First Amendment.</span></p><p><span>So those sorts of things can be very chilling not just to the people who are </span><span>the subjects of whatever it is the person says but also to other people—and cause them to make decisions like, <i>Well, I’m not going to represent any of these folks who the administration has targeted for firing,</i> or, <i>I’m not going to hire any of the people who were part of the January 6 prosecutions because </i></span><i>I might make myself a target of this sort of thing.</i><span> So that’s what’s really problematic about that behavior and why, in the many years leading up to this moment, it has really been very much verboten within the Department of Justice to do those sorts of things.</span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>And I think it’s worth pointing out that it really strikes at the foundations of the rule of law in a big sense to be essentially saying—this is Ed Martin; I’m paraphrasing—<i>I know that it will ingratiate me with Trump if I go after this law firm because that law firm represented Jack Smith, who Trump hates. </i>So he’s essentially saying, <i>I will use prosecutorial power to chill legal representation for anybody who Trump has designated as an enemy. </i>That’s a direct assault on the rule of law.</p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>It’s an assault on the rule of law. And it’s really an assault on a fundamental feature of self-government. The country is supposed to be governed by the people through our elected representatives. </span><span>And the Bill of Rights protects all of our rights to criticize the government, to petition the government for redress of grievances. And it also creates rights for people to have counsel in those situations when we the people may be adversarial to the government. So when you attack lawyers, law firms for people who they represent </span><span>because the president may disfavor those people, that really is fundamentally an attack on self-government.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>I like the way you keep going back to basic principles, which is essential at a time like this. So this week, Trump erupted over Martin’s difficulties with Republican senators. On Truth Social, Trump said this, “</span><span>We are going to take our Country BACK, and FAST. Ed Martin will be a big player in doing so and, I hope, that the Republican Senators will make a commitment to his approval, which is now before them. Ed is coming up on the deadline for Voting and, if approved, HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN.” </span><span>There were lots of all caps there. Trump is mad about this. And CNN <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/05/politics/ed-martin-trump-us-attorney-dc" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reports</a> that Trump’s been privately calling senators as well.</span></p><p><span>Kristy, it seems to me if Trump does lose here, it’s not a small thing. I get your point about how if the system were functioning normally, it would be a typical </span><span>thing for a Republican senator to oppose a nominee like this—but we’re not in normal times. What we need to see is Republican senators going out on a limb occasionally and not doing what the president wants and putting the brakes on the president when he’s flagrantly trying to wreck the rule of law. So if Tillis can do this and not self-immolate on the spot, maybe that sends a message to other Republicans that t</span><span>hey can do this as well from time to time. What do you think?</span></p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>Well, yeah. I think it’s extremely important for members of Congress to act like a Congress and for senators to perform their role. And I don’t know Senator Tillis; I’m not going to presume to put thoughts in his head. But </span><span>I would imagine that he and some of the folks who raised concerns about other of the president’s nominees like Pete Hegseth or others are not trying to do any harm to political conservatism. They are conservatives. They’re not trying to do harm to the Republican Party. They are Republicans.</span></p><p><span>They are exercising their role and doing what they think is best: to </span><span>put the right people in those positions, and really—I imagine it will be hard for the president to see it this way—are probably trying to do him a favor by aiming him in the direction of appointing people who are not going to undo the mandate of their jobs by creating all sorts of side</span><span> scandalous behavior and various things. </span><span>We’ve already seen that with the secretary of defense. It’s not promotive of the government efficiency that they like to talk about when people who are put in these positions can’t focus on doing the job and instead are constantly wrapped up in ways in which they may have violated rules or committed misconduct. </span><span>So again, the Senate plays a huge role in that. </span><span>And yes, it’s something we should all welcome and hope to see and provide encouragement to them when they step up and act like Article 1 truly is equal to the other two branches of government.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>I really like your suggestion that these Republicans think they’re doing Trump a favor by steering him away from picking somebody like Martin. The basic problem that you’re putting your finger on i</span><span>s that Trump simply does not understand this in that sense at all. For Trump—and for Martin, I think, as well—the only thing that’s important is Trump, right? Martin fundamentally puts Trump before the law and his own duty to the public and to public service. It’s been reported that Martin threatened to target Trump’s enemies specifically in order to ingratiate himself with Trump. A</span><span>t some point, not everything should be about making Trump happy. Other things matter too. I just don’t see someone here who feels any evident sense of duty to the people. He’s not someone who thinks he works for the people. He thinks he works for Trump first. Does someone like that have any business in an important post like this?</span></p><p><b>Parker: </b>Well, I’ll go back again to basic principles. Every person who takes a position with the federal government—whether they are politically appointed or whether they were a career civil servant like I was—take[s] the same oath. And that oath is not to the individual who is the president of the U.S. It is an oath to the U.S., <span>to uphold the laws and the Constitution of the U.S. So the job is not about serving a particular individual and advancing that person’s political interests. The job is about faithfully executing the laws on behalf of the American people. So no. Anyone who says things like,<i> I’m the president’s lawyer, </i>when they are actually a U.S. attorney </span><span>or a political appointee in the Justice Department—that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the proper nature of the job.</span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>I think that that principle is what Trump is trying to wreck when it really comes down to it. This basic idea that all these people who work for the executive branch aren’t servants of the president the man; this is the thing that Trump is trying to destroy. And when someone like Ed Martin goes out of his way to ingratiate himself with Trump by feeding that mania, by essentially saying, <i>Mr. President, I will go after your enemies. Mr. President, I’m your servant first. I work for you, not for the people</i>—that’s why it’s so important for these types of things to fail.</p><p><b>Parker: </b>And so important for the rest of us to keep the focus on where it belongs and who we are as a nation and what it means to have a democratic republic. In many ways, Mr. Trump’s time on the national stage has been a long, very vituperative argument with <span>Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton—all of the people who came together and pledged their lives and their sacred honor to create a system that would give us something that was specifically <i>not </i>a king and about loyalty to an individual; it was about we the people of the U.S. So the more people can remember that and remember that </span><span>the president is our employee who was elected to do a job in a particular branch of government, the better off we’re all going to be. And when U.S. senators step up and do their part in that, the better off we’re all going to be. </span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Just to close on an optimistic note, I got the sense at the outset of this conversation that you think we’re seeing some signs of civic health in the fact that various branches of the government and various constitutional actors are showing some independence. <span>What’s your overall assessment right now? Are you optimistic, pessimistic? Is it all hanging in the balance? How do you see everything and where it’s going?</span></p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>Well, I’m a lifelong civics addict, career civil servant. I believe in the American project, the thing that I just outlined. I believe in we the people. I believe in the Constitution. I believe in the three branches of government. And anytime I see people—</span><span>even in the face of someone who is quite bullying and who has shown himself to be serious about a lot of the very threatening things that he has said—every day continuing to stand up and when I see people in the other branches of government saying, <i>I am going to do my job and, in this particular case, my job requires me to tell the executive </i></span><span><i>branch that they are wrong and that they can’t do a thing,</i> then that is a reason for all of us to have hope. And it just has to continue.</span></p><p><span>It takes a village. Everybody has to do it. Senators have a job. People have a job. So again, when senators stand up and do the right thing, the rest of us need to back them up on that in all of the ways that we can. And the same with the courts.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b></span><span>I think it’s really important that right now there’s really a robust movement out there in the streets letting judges, letting senators, letting other independent actors in the system know that the people have their backs. </span></p><p><span><b>Parker: </b>Yes. </span><span>Things like last week on Law Day when lots of lawyers came out and retook their own oaths as members of their bars. I think just p</span><span>ledging our loyalty to our profession is something lawyers can do, and there are lots of things other people can do. But yes, again, watch what the people who comprise the three branches of government are doing when they step up and they do their constitutional duty. Give them positive reinforcement. Show them that you will support them. A</span><span>nd we’re almost to our 250th anniversary. Let’s make it clear that we’re going to continue perfecting the project that was started in 1789, and that we’re not going to scrap it because one guy wants to. </span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Exactly. We’re not going to let this lunatic blow it all up. Kristy Parker, thank you so much for coming on. Great to talk to you.</p><p><b>Parker: </b><span>Same to you, thanks Greg.</span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>You’ve been listening to <i>The Daily Blast</i> with me, your host, Greg Sargent. <i>The Daily Blast</i> is a <i>New Republic </i>podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194992/transcript-trump-erupts-top-doj-pick-implodes-huge-blow-maga</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194992</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Thom Tillis]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 11:27:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e52d3fb283a9fee9f301869cbeeeefdd0e9e7be.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e52d3fb283a9fee9f301869cbeeeefdd0e9e7be.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Libertarian Tech Bros’ Weird, Dystopian Plan for Guantánamo Bay]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The radical libertarian city builders of the tech-bro set have an audacious new proposal: They want to convert Guantánamo Bay, host to the infamous prison, into the high-tech charter city of their wildest imaginations, which will double as a “proving ground” for migrants seeking to enter the United States. The Charter Cities Institute, or CCI, which has <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/startup-cities-donald-trump-legislation/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lobbied the Trump</a> administration on setting up so-called freedom cities in the U.S, suggests the president take advantage of Guantánamo’s special legal status to convert the controversial detention camp into “a beacon of 21st-century prosperity.” </p><p><span>CCI promotes the worldwide development of charter cities, semiautonomous zones designed to be exempt from the regulations and taxes of the nations in which they’re located. The freedom cities idea pushed by CCI and other groups fits this mold: tech hubs that would be exempt from some federal laws. Adherents to this movement argue that these arrangements drive innovation and prosperity. But as </span><i>New Republic </i><span>contributor J.J. Anselmi </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/192741/trump-freedom-cities-company-towns" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">explained back in March</a><span>, there’s not much innovation to be had—freedom cities are little more than spit-shined reboots of the “company towns” of yesteryear. Nevertheless, the president has </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJA_GBhCGgE" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">proven receptive</a><span> to the idea, and the groups have claimed that his inner circle is engaging with their proposals.</span></p><p><span>Now they’ve come up with an eye-catching new site for him to consider. “By transforming Guantanamo Bay into a charter city, the U.S. government can catalyze economic growth, manage immigration flows, and project America’s unparalleled capacity for innovation and statecraft—all while requiring no legislation,” </span><a href="https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/research/guantanamo-bay/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">claims the CCI proposal</a><span> from earlier this year.</span></p><p><span>“This parcel of federal land on the Caribbean coastline presents a striking opportunity to reimagine American governance and reassert U.S. global leadership.”</span></p><p><span>CCI argues in its proposal that the substantial development it plans to unleash would bypass the “multi-tiered hurdles” of “zoning boards, county regulations, city councils, and environmental legal frameworks” that the group claims is holding back similar charter city projects in the U.S. It further argues that this relaxed regulatory environment would encourage cutting-edge R&amp;D in areas like biotech, artificial intelligence, and nuclear microreactors, likening the new enterprise to an American Dubai, capable of attracting billions of dollars in capital over the next five to 20 years.</span></p><p><span>More controversially, CCI proposes to do something very akin to what the Emiratis are best known for doing—erecting a labor economy that </span><a href="https://www.humanrightsresearch.org/post/modern-day-slavery-in-the-united-arab-emirates" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">more readily resembles modern-day slavery</a><span>. The big selling point for its GITMO haven suggests that the hypothetical city could house migrants who wish to move to the U.S., keeping them under surveillance for a “probationary period” while “evaluating their contributions to the local economy and society.”</span></p><p><span>“High performers become prime candidates for U.S. residence, while those who disrupt public order can be repatriated quickly—no labyrinthine state courts involved,” the authors write.</span></p><p><span>“The site’s location close to the Cuban mainland offers an added symbolic advantage,” the report emphasizes: “A thriving free-market enclave next to a stagnating Communist regime.”</span></p><p><span>Charter cities have long been a fascination of Silicon Valley’s libertarian right. Tech billionaire Peter Thiel was an early investor in “seasteading,” the dream of seaborne libertarian enclaves floating beyond sovereign jurisdiction. In recent years, high-profile Silicon Valley investors Marc Andreessen and Balaji Srinivasan have joined the movement, which has turned its attention to land-based fiefdoms.</span></p><p><span>CCI promotes the establishment of these kinds of projects worldwide. It was an </span><a href="https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/updates/links-roundup-may-2020/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">early champion</a><span> of Próspera, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/28/magazine/prospera-honduras-crypto.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a charter city in Roatán</a><span>, Honduras, which is currently engaged in a legal battle with the Honduran government over its continued existence. It is also involved in several city projects in Africa, including one in Nigeria </span><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/itana-binance-charter-cities-institute-africa-tech-startup/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">called Itana.</a><span> Próspera and Itana have both received funding from Pronomos Capital, a venture capital firm backed by Thiel and Andreessen, whose right-leaning Silicon Valley faction </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-peter-thiel-trump-administration-connections/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">has grown in influence</a><span> since Trump entered the White House.</span></p><p><span>CCI told </span><i>The New Republic </i><span>that it had “spoken to staff within the administration and both aisles of Congress” about freedom cities and issues relating to housing and economic dynamism but said it wasn’t actively lobbying for freedom cities. However, CCI founder Mark Lutter is </span><a href="https://www.frontierfoundation.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">still listed</a><span> online as part of the Frontier Foundation team, a nonprofit advocating for freedom cities.</span></p><p><span>CCI didn’t comment on whether the Guantánamo proposal had been presented to anyone in government.</span></p><p><span>Guantánamo experts aren’t convinced this plan will ever come to fruition. “I don’t think there is anything inherently wrong with using space for a more productive, beneficial purpose than a military base,” said Joseph Margulies, professor of the practice of government at Cornell University and author of </span><i>Guantánamo and the Abuse of Presidential Power</i><span><i>.</i> “But what’s troublesome is the idea that you are seeking a place that is beyond the law. That is the perennial attraction of Guantánamo, right?”</span></p><p><span>Margulies says this myth is “part of the imagined reality of Guantánamo.” “You would not be able to create as a matter of law this regulation-free zone where you could do whatever you want simply because you’re in Cuba.”</span></p><p><span>Guantánamo is still largely remembered for the abuses of the Bush administration during the so-called “global war on terror.” During Bush’s presidency, the military prison played host to as many as 780 detainees, frequently in conditions that violated both their human rights and their rights to anything resembling due process.</span></p><p><span>Due to a legal arrangement ratified in the aftermath of the 1898 Spanish-American War, Cuba retains sovereignty over Guantánamo Bay, but the U.S. exercises complete jurisdiction. However, Supreme Court rulings in the 2000s on the rights of Guantánamo detainees upheld the right of U.S. courts to intervene there.</span></p><p><span>Calling the CCI proposal “zany,” Jonathan Hansen, senior lecturer on social studies at Harvard University and author of </span><i>Guantánamo: An American History, </i><span>suggested logistics would also present an issue for the plan</span><i>. </i><span>The layout of the site, he says, requires supplies to be delivered to the area housing residents by boat, which means that “it’s just always … going to be costly and inconvenient just to move things.”</span></p><p><span>Margulies called the migration element of the proposal “just dystopian.” “It contemplates the creation of a place where human beings exist solely to demonstrate their capacity to participate in a neoliberal experiment,” he added. “That’s just horrific.”</span></p><p><span>While Democratic Presidents Joe Biden and Barack Obama each promised to close down the detention center at Guantánamo, neither was ultimately successful in his attempts. Trump, by contrast, has twice committed to keeping it open.</span></p><p><span>His efforts to build up the prison presage a difficult road ahead for the freedom city advocates. In February, Trump ordered an existing migrant detention facility at Guantánamo to be expanded to hold 30,000 people. However, the plan </span><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/14/politics/guantanamo-migrants-trump/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">encountered hurdles</a><span> almost immediately, not least of which was the sheer expense of expanding the facility’s capacity. Some tents set up for the expansion have since been removed, and migrants transported there have since been </span><a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crm3x27vw70o" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">returned to U.S. facilities or deported</a><span> elsewhere.</span></p><p><span>Nevertheless, CCI argues the plan’s dubious optics could in fact be a boon. “Guantánamo Bay’s success would not only revitalize the U.S. brand abroad but also serve as a powerful reminder of how quickly the nation can pivot from war on terror legacies to economic ambition,” the group writes.</span></p><p><span>While it’s unclear whether the plan has any die-hard supporters within the administration, Hansen says it has one thing going for it: It is “classically Trumpian” in its bombast and hubris.</span></p><p><span>“I could, of course, see him saying something ridiculous [like this] because he has no conception of Guantánamo,” says Margulies. “It exists solely as a symbol, and I could see him invoking it for some symbolic purpose. ‘We’re going to create a capitalist Nirvana here. Make it so.’</span></p><p><span>“And it would collapse. The idea would collapse because it’s legally impossible, because it’s logistically impossible, because it would be horrifically expensive. But he doesn’t really care about that.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194515/freedom-city-guantanamo-bay-prison</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194515</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Guantanamo Bay]]></category><category><![CDATA[gitmo]]></category><category><![CDATA[Freedom Cities]]></category><category><![CDATA[Silicon Valley]]></category><category><![CDATA[Peter Thiel]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[The Insecurity Complex]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Laurie Clarke]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/495243f94f37265398667bc1aa79424edbd62afa.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/495243f94f37265398667bc1aa79424edbd62afa.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Taliban prisoners in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the watchful eyes of military police at Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. </media:description><media:credit>Shane McCoy and Greg Mathieson/Getty Images
  12. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Sneaky Plot to Steal Your Data—and Weaponize It Against You]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Over the first 100 days of his second administration, President Donald Trump, working in concert with Elon Musk’s DOGE proxy—which it still seems a stretch to consider a bona fide government agency—has unleashed an onslaught against both our foundational democratic concepts and the civil service erected on top. Still, one of the less-noticed attacks on our democracy has been the siloing and use-case restrictions on government-collected data.</p><p><span>Yes, I know. People are being sent to a foreign gulag without charge or evidence. RFK Jr. is chipping away at vaccine development. Trump is about to drive the economy off a cliff. Yet here I am talking about something that sounds like what you’d skim over in your annoying annual security training at work. Perhaps, then, it’d be useful for us to start referring to this more as Trump’s effort to collect a government dossier on nearly every person, nonprofit, and business in the country.</span></p><p><span>At this point, DOGE has either forced or tried to force access to </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/15/politics/doge-irs-takeover-taxpayer-data-immigration/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">IRS data systems</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/trump-administration-asks-supreme-court-grant-doge-access-social-secur-rcna204548" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Social Security data</a><span>, </span><a href="https://nnomy.org/index.php/en/home-73768/1083-doge-gets-access-to-selective-service-registration-database.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Selective Service records</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/04/16/medicare-data-deportation-ice-doge-trump/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Medicare data</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/doge-data-access-hhs/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Health and Human Services data</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-15/sec-pushes-back-on-doge-request-for-access-to-some-agency-data" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Securities and Exchange Commission data</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/04/15/nx-s1-5355896/doge-nlrb-elon-musk-spacex-security" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">National Labor Relations Board data</a><span>, and </span><a href="https://www.highereddive.com/news/judge-blocks-doge-access-education-department-data/740792/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Education Department student data</a><span>, among other things, with the ultimate goal to make all these disparate information sources interoperable, either in one centralized system or in some other way that they can be compiled and searched together.</span></p><p><span>Once more, the notion of immigration enforcement and the amorphous blob of “national security”—which at this point seems to encompass more federal policy areas than it excludes—have been the tip of the spear for an expansion of government powers and the surveillance state. A good chunk of this collection thus far has been </span><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/doge-collecting-immigrant-data-surveil-track/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reportedly oriented</a><span> toward the administration’s broader crackdown on immigration, which seems to have led a lot of people to tune it out. Plus, the government already has everyone’s data anyway, right? Who cares if one part of the government versus another gets access?</span></p><p><span>The problem, of course, is that you provided every piece of this data at different times, to different agencies, for different purposes. Think of it this way: You might give a friend a copy of the key to your apartment so that they can feed your cat while you’re away. That is an authorization for that person to use the key in the ways that you agreed upon for the time that you agreed upon. If they then use your key to set up a meth lab in your living room, no one can plausibly say that you signed off on it simply because they had under certain circumstances been allowed to enter your home.</span></p><p><span>“When most people think about cybersecurity issues, they think about it in terms of their credit score or getting a computer virus. When we think about this sort of government data aggregation, the historical precedents are the Japanese internment and the use of computer databases during the Third Reich,” said Albert Fox Cahn, executive director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project. </span></p><p><span>Data privacy itself seems to have slowly become a relic of another era, but you can at least in theory take measures to protect yourself from pervasive surveillance from private entities like Meta and Alphabet and Amazon. You cannot, however, do the same when it comes to the federal government. “With DOGE data, when you opt out, it’s a felony; when you don’t submit your tax returns, when you don’t submit your Selective Service registration,” said Fox Cahn. “This is the only area of our lives where you know data is being collected whether we want it or not, and the penalty for protecting your privacy could mean going to jail.”</span></p><p><span>The obvious issue with the idea that this is all a system primarily for immigration enforcement is that of course it’s </span><i>everyone’s</i><span> data being sucked into these mass systems, and you can’t exactly put the genie back in the bottle once the data is desiloed and combined; having these tools lying around would be eminently tempting for an authoritarian administration—an issue that is so predictable that it in fact was predicted by lawmakers decades ago.</span></p><p><span>“Siloing has been partly sort of an accident; databases and systems evolved separately. But it’s also been deliberate. There is a reason for the Data Matching Act, which was an amendment to the Privacy Act, setting a whole series of restrictions that DOGE has flagrantly violated,” said privacy advocate and blogger Edward Hasbrouck, referencing the Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act passed all the way back in 1988. Among other things, the law requires the government to notify individuals if their data is being matched in federal databases and verify if the data is accurate before taking any “adverse action” as a result, which the administration is obviously ignoring.</span></p><p><span>Trump’s own </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/stopping-waste-fraud-and-abuse-by-eliminating-information-silos/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">March 20 executive order</a><span> on “stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos” is specifically geared toward making “all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems” up for grabs to federal officials who want them to advance administration policies, throwing in a laughable nod of doing so “to the maximum extent consistent with law.” If they’re already tossing that bit of the law overboard, does anyone think that the administration won’t reach for the use cases beyond immigration enforcement to target civil society more broadly?</span></p><p><span>Trump and his cadre have at this point shown themselves willing and able to attack individuals and civil society exclusively and explicitly as a result of their speech and political activity. The cases of </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193873/trump-rubio-evidence-mahmoud-khalil-beliefs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mahmoud Khalil</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/29/us/rumeysa-ozturk-tufts-student-detained.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Rümeysa Öztürk</a><span>, and </span><a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/columbia-mohsen-mahdawi-trump-administration-you-will-not-silence-me/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Mohsen Mahdawi</a><span>, among others, have been lumped under the broad banner of immigration enforcement, but immigration is merely the convenient mechanism by which their speech has been punished. None is accused of violating any immigration laws besides the provision on U.S. foreign policy interests that the administration is tortuously twisting into a broad prohibition on pro-Palestinian advocacy.</span></p><p><span>In the </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/10/trump-administration-authoritarian" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">targeting of academic institutions, nonprofits, and law firms</a><span>, the administration has been just as open about the fact that it will bring the weight of the federal government down to bear on those that are advancing oppositional or even just disfavored political agendas. It doesn’t take much imagination to tease out what form this obsession with regulating acceptable speech and political organizing could take if the Trump team could, with a few keystrokes, pull up a person’s health records, tax records, business associations, registrations, and so on.</span></p><p><span>“AI is making it possible to have the sort of surveillance that once was only targeted at political dissidents, the most high-profile government opponents, and to replicate that level of tracking for millions,” said Fox Cahn, pointing to the manpower J. Edgar Hoover once devoted to surveilling Martin Luther King Jr. “There were huge efforts to track the members of political dissident groups, and now you can use weaponized tax data to figure out the identities of donors to nearly every major political and social organization in the country.”</span></p><p><span>In a few cases, DOGE has been sued over </span><a href="https://www.hrdive.com/news/judge-allows-discovery-doge-dol-lawsuit/743370/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">access to individual data streams</a><span>. Even as Trump and Musk are already pretty clearly violating the law, Senators Ron Wyden and Ed Markey are now trying to reinforce data protections with </span><a href="https://www.wyden.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/privacy_act_modernization_act_of_2025_one_pager.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a new bill</a><span> that would clarify routine data uses, increase penalties for misuse, and expand the ability of courts to stop these data-collection and matching programs as they’re litigated. As Wyden told </span><i>The New Republic, </i><span>“No one in the United States should have to worry that the government will illegally weaponize their private information against them. But Trump’s administration is violating every law on the books to pillage Americans’ financial information, medical histories, and other private data.”</span></p><p><span>Hasbrouck points out that, as has long been the case with faulty facial recognition technology, part of the danger is not only that the technologies will work perfectly but that they will not. “Some of the worst things that we’re seeing happening are ultimately traceable back to the misfits between data that’s being used for a purpose it’s not fit for,” he said, pointing specifically to the case of the administration’s </span><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2025/05/03/how-many-international-students-visas-revoked/83216625007/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">abrupt cancellations</a><span> of reportedly thousands of student visas in a way that was rumored to be algorithmic. “It’s obvious that what happened was that some kind of visa database was matched against [the FBI’s National Crime Information Center database] on the erroneous assumption that NCIC was an authoritative, accurate database of everybody who has a criminal conviction, which it isn’t.”</span></p><p><span>After hundreds of lawsuits, the administration </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/25/us/politics/trump-student-visa-cancellations.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">was forced to reverse course on the cancellations</a><span> but never explained in open court how it picked out the students to target. In general, what is or isn’t happening with this matched data is at this point pretty much a matter of speculation, given that we have a partial picture at best. Revelations have mostly come not from public announcements or official acknowledgments but from court documents, leaks, and diligent reporting—including the laudable work of our colleagues at </span><i>Wired</i><span>. The wrecking-ball nature of the administration and DOGE’s fundamental incompetence probably mean that they’re not going to be able to obscure much of what they’re doing, but it’s still not particularly reassuring that what we know we know from mainly unofficial channels.</span></p><p><span>Who is auditing this? Are records even being kept of when the data is downloaded or modified or combined? Who has access, and do they have read/write power? We have at this point no real insight into what the plan is, or if there is a plan at all except, notably, for the involvement of the Peter Thiel–founded data analytics company Palantir, which has been in the news plenty lately for being </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/05/01/nx-s1-5372776/palantir-tech-contracts-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">increasingly enmeshed in the Trump administration</a><span class="active"> after years building its bona fides as a premier law enforcement and government-adjacent surveillance and data analytics company. Per <i>Wired,</i> the company was contracted to </span><a href="https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-doge-irs-mega-api-data/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">build some kind of “mega API,”</a><span> or a</span><span>pplication programming interface, </span><span>layered atop IRS data, precisely to make it more easily accessible and potentially interoperable.</span></p><p><span>Palantir’s bread and butter—what has made it an incredibly valuable company and left its founders enormously rich—is not the creation of data per se. The company is not really involved in the business of generating the databases it draws on. No, its technical innovations have been about </span><a href="https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">taking those multiple data streams and stitching them together</a><span> in ways that make them far more useful for drawing conclusions, building relational webs, and ostensibly predicting where, for example, crimes will be committed.</span></p><p><span>Hasbrouck worries that other private companies will be compelled to feed the beast, even if they’re not necessarily inclined to do so. “We’ve seen pressure being put on social media companies and media companies generally, publishers, to not be critical of the administration as the price of relaxing enforcement of various laws against them or giving them tariff benefits or whatever,” he said. “What I fear is that companies even outside of the space license-plate-reader aggregators, or Palantir, or whatever—the companies that started out with benign purposes for extensive data collection—may find themselves, or may already be finding themselves, behind the scenes … pressured to collaborate to a greater degree than they have in the past.”</span></p><p><span>Most authoritarian regimes sustain themselves in large part through broad surveillance and tight control of data flows that can feed into systems of semilegal pressure against potential dissidents and opponents. This is something the DOGE team seems to intuitively grasp, just as it grasps that framing this power grab as an immigration enforcement measure—which, to be clear, is not in itself a good reason or a legal defense—will ward off public scrutiny. We should not fall for it.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194330/trump-immigration-expanded-surveillance-state</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194330</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mass Deportations]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Elon Musk]]></category><category><![CDATA[Government Data]]></category><category><![CDATA[Surveillance]]></category><category><![CDATA[Surveillance State]]></category><category><![CDATA[data privacy]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Felipe De La Hoz]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/735e35f935b7f8341aaa5824936dcd9df68dd3d1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/735e35f935b7f8341aaa5824936dcd9df68dd3d1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Mandel Ngan/Getty Images
  13. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Please Stop Trying to Get Kash Patel Fired]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Last month, Washington Capitals captain Alex Ovechkin scored his 875th goal in the National Hockey League, surpassing Wayne Gretzky’s long-standing record. Gretzky himself was present for the away game against the New York Islanders. When the cameras cut to Gretzky in the stands, a slightly less familiar face was seated with him: FBI Director Kash Patel.</span></p><p>FBI directors since J. Edgar Hoover have typically been staid, anodyne figures with a low public profile. (James Comey, the showboat leader of the bureau who helped elect Donald Trump in 2016, was a notable exception.) Patel is anything but that: The 45-year-old director has spent his time jetting around the country to sporting events, social events, and Mar-a-Lago.</p><p>That jet-setting lifestyle has drawn some scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Senate Democrats have <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kash-patel-fbi-aircraft-democrats-gao-inquiry/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reportedly asked</a> the Government Accounting Office, a federal watchdog agency, to probe Patel’s use of official aircraft for personal business. While FBI directors are generally required to use government airplanes for national security reasons, Patel’s trips often appear to go well beyond what is required for him to do his job.</p><p>It is hard to fault Senate Democrats for taking a close look at anything the Trump administration does. Nor can they be blamed for their skepticism of Patel himself. But in this particular case, those who fear that Trump is moving the country in a more autocratic and dictatorial way might want to tread a little more lightly. So far, it seems like Trump’s choice for FBI director is less interested in settling scores and more interested in having fun. What would be a vice in any other administration may be a virtue in this one.</p><p>Patel was always an unconventional choice to serve as the head of the top federal law enforcement agency. Past FBI directors included former federal judges, U.S. attorneys, and high-ranking Justice Department officials. Patel, by comparison, only served as a low-ranking line prosecutor in the Justice Department for a few years in the early 2010s.</p><p>Patel’s rise instead owed itself to the favor he had garnered with President Donald Trump. He first became a public figure as a House Intelligence Committee aide during Trump’s first term who authored a memo claiming that the FBI’s Russia investigation was illegitimate. He then served as a top national security official in the first Trump administration’s waning days.</p><p>His unstinting personal loyalty led Trump to name him as the FBI’s next director, effectively muzzling an agency that had investigated him multiple times over the last eight years. Despite Patel’s lack of experience, Trump described him as a “brilliant lawyer, investigator, and ‘America First’ fighter who has spent his career exposing corruption, defending justice, and protecting the American people,” when announcing the pick.</p><p>A more sanguine interpretation is that Trump wanted to bring the FBI to heel, either as a purely defensive strategy or to unleash against his political enemies. In that worldview, Patel is eminently qualified. He wrote a book in 2023 titled <i>Government Gangsters,</i> in which he denounced perceived FBI misdeeds and, in an appendix titled “Members of the Executive Branch Deep State,” laid out an <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/188946/kash-patel-fbi-enemies-list" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">enemies list</a> of roughly 60 names.</p><p><span>That conspiratorial mindset led senators to question whether Patel was an appropriate choice to lead such an important agency. Patel said under oath during his confirmation hearing that their worries were misplaced. “I have no interest, no desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards,” Patel told the Senate Judiciary Committee. “There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by any FBI [agents], should I be confirmed as the FBI director.”</span></p><p>That hasn’t quite turned out to be true. Since taking over the bureau in February, Patel has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/us/politics/fbi-suspends-employee-patel-enemies.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">suspended an FBI analyst</a> who worked on two Trump-related investigations that the new director had questioned and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/30/us/politics/fbi-agents-2020-protests.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reassigned two agents</a> who took a knee during racial justice protests in 2020. He has also sought to restructure the FBI in general by proposing transfers of many of its D.C. agents to the bureau’s branch offices and regional headquarters. While such transfers may be a subtle way to reduce the agency’s overall head count, they also reflect a decentralization of the FBI that Patel seems to favor.</p><p>At the same time, there are also signs that Patel is more interested in recreation than retribution. For one thing, he reportedly declined to move to the D.C. area full-time and instead largely works from home at his Las Vegas residence, which is <a href="https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/trump-fbi-pick-kash-patels-vegas-roommate-is-timeshare-tycoon-accused-of-shady-practices" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reportedly owned</a> by a GOP megadonor. That decision puts him in sharp contrast with the rest of the federal workforce, which has been <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/return-to-in-person-work/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ordered</a> by the Trump administration to return to physical offices as quickly as possible after the post-pandemic shift. Unlike most federal workers, it also brings significant logistical challenges since FBI directors routinely work with sensitive and classified material.</p><p>Patel has taken part in press conferences and public announcements of major law enforcement developments since his confirmation. But he has also shown a flair for jet-setting. After the Gretzky appearance, <i>The New York Times</i> reported that Patel flew on Air Force One to Miami to attend a mixed-martial-arts competition there. Patel, like Trump himself, is a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship league, having attended multiple matches already as FBI director. He has even <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/fbi-director-kash-patel-bring-ufc-fbi-sources/story?id=119255318" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">sought to incorporate</a> it into the training regimen for prospective FBI agents.</p><p>CBS News <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/kash-patel-fbi-aircraft-democrats-gao-inquiry/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported recently</a> that Patel’s government-funded travels have taken him <span>not only</span><span> back and forth from Vegas to D.C., in what might be the nation’s longest commute, but also on multiple jaunts to Nashville, Tennessee, where his girlfriend reportedly resides. Those Nashville trips have included official business, as well—Patel visited the local FBI field office, for example—but also stretch the bounds of what is considered an acceptable use of official resources for a public employee.</span></p><p>To which I say: whatever. In the realm of alleged misconduct by Trump administration officials, using Justice Department jets to see one’s girlfriend may be the least malign. It would not even rank among the top-five scandals involving Trump officials and airplanes over the last three months. This is not to excuse Patel’s actions, of course, but rather to contextualize them.</p><p>If anything, Trump’s critics and political opponents should be heartened by Patel’s on-the-job performance so far. Why should those critics <i>want</i> Patel to spend more time doing his job? It is not like he would spend it busting cryptocurrency fraud schemes, chasing down insider trading, or generally tackling white-collar crime. The Trump administration is effectively in favor of those things. </p><p>FBI directors have the power to do immense harm if they so decide. J. Edgar Hoover used the agency’s powers to spy on civil rights leaders, routinely violate Americans’ civil liberties, and build dossiers of compromising information about Republican and Democratic politicians alike. Comey, the aforementioned director from 2013 to 2017, may have effectively tipped the 2016 election to Trump by announcing a last-minute investigation of Hillary Clinton less than a fortnight before Election Day.</p><p>Fortunately for Americans, Patel seems more interested in having a good time than ensuring Trump’s opponents have a bad time. There are already signs the White House <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/09/us/politics/patel-army-secretary-atf.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">isn’t thrilled with his work ethic</a>: Trump named him as acting director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in February, only to strip him of that title and hand it off to Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll last month. Patel had reportedly never shown up to work there since his initial visit to the ATF headquarters.</p><p>Democrats may see that as a sign of weakness and strike accordingly. The more strategic move would be to not draw more attention to Patel’s work habits at the moment. The only thing worse than a Trump-appointed FBI director who isn’t dedicated to his job is one who actually takes Trump’s mandate for the bureau seriously and works zealously to enact it.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194986/kash-patel-fbi-trump-law</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194986</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kash Patel]]></category><category><![CDATA[FBI]]></category><category><![CDATA[law enforcement]]></category><category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category><category><![CDATA[Law]]></category><category><![CDATA[James Comey]]></category><category><![CDATA[Federal Bureau of Investigation]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Ford]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e4bfee04ceb0713943f8a40d950e3f11ea0e8caa.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e4bfee04ceb0713943f8a40d950e3f11ea0e8caa.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>FBI Director Kash Patel arrives to testify before the House Appropriations Committee on Capitol Hill, on May 7. </media:description><media:credit>Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
  14. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[The Coming Jewish
  15. Civil War Over
  16. Donald Trump]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Following the Hamas October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, in which that group murdered approximately 1,200 people and took 251 more hostage, Israel began a military campaign of “</span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/netanyahu-congress-gaza-hamas-israel-6ea5daf3cd1988b0ad6e874bd450f9bf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">total victory</a><span>” against the group—a terrorist organization it has previously promoted by facilitating Qatari funding for the group in order to weaken the Palestinian Authority and thereby lessen pressure on Israel to allow the creation of a genuine Palestinian state. That campaign has since killed well over </span><a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/23/nx-s1-5337938/palestinian-deaths-gaza-israel" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">50,000</a><span> Gazans, a majority of whom were </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn5wel11pgdo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">women or children</a><span>.</span></p><p>During the course of its attacks, Israel has seen fit to cut off <a href="https://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/latest/water-being-used-weapon-war-gaza" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">water</a>, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-palestinians-war-news-ba90f0de3d4f64a1762d1a39f787817f" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">electricity</a>, and <a href="https://apnews.com/article/gaza-israel-hamas-palestinians-aid-explainer-ecc0e70d5ff1120a04bf36626dfd96f4" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">food supplies</a> to Gaza’s population, destroyed much of its physical infrastructure, and left its residents enduring what the British Red Cross <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2023/10/israel-opt-israel-must-lift-illegal-and-inhumane-blockade-on-gaza-as-power-plant-runs-out-of-fuel/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">called</a> a “desperate humanitarian crisis.” As if that weren’t enough, in addition to the war on Gaza, the Israel Defense Forces have recently launched multiple attacks in the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/20/g-s1-54280/west-bank-displaced-palestinians-israel-idf-military" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">West Bank</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy700rml36lo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Lebanon</a>, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/04/09/nx-s1-5348806/israel-attacks-syria" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Syria</a>, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/world/middleeast/israel-strikes-yemen-houthis.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Yemen</a>, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgr0yvrx4qpo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Iran</a>, with the strong possibility of a much larger attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities later this year.</p><p>At the same time, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deeply unpopular, scandal- plagued extremist right-wing government—one that features an avowed racist and homophobe and a longtime supporter of Jewish anti-Arab terrorism—is in the process of attempting to destroy the nation’s democracy from within as it prioritizes military attacks over the lives of its remaining hostages in Gaza.</p><p>The war has exacerbated a burgeoning conflict between the country that Israel is becoming and the values of the majority of American Jews. To put it in familiar terms, Israel has grown politically bright red while American Jews, alone among ethnicities that code as “white,” remain proudly deep blue. Two-thirds of Israelis <a href="https://en.idi.org.il/articles/56992" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">questioned</a> told pollsters they preferred Donald Trump over Kamala Harris; the exact opposite held true among American Jews. (“Trump gets nothing but praise here,” the Tel Aviv–based pollster and political analyst Dahlia Scheindlin told me.)</p><aside class="pullquote pull-right"><p>Legacy Jewish organizations are throwing in with a president and political movement that seek to destroy the democratic pillars and educational institutions that have helped to make Jews secure and successful in the United States and are shot through with neo-Nazis.</p></aside><p>Despite this, the leaders of the large “legacy” American Jewish organizations, without exception, have chosen to side with Netanyahu, defending Israel against all critics and demonizing as “antisemitic” anyone—especially other Jews—who they believe threatens it. In doing so, however, they face the problem not only of opposing the views of the vast majority of American Jews, but also of throwing in with a U.S. president and political movement that seek to destroy the democratic pillars and educational institutions that have helped to make Jews secure and successful in the United States and are shot through with neo-Nazis and Jew-haters of all sorts.</p><p>The net result is that we are in the early stages of a Jewish civil war unmatched since the early battles over Zionism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In essence, Trump and the forces arrayed behind him—the legacy organizations, a new and well-financed right-wing Jewish media, and the Christian evangelical world that blindly supports Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu—have offered American Jews a kind of devil’s bargain: throw in with us against the antisemitic universities and campus rabble-rousers, but pay no attention as we dismantle the traditions and institutions that Jews value and that have provided the foundation for all they have been able to accomplish as Americans. Who’s in?</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><h2>Donald Trump’s “Pro-Israel Antisemitism”</h2><p>Back in September, Donald Trump appeared <a href="https://thehill.com/video-clips/4888794-watch-live-trump-headlines-iac-conference-2024/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">at an event</a> about antisemitism together with mega-pro-Israel donor Miriam Adelson and promised the crowd: “I will be your defender, your protector, and I will be the best friend Jewish Americans have ever had in the White House.” Shocker: This was a lie. Trump’s antisemitism is no secret to anyone who cares to look. We know from his former chief of staff that he believes “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/06/donald-trump-hitler-michael-bender-book" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Hitler did a lot of good things</a>.” We know that according to his ex-wife Ivana, he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed. No less worrisome is the sympathy he has consistently shown toward contemporary neo-Nazis. This was most obvious when he referred to the Charlottesville protesters who <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/08/12/charlottesville-anniversary-supremacists-protests-dc-virginia-219353/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">chanted</a> “Jews will not replace us” as “<a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/08/15/full-text-trump-comments-white-supremacists-alt-left-transcript-241662" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">very fine people</a>.” Then came the high-profile dinner he had at Mar-a-Lago with Holocaust <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/06/who-is-nick-fuentes-and-why-is-a-us-rep-buddying-up-to-the-segregationist-holocaust-denying-gen-z-influencer/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">denier</a> Nick Fuentes and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/feb/12/kanye-west-sued-dropped-by-talent-agency-and-retail-platform-over-antisemitic-remarks" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Hitler-loving</a> rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West).</p><p>Trump, moreover, exploits antisemitism as a political weapon. In 2016, for instance, he tweeted <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/us/politics/trump-clinton-star-of-david.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">an image</a> that featured Hillary Clinton backgrounded by hundred-dollar bills together with a Jewish star. His campaign <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/11/07/501029170/in-closing-ads-trump-goes-dark-while-clinton-goes-cozy" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ran an ad</a> that went after disloyal “globalist” billionaires, illustrated, coincidentally, with the faces of three Jews: Janet Yellen, George Soros, and Lloyd Blankfein. He also <a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-schumer-israel-jewish-democrats-35bd1522edd64caf1dedbb10fddf0fcf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">embraces</a> the antisemitic canard that the primary loyalty of American Jews lies with Israel rather than their own country. “Any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion.… They hate everything about Israel, and they should be ashamed of themselves,” he proclaimed.</p><p>Equally offensive is Trump’s idiotic claim that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer is “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/us/politics/trump-schumer-palestinian.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">not Jewish anymore</a>” and has instead become “a Palestinian.” In assuming the right to decide who is and isn’t legitimately Jewish, Trump is emulating both his hero, Vladimir Putin, who says much the same thing about Volodymyr Zelenskiy and other “ethnic Jews,” as well as the virulently antisemitic mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, who in the late nineteenth century famously <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2018/11/09/donald-trump-pittsburgh-lessons-kristallnacht/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">asserted</a>, “I decide who is a Jew”; a claim later picked up by Hermann Göring.</p><p>Perhaps most worrisome of all, however, is Trump’s eagerness to blame the Jews when things don’t go his way. At the same Adelson event mentioned above, he warned, “If I don’t win this election … the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” He was preparing his followers for an old-fashioned, antisemitic “stab-in-the-back” attack on liberal Jews. This is no idle threat, given the fact that Trump leads a movement whose members are not averse to political violence and that includes <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jan/26/neo-nazis-trump-extremism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">actual neo-Nazis</a>.</p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/96fe6f4556f630a98bf00fc82800e0ee77f36c1d.jpeg?w=1400" alt="This billboard congratulating Donald Trump appeared in Tel Aviv the day after the 2024 election." width="1400" data-caption="This billboard congratulating Donald Trump appeared in Tel Aviv the day after the 2024 election." data-credit="ODED BALILTY/AP"><p>Such threats should be ringing alarm bells among Jews. After all, the vast majority of violent <a href="https://archive.ph/j45K1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">attacks on Jews</a> in the United States since Trump came on the political scene have come from the right. These include <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/mass-shooter-found-guilty-of-murdering-11-people-at-tree-of-life-synagogue-in-2018" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">synagogue murders</a> in Pittsburgh and Poway, California, and the planting of an <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45949737" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">explosive device</a> at George Soros’s house. Like the neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, many Trump supporters expound the racist, antisemitic “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/05/17/1099223012/how-the-replacement-theory-went-mainstream-on-the-political-right" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">great replacement</a>” theory that appears to inspire these attacks.</p><p>Finally, there is the administration’s embrace of Europe’s and Latin America’s extreme right wing. Rabbi Rick Jacobs, who heads the Union for Reform Judaism, told me, “To see the vice president at the Munich conference saying that we should give a break to the AfD [the Alternative for Germany party] and not talk about this Nazi past, it’s just incredible that an administration would think such a thing, much less say it.” One AfD leader has been fined twice for repeatedly using a Nazi slogan that’s banned in his country. (JD Vance’s February speech, not coincidentally, came a day after his visit to Dachau.)</p><p>The apparent contradiction between fealty to Israel’s government and hostility to diaspora Jews is evidence of a phenomenon that Georgia State University political scientist Jelena Subotić has <a href="https://www.972mag.com/antisemitic-far-right-israel-orban/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">named</a> “pro-Israel antisemitism.” It can be seen today in the ruling parties in Russia, Hungary, and Poland, and in the ideologies of Germany’s AfD and France’s National Rally. Their parties make up what is often termed the “<a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/long-reads/2018/07/new-illiberal-international" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Illiberal International</a>” and attract support with antisemitic memes and themes thereby laying the groundwork to blame Jews when things go sour. But they support Israel because they appreciate its model of ethno-nationalist statehood and because they despise Muslims even more than they do Jews.</p><p>By the way, all of these concerns can be applied to Trump’s BFF, Elon Musk, and then some. When the world’s wealthiest man bought X (formerly Twitter), he purposely opened it up to what <a href="https://counterhate.com/blog/the-musk-bump-quantifying-the-rise-in-hate-speech-under-elon-musk/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a report</a> by the <a href="https://counterhate.com/?utm_source=google_grant_search&amp;utm_medium=cpc&amp;utm_campaign=g-00_evergreen&amp;utm_id=g-00&amp;utm_term=ccdh&amp;utm_content=homepage&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=21167512281&amp;gbraid=0AAAAAokHfkEbmNu5ceRTkT6Z83U4eeitD&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw2tHABhCiARIsANZzDWr6iwPvbstXXVJZBjALQHEtI2AF1FMpt-DG19ov8EGn9ljAYWm0zSEaAnT2EALw_wcB" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Center for Countering Digital Hate</a> found to be a surge in hate speech, including antisemitic and white supremacist content. Much of its antisemitic content was encouraged by Musk himself. For instance, when someone calling himself “Eric” responded to a PSA about antisemitism by saying, “Jewish communties [sic] have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them,” Musk <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/16/elon-musk-antisemitic-tweet-adl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">replied</a>, “You have said the actual truth.”</p><p>Back in 2022, when Musk decided<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/19/technology/trump-twitter-musk.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> to reinstate</a> Trump on the site, the Anti-Defamation League co-led a campaign for an <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/twitter-elon-musk-donald-trump-naacp-adl-ad-boycott/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">advertising boycott</a>. (ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt was initially a great fan of Musk’s purchase of the site, calling him “an amazing entrepreneur and extraordinary innovator” and “the Henry Ford of our time,” apparently unaware that Ford was one of the most prominent antisemites in American history; he quickly reconsidered after an intense backlash.) Meanwhile, toxic antisemitism continues to flow freely on X.</p><p>And of course there was the astonishing sight of Musk, on Inauguration Day, thrusting his arm into the air at Trump’s inauguration in what pretty much every educated, intelligent person in the Western world would have recognized as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/politics/elon-musk-stirs-controversy-over-hand-gesture-at-trump-r" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a Nazi salute</a>. (Musk has vehemently <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy48v1x4dv4o" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">denied</a> the charge.) Almost immediately, Musk was gifted with a get-out-of-jail-free card from the two people who, at least in theory, perhaps should have been the last people on Earth to offer one: the prime minister of Israel and the head of the ADL. Netanyahu rushed to X to <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/benjamin-netanyahu-elon-musk-is-being-falsely-smeared-over-controversial-salute/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">proclaim</a> Musk “a great friend of Israel” who was “being falsely smeared” by these Nazi accusations. No less incredibly, the ADL—whose CEO, Greenblatt, is the scourge of every college student who has ever chanted “Free Palestine”—called the salute, which the group’s own website defines as “the most common white supremacist hand sign in the world,” merely an “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-inauguration-president-2025/card/musk-s-gesture-wasn-t-a-fascist-salute-says-head-of-adl-iC97rddU5arloAcUGrVv" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">awkward gesture</a>,” and said the man who made it “should be given the benefit of the doubt.” The Jewish actor Josh Malina was <a href="https://x.com/JoshMalina/status/1881685953494106246" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">inspired</a> to “report the ADL to the ADL.”</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><h2>The Legacy Groups and the New Media Landscape</h2><p>The political world of American Jews is so simultaneously large and chaotic that it can be hard even for its participants to imagine it in full. While Jews number barely more than 2 percent of the U.S. population, there are 54 organizations that make up what’s called the <a href="https://conferenceofpresidents.org/about/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Conference of Presidents</a> of Major Jewish Organizations, as well as numerous groups outside the conference. These groups can be divided into roughly three classifications. First, there are the “legacy” groups, which are the best known and best funded, and inarguably the most influential. It’s fair to say that they see themselves as the contemporary manifestation of the historic shtadlanim (intercessors), those Jews appointed to represent the entire community to whatever ruling powers happened to control the region in which they found themselves. The most famous of these are the <a href="https://support.adl.org/campaign/652835/donate?utm_source=paidsearch&amp;utm_medium=googlepaid&amp;utm_campaign=evergreen&amp;c_src=evergreen&amp;c_src2=googlepaid&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=18288561803&amp;gbraid=0AAAAACw2y1cMzErubWTpksHgxRifT2rVb&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw2tHABhCiARIsANZzDWrazbrTakpYaaYvcz7bZdN96tdhEuk2qSyMsiCVeD5i0yTOyK3QiGkaAjmOEALw_wcB&amp;gclsrc=aw.ds" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ADL</a>; the <a href="https://www.aipac.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">American Israel Public Affairs Committee</a>, or AIPAC; the <a href="https://www.ajc.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">American Jewish Committee</a>, or AJC; and the office of the CEO of the conference itself. In recent years, all have moved closer to the traditional position of the Orthodox Union, or OU, which represents the faction of Jewish voters who went heavily for Trump and accounts for approximately 10 percent of American Jews today.</p><p>A second set of organizations seeks instead to speak for the Jewish majority that consistently votes Democratic and remains committed to defending democracy in both Israel and the United States. Working with far fewer resources than the legacy groups, they walk a political tightrope, balancing their simultaneous commitments to both Zionism and the traditional Jewish liberal agenda and constantly finding themselves fending off attacks from both their right and left—especially when these attacks involve attempts by the right to weaponize antisemitism and by the left to ignore it. These groups include the “pro-peace, pro-Israel”<a href="https://jstreet.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> J Street</a>; the <a href="https://rac.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism</a>; <a href="https://truah.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">T’ruah</a>, a group of liberal rabbis and cantors; <a href="https://nexusproject.us/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the Nexus Project</a>, an antisemitism watchdog group; <a href="https://www.newjewishnarrative.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">New Jewish Narrative</a>, a product of a merger between Americans for Peace Now and Ameinu; the <a href="https://www.nif.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">New Israel Fund</a>, which supports civil society and Arab-Israeli cooperation in Israel; and the recently revitalized <a href="https://jewishpublicaffairs.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jewish Council for Public Affairs</a>, or JCPA, under the leadership of Amy Spitalnick. Call these the “Next Generation” Jewish organizations.</p><p>In the space beyond both groups are those on the far right and left. The far right’s influence has rocketed skyward of late, owing to what former U.S. diplomat Aaron David Miller <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/us/politics/trump-netanyahu-israel-political-strategy.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">calls</a> “the Vulcan mind meld between Trump and Netanyahu on undermining the independence of the courts and fighting the ‘woke left.’” These groups promote Israel’s annexation of both the West Bank and Gaza and thrilled to Trump’s lunatic notion that the United States and Israel could create a second “<em>nakba</em>”—Arabic for the “catastrophe” of the Palestinians’ <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/about-the-nakba/#:~:text=The%20Nakba%2C%20which%20means%20%E2%80%9Ccatastrophe,ethnic%20and%20multi%2Dcultural%20society." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">1948 expulsion</a>—in the service of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/09/politics/trump-gaza-real-estate/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">turning Gaza</a> into a sort of Middle Eastern Mar-a-Largo (“<a href="https://zoa.org/2025/02/10452404-zoa-praises-pres-trumps-plan-for-gazan-emigration-to-egypt-and-jordan-and-trumps-release-to-israel-of-military-equipment-israel-purchased/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">brilliant and courageous,</a>” as judged by the Zionist Organization of America’s Morton Klein). The anonymously funded Canary Mission, which spies on students and faculty, and Betar, which specializes in violent threats against Jews whom the group doesn’t like, have staked out similar ideological territory. Together with stopantisemitism.com, which exists almost exclusively for this purpose, <a href="https://www.vox.com/politics/410125/canary-mission-the-pro-israel-group-taking-credit-for-student-deportation-explained" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">they take credit</a> for reporting foreign-born students and faculty to ICE in the hopes of getting them deported.</p><p>On the opposite side of the spectrum are the youth-dominated, protest-oriented groups like <a href="https://www.jewishvoiceforpeace.org/nobombs/?sourceid=1003452&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=21772873613&amp;gbraid=0AAAAAqXRb9oTL6XqBh_yqmQfKjDxy3iHO&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw2tHABhCiARIsANZzDWqwhKG3ymWG8_QfLwEZH-LwPFaZHVSDPjfaaCchIpYNNpyQE_f2EuwaAr1uEALw_wcB#donate" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jewish Voice for Peace</a>, or JVP, <a href="https://www.ifnotnowmovement.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">IfNotNow</a>, and <a href="https://www.jfrej.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jews for Racial and Economic Justice</a>. Popular in college towns and a few cities where young Jews congregate, these groups insist that it is their commitment to Jewish values and religious teachings that underlies their anti-Israel politics. Their membership has grown in recent years to the point where JVP can credibly claim to be the largest progressive Jewish anti-Zionist organization in the world. The most eloquent expounder of this viewpoint is likely <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Beinart" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Peter Beinart</a>, an observant Jew and former editor of this magazine in its obsessively Zionist days who now calls himself a “cultural Zionist” and supports the creation of a single binational state in what is today Israel, the occupied West Bank, and Gaza. To the degree they enjoy any influence in Washington, it is exclusively with the “Squad” members who make up the Democratic Party’s left flank.</p><p>The legacy groups have two massive advantages over their opponents. The first is that Republican politicians are happy to march in lockstep on behalf of Israeli government demands. According to a recent Gallup poll, <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/657404/less-half-sympathetic-toward-israelis.aspx" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">83 percent</a> of registered Republicans say they have a favorable opinion of Israel. And while most Democratic members of Congress remain committed to supporting Israel, the percentage of Democrats surveyed by Gallup with a favorable view of that country has fallen to just 33 percent. Fifty-nine percent expressed greater sympathy for Palestinians, and just 21 percent for Israelis.</p><p>Second, and hardly less important given that this is America, is the power of money. The ADL alone enjoys assets of nearly $250 million. (It recently launched what it called the “<a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/jlens-launches-first-ever-jewish-advocacy-etf-tov-nyse-backed-adl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">first ever Jewish advocacy</a>” investment fund. With comically terrible timing, among its top recommendations was Musk’s Tesla, whose stock, at this writing, is down over 40 percent on the year.) The Republican Jewish Coalition, which carries out what political pros term the “Adelson primaries,” worth tens or even hundreds of millions to the right candidate, also plays on this team. (Miriam Adelson alone contributed over <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2025/03/elon-musk-tops-list-of-2024-political-donors-but-six-others-gave-more-than-100-million" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$148 million</a> to Trump and the Republicans in 2024.) By contrast, J Street, the best funded of the politically minded Next Generation groups, enjoyed assets of roughly $4.45 million, with another $4.6 million sitting in its “education fund,” according to its most recent filings.</p><p>AIPAC, the traditional 800-pound gorilla of Jewish politics, is influential for many reasons besides money. It recruits congressional candidates and helps to staff their offices if they win. It writes legislation, arranges junkets, and smears the reputations of those with whom it disagrees. Its power and influence created an atmosphere on Capitol Hill where its staffers did not even have to act in order to get what it wanted, since it enjoyed what William Quandt, the Middle East expert and former White House adviser who worked on the Camp David accords, termed “the law of anticipated reaction,” under which certain policy options “are frequently rejected because of the expectation of negative reaction” from AIPAC and its allies.</p><p>Lately, AIPAC has also directly entered the money fray, after decades of pretense otherwise, with its own political action committee: one that specializes in raising money from wealthy Republicans and funneling it into Democratic primaries to ensure that the more “<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/09/aipac-republican-donors-democratic-primaries-00162404" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pro-Israel</a>” candidate wins the race. In 2022 and 2024, it set <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/190021/report-aipac-spent-record-amount-2024-election" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">all-time records</a> for its primary contributions, though, ironically, its advertising rarely mentioned Israel. AIPAC’s <a href="https://www.aipacpac.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">website</a> brags that the group spent a $70 million investment to help defeat 24 candidates whose support for Israel did not meet its exacting standards. As a result, as Matt Duss, formerly the top foreign policy adviser to Bernie Sanders, explained, “AIPAC scares the shit out of members of Congress.” If you vote against or even speak overly critically of Israel in a public forum, Duss explained, “AIPAC will take you down,” and it has “any number of means at its disposal.” While J Street does raise money for more progressive candidates, albeit nowhere near as much as AIPAC, its true value lies in its “pro-peace, pro-Israel” umbrella’s ability to protect those under attack.</p><p>In recent times, the ADL’s relentless attacks on Israel’s critics led to the perception among insiders that it had overtaken AIPAC as the most influential member of the presidents’ conference. Once identified with civil rights struggles and the fight to maintain a separation of church and state, it has downgraded virtually all efforts save those involving attacking Israel’s critics wherever they may appear. (“Anti-Zionism is antisemitism, full stop,” Greenblatt <a href="https://www.adl.org/resources/news/adl-doing-work" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">insists</a>.) In the past, it was AIPAC’s job to root out those unfriendly to Israel anywhere in the presidential bureaucracy. But in March, when Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, felt forced to deny the Israel critic Daniel Davis an important post that would have put him in charge of managing briefings for the president, <em>The New York Times</em>’ account of the internecine fight credited the ADL, which had called the appointment “extremely dangerous.” (Davis had called U.S. support for Israel’s Gaza war a “stain on our character as a nation.”)</p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/e8e1208f29424ad11967c0c38ebed1393d53ccaa.jpeg?w=1400" alt="Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, spoke to a J Street conference in Washington in 2022." width="1400" data-caption="Antony Blinken, Biden’s secretary of state, spoke to a J Street conference in Washington in 2022." data-credit="MICHAEL BROCHSTEIN/SIPA USA/AP"><p>As enormous as the imbalance of power is inside the Jewish lobbying groups, it’s even greater within the Jewish media. The right dominates here as well. Obama deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/ben-rhodes-interview-obama-democrats-foreign-policy/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">he found</a> “striking” during his time in the White House the degree to which “the drivers of opinion on foreign policy come almost entirely from the right.” Right-wing Jewish billionaires and multimillionaires have invested heavily in websites, daily email blasts, and thick policy journals. It would take a lot of space to list all of them, but among the most important are Jewish Insider, which acts as a tribal drum for right-wing Jews, often pounding the same targets as Rupert Murdoch’s <em>New York Post</em> but with greater depth and fewer fireworks. Bret Stephens uses his <em>New York Times</em> column to defend whatever Israel does and is also blessed with his very own Jewish policy journal, <em><a href="https://sapirjournal.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Sapir</a>,</em> funded by a dark-money foundation called the Maimonides Fund, which refuses to identify its donors. It’s a remarkable state of affairs for a newspaper that seeks to avoid even “the appearance of conflict of interest.” <a href="https://www.thefp.com/subscribe?utm_source=google&amp;gad_source=1&amp;gad_campaignid=22446303251&amp;gbraid=0AAAAApHxamH132nW9VZcBOT7D8lu-HCQ0&amp;gclid=Cj0KCQjw2tHABhCiARIsANZzDWp6ghWugoFTXCcnNu73X4xuZiSz59lfcn3E1j5kCU4jb6N3flUrVdUaAhB-EALw_wcB" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Free Press</a>, founded by Stephens’s former mentee, Bari Weiss, is obviously all in for Israel. <a href="https://www.tabletmag.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Tablet</a> is another extremely well-funded right-wing outlet that frequently traffics in Trump-style conspiracy theories and personal attacks on those Jews who resist them. Ditto <em>The Algemeiner,</em> a New York newspaper widely read by Hasidic Jews.</p><p>More: Miriam and Sheldon Adelson started their own news service explicitly for this purpose, called Jewish News Syndicate, and it is edited by a former <em>Commentary </em>magazine blogger Jonathan S. Tobin. The <em><a href="https://jewishreviewofbooks.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jewish Review of Books</a></em> publishes transparent hatchet jobs on dovish-sounding writers on issues relating to Israel alongside otherwise respectable intellectual inquiry (much like this magazine in the days when Martin Peretz was the owner and editor in chief). It competes in this category with the equally right-wing Mosaic, published by the far-right Tikvah Fund. <a href="https://www.commentary.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><em>Commentary</em>,</a> edited by nepo-baby John Podhoretz, has doubled down on its poisonous rancor directed toward anyone and everything that does not hew to the far-right Israeli line in the style of his father, Norman Podhoretz, though with less élan than it had under the old man. For instance, among his barrage of tweets that followed this year’s Oscar victory for the Israeli/Palestinian film <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt30953759/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">No Other Land</a></em> in the best documentary feature category <a href="https://x.com/jpodhoretz/status/1896384419642200315" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">were these</a>: “Congratulations to HAMAS for its Oscar win. Now let’s see them destroyed,” together with, “Fuck you, anti-Semitic anti-Israel Hollywood filth.”</p><p>The Jewish media’s middle ground is occupied primarily by <em><a href="https://forward.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Forward</a></em> and the English edition of the Israeli newspaper <em><a href="https://www.haaretz.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Haaretz</a>.</em> Both lean left editorially but are open to almost all (non-Nazi) viewpoints in their respective opinion sections. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, which has ably served as an analogue to the Associated Press ever since 1917, is also dependable journalistically and open to all sides. The Jewish media far left belongs to <em><a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jewish Currents</a></em>, where Beinart frequently publishes. While it can be depended upon for sophisticated, well-documented journalism, its views—like those of other anti-Zionist publications—are considered too extreme to affect mainstream politics. In a shock to this reader at least, its editors could not even bring themselves to condemn the horrific attacks of October 7.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><h2>Columbia: Ground Zero of the Backlash</h2><p>In today’s Jewish political world, there is a single word that will likely dominate almost any conversation: “antisemitism.” Expressions of Jew-hatred are, we can all agree, to be resisted whenever possible and condemned whenever necessary as with all forms of ignorance and prejudice. The problem with antisemitism is that we lack any remotely consensual understanding of how to define it; even less so on how to successfully combat it.</p><p>Most of the members of the mainstream media, and therefore many of the people who consume its product, rely on the ADL to tell them what’s going on in this arena, as it is understood to be this legacy stalwart’s bread and butter. But the ADL’s statistics are corrupted by its ideology. For instance, the group defines virtually every single pro-Palestinian demonstration on any campus anywhere, including those in which Jews are significant participants, as antisemitic. Almost every weekday, noted Jodi Rudoren, until recently the editor of <em>The Forward,</em> the ADL blasts what she calls an “exhausting and confusing” Campus Crisis Alert email to roughly 200,000 subscribers (featuring a red siren emoji). These enjoy the highest “open rate,” according to the ADL, of any of its constant stream of email blasts. Campus conflicts have calmed down across the country; emergency ADL email blasts have not.</p><img src="//images.newrepublic.com/43beec6098c071b86fcba57b95fb057e2ae6c67c.jpeg?w=1400" alt="Pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters faced off at Columbia in October 2023." width="1400" data-caption="Pro-Palestinian protesters and pro-Israel counterprotesters faced off at Columbia in October 2023." data-credit="BING GUAN/THE NEW YORK TIMES/REDUX"><p>Whatever antisemitism may or may not be, it obviously is not manifested in every single student demonstration for Palestinian rights. As the venerable Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, who spent four decades as executive director of the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA, put it to me in conversation: “One is a political issue that has to do with the politics of Israel, and one involves hatred of Jews.”</p><p>A considerable number of student protesters are themselves Jewish and insist that it is their religious commitments that lead them to protest Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. Last year at Columbia University, for instance, encampment participants held a “<a href="https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/23/gaza-solidarity-encampment-approaches-one-week-mark-on-south-lawn/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">solidarity Seder</a>.” Are they antisemites? We can also agree that there are obviously plenty of reasons to object to Israel’s actions in Gaza, its now-multiple military occupations, and its treatment of Palestinians inside and outside its borders without, say, also hating the people on line at the lox counters at Zabar’s and Barney Greengrass. The growing number of anti-Zionist rabbis and especially rabbinical students offers further evidence of the lie of this simple equation.</p><p>While Israel’s popularity remains <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/05/26/modest-warming-in-u-s-views-on-israel-and-palestinians/https://apnews.com/article/evangelical-christians-israel-volunteer-trips-462329e04459191fd6ae061e722cae30" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">off the charts</a> among conservative Christians, it is rapidly declining among American Jews. It’s as if one group of Americans has fallen in love and another is contemplating divorce. In <a href="https://www.jewishelectorateinstitute.org/p6971" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a survey</a> that shocked many people back in 2021, 34 percent of American Jews questioned agreed that “Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is similar to racism in the United States” and 38 percent of those under 40 agree that “Israel is an apartheid state.” Those numbers have likely increased in the past four years. In a May 2024 Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs <a href="https://jcpa.org/survey-among-american-jews-over-51-support-for-bidens-decision-to-withhold-arms-shipments-to-israel/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">survey</a>, over half of American Jews supported withholding certain weapons from Israel, and fully a third agreed that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza—again, numbers that have likely grown over time.</p><p>As evidenced by the choice of Mike Huckabee to be U.S. ambassador to Israel, when it comes to Israel and the Trump administration, however, it’s the right-wing Christians who are driving the bus. While the Heritage Foundation’s “<a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Project Esther</a>” has received far less attention than its “<a href="https://www.aclu.org/project-2025-explained" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Project 2025</a>,” it appears to be no less accurate in presaging the Trump administration’s attack plan. Its almost exclusively conservative Christian authors live in a world where what they call a “<a href="https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2024-10/Project%20Esther.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Hamas Support Network</a>” is funded by liberal billionaires, especially Jewish ones like Soros. According to a pitch deck that accompanied the report <a href="https://forward.com/news/680626/project-esther-heritage-jewish-conspiracy-antisemitism/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">obtained by</a> <em>The Forward,</em> the first necessary step to save mankind from this fate was to locate “foreign [network] members vulnerable to deportation” and deploy law enforcement to “generate uncomfortable conditions” for U.S. citizens similarly engaged. The pitch deck suggested designating certain groups and organizations to be “TSEs,” for “terrorism support entities,” in order to allow ICE agents to arrest and to seek to deport foreign-born pro-Palestine protesters on campus. Trump began putting <a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Project Esther</a> into practice almost immediately when, on January 29, he issued an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/additional-measures-to-combat-anti-semitism/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">executive order</a> that promised to deport noncitizens who have joined in “pro-jihadist protests” and to cancel student visas of all sympathizers of Hamas. The order was accompanied by the cheers of most of the legacy groups.</p><aside class="pullquote pull-right"><p>Columbia has the largest contingent of Jews in the Ivy League—nearly 23 percent of its undergraduates—and is located in the city where the 12 percent of citizens who identify as Jewish make it second only to Tel Aviv as the largest Jewish city in the world.</p></aside><p>The Trump administration picked Columbia University to begin its attack on America’s institutions of higher learning, and, from a purely political standpoint, this made sense. Columbia has been ground zero for pro-Palestinian protests, encampments, disruption, harassment, building takeovers, destruction of property, and ultimately massive arrests. When called on the carpet by publicity-seeking Republican representatives, wealthy Jewish funders, and legacy Jewish organizations, Minouche Shafik, then the university’s president, <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty-issues/academic-freedom/2024/04/19/columbia-president-accused-throwing-profs-under-bus" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">attacked her own faculty</a> before Congress and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/10/us/columbia-professor-katherine-franke-retires.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pressured</a> a prominent pro-Palestinian professor to retire before quitting herself (along with the presidents of Harvard, Cornell, and the University of Pennsylvania). What’s more, it’s the school with the largest contingent of Jews in the Ivy League—nearly <a href="https://www.hillel.org/college/columbia-university/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">23 percent</a> of its undergraduates—and is located in the city where the 12 percent of citizens who identify as Jewish make it second only to Tel Aviv as the largest Jewish city in the world.</p><p>In March, ICE made the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-15014bcbb921f21a9f704d5acdcae7a8" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">shocking arrest</a> of the pro-Palestinian protester, graduate student, and green card–holder Mahmoud Khalil (in Columbia housing, in front of his then-pregnant U.S.-citizen wife, who was also threatened). He may be deported. That same month, Trump threatened Columbia with withdrawal of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/21/nyregion/columbia-response-trump-demands.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$400 million</a> in federal research funds. ADL’s Greenblatt loudly <a href="https://x.com/JGreenblattADL/status/1898138184711835956" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">cheered</a> both the arrest and the attack on the university itself.</p><p>There was no shortage of prominent Next Generation voices standing up to the onslaught. Among the most eloquent of these was JCPA’s Spitalnick. “While the Trump administration claims to prioritize the fight against antisemitism, it has, in reality, repeatedly taken steps to gut the very tools we need to protect Jewish students,” she <a href="https://jewishpublicaffairs.org/press-release/jewish-council-for-public-affairs-condemns-executive-order-to-dismantle-the-u-s-department-of-education/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">explained</a>. Indeed, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.aclu.org/news/racial-justice/trumps-attack-on-the-department-of-education-explained" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">shuttered</a> seven of the 12 regional offices of the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, which actually deals with complaints about antisemitism in our universities. He has, of course, threatened the termination of the entire department. Spitalnick <a href="https://jewishpublicaffairs.org/press-release/jewish-council-for-public-affairs-condemns-executive-order-to-dismantle-the-u-s-department-of-education/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">charged</a> the administration with “exploiting our community’s legitimate concerns about antisemitism on campus to undermine due process, civil liberties, and the rule of law” and seeking to “pit the Jewish community against the strong education institutions and inclusive democracy that have been inextricably linked with our community’s advancement, rights, and safety.”</p><p>As the Jewish journalist Ron Kampeas <a href="https://ronkampeas.substack.com/p/trumps-arrests-of-israel-critics?triedRedirect=true" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">recently reported</a>, a confrontation recently erupted between the legacy groups and the Next Generation. It began when Spitalnick and the JCPA initiated <a href="https://jewishpublicaffairs.org/press-release/jewishcommunalstatement/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a letter</a> that was eventually signed by the leaders of 10 organizations, including the leaders of all three non-Orthodox denominations, stating, “escalating federal actions have used the guise of fighting antisemitism to justify stripping students of due process rights when they face arrest and/or deportation, as well as to threaten billions in academic research and education funding.” The signatories categorically “reject[ed] any policies or actions” designed to exploit Jewish concern about antisemitism “to undermine democratic norms and rights, including the rule of law, the right of due process, and/or the freedoms of speech, press, and peaceful protest.”</p><p>Eric Fingerhut, a former congressman who heads the <a href="https://www.jewishfederations.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jewish Federations of North America</a>, an umbrella organization boasting assets of nearly $300 million and 146 member groups, urged his members to reject the JCPA letter. He claims, somehow, that ICE’s <a href="https://certainthoughts.substack.com/p/exclusive-internal-jewish-community" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">targets were</a> “receiving due process and are represented by able legal counsel.” (Fingerhut earlier provided Trump administration officials a forum to promote their campus crackdown.)</p><p>The jury is still out on the ultimate victor in this battle, but it appears that Team Next Generation has so far carried the day. Even Greenblatt felt forced to backpedal. Following the ADL’s celebratory statement in the wake of the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, Greenblatt <a href="https://x.com/ADL/status/1898918587437338827" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said his detention</a> “serves as a deterrent to others who might consider breaking the law on college campuses or anywhere.” Later, Greenblatt apparently experienced a civil libertarian revelation: “If we sacrifice our constitutional freedoms in the pursuit of security,” he <a href="https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/we-must-fight-for-jewish-students-and-our-values/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">warned</a>, “we undermine the very foundation of the diverse, pluralistic society we seek to defend.” Not long afterward, the AJC followed suit, belatedly <a href="https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-statement-on-university-funding-cuts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">decrying</a> the “profound threat to the survival of America’s leading universities” that Trump’s actions represented, without, however, reconsidering its support for the ICE arrest of Kahlil.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><h2>All Roads Lead to … Resistance</h2><p>During the course of writing and researching this article, I had occasion to speak to dozens of liberal Jewish leaders and noted scholars of American Jewish history. Among them, the only difference I could discern in their views was their degree of concern—a better word in many cases would be “panic”—over what constitutes the greater threat to American Jews: Trump’s attack on universities and his apparently unconstitutional treatment of pro-Palestinian protesters in the name of combating “antisemitism,” or the threats to the survival of U.S. democracy inherent in these actions.</p><p>Both of these, however, are tied up with the problem of the transformation of Israel into a country to which millions of liberal American Jews remain profoundly emotionally committed, but whose government consistently violates their most deeply held values. Taken together, these challenges combine to present American Jews with what J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami described as the fundamental question: “What does it mean to be Jewish in the U.S. in the middle of the twenty-first century?” The conflict he described is “partially related to Trump but also related to Israel and over who gets to define what it means to be Jewish in the U.S.” On the one side is “fealty to domination,” a particularist Jewish vision that is “tribal, nationalist, and territorialist.” On the other are the “liberal universalist values” that have historically defined the politics and culture of (non-Orthodox) American Jewish life.</p><p>The Israel problem is complicated enough. As Rabbi Jill Jacobs, an eloquent progressive Zionist who heads up <a href="https://truah.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">T’ruah</a> (formerly Rabbis for Human Rights), explained: “Judaism is not just a religion, it is also a peoplehood, and it is a connection and responsibility for other Jews. And half the Jews in the world live in the state of Israel. We are not in some café in Vienna.” Ben-Ami predicted that “if Israel moves back toward the center and normalizes relations with the neighboring states while assisting in the emergence of a stable, viable state of Palestine—then I can see a long-term reconnection of the Jewish community with the state of Israel, even for those younger Jews who today feel so distant from it.” Evidence, alas, for even the hint of such a transformation anytime soon would be microscopic, were it to exist at all. Far more likely is Israel’s continued embrace of illiberalism, corruption, and the same general disdain for what Thomas Jefferson <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-08-02-0143" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">called</a> “the good opinion of mankind” that one sees in Donald Trump.</p><p>Indeed, it is Trump who is helping to unshackle whatever boundaries Netanyahu and company had until recently respected. As a recent <em>New York Times</em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/08/world/middleeast/trump-netanyahu-israel-gaza.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">explainer</a> observed, the result of America’s replacement of Joe Biden with Donald Trump is “a prime minister unleashed, with fewer guardrails to constrain his actions in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria.” This is true domestically as well. The Trump-era Netanyahu is all the more likely to succeed in his campaign to destroy Israel’s own fragile democratic institutions. (Others who have been unleashed include lawless West Bank settlers, who, supported by Israel’s military, have increased their campaign of terror designed to force Palestinians out of their homes and pave the way for the ultimate Israeli annexation of the territory.)</p><p>According to Beinart, young American Jews outside these established institutions will need to create Jewish ones independent of what he terms “the worship of Israel” or assimilate entirely into secular American life. (Notably, a recent <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/03/26/religious-switching-into-and-out-of-judaism/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Gallup poll</a> found that fully one-quarter of those Americans raised as Jews no longer identify themselves that way.) Like Beinart, the influential scholar Rabbi Shaul Magid looks forward to younger Jews “creating a new form of diasporism that draws from the proximate past but has its own originality,” one that is “universal in aspiration” rather than dependent on Zionism in the manner that American Jewish identity operated for roughly the half-century that followed the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Six-Day-War" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">1967 Six Day War</a>. Magid looks forward to these changes as “Israeli Jewry doesn’t really care that much about the American diaspora unless it supports them. It is a transactional relationship. They are watching American Jews get thrown under the bus by being subjects of weaponizing antisemitism for a conservative agenda, and they say nothing because in effect they support it because that supports their agenda. Young Jews see that and are basically saying ‘fuck you!’”</p><p>To be fair, there are many thousands of Israeli Jews who remain committed to finding a peaceful and fair-minded solution to the Palestinian issue. A small number of them are also Orthodox Jews. In March, I was present at an extremely well-attended meeting of American and Israeli religious Jews committed to peace at B’Nai Jeshurun synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. But when it comes to elections and the actual making of Israel’s policies toward the Palestinians, and especially regarding the war in Gaza, they are, alas, all but invisible.</p><p>Those Jews like Jill Jacobs—who remain committed to a profound belief in Jewish “peoplehood” and its implied deep connection to Israeli Jews—worry about the impact of the current Israeli political leadership pushing away young Jews from their own religion and history as it simultaneously inspires antisemitism on the part of those who would blame Israel’s actions on Jews more generally. In many respects, this latter phenomenon is exactly the problem that Jewish students have been facing on college campuses, where pro-Palestinian protesters rule the day in popularity and have sometimes verbally abused Jews who they simply assume support Israel. Now, with the harsh, anti-democratic measures being undertaken at so many universities, Jacobs worries that, if this posture becomes widespread, it will lead to a broader perception that “Jewish power” is causing all the trouble. It will start with the accusation that “it is the Jews who are behind defunding the universities” and grow into far worse attacks. Speaking from UCLA, Rabbi Seidler-Feller told me, “I already hear the resentment against Jews based on exactly these claims.”</p><p>The more immediate crisis, however, is the one identified earlier by Spitalnick. Trump, with either the support or acquiescence of the legacy groups, and the enthusiastic backing of the new right-wing Jewish media infrastructure, is offering American Jews the following deal: They get a short-term win in shutting down a protest movement focused on Israel that discomfits them, just so long as they are willing to turn a blind eye to purposeful destruction of the educational and democratic institutions that have allowed them to become the safest, most secure, and most economically successful Jewish population to exist anywhere, anytime, ever.</p><p>In truth, both crises require exactly the same response. As the head of the <a href="https://urj.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Union for Reform Judaism</a>, the largest single organized group of Jews in the United States, Rabbi Rick Jacobs insisted that “in protecting Jews from antisemitism, we will find there is no Noah’s Ark that will allow American Jewry to survive the resulting flood of injustice and hate.” The rights and civic institutions that have allowed Jews to prosper in the United States, he said, are “imperiled by the beginning of the slide into authoritarianism we are witnessing in America and in Israel.” Jacobs shares the concern with others that “Trump and the Christian right’s enthusiastic support is supporting Israel on a path that will forever alienate it from the majority of American Jews, particularly those coming of age during the horrors of its war on Gaza.” The Nexus Project recently <a href="https://www.axios.com/2025/03/31/college-campus-antisemitism-trump-nexus-project" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">released a report</a> called “Fighting Antisemitism, Protecting Democracy: A Strategy for the Trump Era.” The group’s founder, Jonathan Jacoby, advises Jewish leaders and rabbis to inform Trump’s supporters, “You cannot exploit our fear for your nefarious purposes. We will not let you destroy our democracy in our name. We will not let you endanger our community, and the communities of disadvantage groups and of other minorities, and ultimately, all Americans, in our name.”</p><p>Whatever the future holds for American Jews, <a href="https://history.ucla.edu/person/david-myers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">David Myers</a>, the esteemed UCLA professor of Jewish history, insisted that whatever one’s beliefs about antisemitism may be, “there is a much larger issue at hand. Jews are being instrumentalized—in the name of anti-antisemitism—as tools in a larger battle with much higher stakes. Trump and his people want to take down the university as a bastion of liberal values that poses an obstacle to their makeover of the American political order. Their larger goal is a twenty-first-century version of authoritarianism in which there is no martial law or soldiers at every street corner,” but one that nevertheless strangles the institutions that constitute the lifeblood of any democracy. Myers cited the warnings of the Jewish philosopher Hannah Arendt about the dangers of the Jews’ vertical alliance with the state and said: “This seems to be another moment at which Jews must seriously weigh the merits of aligning themselves with a regime whose values—anti-rights, anti-due process, anti-rule of law, anti-university—are so antithetical to those that have provided them with the most successful diaspora existence in their history.”</p><p>To which all one can say is “Amen.” </p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194674/trump-antisemitism-universities-jewish-civil-war</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194674</guid><category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category><category><![CDATA[June 2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[feature]]></category><category><![CDATA[Israel]]></category><category><![CDATA[Palestine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gaza]]></category><category><![CDATA[Anti-Defamation League]]></category><category><![CDATA[Higher Education]]></category><category><![CDATA[Universities]]></category><category><![CDATA[Anti-Semitism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jews]]></category><category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Eric Alterman]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/2fa4f3cc20e9807d54d9c76f9e46a543b741f375.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/2fa4f3cc20e9807d54d9c76f9e46a543b741f375.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>JESSICA RINALDI/THE BOSTON GLOBE/GETTY</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Erupts as GOPers Quietly Ice His US Attorney Pick, Enraging MAGA]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Donald Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114457993936599790" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">erupted</a> on Truth Social this week when it became clear that MAGA loyalist and insurrectionist Ed Martin’s nomination for U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., may not have the Senate votes to survive. Trump went all-caps, urging GOP senators to back Martin, and he <span>even <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/05/politics/ed-martin-trump-us-attorney-dc" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">called</a> them privately to demand their support. But then GOP Senator Thom Tillis <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/06/ed-martin-senate-republican-opposition/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced</a> his opposition, leading even staunch Trump loyalists to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2025/05/06/ed-martin-senate-republican-opposition/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">concede</a> the nomination is in trouble. MAGA personalities <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194960/maga-republican-senator-tillis-trump-nominee-ed-martin" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lashed out</a> <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/january-6-insurrection/charlie-kirk-complains-about-sen-thom-tillis-r-nc-opposing-ed-martins" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">in response</a>, vowing revenge on Tillis. Yet l</span>ost in this saga has been the basic reason we don’t want a MAGA-brained January 6-er in such a crucial law enforcement role in the first place. We talked to former prosecutor Kristy Parker, counsel at Protect Democracy. She explains why this position is so critical to the legal order, why Martin has no business in it, and why she has cautious optimism that Trump’s assault on the rule of law might ultimately get repelled. Listen to this episode <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>. A transcript is <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194992/transcript-trump-erupts-top-doj-pick-implodes-huge-blow-maga" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194988/trump-erupts-gopers-quietly-ice-us-attorney-pick-enraging-maga</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194988</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Thom Tillis]]></category><category><![CDATA[Daily Blast]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Thu, 08 May 2025 09:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/110d014520a5930c2f30b72b43d6bf6fd8ef05e3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/110d014520a5930c2f30b72b43d6bf6fd8ef05e3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit> Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Federal Reserve Rings Every Alarm Bell About Trump’s Economy]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Jerome Powell has once again said what everyone except Trump seems to already know: Lowering inflation while enacting staggering tariffs is virtually impossible. </span></p><p><span>“If the large increases in tariffs that have been announced are sustained, they’re likely to generate a rise in inflation, a slowdown in economic growth, and an increase in unemployment,” the Federal Reserve chair </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920186154105909636" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said </span></a><span>on Wednesday. “The effects on inflation could be short-lived, reflecting a one-time shift in the price level. It is also possible that the inflationary effects could instead be more persistent. Avoiding that outcome will depend on the size of the tariff effects, on how long it takes for them to pass through fully into prices, and ultimately on keeping longer-term inflation expectations well-anchored.” </span></p><p><span>This is exactly what Trump doesn’t want the American public to hear. The president has repeatedly attacked Powell for his honesty, </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114376239725335883" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>referring</span></a><span> to him as “Mr. Too Late” and “a major loser,” and calling for his </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114352766082542122" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>termination</span></a><span> after Powell correctly noted that wanton tariffs cause inflation. </span></p><p><span>Though Powell didn’t name it, he was clearly referring to “stagflation: slow GDP growth, high inflation, and high unemployment. The Federal Reserve refused to cut interest rates on Wednesday, as Powell described the concerns with Trump’s economic plans.</span></p><p><span>“Donald Trump’s tariffs mean you could suffer higher prices and lose your job AT THE SAME TIME, Senator Elizabeth Warren </span><a href="https://x.com/SenWarren/status/1920195129077387331" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> on X. “Forget dolls, families will be forced to make impossible choices between necessities like food, housing, and health care.”</span></p><p><span>Trump’s trade war loses a lot of validity when people like Powell call it what it is: a tax on top of an already high cost of living for everyday people. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194985/federal-reserve-powell-trump-economy-tariffs-stagflation</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194985</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Inflation]]></category><category><![CDATA[stagflation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Unemployment]]></category><category><![CDATA[Recession]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jerome Powell]]></category><category><![CDATA[US Federal Reserve]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 20:20:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/76f556a7e8b483deb0b03196f84a7beb08ae7abf.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/76f556a7e8b483deb0b03196f84a7beb08ae7abf.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[
  17. Trump Gives Stunning Answer When Asked About Deportations to Libya]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Donald Trump says he doesn’t know whether he plans to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194950/trump-plans-deportations-libya-hellscape-prisons" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>deport hundreds of immigrants</span></a><span> to Libya, amidst </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-may-soon-deport-migrants-libya-military-flight-sources-say-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reports</span></a><span> that his administration will do so as soon as Wednesday. </span></p><p><span>“Is the administration sending migrants to Libya?” Trump was </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1920174693975543994" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>asked</span></a><span> during a press conference Wednesday afternoon.</span></p><p><span>“I don’t know,” he responded. “You’ll have to ask the Department of Homeland Security.” Whether Trump is lying or not, his answer does nothing to quell the terrifying possibility that immigrants could be sent to a country whose prisons have been called a </span><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/libya-horrific-violations-in-detention-highlight-europes-shameful-role-in-forced-returns/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>“hellscape”</span></a><span> and “</span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-libya-security-rights/executions-torture-and-slave-markets-persist-in-libya-u-n-idUSKBN1GX1JY/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>open slave markets</span></a><span>” by human rights organizations.</span></p><p><span>On Tuesday, U.S. officials </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-may-soon-deport-migrants-libya-military-flight-sources-say-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>confirmed</span></a><span> to multiple news outlets that the government was planning to send undocumented immigrants to Libya in what would be a cruel and unlawful escalation of the president’s deportation efforts. In March, Trump unlawfully </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193673/60-minutes-trump-deportations-el-salvador" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>deported</span></a><span> 200 Venezuelan immigrants, the majority of whom had no criminal record, to El Salvador, where they are now being held in CECOT, a mega-prison notorious for human rights abuses.</span></p><p><span>More than a decade after Libya’s authoritarian state was toppled, the political situation in the country remains incredibly unstable. It’s been plagued by conflict for years, and the State Department advises Americans not to travel there amidst the risk “crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.” It’s a stunning display of irony given the government may literally send people there against their will. </span></p><p><span>Libyan officials have denied the country is communicating with the United States, Reuters </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-may-soon-deport-migrants-libya-military-flight-sources-say-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reported</span></a><span>. </span></p><p><span>The president is reportedly eyeing Africa as a whole as his next target for deportations, which will likely face a flurry of legal challenges. Rwanda has already </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194312/trump-deportation-rwanda" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>accepted</span></a><span> at least one deportee from the United States, while several other African countries including Benin, Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Eswatini have been mentioned in various media reports.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194980/trump-answer-deportations-libya</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194980</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Marin Scotten]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 20:19:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/031df29fe2e66b534c48494be52dfeb9b358f6be.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/031df29fe2e66b534c48494be52dfeb9b358f6be.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Libya Throws Huge, Dangerous Wrench in Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Donald Trump is planning to send a planeful of deportees to Libya—but both of Libya’s governments say they won’t take them, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/05/07/libya-trump-migrants-plane-deportations/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The Washington Post</i></a> reported Wednesday. </p><p><span>Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, the prime minister for the Government of National Unity based in Tripoli, wrote on social media that “Libya refuses to be a destination for the deportation of migrants under any pretext.”</span></p><p><span>Dbeibeh said that Libya would not be held to any agreements made by “illegitimate entities.”</span></p><p><span>The Libyan National Army, which controls the eastern half of the country from Benghazi, also released a statement rejecting the arrival of deportees from the United States, saying that accepting deportees would “violate sovereignty in the homeland.”</span></p><p><span>While the U.S. government only has foreign relations with Dbeibeh’s government, the son of Khalifa Haftar, the general turned warlord in the east, visited with Trump administration officials last month. The meetings were not about deportations, according to the State Department and a Libyan official, CNN </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/30/politics/migrants-libya-rwanda-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>It’s not clear that any formal deal was made to facilitate the removal of immigrants to a potentially hostile host country. Libya’s migrant detention centers are notorious for subjecting detainees to severe beatings, sexual violence, extortion, and forced labor, according to a 2021 report from </span><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/mde19/4439/2021/en/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Amnesty International</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Lawyers for immigrants currently held in Texas have </span><a href="https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1920204944289706451" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">asked</a><span> a judge for an emergency order barring any potential deportations to Libya. The lawyers argued that carrying out such a flight without warning would “blatantly” violate court orders. </span></p><p><span>Previous </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194950/trump-plans-deportations-libya-hellscape-prisons" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reports</a><span> said that a military plane potentially carrying hundreds of immigrants could depart for Libya as soon as Wednesday, so it’s entirely possible that wheels are </span><a href="https://x.com/ReichlinMelnick/status/1920141906186580033" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">already up</a><span> on the latest phase of Trump’s inhumane mass deportation crusade. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194982/donald-trump-mass-deportation-plan-libya-throws-wrench-trump</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194982</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mass Deportations]]></category><category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category><category><![CDATA[Libyan government]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category><category><![CDATA[refugees]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 20:15:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/74bdf1e77ee97dcf818df4ae68b1658232ee4fc8.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/74bdf1e77ee97dcf818df4ae68b1658232ee4fc8.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Foreigners Are Funneling Millions Into Trump’s Shady Meme Coin]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Trump is selling himself–and his meme coin—to the highest bidder. And most of those top bidders appear to be foreign, according to </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2025-trump-memecoin-foreign-crypto-traders/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Bloomberg</span></a><span>. </span></p><p><span>More than 200 of the largest holders of Trump’s lucrative meme coin will be invited to attend a May 22 dinner with Trump at his golf club in Virginia. The 25 highest holders will qualify for a private reception prior to the dinner, described as a “VIP” tour. The opportunity has caused a buying frenzy, leading to the meme coin shooting up by </span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/crypto-trump-memecoin-democrats-00330767" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>20 percent in value</span></a><span>, generating even more profit for the Trump family, which has raked in more than $320 million since January. </span></p><p><span>All but six of the top 25 holders used foreign exchanges that are closed to U.S. residents. And at least 56 percent of the 220 holders used other similar offshore exchanges. This raises valid concerns about just who will have access to the president during the May 22 dinner, as the guests have only been identified by short usernames of their choosing. </span></p><p><span>The top foreign exchanges used to buy the meme coin were Binance, Bybit, and OKX—all markets that restrict U.S. users.</span></p><p><span>“The sitting president appears to be selling personal cryptocurrency while in office, granting access to people who buy it, and thereby enriching his business and his family. It’s gobsmacking,” Senator Jon Ossoff said to </span><a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/06/crypto-trump-memecoin-democrats-00330767" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>Politico</span></a><span>. “I’d like to hear one Republican senator defend it. Any self-respecting Congress would demand an accounting of everyone trading this coin who has any business before the government.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194973/trump-meme-coin-foreign-buyers-corruption</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194973</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrency]]></category><category><![CDATA[Binance]]></category><category><![CDATA[World Liberty Financial]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Corruption]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Money in Politics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 19:32:06 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b4453abb3903c840c2ca93680548c2d56ff80d74.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b4453abb3903c840c2ca93680548c2d56ff80d74.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Ford Hikes Car Prices Thanks to Trump’s Reckless Tariffs]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Ford is jacking up the cost of its foreign-made cars, including what’s known as America’s most affordable pickup, amid Donald Trump’s disastrous auto tariffs.</span></p><p><span>Just days after the company </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/05/business/ford-says-auto-tariffs-will-cost-it-usd1-5-billion-in-rest-of-2025" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> it didn’t expect auto prices to increase this year, a memo sent to Ford’s dealerships revealed it would hike prices on three of its Mexican-made models, Reuters first </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/ford-hikes-prices-mexico-produced-models-citing-tariffs-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reported</span></a><span>. The suggested retail price is expected to increase anywhere between $600 to $2,000 per car beginning May 2 and would hit the Maverick, known as the </span><a href="https://www.cars.com/articles/here-are-the-10-cheapest-pickup-trucks-you-can-buy-right-now-448622/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>most affordable</span></a><span> pickup truck in the country.</span></p><p><span>“This is our usual mid-year pricing actions combined with some tariffs we are facing,” Ford spokesman Said Deep </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/07/business/ford-sticker-prices-tariffs-mexico" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>told</span></a><span> CNN. “We have not passed on the full cost of tariffs to our customers. Our approach throughout this evolving situation continues to be doing what’s right for our customers—and our business.”</span></p><p><span>Last month, the Trump administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on imported vehicles and auto parts, a devastating blow to car manufacturers who have long freely imported cars and parts without fee.</span></p><p><span>Economists </span><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2025/05/05/economists-tariff-costs-per-vehicle/83446003007/#:~:text=Anderson%20Economic%20Group%20has%20estimated,it%20is%20built%20in%20Mexico." target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>estimate</span></a><span> this will lead to imported vehicles facing tariffs ranging from $2,000 to $15,000 per vehicle, which will ultimately raise </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/27/cars/auto-tariffs-car-prices-impact-hnk-intl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>car prices</span></a><span> for consumers. Auto dealers are already seeing a </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/car-dealerships-see-thinner-lots-auto-tariffs-sink-rcna205194" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>dwindling supply</span></a><span> of available cars to sell.</span></p><p><span>On Monday, Ford </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/business/economy/ford-earnings-tariffs.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> Trump’s tariffs were likely to drop the company’s profits for the year by about $1.5 billion, but that it is “well positioned to adapt to the changes tariffs are driving” in the industry. The majority of Ford’s cars are manufactured in the U.S., so it likely won’t be hit as hard by Trump’s tariffs as other manufacturers. Still, the three models it makes in Mexico—the Ford Mustang Mach-E, the Maverick, and the Bronco Sport—are already going up in price.</span></p><p><span>The auto industry has been relatively </span><a href="https://uaw.org/tariffs-mark-beginning-of-victory-for-autoworkers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>supportive</span></a><span> of Trump’s tariff scheme, and manufacturers have been slow to peg price increases to the president’s economic policies. But now not even Ford, the pride and joy of the American auto industry, can keep up the facade.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194974/ford-increases-car-prices-trump-tariffs</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194974</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ford]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cars]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Marin Scotten]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 18:56:21 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/677cb832a32d94fc0812a34df229c211665d22a4.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/677cb832a32d94fc0812a34df229c211665d22a4.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit> FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Birthday Parade to Cost Eyewatering Amount—and Could Get Worse]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump is planning to pay $45 million to roll tanks down the streets of Washington, D.C., on his birthday.</p><p><span>It was only a few months ago that the president </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-works-to-make-our-nations-capital-safe-and-beautiful/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">signed</a><span> an executive order creating a program to “beautify Washington D.C.” Now he’s plotting to transform his </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194764/trump-birthday-parade-thousands-soldiers-tanks" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">expensive birthday parade</a><span> into a demolition derby that will cause serious damage to the roads that line the nation’s capital. </span></p><p><span>Jennifer Griffin, Fox News’s chief national security correspondent, </span><a href="https://x.com/JenGriffinFNC/status/1920143481407783162" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> on X Wednesday that the newest batch of plans for a military parade to mark the Army’s 250th anniversary—which also happens to fall on Flag Day, Trump’s birthday—will feature 90 heavy vehicles. </span></p><p><span>This would include tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and heavy artillery weaponry. Griffin reported there would be 10 tanks and 10 Howitzers.</span></p><p><span>The first time Trump pitched the idea of throwing a massive military parade in his honor was in 2018. At the time, plans to include tanks were ultimately scrapped over concerns they would damage the roads. A Pentagon </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/09/politics/pentagon-memo-trump-military-parade" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">planning memo</a><span> said that the procession would “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks” because “consideration must be given to minimize damage to local infrastructure.”</span></p><p><span>This time around, it seems similar considerations to preserve local infrastructure have been skipped. </span></p><p><span>During an </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-defends-high-cost-military-parade-peanuts-rcna204581" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">interview</a><span> on NBC News’s <i>Meet the Press</i> Sunday, Trump said the hefty $45 million price tag was “peanuts compared to the value of doing it.” U.S. defense planners said that the price would fall somewhere between $25 million and $45 million, according to Griffin.</span></p><p><span>Those numbers should be questionable, however. In 2018, the estimated price tag of Trump’s parade was </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193674/trump-military-parade-birthday" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">roughly $92 million</a><span>. Imagining that these plans include many of the same features as the ones from seven years ago, inflation would put the price tag closer to $117 million. </span></p><p><span>Whatever the price may be, it will fall squarely on the Army, with the cost being divided between units. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has ordered major cost-cutting measures in the military. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth </span><a href="https://media.defense.gov/2025/May/05/2003704210/-1/-1/1/MEMORANDUM-DIRECTING-GENERAL-AND-FLAG-OFFICER-REDUCTIONS.PDF" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">called</a><span> Monday for a 20 percent reduction in the number of four-star generals and general officers in the National Guard and a 10 percent reduction in general and flag officers. </span></p><p><span>“Through these measures, we will uphold our position as the most lethal fighting force in </span><span>the world, achieving peace through strength and ensuring greater efficiency, innovation, and </span><span>preparedness for any challenge that lies ahead,” Hegseth stated in a memo. </span></p><p><span>It’s no secret that Trump has </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/interactive/2025/trump-words-dc/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hated</a><span> Washington for years—but that doesn’t mean he should be allowed to destroy it for a vanity project. A “No Kings Day” protest is already </span><a href="https://www.newsweek.com/no-kings-protest-donald-trump-birthday-parade-2068443" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">being planned</a><span> to combat the parade. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194977/donald-trump-birthday-military-parade-cost</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194977</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Birthdays]]></category><category><![CDATA[Flag Day]]></category><category><![CDATA[American military]]></category><category><![CDATA[Military]]></category><category><![CDATA[Parade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington D.c.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Costs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Price]]></category><category><![CDATA[Military parade]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 18:48:28 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/dafa2e6b7006031390b8757dabfdcd00852d348e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/dafa2e6b7006031390b8757dabfdcd00852d348e.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Samuel Corum/Sipa/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Devastating New Poll Shows Trump Has Lost Key Support Groups]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The numbers are in, and they don’t look good for the president.</p><p><span>The </span><a href="https://www.cookpolitical.com/analysis/survey-research/cpr-polltracker/inside-trump-slump-young-latino-independent-voters" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Cook Political Report</a><span> observed Wednesday that Donald Trump’s&nbsp; poll numbers are in a slump with key groups that helped him win in November, including young voters, Latinos, and independents.</span></p><p><span>Cook’s newly launched poll tracker found that Trump’s net job-approval rating had plummeted just since April 15, dropping by seven points from -3.9 percent to -10.7 percent. The most dramatic shifts were witnessed in the aforementioned groups: For 18- to 29-year-old voters, Trump’s approval dropped by -11.8 points. The president lost Latinos by 10.4 points, and independents soured on Trump by 7.9 points.</span></p><p><span>“It’s worth noting that even significant slumps in the president’s popularity don’t directly translate into shifts in downballot vote choice, particularly in a deeply polarized climate,” the report read. “It’s no guarantee that most—or even many—Americans who ultimately sour on the current occupant of the White House will be driven into the arms of the Democratic Party come next November.”</span></p><p><span>Instead, those voters may be more likely to stay home—though that wouldn’t bode well for Republicans jockeying for other political positions downballot.</span></p><p><span>It’s just the latest in a string of sinking reactions to the president’s performance. An </span><a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/americans-have-negative-economic-outlook-even-many-feel-their-personal-economic-situation-hasnt" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ABC News/<i>Washington Post</i>/Ipsos poll</a><span> published last month found that Trump’s approval rating had plummeted to 39 percent—a 6 percent drop from February—marking the lowest first-100-day rating of a president since modern polling began roughly 80 years ago.</span></p><p><span>And an April </span><a href="https://www.conference-board.org/topics/consumer-confidence/press/CCI-Apr-2025" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a><span> by the Conference Board found that its consumer confidence index had fallen by 7.9 points, bringing overall U.S. consumer confidence to 86 points. Consumer futures were brought to a 13-year low, with outlooks on the economy dropping by 12.5 points to 54.5 points—well below the threshold of 80 that “usually signals a recession ahead,” according to the Conference Board.</span></p><p><span>The root cause of the instability was “high financial market volatility in April,” which hit American consumers’ stock portfolios and retirement savings hard and fast, per the Conference Board’s report. That was almost singularly due to Trump’s machinations in the White House, which included releasing (and stalling) a sweeping and vindictive tariff proposal plan that economists observed (and the White House eventually confirmed) was founded on </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193521/donald-trump-calculated-tariffs-rates" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">bad math</a>.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194970/donald-trump-lost-support-key-voters-poll</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194970</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Young Voters]]></category><category><![CDATA[Latinos]]></category><category><![CDATA[Latino Vote]]></category><category><![CDATA[Independents]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2024]]></category><category><![CDATA[Polls]]></category><category><![CDATA[Polling]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 17:58:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/9fc7fbabef128f16eef8342f4339b85aa52c246b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/9fc7fbabef128f16eef8342f4339b85aa52c246b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Dealt Massive Blow as Judge Blocks Executive Order on Libraries]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Three federal agencies on Donald Trump’s chopping block have been saved by a federal judge.</p><p><span>U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. sided with a 21-state coalition Tuesday, issuing a preliminary injunction to halt one of Trump’s executive orders dismantling federal agencies that support libraries, museums, minority businesses, and mediation services. They included the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or IMLS; the Minority Business Development Agency, MBDA; and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, FMCS. </span></p><p><span>The </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/continuing-the-reduction-of-the-federal-bureaucracy/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">March order</a><span> also marked the end of four other agencies, including the United States Agency for Global Media, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the Smithsonian Institution, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund.</span></p><p><span>In a </span><a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.rid.59257/gov.uscourts.rid.59257.57.0_3.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">49-page memorandum</a><span>, McConnell wrote that Trump’s order blatantly ignored the separation of powers and violated the Administrative Procedure Act “in the arbitrary and capricious way it was carried out.”</span></p><p><span>“It also disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated,” McConnell wrote.</span></p><p><span>The sweeping order translated to mass layoffs, grant freezes, and whopping reductions. Last week, another federal judge paused planned layoffs at the IMLS, responding to a </span><a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.279257/gov.uscourts.dcd.279257.36.0_1.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">related lawsuit</a><span> brought by the American Library Association.</span></p><p><span>“The States have presented compelling evidence illustrating that the harms stemming from the dismantling of IMLS, MBDA, and FMCS are already unfolding or are certain to occur, in of light the significant reduction in personnel available and competent to administer these agencies’ funds and services and the elimination of certain programs that served the States,” McConnell noted.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194967/donald-trump-loss-judge-blocks-executive-order-libraries</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194967</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[executive order]]></category><category><![CDATA[Museums]]></category><category><![CDATA[Libraries]]></category><category><![CDATA[Minority]]></category><category><![CDATA[small businesses]]></category><category><![CDATA[Government Funding]]></category><category><![CDATA[judge]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 17:03:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e52d3fb283a9fee9f301869cbeeeefdd0e9e7be.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e52d3fb283a9fee9f301869cbeeeefdd0e9e7be.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[DOGE Staffer Fired the Lawyers Trying to Help Him Avoid Corruption]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>A 25-year old DOGE bro oversaw the termination of lawyers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last month, just days after they warned him certain stocks he owned were prohibited by employees, according to a Wednesday report by <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/cfpb-gavin-kliger-doge-conflict-of-interest-consumer-financial-protection-bureau" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ProPublica</a>. &nbsp;</p><p><span>Gavin Kliger had been detailed to the CFPB in early March as part of DOGE’s efforts to take over and ultimately dismantle the ethics watchdog that oversees banks and manages vast troves of consumer data.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>But Kliger had committed a big no-no at the CFPB. His </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25553901-kliger-gavin-od-new-entrant-278-2025-2025-02-10/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">financial records</a><span> indicated that he owned up to $365,000 in stock in companies that the CFPB was charged with regulating, including Tesla, which has been the subject of </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/us/politics/elon-musk-companies-conflicts.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hundreds of consumer complaints</a><span>. Kliger also owned stock in Apple and two cryptocurrencies, as well as additional companies on a “Prohibited Holdings” list, including Alphabet, Alibaba, and Berkshire Hathaway. In total, Kliger had made up to $715,000 in investments in seven barred companies.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Kliger received an ethics notice on April 10, ProPublica reported. Shortly afterward, OMB Director Russell Vought moved forward with sweeping layoffs of federal employees, and sent Kliger and other DOGE officials an email with the subject line “CFPB RIF Work.” Another note sent to Kliger told him he’d been given access to the agency’s computer systems that “should allow you to do what you need to do.”</span></p><p><span>Kliger spent the next few days “screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough” to disseminate termination notices, said one federal employee who used the pseudonym Alex Doe, in a </span><a href="https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/alex-doe-doge-cfpb-declaration.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">sworn statement</a><span> about the layoffs. On April 17, the termination notices went out, including to the ethics team, which had alerted Kliger to his prohibited investments.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>A White House spokesperson told ProPublica that Kliger “did not even manage” the layoffs, “making this entire narrative an outright lie.”</span></p><p><span>In April, the CFPB </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194498/federal-workers-cfpb-trump-terminations-firing-themselves" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fired</a><span> nearly 1,500 employees at DOGE’s direction, leaving only about 200 people employed there. The remaining workers have been forced to work around the clock to manage the transition, and they’ve begun including themselves in the layoffs.&nbsp;</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194966/elon-musk-doge-staffer-stocks-cfpb-fired</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194966</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Elon Musk]]></category><category><![CDATA[doge]]></category><category><![CDATA[department of government efficiency]]></category><category><![CDATA[CFPB]]></category><category><![CDATA[Consumer Financial Protection Bureau]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ethics]]></category><category><![CDATA[lawyer]]></category><category><![CDATA[Layoffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[federal workers]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stock market]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stocks]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tesla]]></category><category><![CDATA[Apple]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alibaba]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alphabet]]></category><category><![CDATA[Berkshire Hathaway]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cryptocurrency]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 16:18:20 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b5efe80e71ffbfc8b4051d54c7871e3c677706ba.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b5efe80e71ffbfc8b4051d54c7871e3c677706ba.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Dem Governor Launches Plan to Counter RFK Jr.’s Autism Registry]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Illinois Governor JB Pritzker has a plan to protect autism-related data from RFK Jr.’s absurd plans to create a disease </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194245/rfk-jr-disease-registry-track-autistic-people" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>registry</span></a><span> tracking autistic people.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>Pritzker plans to sign an executive order Wednesday that will prevent state agencies from obtaining or disclosing data that personally identifies people with autism, unless it’s required for medical care or legal matters, according to a copy of the order </span><a href="https://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/2025/05/07/rfk-jr-pritzker-sign-executive-order-protecting-autism-data" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>obtained</span></a><span> by the </span><i><span>Chicago-Sun Times</span><span>.&nbsp;</span></i></p><p><span>“Every Illinoisan deserves dignity, privacy, and the freedom to live without fear of surveillance or discrimination,” Pritzker said in a statement. “As Donald Trump and DOGE threaten these freedoms, we are taking steps to ensure that our state remains a leader in protecting the rights of individuals with autism and all people with disabilities.”</span></p><p><span>Pritzker’s order comes as RFK Jr. announced the National Institutes of Health is collecting private medical data from government and commercial databases to create a registry of people with autism in the United States. The data will be collected from prescription records, lab testing, and private insurance claims. While the NIH denies it’s a “registry,” RFK Jr. used the word again just </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194909/robert-f-kennedy-jr-defends-registry-autistic-people" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>this week</span></a><span>.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>The announcement sparked widespread outrage among autism advocacy groups across the country. A </span><a href="https://www.change.org/p/stop-the-national-autism-registry-protect-our-children-s-privacy-and-human-rights" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>petition</span></a><span> against the registry garnered thousands of signatures within 24 hours.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>“They are building a list. A list of people like my children. A list of autistic individuals— tracked, labeled, and filed under the guise of public health,” Ryan Smith, the petition starter, wrote in the petition’s description. “This is not support. It is surveillance.”</span></p><p><span>RFK Jr. has long dehumanized people with autism and spread unbacked claims about the disorder. “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use the toilet unassisted,” Kennedy </span><a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/fact-checking-robert-f-kennedy-jr-s-statements-on-autism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> at a press conference in April.</span></p><p><span>The lifelong </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/188497/rfk-anti-vaccine-public-education" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>vaccine skeptic</span></a><span> has compared the rising rates of autism diagnoses in the U.S. to a preventable </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/rfk-jr-autism.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>epidemic</span></a><span>. Autism is not an infectious diseas; it is a lifelong developmental disorder.</span></p><p><span>With Pritzker’s executive order, Illinois will become the first state to legally restrict the sharing of autism-related data—a clear message to RFK Jr. that every American, even those he looks down upon, has the right to privacy.&nbsp; <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194961/democratic-governor-pritzker-rfk-jr-autism-registry</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194961</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[autism]]></category><category><![CDATA[J.B. Pritzker]]></category><category><![CDATA[Illinois]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Marin Scotten]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 15:57:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/9e626e298a7eab014c32f0d25c80475e4d54e1f3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/9e626e298a7eab014c32f0d25c80475e4d54e1f3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Tulsi Gabbard Freaks Over Damning Report U.S. Is Spying on Greenland]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump’s quest to conquer Greenland is becoming increasingly serious.</p><p><span>The intelligence community directed intelligence agency chiefs to conduct a spy campaign on the Denmark-controlled island territory last week, issuing a “collection emphasis message” for information pertaining to Greenland’s independence movement, as well as an examination of local attitudes regarding “American resource extraction,” reported </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/greenland-spying-us-intelligence-809c4ef2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The Wall Street Journal</i></a><span>. It also tasked agencies to identify individuals living in Greenland and Denmark who support the Trump administration’s goals for the island.</span></p><p><span>The directive came from several high-ranking officials under Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, according to the paper, but Gabbard was not happy to hear that the news of the initiative had gotten out.</span></p><p>“<i>The Wall Street Journal</i> should be ashamed of aiding deep state actors who seek to undermine the President by politicizing and leaking classified information,” Gabbard told the <i>Journal</i> in a statement. “They are breaking the law and undermining our nation’s security and democracy.”</p><p><span>The Greenland order, which went out to multiple departments including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency, is the first tangible step the Trump administration has made to satiate the president’s desire to own the self-governing island.</span></p><p><span>One intelligence official explained to the <i>Journal</i> that because collection resources are “inherently limited,” they are typically used for “perceived threats, not allied countries.” </span></p><p><span>The order is just another reminder that American voters should take Donald Trump at his word. In an interview with </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/video/trump-won-t-rule-out-military-force-on-greenland-238876741745" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">NBC News</a><span> that aired Sunday, Trump refused to rule out the possibility of taking Greenland by force.</span></p><p><span>“I don’t rule it out,” the president said. “I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there. We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security.”</span></p><p><span>The White House National Security Council has met “several times” to make Trump’s desires for the arctic island a reality, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/us/politics/trump-greenland-denmark.html?partner=slack&amp;smid=sl-share" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The New York Times</i></a><span> reported in early April. At the time, a U.S. official claimed the council had sent “specific instructions to multiple arms of the government.” But those instructions never specified the use of military force.</span></p><p><span>Another effort by the Trump administration to win over Greenland involves using federal dollars on advertising and social media campaigns with hopes of persuading Greenland’s 57,000 residents to basically annex themselves for America.</span></p><p><span>But Greenlanders have not taken kindly to Trump and his associates’ sudden interest in acquiring their land. After months of heavy pressure from the Trump family, including an </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/190070/donald-trump-jr-greenland-staged-homeless" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">embarrassing stunt</a><span> in which Donald Trump Jr. reportedly convinced homeless residents to wear MAGA merchandise in exchange for food, and an effort in the U.S. Congress to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/191406/republican-buddy-carter-donald-trump-greenland" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">rename the territory</a><span> “Red, White, and Blueland,” Greenland’s various political parties set aside their differences in March to </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193311/greenland-government-goal-donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">unite under a singular goal</a><span>: opposing U.S. aggression.</span></p><p><span>“We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future,” Demokraatit Party leader Jens-Frederik Nielsen </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192650/donald-trump-humiliating-blow-greenland-election" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a><span> Sky News the night his party won a decisive majority in Parliament, making him prime minister. “And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”</span></p><p><span>A late-January poll by pollster Verian found that 85 percent of Greenland’s residents do not want to become part of the United States. Just 6 percent were in favor of the switch, while 8 percent were undecided, according to </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jan/28/85-of-greenlanders-do-not-want-to-join-us-says-new-poll" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The Guardian</i></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>That disinterest became more apparent in late March, when second lady Usha Vance’s trip around Greenland was </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193223/donald-trump-usha-vance-greenland-embarrassing" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">gutted and canceled</a><span> after American representatives were spotted walking around Nuuk, the island’s capital, failing to find residents who would be interested in a visit from the vice president’s wife.</span></p><p><span>But none of that has squashed Trump’s interest. In a </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NU2yXdWaxEI&amp;ab_channel=AssociatedPress" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">meeting</a><span> in March with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, Trump claimed that the U.S. needs Greenland “for international security,” reasoning that the “whole area is becoming very important” because there are “ships all over the place.” </span></p><p><span>“So, we’re going to have to make a deal on that, and Denmark is not able to do that, and you know, Denmark is very far away, and really has nothing to do. What happened? A boat landed there 200 years ago or something and they say they have rights to it, I don’t know if that’s true, I don’t think it is, actually,” the apparent anti-colonialist activist said at the time.</span></p><p><span>In an address to Congress in March, Trump </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7acbY5-e5PY" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">clarified</a><span> his intention: “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194965/tulsi-gabbard-report-us-spying-greenland</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194965</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tulsi Gabbard]]></category><category><![CDATA[National Intelligence]]></category><category><![CDATA[Espionage]]></category><category><![CDATA[spy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Greenland]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 15:44:57 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f76ca70665f0570062ff43bd8d39897403e91fb1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f76ca70665f0570062ff43bd8d39897403e91fb1.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit> Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[MAGA Launches War on Republican Senator Blocking Trump Nominee]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The MAGAsphere is reeling as Republican Senator Thom Tillis seems </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194923/republican-senator-tillis-trump-nominee-ed-martin-dc-prosecutor" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>likely to tank</span></a><span> Trump’s nominee for D.C. attorney due to his legal and political support for January 6 insurrectionists. </span></p><p><span>Tillis came out against Ed Martin—who has been described as a “</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/politics/ed-martin-us-attorney-washington.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>far-right election denier</span></a><span>” and a “</span><a href="https://abovethelaw.com/2025/02/turning-over-u-s-attorneys-office-to-conspiracy-theorist-working-out-as-expected/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>conspiracy theorist</span></a><span>”—on Tuesday. </span></p><p><span>“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some [200 to 300 of them] that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday, referring to the Capitol riot insurrectionists. “I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6.”</span></p><p><span>This has led to widespread anger among Trump supporters, particularly those on the farthest right. </span></p><p><span>“I was sentenced to nearly 3 years in prison—not for violence on J6, but for standing my ground and refusing to bow to a rigged political prosecution,” </span><a href="https://x.com/JohnStrandUSA/status/1919875638686609775" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> Jon Strand, an insurrectionist who said he was “with the first dozen patriots” to storm the Capitol building. </span></p><p><span>“Now Senator Thom Tillis is opposing Ed Martin, one of the few men who actually understands the injustice that I and hundreds of others have endured. This isn’t politics, it’s a coverup,” he continued in the video attached to his post, with dramatic music playing in the background. “If Tillis won’t support President Trump’s nominee, a man clearly dedicated to justice, then I will dedicate myself to ending Thom Tillis’s career…. Make sure Tillis knows, we see him. And we won’t forget this.” </span></p><p><span>Mike Benz, head of a conservative “free speech” group, </span><a href="https://x.com/Bannons_WarRoom/status/1919876482601529714" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>completely dismissed</span></a><span> January 6 as an issue on Steve Bannon’s </span><span>War Room</span><span> show. </span></p><p><span>“This is not just an ancient memory, it’s settled. Done. For [January 6] to be invoked as the reason to block Ed Martin suggests something much darker to me.” Benz went on to accuse Tillis of being a member of the deep state who can’t accept the “fedsurrection,” a MAGA conspiracy theory that the insurrection was a planted, false flag event. </span></p><p><span>“Get off your high horse. Quit worrying about your feelings, and vote for President Trump’s people,” Senator Tommy Tuberville </span><a href="https://x.com/SenTuberville/status/1919809460567994611" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> Tuesday on Newsmax. “Seventy-seven million voted for President Trump. I just don’t understand how people put themselves first and not their constituents.” </span></p><p><span>Tillis received even more flack on Truth Social. </span></p><p><span>“Thom Tillis voted for Merrick Garland but won’t vote for Trump’s picks,” one MAGA account with a large following </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@catturd2/posts/114461641664670347" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span>. “You wouldn’t do this unless you’re in on the D.C corruption.”</span></p><p><span>“If Thom Tillis wont vote Ed Martin out of committee then he needs to be REMOVED from the committee and replaced with someone that will vote to confirm,” </span><a href="https://x.com/CharlieK_news/status/1919890929684463820" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>wrote</span></a><span> far-right activist Charlie Kirk on X. “Its not that tough,</span><a href="https://x.com/LeaderJohnThune" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span> @LeaderJohnThune</span></a><span>. Man up and do what needs to be done.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194960/maga-republican-senator-tillis-trump-nominee-ed-martin</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194960</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ed Martin]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><category><![CDATA[justice]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington D.c.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Thom Tillis]]></category><category><![CDATA[North Carolina]]></category><category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[maga]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump Jr.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 15:34:14 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/cfee31c8aa6758703961f5561dc035a8a81b42af.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/cfee31c8aa6758703961f5561dc035a8a81b42af.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[JD Vance Has Grim Warning for Russia on Ukraine Peace Talks]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that Russia was “asking for too much” in its negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.</p><p><span>During a Q&amp;A at the Munich Leaders Meeting in Washington, Vance lobbed a rare criticism at Moscow over its lengthy list of demands required to end its invasion into Ukraine, when asked whether he thought Russia was serious about ending the conflict. </span></p><p><span>“I wouldn’t say—I’m not yet that pessimistic on this—I wouldn’t say that the Russians are uninterested in bringing this thing to a resolution. What I would say is right now the Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions, in order to end the conflict,” Vance said. “We think they’re asking for too much.”</span></p><p><span>Russia’s </span><a href="https://kyivindependent.com/russia-still-demands-control-of-five-ukrainian-regions-as-condition-for-peace-talks-fm-lavrov-says/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">list of demands</a><span> have remained largely the same since its full-scale invasion first began in 2022. In April, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia requires full control of five Ukrainian regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, and Crimea. Lavrov also insisted that Ukraine must be demilitarized, banned from entering NATO, and that Kyiv would need to introduce legislation to restore the state of Russian language, culture, and religious institutions. </span></p><p><span>The vice president claimed Wednesday that the next step for the U.S. was to facilitate a face-to-face meeting between the two warring governments. “It’s very important for the Russians and Ukrainians to start talking to one another,” Vance said. </span></p><p>This comes little over a week after Lavrov said that Russia wanted to lift a ban on Kyiv’s ability to directly negotiate with Moscow. Yaroslav Trofimov, the chief foreign affairs correspondent at <i>The Wall Street Journal,</i> <a href="https://x.com/yarotrof/status/1916834453961203861" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a> that Russia was essentially telling Trump to “get lost.”</p><p><span>Vance made it clear that in negotiations, the United States was still playing by Russia’s rules. After Russia refused to agree to a 30-day ceasefire, Vance said that the U.S. was abandoning those hopes as well. “We’ve tried to move beyond the obsession with the 30-day ceasefire,” he said.</span></p><p><span>During the Q&amp;A, Vance waxed poetic about how important it was to truly understand each side, even if you didn’t agree with them, but he also took a moment to whine about all that pesky historical context he’d had to endure. </span></p><p><span>“They hate each other so much that if you have an hour conversation with either side, the first 30 minutes are just them complaining about some historical grievance from four years ago, or five years ago, or 10 years ago,” Vance said. </span></p><p><span>Speaking of history, one might flash back to Vance’s </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192154/donald-trump-volodymyr-zelenskiy-shouting-match-ukraine" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">humiliating display</a><span> in the Oval Office in February, when he lost his temper as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy explained Russia’s invasion of Crimea. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194963/jd-vance-grim-warning-russia-ukraine-peace-talks</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194963</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[J.D. Vance]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Vladimir Putin]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Volodymyr Zelenskiy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ukraine Invasion]]></category><category><![CDATA[Peace Talks]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 15:21:56 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5c489b6eb35a6253be6f10de9e36cceac4ce0157.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5c489b6eb35a6253be6f10de9e36cceac4ce0157.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Is Trump Now Using ICE to Take Revenge on CBS?]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday raided a restaurant in Washington, D.C., owned by the husband of CBS News anchor Norah O’Donnell.</span></p><p><span>Early Tuesday morning, immigration officers dressed in Homeland Security uniforms busted into the American fare restaurant Chef Geoff’s and demanded to see employees’ work authorization, Fox5 </span><a href="https://www.fox5dc.com/news/ice-agents-went-into-dc-restaurants-asking-to-see-staff-forms" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reported</span></a><span>. No one was taken into custody, marking yet another pointless, fearmongering raid from ICE.</span></p><p><span>O’Donnell is a senior correspondent for CBS News and a contributing correspondent for the network’s </span><span><i>60 Minutes,</i> </span><span>which Trump has targeted ever since the network did an interview with Kamala Harris before the 2024 election. It’s unclear whether ICE knew that O’Donnell’s husband, Geoff Tracy, is the owner of Chef Geoff’s.</span></p><p><span>ICE also raided at least seven other restaurants in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, including Millie’s, Pupatella, and Chang Chang, to demand I-9 forms, </span><span><i>The Washingtonian</i></span><span> </span><a href="https://www.washingtonian.com/2025/05/06/ice-agents-are-targeting-dc-restaurants/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reported</span></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>“We were under the impression that they were focusing on trying to find criminals,” Bo Blair, the owner of Millie’s, told </span><span><i>The Washingtonian</i></span><span>. “And this is just a whole new level of harassment to our hardworking, law-abiding employees.” The ICE agents informed staff at Millie’s that they will return on Monday to collect the remainder of the I-9 forms verifying employees’ identity and work authorization.</span></p><p><span>According to </span><a href="https://www.independentrestaurantcoalition.com/the_impact_of_immigration_on_independent_restaurants_and_bars#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20American%20Immigration,even%20higher%2C%20exceeding%2030%25%20." target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>data</span></a><span> from the Independent Restaurant Coalition, immigrants make up 22 percent of all U.S. workers in food services. Restaurant workers have long been </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/25/dining/trump-immigration-undocumented-workers-restaurants.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>bracing</span></a><span> for ICE raids, and it looks like the GOP’s crackdown on yet another industry that relies heavily on immigrant labor is in full force.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194956/trump-ice-raids-dc-revenge-cbs-anchor-husband-restaurant</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194956</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[CBS]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[ICE]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration and Customs Enforcement]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington D.c.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Cheff Geoff's]]></category><category><![CDATA[Restaurants]]></category><category><![CDATA[Norah O'Donnell]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Marin Scotten]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 14:43:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e967d3615b30a8f5584b9a81c7459f0932d64aea.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e967d3615b30a8f5584b9a81c7459f0932d64aea.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Has a New Target in His Weird Renaming Crusade]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump made the “Gulf of America” so great again that he’s considering implementing a similar rebrand for another body of water—this time, one thousands of miles away from U.S. territory.</p><p><span>The president is considering renaming the Persian Gulf the “Arabian Gulf,” mere days after his family announced billions of dollars in forthcoming real estate deals in the region.</span></p><p><span>Those plans include a Trump-branded golf course in Qatar (as part of a $5.5 billion development project), a $1 billion Trump hotel and residence in Dubai, and a $2 billion investment by an Abu Dhabi firm into one of Trump’s cryptocurrency projects, the World Liberty Financial Coin. </span></p><p><span>The family also revealed in December that they would be expanding their presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing </span><a href="https://x.com/EricTrump/status/1866831899131617513" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Trump Tower Jeddah</a><span>. The price tag for the building has not been made public, but one of the developers on the project, Dar Global, compared it to another $530 million Trump Tower in the city, reported </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/trump-organization-plans-second-saudi-arabian-tower-regional-expansion-2024-12-12/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Reuters</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>The Trumps have held deep financial ties to the region for years. After Trump’s first term, Saudi Arabia invested $2 billion in a firm belonging to Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law.</span></p><p><span>Trump is expected to travel to Saudi Arabia next week, where it’s anticipated that he’ll make the announcement publicly, according to two officials who spoke with the </span><a href="https://apnews.com/article/trump-persian-gulf-saudi-arabia-ce30874c27bc01426d93ad3c65a18844" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Associated Press</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>As a reminder, it’s actually </span><a href="https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S9-C8-3/ALDE_00013206/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">unconstitutional</a><span> for presidents to profit from or receive compensation from foreign governments. The White House has contested that the deals are not a conflict of interest since the president’s assets are managed by his eldest sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr. But Trump’s pockets will undoubtedly be lined by the deal—even if he has to wait a handful of years before he’s out of office to see the cashflow. In the meantime, he’ll receive myriad personal benefits from his relationships in the Middle East for arranging the deal.</span></p><p><span>Seven other nations surround the body of water, including Iran, Iraq, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates. </span></p><p><span>The Persian Gulf has been the body’s predominant name since the sixteenth century, but its moniker has also been regionally contested by other countries in the Middle East, where it is mainly referred to as the “Gulf of Arabia” or “Arabian Gulf,” according to </span><a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-targets-the-persian-gulf-in-his-maga-renaming-blitz/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Daily Beast</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Referring to the inlet as the Arabian Gulf hasn’t served Trump’s diplomatic relations well in the past. During one such instance in 2017, former Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the U.S. leader that he needed to “study geography.”</span></p><p><span>“Everyone knew Trump’s friendship was for sale to the highest bidder. We now know that his geography is, too,” Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif </span><a href="https://x.com/JZarif/status/918952519879004161" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote online</a><span> at the time.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194954/donald-trump-rename-persian-gulf-arabia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194954</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Names]]></category><category><![CDATA[Persian Gulf]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gulf of Arabia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gulf of Mexico]]></category><category><![CDATA[gulf of america]]></category><category><![CDATA[Middle East]]></category><category><![CDATA[Saudi Arabia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Qatar]]></category><category><![CDATA[UAE]]></category><category><![CDATA[Dubai]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 14:36:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e42e96477728b686b6f2ab48cb5520f3497e5844.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/e42e96477728b686b6f2ab48cb5520f3497e5844.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Biden Has Tone-Deaf Answer on Whether He Should Have Withdrawn Sooner]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Former President Joe Biden doesn’t think the election would have been any different if he’d dropped out sooner.</span></p><p><span>“I don’t think it would have mattered. We left at a time when we had a good candidate,” Biden </span><a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0m9mvemxrwo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>told</span></a><span> the BBC, in his first interview since leaving the White House. “Things moved so quickly that it made it difficult to walk away. And it was a hard decision.… I think it was the right decision. I think that … it was just a difficult decision.”</span></p><p><span>Biden dropped out a mere four months before Election Day, in the midst of mounting fears regarding his mental acuity. The White House insisted over and over again that he was as sharp as ever. Senator Chuck Schumer </span><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/5070369-democratic-leaders-scrutinized-biden-decline/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>called</span></a><span> the fears “right-wing propaganda,” former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IxlFCRiZ5SI" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> he was “at the top of his game,” and Senator Bernie Sanders </span><a href="https://nypost.com/2023/08/27/bernie-sanders-downplays-joe-bidens-age-seemed-fine/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>said</span></a><span> that Biden “seemed fine” to him. But the truth came out at the first televised debate between Trump and Biden, in which Biden delivered perhaps the worst performance of all time—a bumbling, sad, and incoherent showing that made it clear that he was not mentally prepared to run again.</span></p><p><span>It’s easy to play the “what if” game in hindsight. But it’s painfully obvious that Biden dropping out sooner would have allowed the Democratic Party to have an actual primary, in which a diverse field of candidates would have been able to sharpen their positions and differentiate themselves from one another. Instead there was no primary, no differentiation between Harris and Biden, and a brutal loss to show for it. <br></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194957/biden-interview-question-dropped-out-sooner</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194957</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Joe Biden]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2024]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kamala Harris]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democrats]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 14:22:07 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f5eb055c44a4e5fb5cfc7fb655413defa8f0b16d.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/f5eb055c44a4e5fb5cfc7fb655413defa8f0b16d.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Treasury Sec. Says Kids Need to Suck it up for Greater Good]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has a message for a hypothetical little girl worried that she won’t have more than <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194938/trump-dolls-weird-tariffs-scarcity" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">two dolls</a> because of Donald Trump’s <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194072/federal-reserve-jerome-powell-warning-consequences-donald-trump-tariffs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">disastrous</a> tariff policy. </p><p><span>“I would tell that young girl that you will have a better life than your parents,” Bessent </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919893775054143681" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>,<span> during an appearance on Fox News Tuesday night. “That you and your family, thanks to President Trump, can now be confident again that you will have a better life than your parents, which, working-class Americans had abandoned that idea.”</span></p><p><span>“Your family will own a home, you will be able to advance. You will have a good education, you will have economic freedom,” Bessent continued.</span></p><p><span>“Confident” is an interesting choice of words for Bessent, after consumer confidence </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194566/donald-trump-economy-consumer-confidence" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">sank</a><span> a whopping 7.9 points in April, to its lowest level since May 2020. </span></p><p><span>The beleaguered Bessent has been desperate to rebrand Trump’s isolationist America First economic policy as a Buddhist-like maxim on desire as the root of all suffering. In March, Bessent </span><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/06/treasury-secretary-bessent-says-the-american-dream-is-not-about-access-to-cheap-goods.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">claimed</a><span> that “access to cheap goods is not the essence of the American dream.” In fact, being able to afford to live is a huge part of the American dream, and abundant consumer conveniences have become </span><a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-04-10/cheap-consumer-goods-are-more-important-to-america-than-team-trump-realizes?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc0NDI5MjQ3NiwiZXhwIjoxNzQ0ODk3Mjc2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTVUkxODVEV0xVNjgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiI3MDQyN0U3REVGMkM0MDEzODNCNDUzRjAyNUE2NDc3NyJ9.GwHKUu39tuVsTUh_Kb2jyfB6jeMKwlYkDQ4qCOMX2lc&amp;leadSource=uverify%20wall" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">baked into our national identity</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>But Bessent and Trump are insistent that they’re playing the long game—a little pinch in the present to make way for an expansive future they </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194920/donald-trump-admits-no-trade-deals" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">haven’t deigned to actually progress toward</a><span> yet.</span></p><p><span>Small consumer grievances may illustrate the present-day realities of Trump’s tariffs, but they should not be used by the administration to obscure the larger picture. If we’re really going to play with hypotheticals, then we should imagine how a little girl’s “economic freedom” might be hurt by the collapse of her family’s </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193773/eu-red-states-tariffs-trump-payback" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">soybean farm</a><span>. Maybe then she can get a job in one of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick’s </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194572/trump-lutnick-work-factories-forever-with-grandpa" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">factories</a><span>, and then her children can work there, and her children’s children. By then, maybe they’ll have dolls to play with.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194951/donald-trump-treasury-scott-bessent-dolls-good-cause</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194951</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of the Treasury]]></category><category><![CDATA[Scott Bessent]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Shortages]]></category><category><![CDATA[Dolls]]></category><category><![CDATA[Children]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 14:00:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/85470316b30599d8b58558d601087613169302da.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/85470316b30599d8b58558d601087613169302da.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Nathan Posner/Anadolu/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Finds Another Hellish Country for His Mass Deportations]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Trump administration is </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-may-soon-deport-migrants-libya-military-flight-sources-say-2025-05-07/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>planning</span></a><span> to use a military plane to deport immigrants to Libya in a cruel, arbitrary escalation of its mass deportation campaign. The deportations could happen as soon as Wednesday, and the nationality of the immigrants remains unclear.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>The situation in Libya is so unstable that the State Department dissuades its citizens from traveling there “due to crime, terrorism, unexploded land mines, civil unrest, kidnapping and armed conflict.”&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>The detention centers where these migrants would be held are even worse. A 2021 Amnesty International </span><a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/07/libya-horrific-violations-in-detention-highlight-europes-shameful-role-in-forced-returns/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>investigation</span></a><span> found “horrific violations” in the prisons there, calling them a total “hellscape.” The organization’s Middle East deputy director, Diana Eltahaway, noted that prisoners are “immediately funnelled into arbitrary detention and systematically subjected to torture, sexual violence, forced labour and other exploitation with total impunity.… The entire network of Libyan migration detention centres is rotten to its core and must be dismantled.”</span></p><p><span>This comes months after the administration pulled a similar move by sending Venezuelan immigrants to the infamous CECOT prison in El Salvador—an extrajudicial&nbsp; move that is still being debated by the court.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194950/trump-plans-deportations-libya-hellscape-prisons</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194950</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Libya]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[refugees]]></category><category><![CDATA[Africa]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 13:08:51 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/01e9db5b20775b77bcd7f2524086b0249e4dc6cb.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/01e9db5b20775b77bcd7f2524086b0249e4dc6cb.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>cott Olson/Getty Images)</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Transcript: Trump’s Tariff Tirade Reveals How Badly He’s Screwing MAGA]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><i>The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 7 episode of the</i> Daily Blast<i> podcast. Listen to it <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</i></p><p><b>Greg Sargent: </b>This is <i>The Daily Blast </i>from <i>The New Repub</i><i>lic, </i>produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.</p><p>Thanks to President Trump’s policies, a confluence of events is about to unfold that will absolutely clobber rural America. First, there’s Trump’s trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919791248388268265" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">bizarre rambling rant</a> that indicated he’s absolutely fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned. Meanwhile, there are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/business/soy-farmers-struggle-with-trade-war.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">new indications</a> that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered by these tariffs. On top of that, t<span>he House GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid are very likely to be a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/03/08/medicaid-cuts-rural-hospitals/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">massive problem</a> for rural hospitals. And big GOP cuts to food stamps will also inflict pain on rural areas. So is there an opening here for Democrats to win back some ground in these places? Today we’re talking about all this with </span><span>Matt Hildreth</span><span>, executive director of </span><a href="http://ruralorganizing.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">RuralOrganizing.org</a><span> and a veteran Democratic operative in rural areas. Matt, great to have you on.</span></p><p><span><b>Matt Hildreth: </b>Thank you for having me on the show. I’m a big fan.</span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Thanks, Matt. Let’s start with what Trump said on Tuesday. He was talking about how he hasn’t yet made any deals with other countries to dial down tariffs. Listen to this.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><b>Donald Trump (audio voiceover): </b><i>Just to finish, we also have a situation because everyone says, </i>When? When? When are you going to sign deals?<i> We don’t have to sign deals. We can sign 25 deals right now, Howard, if we want it. We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. </i><i>They want a piece of our market. We’re going to sit down and we’re going to put very fair numbers down and we’re going to say, </i>Here’s what this country [wants], what we want, <i>and, </i>Congratulations, we have a deal.<i> And they’ll either say, </i>Great,<i> and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, </i>Not good. We’re not going to do it.<i> And I’ll say, </i>That’s OK. You don’t have to shop.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Matt, the quote that jumps out at me is, “We don’t care about their market.” Here he’s clearly saying, <i>W</i></span><span><i>e may never make deals that will dial down the trade war.</i> What do you think farmers who rely on exporting food to international markets are going to make of that?</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, I think that that’s a really good point. When you talk to folks in small towns and rural communities, they’re paying attention to markets. That’s something that you learn when you’re a farmer and you study things like ag economics: It’s all about understanding the markets. And I think sometimes there’s a lot of stereotypes about farmers—that they’re just </span><span>dumb hayseeds, simple people that sit on tractors all day. Farming is pretty sophisticated. Whether you’re a farm worker working out for the growers in the fields or you’re sitting in a combine, there’s a ton of science and there’s a ton of economics. It’s all economics.</span></p><p><span>And I actually think Donald Trump probably really doesn’t care about the markets. He’s more focused on his favorability. He’s more focused on his vengeance. But farmers absolutely </span><span>care about their markets. It takes years to establish relationships in international markets for farmers, especially when it comes to farmers in the Midwest with corn and especially soybeans. Farmers have been dedicating tons and tons of time and resources to establishing those relationships. And many farmers are seeing those evaporate overnight.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, <i>The New York Times</i> has a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/business/soy-farmers-struggle-with-trade-war.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">new piece</a> confirming this, reporting that farmers in Iowa are already getting hammered economically and the local economies are slowing down. </span><span>The<i> Times </i>reports on Monona County where Trump got 72 percent of the vote, quotes a farmer there saying the trade war is going to hit hard. A lot of this is due to China’s tariffs and retaliation against Trump’s tariffs. Matt, you spent a lot of time in rural America. Let’s talk about how important Chinese markets in particular are for farmers in the places that you organize.</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, absolutely. In fact, RuralOrganizing.org started in Northwest Iowa in Steve King’s congressional district, s</span><span>o agriculture is something that we hear about all the time—and especially when it comes to soybeans. That’s something that I think people might not recognize if you’re not from a farm family: Soybeans are an absolutely critical component of many Iowa farms and have a big impact on rural economies. And so when you lose that foreign Chinese market with your soybeans, that’s a huge hit. I’ve heard things like one in three rows of soybeans is going to China. So when you think about all those </span><span>rows of soybeans when you drive across Interstate 90 or Interstate 80, it’s just a huge export out to China. The farmers in Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, the Dakotas are going to be hit especially hard.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>So Matt, to what degree do you think these farmers are going to blame Trump’s policies, his trade war with China for their inability to sell to those markets? Are they going to say to themselves, <i>Well, the president has asked me as a patriot to </i></span><span><i>swallow all the pain and it’s going to really make things better later in some vague sense for the whole country?</i> Or do they just not really get snowed by that? You’re telling me that the farmers you organize among are pretty shrewd people a lot of the time. You’d think they’d see through the folly of the trade war if that’s the case. Do they?</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, I think there’s three components to the answer to your question. One is that one thing we see overwhelmingly in our work is that when good things happen in rural America, many rural voters just assume it was Republicans. We saw that going back to the stimulus checks that the Biden administration sent out. People loved those checks. They loved the child tax credits. They love things like that, and they assume it’s just Republicans doing it because Democrats are not present in the communities. And so much of the way the </span><span>Biden Build Back Better projects were administered were through local and state Republicans. So when good things happen, people assume it’s Republicans. And when bad things happen, their bias just makes them assume it’s Democrats. Because Republicans control the House and the Senate and the White House and the Supreme Court, and because Donald Trump has set himself up as the authority, i</span><span>t’s really hard for them to blame Democrats right now—especially because he’s gone so far out on a limb on trade. So that’s the first piece.</span></p><p><span>The other two, I think, are a little bit harder. One is farmers are very stubborn in their position on Trump. I think that’s something that we all know. For many of us that have worked in small towns and rural communities, farmers have supported Trump for a very long time. And a lot of them just did not believe what was in Project 2025. There was so much that we’re seeing now that was outlined in Project 2025. And when we would </span><span>talk about it, people would say, <i>Yeah, that’s just politics. Trump’s not going to actually do it.</i> So there is that stubbornness.</span></p><p>The last piece of this, though—the third piece that I think is really important—is most rural Americans are not farmers. And when you look at where the trade wars are hitting, it’s far beyond the corn and soybean fields. I was just in Home Depot yesterday getting some wood for our chicken coop. A man in a Punisher T-shirt with an American flag walked up and he was standing next to me, and he just goes, <i>Fuck, screws are so expensive right now. </i>So there are so many places where the tariffs are going up and people are seeing prices increase. And some of that might be directly related to tariffs like the situation with the screws, but things are going up for many different reasons right now. And I think Trump has actually positioned himself to be blamed across the board. People are going to make a lot of excuses for him for the next couple of weeks, b<span>ut if things continue, I think there’s going to be a real softening that we haven’t seen in a while.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>A recent Marist poll <a href="https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/president-trumps-first-100-days-april-2025/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">found</a> that Trump’s support in rural America has pretty much collapsed. It’s now at parity, 46 to 45, which is really surprising given that Trump carried rural America overwhelmingly in 2024. I’ve got to ask Matt, how seriously should we take that though? Is it a superficial expression of, <i>Oh, the screws are expensive, </i></span><span>which you overheard from a rural voter just the other day, something that won’t actually sink its claws into rural America in any real way? Or is there an actual chance that this will alienate a fraction of these voters enough so that they can get peeled away? How real is it that that disapproval of Trump is actually pretty high in rural areas?</span></p><p><b>Hildreth: </b>I’m feeling that the disapproval is as high as I’ve ever seen it. In my day-to-day life, I live in a small town, I live outside of small town. I’m feeling it. My family back in South Dakota is feeling it. Something is happening. So I think that the movement that we’re seeing in the polls, and that poll specifically, is real. I’ve dug into some of the numbers to really try and understand where that movement is happening. It really seems like it has to do with the people who are tuning in to the networks.</p><p><span>We’re not moving voters when it comes to Fox News. We’re not moving voters when it comes to right-wing media. But for the people who are still getting their news from the nightly news, that seems to be where the support is softening the most. And it is setting up an opportunity for Democrats to step into that space. But the numbers reflect what I’m seeing in my day-to-day life. And I think t</span><span>here’s some big questions, though, about what we do with it. Can we sustain it? Is this just a bad week versus is this a real shift in the momentum?</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, I want to ask you about the information environment, which you just brought up. It’s overwhelmingly clear. You spend any time in rural America, you can immediately see that there’s this immense information vacuum—that a lot of people in rural America are hearing just one side of the story, just the Republican message, just the Trump message. </span><span>They never hear mainstream media. They never hear what Democrats have to say. But it sounds like there’s at least some percentage of rural Americans that you think are getting their news from networks and from more neutral sources. Can you talk a bit about that?</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, absolutely. So in rural America, the local news is always the most trusted news. When we do surveys on “Who do you really trust for your news?” i</span><span>t’s the local papers, it’s the local radio; if there’s TV, it’s the local TV. And when you look at the numbers, Donald Trump won over 90 percent of news deserts across the country. These are communities that don’t have a local source of news on local issues. So they don’t have a local newspaper. They don’t have a local news source through their radios or on television. And that’s where Donald Trump is really succeeding.</span></p><p><span>When the conversation is about national issues and about national politics, it’s very easy for that Fox News talking point to carry the day. But when you have to compare what you’re hearing on Fox News or right-wing media to what you’re seeing in your local news, it really changes the dynamic quite a bit. So that’s why I think in these places where we do still have some really strong local newspapers—places like Iowa; Iowa has amazing small-town papers—that’s where I think you’re seeing some of this support softening up.</span></p><p>And then also amongst the viewers, the people at home that get their news from PBS—PBS is still a huge source of news in small towns and rural communities—or the evening news, that’s where I think we are seeing people move. It’s not huge. It’s like 3 to 5 percentage points right now, but I still think that’s a significant amount of people. And that’s where we really need to focus: the people that are getting their news from places other than Fox News. <span>Yes, most people are getting </span><span>their news in rural America from Fox News, but it’s not everybody. There’s quite a bit of those independent voters that are getting it from other sources.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>And the margins are what matter here. I feel like a perennial thing we hear from Democrats is that they’re always about to regain some ground in rural areas thanks to GOP budget cuts decimating rural hospitals, but it just doesn’t seem to happen. Now we have another test of this. The GOP budget is expected to cut Medicaid by hundreds of billions of dollars. </span><span>Rural hospital officials recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/04/republicans-budget-medicare-social-security-medicaid/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a> <i>The Washington Post</i> that these cuts are going to really erode health care availability in these places. Is there any prospect for that to matter this time around?</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, I think so. And you mentioned the margins. One of the things that we say all the time—it started as a joke, and it’s become kind of an organizational slogan—is “lose less.” So in a lot of places, we’re not actually looking to win even at the </span><span>city or at the county level. But if we can just move the margins by 3 or 4 percentage points in rural communities across the state, that can have a major impact on statewide elections. So there’s places in Wisconsin where I think we are seeing Democrats at the state level doing a lot better because they are cutting margins in rural areas. We’re seeing that in Georgia. We’re seeing that in North Carolina.</span></p><p><span>I think oftentimes it’s not translating to the top of the ticket. And a lot of that has to do with how t</span><span>he presidential campaigns are run; [they] run on national issues, not on local issues. But I think there are very specific examples in places, especially North Carolina, where you have rural hospitals closing and you have people getting pretty pissed off about it. Now, do they know how to translate their local hospital closure to policies that the Republicans support, specifically not expanding Medicaid? Maybe not. And that’s where we really run into problems in the local news deserts where there’s no source of local information. </span><span>But for the places where Democrats can get in and can connect the dots between their hospital closing and the policy supported by the governor, I think we are seeing movement.</span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Well, there’s one other area for Dems to exploit as well: cuts to food stamps. That’s something that can also hit rural areas pretty hard. You’ve actually got some vulnerable House Republicans from rural districts like Derrick Van Orden in Wisconsin and Don Bacon in Nebraska making noise about opposing these cuts. But <span>House Democrats just put forward this discharge petition—which could theoretically pass without the GOP leadership supporting it—that would protect Medicaid and food stamps from GOP cuts. You’d only need a few Republicans to support that for it to pass—but let’s face it, that won’t happen. No Republicans will get onto it. Is there any way for Democrats to use<i> that</i> to inflict political pain on Republicans among rural voters?</span></p><p><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, absolutely. And we’re in the middle of launching a new campaign <span>that we’re calling the “Campaign for Rural Prosperity.” It’s all about protecting and strengthening rural services like Social Security, [which] is a huge source of income in rural America. Medicaid is an absolutely critical piece of the equation. And then SNAP, or food stamps, is the other piece of it.</span></p><p><span>Food stamps or SNAP, those impact rural communities on two fronts. One, rural Americans are more likely to use those benefits just because the poverty </span><span>levels are higher in a lot of small towns and rural communities. But also, those benefits are going to farmers. So it’s not just about benefits to people who are hungry; it’s also about creating higher demand for farmers. And that’s why you see it impacting in places like Wisconsin and Iowa and a number of these congressional districts. We don’t need to flip a ton of congressional districts to have a massive impact on our politics right now. And when it comes to Medicaid, there’s between six and </span><span>10 Republicans at any moment that are really feeling that pressure. Piling on with SNAP and piling on with the Elon Musk conversation about cutting Social Security, I think that’s all really good for Democrats right now.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>I’m really glad you mentioned Musk because it really feels to me like we’re seeing this confluence of things all gunning straight for rural America metaphorically in a way that I’m not sure we’ve seen in a long time. There’s </span><span>the trade war; there’s the Medicaid cuts; and then there’s DOGE. Elon Musk is a big looming presence behind all this. I can’t imagine he plays very well in rural America. Is there a confluence here in some kind of new way, or are we just going to get disappointed again?</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Well, the question about whether or not we’re going to get disappointed again is, I think, a very real question. That’s the thing that keeps me up at night, and that’s </span><span>the whole focus of our organization. But there is ... It is a special moment right now. And something that those of us from small towns and rural communities that are engaged in politics and policy know well is that the federal government is actually absolutely critical for small towns and rural communities. Everybody thinks [about] Ronald Reagan’s [saying], “The worst thing you can say is I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” They think that’s something that just resonates with people in rural America—a</span><span>nd it does from a bumper sticker point of view. </span><span>But the fact is that rural Americans are very connected to the federal government through employment.</span></p><p><span>All of the national park rangers, they are federal employees. The people working at extension offices telling people how to grow their tomatoes, they get federal funding. The connection between rural America and the federal government is strong; it’s been strong since FDR. And </span><span>Elon Musk has gone through the United States Department of Agriculture, or USDA, with a chainsaw and cut critical programs for rural development, critical programs from the Farm Service Administration. I think he was cutting things that he didn’t even understand. He was unplugging parts of the Agriculture Department that he didn’t even know what they did. Those were felt immediately in small towns and rural communities. And it’s creating a new appreciation for the services that are coming from the federal government.</span></p><p><span>And so much of the federal government </span><span>services in rural communities have a local brand. So you might not know the USDA at the national level, but you know the local guy who you go to when your tomatoes aren’t growing. And once those people start telling you, <i>Hey, these cuts are having an impact, I might get fired,</i> that’s really, I think, waking people up in small towns and rural communities.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>But Matt, are these voters going to connect this stuff to Donald Trump </span><span>and the Republican Party—the national Republican Party? That’s the big question.</span></p><p><span><b>Hildreth: </b>Right. The question is: Are they going to connect it to the Republican Party? And are Democrats going to be able to take advantage of it if they do? I think a lot of that is still out for debate, but right now, it doesn’t really matter what Fox News is telling you when you go to the hardware store and screws have gone up 100 percent. Something is off. And across the battleground states, Donald Trump had signs that said, “</span><span>Donald Trump means lower prices, Kamala Harris means higher prices.” And people know that’s not happening right now. That’s a pretty simple and pretty effective message, and it’s actually backfiring on him right now because things are going up so dramatically.</span></p><p><span>And when people said that they were willing to put up with a little pain for a long-term game, they were overwhelmingly talking about a couple of percentage points in the increase in their food or in the increase in their groceries for a couple of weeks. They were not talking about what we’re hearing in this quote </span><span>that you played at the top about indefinite tariffs, 145 percent. So I do think people are going to connect it to Donald Trump, but I do think that Democrats need to step into the space. We’re seeing a lot of that momentum already, and I think it’s not about winning every single rural voter. It’s about cutting the margins by 4 to 7 percent.</span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Well, we should probably have another pod soon to talk about whether Democrats are actually stepping into that space, which is a very big topic. <span>Matt Hildreth, thanks so much for coming on, man.</span></p><p><b>Hildreth: </b>Yeah, thanks for having me.</p><p><b>Sargent: </b>You’ve been listening to <i>The Daily Blast</i> with me, your host, Greg Sargent. <i>The Daily Blast</i> is a <i>New Republic </i>podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194947/transcript-trump-tariff-tirade-reveals-badly-he-screwing-maga</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194947</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Rural America]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 11:27:37 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e01a1d8e1246cb3eb0adde8b69398e1bed6fc44.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e01a1d8e1246cb3eb0adde8b69398e1bed6fc44.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Trump Will Use “Anti-Christian Bias” to Entrench His Power]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>On April 22, Attorney General Pam Bondi <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/attorney-general-pamela-bondi-hosts-first-task-force-meeting-eradicate-anti-christian-bias" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hosted</a> the first meeting of the “Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias in the Federal Government.” Attendees included the secretaries of Defense, State, Homeland Security, Health &amp; Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Education, and Labor, as well as over a dozen high-ranking officials in the administration. Those attending didn’t seem to be bothered by the fact that no evidence of such widespread bias exists. That’s because they weren’t there to solve a problem but to create one. The Task Force claimed to be standing up for “religious liberty,” but its real goal is to amplify the persecution complex of the Trump administration’s Christian nationalist allies and base—and then to use groundless claims of religious discrimination as the basis for the suppression of dissent. </p><p>Less than a week later, <a href="https://religionnews.com/2025/04/28/william-barber-arrested-in-capitol-rotunda-after-prayer-challenging-republican-budget/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">an incident</a> at the U.S. Capitol made clear that the Trump administration has zero interest in promoting “religious liberty.” As the Reverend William Barber and other faith leaders opposed to Republican budget cuts gathered to pray at the Capitol Rotunda, they were swiftly surrounded by Capitol Police officers, one wearing a “crime scene” vest. The press was expelled from the building, and the pastors were arrested.</p><p>You would think that a Task Force concerned with anti-Christian bias would take an interest. But the administration appears to have nothing to say. The problem for the Reverend Barber and his fellow pastors is that they would seem to be the wrong kind of Christians. Right-wing pastor Sean Feucht has “filled the US Capitol Rotunda with worship time and time again for the last 4 years,” in his <a href="https://x.com/seanfeucht/status/1880348435318182104" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">own words</a>, and yet he has never been arrested or detained. He, apparently, is the right kind of Christian.</p><p>In the United States, attacks on Christians continue to occur at far lower rates than those <a href="https://www.csusb.edu/sites/default/files/2023-03/REPORT%20TO%20THE%20NATION%202023%20Relig4PM.docx.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">targeted</a> at other religious groups, including Jews, Muslims, and Sikhs. The Task Force’s exclusive focus on Christian victims exposes its rhetoric about defending “religious liberty” as transparently insincere.</p><p>Instances of alleged “anti-Christian bias” cited in the executive order that established the Task Force are even more revealing. The first and most prominent example of bias provided is the conviction of anti-abortion activists in connection with their violations of laws intended to protect the rights of individuals seeking health care services—a group that Trump pardoned in his first days in office. The second example is an internal FBI memo from 2023 that identified certain extremist Catholic groups as potential terror threats—even though an internal FBI review of the memo in 2024 <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/18/us/politics/catholic-extremists-fbi.html#:~:text=The%20Richmond%20memo%20was%20spurred,racial%20minorities%20and%20Jews%2C%20and" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">concluded</a> that there was no evidence the memo targeted or resulted in the targeting of anyone on account of their religious beliefs, Catholic or otherwise.</p><p>The irony of “anti-Christian bias,” as the Trump administration defines it, is that it is not, in fact, directed at Christians per se. After all, the Reverend Barber, like many American Christians, appears to anchor a commitment to equality, social justice, and concern for the poor in his faith. Rather, the alleged victims of bias are those Christians who endorse reactionary positions in the culture wars and support Trump’s agenda unconditionally.</p><p>The other fact about this misnamed “anti-Christian bias” is that it is indistinguishable from sincere efforts to protect individual rights <i>against</i> discrimination on the part of this subset of people who identify as Christian. If you try to prevent a political activist who holds this preferred identity from discriminating against or infringing on the rights of people of whom they disapprove—precisely what the anti-abortion activists were doing—then you, not they, are allegedly engaging in “bias.” This is what “religious freedom” has come to mean: privilege for conservative Christians alone, including the freedom to harass or discriminate.</p><p>But there is still more to make George Orwell proud. The most insidious aspect of this “anti-Christian bias” program is that it refers not primarily to actual crimes, such as acts of discrimination or violence, but to thought crimes. The reason the administration can’t let go of the FBI memo on terrorist threats from “radical-traditionalist” Catholic extremists<b> </b>is not that it proves discrimination—it does not—but that it serves as evidence that someone somewhere in the FBI had a negative thought about some reactionary people who happen to identify as Catholic. </p><p>The thought-crime focus of the Task Force is evident in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/22/veterans-affairs-anti-christian-bias" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">memo</a> that Veterans Affairs circulated to its staff immediately after the meeting. That email specifically calls on employees to report on “any informal policies, procedures, or unofficial understandings hostile to Christian views.”</p><p>So, if your office holds the “unofficial understanding” that LGBTQ people or the nonreligious or progressive Christians, for example, should have equal rights—an understanding clearly hostile to the views of the subset of Christians who believe that “woke Christians,” the nonreligious, and LGBTQ Americans deserve no such equal protections—do you rat out the office for rampant anti-Christian bias? If your agency promotes racial equality, concern for the poor, or the protection of the earth from climate change—views apparently at odds with the ideas of those who <a href="https://www.christianpost.com/voices/christianity-shows-us-the-true-meaning-of-dei.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">characterize</a> “DEI” as an “ungodly agenda,”<b> </b>who <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Biblical-Economics-Commonsense-Guide-Daily/dp/1607021501" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">promote</a> “biblical economics” or <a href="https://answersingenesis.org/store/product/resisting-green-dragon/?srsltid=AfmBOorqR6CmODnAjbfcd0879WDDBJ90qJaKSpDUL6ZS-iL27znk1IFB" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">regard</a> environmentalism as a “cult of the green dragon” and, conveniently for the fossil fuel interests that <a href="https://energyandpolicy.org/heartland-institute/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fund</a> many of their operations, deny the reality of climate change—should you turn them in too?</p><p>Federal employees will have no trouble picking up the real message of the Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias, even though one hopes that they will have the strength to resist. The message is that one political ideology—the one that the administration mislabels as “Christian”—occupies a place of special privilege in the United States. If anything you say or do can be construed as “hostile” to this ideology, you will face the coercive power of the federal government. </p><p>This kind of thought-crime demagoguery, which panders to the persecution complex of Trump’s Christian nationalist base, has been tremendously successful. A 2023 survey, conducted by the Survey Center on American Life, <a href="https://www.americansurveycenter.org/?s=discrimination" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a> that nearly 60 per cent of white evangelicals in America say they face “a lot” of discrimination. Other surveys show that Republicans and those who lean Republican now <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/2024/04/02/views-on-discrimination-in-our-society/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">say</a> that discrimination against white people and evangelicals is more common than discrimination against Black people.</p><p>To make people feel persecuted, it turns out, you don’t actually have to persecute them. You just have to tell them, over and over again, that they are being persecuted. The supposed “war on Christmas” operates on the same principle as “the stolen election”: You repeat the lie until you believe that it is true. </p><p>The public has little difficulty in figuring out the real message too: that there is one group in America that is authentically American and deserving of rights and privileges. The autocrat in power will defend them and their tribe against all others who fail to conform. If those “others” step out of line, they will be punished, no matter what the law and the Constitution says.</p><p>Majoritarian grievance is the energy drink of all fascist movements, but the Task Force is more than just a propaganda stunt to shore up the base. It is weaponizing the constitutional guarantees on the free exercise of religion. Trump’s Task Force is turning a legitimate concern—that no one should suffer discrimination on the basis of belief—into a pseudo-legal foundation for the prosecution of those whose thoughts are “hostile” to the ideology of the regime and its preferred, protected class of people. This is how it starts. </p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194834/trump-anti-christian-bias-task-force</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194834</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pam Bondi]]></category><category><![CDATA[Religion]]></category><category><![CDATA[Christian Right]]></category><category><![CDATA[Anti-Christian Bias]]></category><category><![CDATA[Religious Discrimination]]></category><category><![CDATA[Law]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Katherine Stewart]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/67f0efac0ddf71d183020ac0cb47b0863f59ae35.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/67f0efac0ddf71d183020ac0cb47b0863f59ae35.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks during a meeting of the “Task Force for Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” at the Department of Justice headquarters in Washington, D.C.</media:description><media:credit>Oliver Contreras/Getty Images
  18. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Is Destroying the Data that Keeps the Country Running]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>On April 28, air traffic controllers responsible for as many as 20 flights into and out of Newark Liberty International Airport—some flying at hundreds of miles per hour—<a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/05/us/newark-airport-additional-flight-delays" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lost access</a> to the radar and communications systems, maintained by the Federal Aviation Administration, that help ensure safe passage. “We don’t have a radar,” one controller told a pilot approaching Newark on audio recorded during the <a href="https://6abc.com/post/newark-airport-outage-last-week-lasted-60-90-seconds-atc-screens-went-dark-issues-philadelphia-facility-sources/16337407/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">blackout</a>, which lasted as long as 90 seconds, “so I don’t know where you are.” After the incident, several controllers took medical leave, citing trauma from the incident. The absences compounded long-running staffing shortages in air traffic control. Since last Monday, <a href="https://www.flightaware.com/live/cancelled/yesterday/KEWR" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hundreds of flights</a> scheduled to depart from and land at the airport have been delayed or canceled.</p><p>Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has vowed to hire more air traffic controllers and revamp the aging technology they rely on. Nonetheless, in February, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly9y1e1kpjo" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hundreds of FAA workers were fired</a> as part of the White House’s indiscriminate axing of probationary employees, i.e., those either recently hired or even promoted to new positions, and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/faa-trump-elon-plane-crash/681975/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">more than 1,300</a> FAA employees reportedly replied to an early retirement offer from the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. Last week’s Newark episode is among the more dramatic examples of how the Trump administration’s war on the administrative state—often already struggling to maintain basic government functions—threatens to undermine the essential, unglamorous work that keeps the country running.</p><p>While air traffic controller shortages have understandably been at the center of the story about Trump 2.0–era airline chaos, FAA cuts are gutting more behind-the-scenes positions too. Back in March, <i>The</i> <i>Atlantic</i>’s Isaac Stanley-Becker <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/faa-trump-elon-plane-crash/681975/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a> that as many as 12 percent of the FAA’s aeronautical-information specialists—those tasked with updating charts, maps, and flight procedures—had been fired or were exiting the agency as part of the government-wide buyout program spearheaded by DOGE. These kinds of cuts to critical information-gathering services are happening across agencies, eroding the government’s ability to collect and interpret data on everything from maternal mortality to flight paths, hurricanes, and electricity. The results could prove far more devastating than a few hundred canceled and delayed flights.</p><p><span>The Federal Emergency Management Agency, for instance, </span><span>faces</span><span> </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194571/trump-cuts-making-natural-disasters-deadlier" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">drastic budget</a><span> </span><span>reductions</span><span> as the White House asks states and local governments to shoulder more of the costs and responsibility for disaster response and preparedness; Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have gone so far as to suggest scrapping FEMA outright. FEMA and the country’s broader disaster response and preparedness systems—already concentrated at the state and local level—</span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/05/trump-cuts-disaster-preparedness" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">rely heavily</a><span> on information gathered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and National Weather Service to issue warnings and evacuation orders, and ensure </span><span>that</span><span> adequate resources are in place before disaster strikes.</span></p><p>FEMA itself <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/5167556-fema-california-wildfires-soil-testing/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">declined</a> to test soil for hazardous substances in areas of Los Angeles County that were decimated by wildfires earlier this year. Such data collection has been standard practice after wildfires in California, because fire-devastated properties can contain dangerous concentrations of toxic chemicals that might threaten residents and local water supplies.</p><p>Meanwhile, hundreds of NOAA employees have been let go as part of DOGE’s mass firing of probationary employees across agencies. The administration has outlined plans to slash the agency’s budget by <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-noaa-budget-cuts-climate-change-modeling-princeton-gfdl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">27 percent</a>, imposing steep cuts to and even eliminating vital programs for ocean research, coastal management, and satellite networks. The office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research faces a 74 percent cut, per a leaked memo from the Office of Management and Budget. “If we don’t understand what’s happening and why it’s happening, you can’t be adapting, you can’t be resilient. You’re just going to suffer,” Don Wuebbles, an atmospheric scientist who sits on NOAA’s scientific advisory board, <a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-noaa-budget-cuts-climate-change-modeling-princeton-gfdl" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">told</a> ProPublica’s Abrahm Lustgarten. “We’re going to see huge impacts on infrastructure and lives lost in the U.S.”</p><p>As I r<a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/192346/musk-doge-noaa-water-safety-algae" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">eported</a> in March, NOAA’s already sparsely staffed, generally little-known research arms are tasked with collecting data that helps prevent everything from ships crashing into one another to algal blooms poisoning local water supplies. These functions are crucial not just to public safety but to the private sector, as well; commercial fisherman and shipping vessels, for instance, rely on NOAA data in order to know which fish populations are safe to fish and how to avoid dangerous ice floes. The Coast Guard similarly uses real-time data collected from NOAA-maintained buoys in search-and-rescue operations. </p><p>Potentially at risk too are the reams of data collected by federal economists and statisticians that are necessary for financial and energy markets. In March, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/21/labor-commerce-department-economy-data-doge-00241559" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">dismissed</a> expert advisers to the Labor Department’s statistical bureau and the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2025-03-11/the-war-on-government-statistics-has-quietly-begun?sref=17aozLHf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis</a>. Experts have <a href="https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/05/02/concerns-over-bls-data-raised-by-proposed-trump-rule" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">raised alarm bells</a> in recent weeks about White House attempts to make it easier to fire federal officials. If economists at the Bureau of Labor Statistics could be fired at will, without the usual lengthy appeals process, they could be pressured by political appointees into manipulating BLS data on politically sensitive subjects like inflation, unemployment, productivity, and growth. Even without such meddling, sweeping personnel cuts might limit the BLS’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfgpqVixeIw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">already strained ability</a> to perform the labor-intensive nationwide surveys of companies and job-seekers that comprise their monthly reports on jobs and prices, which are hotly watched by investors and policymakers.</p><p><span>The list of cuts to data-gathering bodies goes on—and on. The formerly 350-person U.S. Energy Information Administration collects troves of information that’s closely monitored by the energy industry, including weekly reports on oil and natural gas production, electricity prices, and fuel exports. That independent agency, housed within the Department of Energy, has reportedly lost </span><a href="https://www.eenews.net/articles/how-eia-staffing-purge-could-promote-trumps-view-of-fossil-fuels/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">100 staffers</a><span> as a result of government layoffs, resignations, and buyouts. Under fear of retaliation from the administration, ProPublica </span><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/the-latest-trump-and-doge-casualty-energy-data" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a><span> that EIA staffers canceled standard-order promotion of its Annual Energy Outlook and withheld the report’s 50-plus-page narrative portion, </span>which<span> </span>discusses<span> a projected rapid growth in alternative energy and diminishing U.S. reliance on coal, oil, and gas. A draft of that deleted section, obtained and reviewed by ProPublica, noted a reference case showing that increased electricity demand would be met through 2050 “mainly by generation from renewable sources” and that there would be “declines” in domestic oil and gas consumption.</span></p><p>To be sure, some of the information gathering now under attack from the White House could be replicated elsewhere. Last week, the administration <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-climate-assessment-report-scientists-fired/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">dismissed</a> all 400 authors of the upcoming National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated report used by federal agencies, states, local governments, and private companies to understand climate risk and prepare for the impact of future storms, floods, and wildfires. The American Geophysical Union and the American Meteorological Society then <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/scientific-societies-national-climate-assessment-after-trump-dismisses-121408700" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pledged</a> to pick up that work, collecting peer-reviewed research assessing the current and future climate impacts in the U.S. </p><p>There’s no easy substitute, though, for the vast array of research in the Trump administration’s crosshairs. As the White House undermines the government’s ability to understand the world, it’ll get harder and harder to tell just how much damage its attacks on federal data collection are causing.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194930/trump-destroying-data-keeps-country-running</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194930</guid><category><![CDATA[Climate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Climate Change]]></category><category><![CDATA[Environment and Energy]]></category><category><![CDATA[doge]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Kate Aronoff]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b1a2d9d53132d3e34792c0b5fa990400f16d0f3b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/b1a2d9d53132d3e34792c0b5fa990400f16d0f3b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Donald Trump is trailed by Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy at a press conference in late January.</media:description><media:credit>ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Rants About Young Girls’ Dolls Just Got Weirder and Darker]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Trump is suddenly very taken with visions of Barbie doll factories in America. On three separate occasions, Trump has defended his tariffs by arguing that young American girls don’t need a lot of dolls—in fact, they can make do with fewer. His basic case, as top adviser Stephen Miller <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1917938235394674863" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">elaborated</a>, is that we don’t need imported Chinese toys, because kids are already drowning in them, and most American parents will happily pay more for fewer quality dolls made in America rather than buy cheap and superfluous Chinese ones.</p><p>This has been widely analyzed from the consumer side of the equation. As many have noted, Trump—whose own kids were raised in <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194888/trump-dolls-barron-trump-kids-toys" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">literal</a> golden splendor—is in no position to lecture Americans about accepting scarcity created by his own policies. Indeed, the whole conceit is a tacit admission that the tariffs will hike prices on consumers, which he keeps denying will occur.</p><p>But we should also look at Trump’s notion from the labor side. Even if Trump’s tariffs did spur a boom in domestic doll manufacturing, is that something we should want? As it turns out: not really. Many of the jobs this would create are bad ones. And even if it were possible for some fraction of manufacturing jobs along these lines to be decent ones, Trump’s own hostility to unions and government regulations would work against that goal.</p><p>Trump’s musings about young girls’ dolls are getting stranger. After <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1917634685745668399" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">floating</a> the thought last week, Trump doubled down in a new interview with NBC News. “I don’t think a beautiful baby girl that’s 11 years old needs to have 30 dolls,” he <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919031227232735725" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a>. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls.”</p><p>“They don’t need to have 250 pencils,” Trump continued. “They can have five.” Wait, 11-year-olds are babies? And who wants 250 pencils, anyway?</p><p>Trump then reiterated the point to reporters on Air Force One, but this time, he grew angrier. “Let’s not waste a lot of time with stupid questions,” Trump <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lof5dcckve2l" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ranted darkly</a>, even though the queries posed concerned his own ideas about girls’ dolls, ones that raise obvious questions about the impact he himself expects his policies to have.</p><p>Miller’s explanation for all this has been that Americans will pay more for a “doll made in America” that has “higher quality” and a “higher environmental and regulatory standard” than for a Chinese model with “lead paint” that’s “not as well constructed.” <span>Watch, <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1917938235394674863" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">via</a> Aaron Rupar:</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Stephen Miller: "If you had a choice between a doll from China that might have lead paint from it that is not as well constructed, as a doll made in America that has a highly environmental and regulatory standard ... and those two products are both on Amazon, that yes, you… <a href="https://t.co/HfisWdbJ0b" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pic.twitter.com/HfisWdbJ0b</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1917938235394674863?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">May 1, 2025</a></blockquote><p><span>Let’s say Trump and Miller did succeed in ensuring that a lot more dolls get manufactured in the United States. What would we get out of that?</span></p><p>Well, the biggest-selling dolls and doll accessories, as of September 2024, were various Barbie products, Monster High dolls, Baby Alive dolls, and Disney Princess products, <a href="https://toybook.com/toy-book-digital-archive/9-24/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">according</a> to <i>The Toy Book,</i> a trade publication. Those are almost exclusively manufactured by Mattel, with one made by Hasbro. Both companies <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2025/05/05/mattel-pulls-annual-forecasts-will-hike-prices-as-tariffs-raise-costs.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">manufacture large percentages</a> of imported toys in China and other East Asian countries.</p><p>It’s not easy to track down information on the working conditions in such factories, as some of this manufacturing is outsourced to subcontractors and much of it is done “across multiple countries,” says James Zahn, editor of <a href="https://toybook.com/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The Toy Book</i></a>. But people who work in toy manufacturing will tell you that in general, making dolls like these inevitably involves human-performed tasks that aren’t typically seen as good jobs.</p><p>One is the molding of dolls’ arms, legs, and other body parts. According to Jonathan Cathey, the CEO of the Loyal Subjects, a California-based toy company that manufactures products abroad, this is typically done with molding machines, with a human worker usually needed to detach finished plastic parts from <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=sprue+kit&amp;oq=sprue+kit&amp;gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyCQgAEEUYORiABDIICAEQABgWGB4yCAgCEAAYFhgeMggIAxAAGBYYHjIICAQQABgWGB4yCAgFEAAYFhgeMggIBhAAGBYYHjIHCAcQABjvBTIKCAgQABiABBiiBDIKCAkQABiABBiiBNIBCDEzNDBqMWo3qAIAsAIA&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">plastic model-like trees</a>.</p><p>Meanwhile, creating dolls’ faces and attaching their hair often requires connecting the head by hand to different machines, after which lips and eyes are stenciled on and the hair (often made of nylon) is grafted to the scalp. Still another chore often done by hand is attaching arms and legs to torsos. Yet another involves the creation of dolls’ miniature clothes at sewing machines.</p><p>“You’re sitting on a line, assembling things, like Laverne and Shirley <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/tv/as-laverne-defazio-penny-marshall-helped-push-a-lucy-like-hilarity-down-comedys-conveyor-belt/2018/12/18/57d2d3aa-0305-11e9-b6a9-0aa5c2fcc9e4_story.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">putting bottle caps on bottles</a>,” Cathey tells me, referring to the old TV series. “Do most Americans want to sew tiny little skirts a thousand times a day?”</p><p>With some fashion dolls, parts of the faces are even hand-painted, says Jay Foreman, founder and CEO of Basic Fun, a Florida-based toy company that also makes products abroad. <span>“These are all individual tasks that require an operator to perform each of them,” Foreman tells me. </span><span>“The manufacturing process is incredibly laborious.” </span></p><p>There’s no easy way to envision mass domestic doll manufacturing creating lots of good jobs, these people tell me. It’s not just that much of the human-performed work is drudgery. There are also other factors, they say: Lots of the materials you’d need to make the dolls, as well as many of the machines for making them, are also manufactured abroad. So you’d need to import all that anyway.</p><p>“With most doll production, you’re going to be sourcing raw materials from a global supply chain, including nylon for the hair and plastic for the doll body,” Zahn tells me.</p><p>Even if we could construct a massive and largely domestic supply chain for dolls, it would take many years to spin up. And it’s not clear how long many of the manufacturing jobs would last, even if we did do that. “The only thing that will happen is eventually robots and AI will take over,” Cathey says.</p><p>What about the fundamental trade-off that Trump and Miller posit, in which we exchange 30 Chinese dolls for three American ones of higher quality, accepting far fewer things in exchange for quality ones? </p><p>None of this adds up, either. Even if you think some good outcomes might result from producing far fewer plastic toys, lots of quality jobs won’t be one of them. Indeed, the opposite would happen, these industry officials tell me: Because toy companies also employ lots of higher-end professions like design and marketing—and these are the jobs that are concentrated in the United States already—producing far fewer toys would kill many of those good American jobs, while creating far fewer bad manufacturing jobs in their place.</p><p>“You’d be trading millions of good-paying jobs for tens of thousands of horrible-paying jobs,” Cathey says.</p><p>There’s still more. If the stated goal of tariffs is to create durable, high-quality American jobs, weakening unions and gutting regulatory oversight—which the Trump administration is fully committed to doing—is a recipe for further undermining that goal. This is particularly true of something like the toy industry, with its focus on high-volume, repetitive tasks involving all manner of synthetic materials.</p><p>Josh Bivens, chief economist at the Economic Policy Institute, points out that Trump has laid off <a href="https://www.epi.org/blog/too-many-workers-die-on-the-job-every-year-trumps-attacks-on-osha-will-kill-more/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">large numbers of officials</a> at agencies overseeing worker safety, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/15/us/politics/trump-doge-regulations.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">halted</a> government rules ensuring good working conditions, and <a href="https://www.epi.org/policywatch/firing-nlrb-general-counsel-jennifer-abruzzo/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">fired</a> pro-worker, pro-union appointees at the National Labor Relations Board, among <a href="https://www.epi.org/publication/100-days-100-ways-trump-hurt-workers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">many other things</a>.</p><p>“What makes manufacturing jobs good is unions and regulations that protect worker safety,” Bivens told me. “Without those things, any jobs created by somehow bringing toy manufacturing back are not going to be good or safe jobs.”</p><p>As <a href="https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/making-sweatshops-great-again" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Paul Krugman details</a>, many Trump officials are now explicitly packaging the idea of a revival of low-level manufacturing work in many areas—from sneakers to apparel—in the language of nostalgia for the 1950s. It’s a preposterous notion, one that gets at the core absurdities and outright lies embedded in MAGA ideology at a very fundamental level.</p><p>After all, the whole selling point behind the promise of restored manufacturing is supposed to be that this will create a lot of good breadwinner jobs that will then shore up stable, virtuous manufacturing communities. <span>But trying to reshore things like doll manufacturing—while rolling back worker protections and the regulatory state, which is also a core ideological commitment of Trumpism—is a recipe for anything but. </span><span>The brutal, poorly paid factory work that would result is not what Trumpism, in its romanticized and idealized forms, is supposed to be offering.</span></p><p>Yet that would very much be the reality. “Painting eyeballs on Barbie dolls and styling the hair of Bratz dolls,” notes Foreman drily, “aren’t the kinds of jobs that President Trump has promised in Michigan or Alabama.”</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194938/trump-dolls-weird-tariffs-scarcity</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194938</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stephen Miller]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[China]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/260d13f85d7c0dd291a53959654de59978341603.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/260d13f85d7c0dd291a53959654de59978341603.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Ken Cedeno/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Seth Rogen’s The Studio Isn’t Just a Celebration of Hollywood’s Past
  19. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The “TV is Art” team won. When I first started writing about television in the early 2010s, there was still something of a taboo about lavishing critical attention on this down-market medium. For many decades, TV was the “<a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/641152/why-is-television-called-boob-tube" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">boob tube</a>,” the “idiot box,” a medium that wasted your time and attention rather than rewarding them. But in the late 1990s, things started to change. There was a push in popular journalism to consider television not just as an influential medium, but as an art form. It didn’t take right away. Into the 2010s, well <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/06/the-twilight-of-prestige-television" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">after the rise</a> of the premium cable prestige series, after the rise of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141842/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Tony Soprano</a> and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903747/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Walter White</a>, my reviews and recaps would still inspire trolls to chastise me for taking television too seriously. But eventually, all the arguing and all the strategic disavowal (“It’s not TV, it’s HBO”) worked. These days, it’s not controversial to talk about TV series in artistic terms. The war over the cultural value of the medium is mostly over.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p>The irony is that the period when TV’s artistic status became broadly acceptable has also been a period of artistic stagnation, largely industry driven. Writers rooms, once the creative nerve centers of the medium, have <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/tv-writer-jobs-down-wga-stats-1236188142/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">been thinned out</a>, de-emphasized, replaced by an increasingly rickety auteur model of TV creation and production; networks have come to prefer one-off, star-studded limited series to the challenge of multiseason drama; studios have come to prefer safe, cheap IP to original ideas; streamers commission veteran TV writers to squeeze the last drops out of already profitable film franchises; and even the big tentpole series of our time, the shows occupying the coveted HBO Sunday night time slot, are rehashes. Last year, FX’s <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2788316/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Shōgun</a></em> was <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/180392/shgun-fx-tv-show-reinventing-epic" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">one of the best</a> series on the air, while Netflix’s <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt13016388/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">3 Body Problem</a></em> was one of <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/178146/3-body-problems-failure-imagination-netflix-tv-show-review" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">the worst</a>. Both were green-lit because they were adaptations of valuable, battle-tested IP; both emerged from the same swamp.</p><p>I think it’s fair, then, to ask whether Apple TV+’s new streaming series <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23649128/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Studio</a></em>—a tart love letter to the art and industry of old-school filmmaking—is a rebuke to its medium or an attempt to revive it. Created by star <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0736622/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Seth Rogen</a> with his <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/26/arts/television/the-studio-seth-rogen-evan-goldberg.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lifelong</a> collaborator <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1698571/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Evan Goldberg</a>, as well as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0404752/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Peter Huyck</a>, <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0339733/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Alex Gregory</a>, and <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm7482208/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Frida Perez</a>, <em>The Studio </em>tells the story of Matt Remick (Rogen), a young film producer who suddenly finds himself the head of the storied Continental Studios. Remick is an idealist at heart, a cinephile who worships directors and movie stars and who believes in the lasting significance of film as an art form. But his job, it turns out, is not to produce art, it’s to make money. And though he loathes the task, he proves himself pretty good at it. By the end of the first episode, Remick has brought <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000217/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Martin Scorsese</a> to tears and green-lit a franchise film about the <a href="https://advertisingweek.com/the-history-of-kool-aid-man/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Kool-Aid Man</a>.</p><p>So <em>The Studio</em> is a television show based on an original idea, created by a medium-size team of writers, invested in both adhering to classic televisual form and stretching its boundaries. It’s also a television show about an entertainment industry that is dying of largely self-inflicted wounds. It’s explicitly a nostalgic paean to the revolutionary cinema of the 1960s and 1970s; implicitly, it’s a nostalgic paean to the revolutionary prestige TV of the 1990s and 2000s. It’s a piece of insightful, compromised art about the seeming impossibility, in this financialized ecosystem, of making any kind of art at all. Long live and/or RIP television.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><em>The Studio</em> begins in flux. Arriving to work in the morning, Remick is advised that his longtime mentor, the studio head, Patty Leigh (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001573/?ref_=tt_cst_t_2" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Catherine O’Hara</a>), has been unceremoniously sacked by Griffin Mill (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0186505/?ref_=ttfc_cst_22" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bryan Cranston</a>), the studio’s craven, bombastic CEO. Almost immediately, Remick is called in to see Mill, tested on his willingness to give up his integrity for power, and rewarded with the job. Remick was not scheming for the role, nor does he seem eager to compromise himself, but his naked desire ultimately renders him complicit. Neither the kind of operator who could engineer his own accession nor the kind of ideologue who would turn it down on principle, Remick is a perfect company stooge.</p><p>Many of the show’s episodes revolve around Remick’s frustrated desire to be liked by the artistic talent at the studio. His admiration for filmmakers is sincere, but the precise weakness of character that got him the job also makes it nearly impossible for the creatives to respect him. He gets dressed down by Martin Scorsese, annoys <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001631/?ref_=ttfc_cst_21" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Sarah Polley</a> to the point of rage, gets into a shouting match with <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000165/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Ron Howard</a>, and chases <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1312575/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Olivia Wilde</a> down a hill. The viewer’s knowledge that his intentions are pure, if loosely held, makes it all the more striking when we see him behave like the asshole all these filmmakers perceive him to be. That he loves the medium so much makes his sins against it so much worse.</p><p>Admittedly, this sounds like no fun, and, in ways the show fully intends, it isn’t. <em>The Studio</em>’s baseline pace is a kind of harried trot. There’s a mood of desperation as Remick races to find a missing film reel, or his junior executives Sal (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0054697/?ref_=ttfc_cst_3" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Ike Barinholtz</a>) and Quinn (<a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3681769/?ref_=ttfc_cst_4" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Chase Sui Wonders</a>) jockey for position in the company hierarchy. In this vision of Hollywood, nobody is cool; everybody is a petty child in constant need of reassurance. The hallways are slick with flop sweat.</p><p>What reliably lightens the mood, amid all this dread, is <em>The Studio</em>’s packed <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt23649128/fullcredits/?ref_=tt_cst_sm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">roster</a> of perfectly pitched recurring and guest actors. After several years now as a leading lady, Kathryn Hahn returns here to her origin as a scene-stealing supporting player, turning every frame that features her clotheshorse marketing director into a riot; O’Hara delivers a vintage performance as a batty, wise, deposed studio head; <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1107001/?ref_=ttfc_cst_23" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Anthony Mackie</a>, out of his mechanized Captain America suit, reminds us of the charm and impeccable comic timing that got him cast in that role in the first place; Polley plays herself playing herself, as a director only just willing to kiss some asses to get her dreams on film.</p><p>The problem with <em>The Studio</em> as a comedy is that it isn’t terribly funny. The atmosphere of the show is frenetic from a plotting standpoint—Remick always finds himself in some quickly escalating scrape—but tightly controlled from a filmmaking standpoint. And its mannered, madcap choreography leaves little room for the kinds of punched-up jokecraft that anchored Rogen’s earlier work with Goldberg. Films like <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0829482/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Superbad</a> </em>and <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910936/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Pineapple Express</a></em> were hilarious romps, not only because of the wild abandon of their capers, but because improvisatory alchemy sharpened every joke to a fine point. In <em>The Studio,</em> much of the comedy relies upon us as viewers to sustain a chuckle at broadly humorous scenarios; we won’t be powered through by explosive one-liners. I remember smiling during several episodes of this show, but I don’t remember a single punch line, and that’s rare for a Rogen/Goldberg production.</p><p>It’s also a problem, because the show is neither uncommonly profound about its subject nor an uproariously great time. <em>The Studio</em>’s critique of its industry is no doubt accurate, but in its broadness, and in its heartfelt affection for its soulless suits, it can feel more like gentle in-group teasing than genuine polemic. In the elaborate network of homage, Rogen and his team have lost the defining elements of their comedic sensibility. Absent the romantic melancholy of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000985/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">James L. Brooks</a>, the ­Dipshit Cassavetes realism of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0031976/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Judd Apatow</a>, or the film bro auteurism of <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0352778/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bill Hader</a>, Rogen seems hemmed in, rather than liberated, by his ambition. <em>The Studio</em> is a perfectly engaging, even a frequently entertaining, television show that makes the viewer neither think too much nor laugh too hard.</p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p>The main formal feature of <em>The Studio</em> is the long take, also known as The Oner. In such a shot, the camera moves freely, either following a character or exploring a space, and it does so for far longer than the viewer might otherwise expect. It is both a conspicuous stunt and a fantastical achievement, as stunning to watch unfold as it is logistically difficult to achieve. There are lots of <a href="https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/best-long-one-take-shots-movies/atonement-james-mcavoy-2007-focus-features-courtesy-everett-collection-2/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">famous examples</a> of these types of shots in film, nearly all of which are referenced in <em>The Studio:</em> the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhmYY5ZMXOY" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">opening scene</a> of <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052311/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Touch of Evil</a>,</em> the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0epB5Z6ijpk" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">opening scene</a> of <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105151/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Player</a>,</em> the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mcXBP-1fduY" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Copacabana scene</a> in <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099685/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Goodfellas</a>,</em> and on and on (literally). When a director pulls off a complicated oner, it’s usually because they’re trying to say something, to prove something, or both. It’s a thesis statement and a trick.</p><p><em>The Studio</em> is sometimes about long takes, but it’s also mostly composed of them, too. The show’s second episode, called “The Oner,” which is about Polley trying to film her own long-take masterpiece, is itself shot in one take (or what cleverly appears to be one). But the long take is the show’s dominant aesthetic through-out. The camera bustles and barges into the studio offices along with Remick, imbuing every comic foible with palpable tension.</p><p>The reason the long takes in <em>The Studio</em> stand out, though, is not that they are particularly impressive or particularly meaningful, but because their presence reinforces something counterintuitively true: <em>The Studio</em> is a true-blue TV show. While the long take is a staple, even a hallmark, of cinema, the kind of badge of honor a director can wear forever, in this show, it’s often called upon to enhance <em>The Studio</em>’s distinctly televisual features. For instance, a majority of the long takes are classic network “walk and talks” that veteran TV directors made iconic in <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0165961/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Sports Night</a></em> and <em><a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0200276/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The West Wing</a>.</em> Tracking a fast-talking conversation through the halls of a workplace, the walk and talk was developed to lend dynamism to exposition that might otherwise feel staid or locked in place. Rogen et al. use this technique to the same effect, but, because the characters walk and talk through seemingly endless long takes, that dynamism begins to feel like risk and recklessness. The same goes for the <em>Curb</em>-style episodic plot constructions. Each cantilevered cringe encounter feels exponentially more mortifying without the relief of a cut. It’s an ingenious idea, however nauseating it can sometimes be to watch, to supercharge these flashy if utilitarian TV techniques by cross-breeding them with a flashy, not particularly utilitarian film one.</p><p><em>The Studio</em> is a series about the crippling, stultifying risk aversion of the contemporary film industry, made with one of the few creative blank checks left floating around in the contemporary TV industry. Filmed at the intersection of two self-annihilating industries, it’s a show about the spectacle of seeing how long they can keep this one impossibly long shot going. </p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194725/seth-rogan-studio-apple-hollywood-ode-prestige-tv</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194725</guid><category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category><category><![CDATA[June 2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Culture]]></category><category><![CDATA[TV]]></category><category><![CDATA[Seth Rogen]]></category><category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category><category><![CDATA[Entertainment]]></category><category><![CDATA[Business]]></category><category><![CDATA[Books & The Arts]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Phillip Maciak]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5d2c386e2c48ef281d62249737f6dd141f417bdf.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5d2c386e2c48ef281d62249737f6dd141f417bdf.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>COURTESY OF APPLE TV+</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Odd New Tariff Musings Show How Badly He’s Screwing His Voters]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Thanks to President Trump’s policies, a confluence of events is set to absolutely clobber rural America. First there’s Trump’s trade war. On Tuesday, Trump unleashed a <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919791248388268265" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">bizarre set of ramblings</a> that indicated he’s fine with letting it drag on forever, our exporters be damned. Meanwhile,<span> there are <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/business/soy-farmers-struggle-with-trade-war.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">new signs</a> that farmers in Trump country are already getting hammered. The House GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid will likely pose a </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2025/03/08/medicaid-cuts-rural-hospitals/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">massive problem</a><span> for rural hospitals. And big GOP cuts to food stamps will also inflict pain on rural areas. We talked to Matt Hildreth, </span><span>executive director of </span><a href="http://ruralorganizing.org" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">RuralOrganizing.org</a> <span>and a veteran Democratic operative in rural areas. He explains why the perfect storm of policies bearing down on rural America is unusual, and reflects on whether his party will be able to translate this into real gains</span><b>—</b>or whether this will once again prove a chimera.<b> </b><span>Listen to this episode <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>. A transcript is <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194947/transcript-trump-tariff-tirade-reveals-badly-he-screwing-maga" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194944/trump-odd-new-tariff-musings-show-badly-he-screwing-voters</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194944</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Rural America]]></category><category><![CDATA[Daily Blast]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Wed, 07 May 2025 09:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/44f31e2c30bc28222636396bb98306966d2136b6.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/44f31e2c30bc28222636396bb98306966d2136b6.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pam Bondi Hops on Board Trump’s Alcatraz Delusion Train]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The president’s Make Alcatraz Great Again pitch just got more fuel from one of his subordinates.</p><p><span>Attorney General Pam Bondi </span><a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1919830956502048813" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">suggested</a><span> Tuesday that alleged international drug traffickers, “if convicted,” should stay in American prisons—“maybe Alcatraz,” she added with a smile.</span></p><p><span>Other Republicans have similarly scrambled to make Trump’s bizarre Sunday evening order to “</span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114452025916969327" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">rebuild, and reopen Alcatraz</a><span>” sound like a bright idea. Senator Eric Schmitt </span><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3logpyfdbyx2r" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">vaunted</a><span> the plan as “very smart,” and Senator Markwayne Mullin </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/05/trump-alcatraz-prison-reopening/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">endorsed</a><span> it on X, while Representative Mary E. Miller got to work itemizing the most important Alcatraz inductees: “The first person to be sent to Alcatraz should be Anthony Fauci,” she </span><a href="https://x.com/RepMaryMiller/status/1919434918007914626" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span>, referring to the pandemic-era director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.</span></p><p><span>In reality, there is practically zero possibility that the famed prison would reopen to house more prisoners. Alcatraz—which operated for just 29 years—was shut down in 1963, in part due to how expensive it was to operate. Data from the federal </span><a href="https://www.bop.gov/about/history/alcatraz.jsp" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Bureau of Prisons</a><span> shows that housing inmates at Alcatraz was three times more expensive than at other jails thanks to the fact that it was located on a remote island, requiring all of its resources, such as water, food, and fuel, to be shipped from the mainland.</span></p><p><span>“An estimated $3-5 million was needed just for restoration and maintenance work to keep the prison open. That figure did not include daily operating costs,” according to the Bureau of Prisons.</span></p><p><span>John Martini, an expert on Alcatraz history who previously served as an Alcatraz park ranger, told the </span><a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/alcatraz-trump-prison-reopen-reaction-20309745.php" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>San Francisco Chronicle</i></a><span> Sunday that the building is “totally inoperable” and has no running water or sewage.</span></p><p><span>“It was falling apart and needed huge amounts of reconstruction, and that would have only brought it up to 1963 code,” Martini told the paper, noting that the building would need to be torn down and completely rebuilt to house prisoners again. “It was always an extremely expensive place to run.”</span></p><p><span>Meanwhile, the tourism centering around the former island prison rakes in $60 million in annual revenue, hosting 1.6 million annual visitors, according to the </span><a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/central-to-visitor-access-stabilizing-1939-alcatraz-island-wharf.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">National Park Service</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Bondi must not have known this before throwing her weight behind Trump’s idea. Speaking with </span><a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/video/6372383564112" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Fox Business</a><span> Monday, the attorney general said she was “all for” putting prisoners back in Alcatraz, claiming that it would provide “cost savings.”</span></p><p><span>But Trump’s rationale for keeping the prison open apparently has nothing to do with nickels and dimes. Speaking with reporters at the White House Monday, Trump claimed an uncharacteristically picturesque attachment to the facility.</span></p><p><span>“It sort of represents something that’s both horrible and beautiful and strong and miserable, weak. It’s got a lot of qualities that are interesting,” he </span><a href="https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3logxhlnnfu2r?ref_src=embed&amp;ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fiframe.nbcnews.com%252Fqnm6FDx" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">sentimentalized</a><span>.</span></p><p>Speaking of pictures, Trump’s mysterious sudden fascination with the prison <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/trump-reopen-alcatraz-escape-from-alcatraz-pbs-1236207822/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">suspiciously coincided</a> with weekend reruns of a 46-year-old Clint Eastwood movie, <i>Escape From Alcatraz</i>, on WLRN—a PBS affiliate that services the area around Mar-a-Lago. Go figure.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194941/donald-trump-pam-bondi-alcatraz</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194941</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pam Bondi]]></category><category><![CDATA[attorney general]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Crime]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigrants]]></category><category><![CDATA[Undocumented Immigrants]]></category><category><![CDATA[Prison]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alcatraz]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 21:01:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/64a7f0bf1e9f968f56e79dd894bd5923aed2b54f.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/64a7f0bf1e9f968f56e79dd894bd5923aed2b54f.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Oliver Contreras/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Transgender Rights Are in Grave Peril at the Supreme Court]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration’s ban on transgender soldiers in the military <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194927/supreme-court-trump-transgender-military-ban" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">to take effect on Tuesday</a>, sending an ominous signal about the future of transgender rights in general in the United States.</span></p><p>Justice Department officials asked the justices last month to override a temporary injunction issued by a federal judge in Seattle that had blocked the ban from taking effect. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals had previously declined to lift the injunction. <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/050625zr_6j37.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Tuesday’s order</a> by the high court cleared the legal barriers to enacting the new policy.</p><p>Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson indicated that they had dissented from the Supreme Court’s unsigned decision but did not write separately to explain their reasoning. The majority’s order also came without a written opinion, as is common with cases heard on the court’s emergency “shadow” docket.</p><p>The court’s decision will affect <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/27/us/politics/trans-troops-pentagon-figures.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">around 4,200 active-duty soldiers</a> who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Beyond the military implications, the justices’ intervention also bodes ill for other ongoing cases that could affect transgender Americans, most notably a pending ruling on whether the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause forbids discrimination on the basis of gender identity.</p><p>The case, <i>United States v. Schilling,</i> stems from an executive order signed by Trump one week after he took office in January. It directed the secretary of defense to develop a policy that would exclude future transgender recruits and remove active-duty transgender soldiers from military service. Trump’s order claimed, among other things, that transgender Americans lack the honor necessary to serve in the U.S. armed forces.</p><p>“Beyond the hormonal and surgical medical interventions involved, adoption of a gender identity inconsistent with an individual’s sex conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one’s personal life,” the executive order argued. “A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.”</p><p>Transgender Americans have actually been serving their country honorably for some time. The Obama administration allowed transgender Americans to serve openly in the armed forces in 2016. In 2018, then–Secretary of Defense James Mattis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/24/us/politics/trump-transgender-military.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">issued a policy memo</a> that disqualified soldiers who had undergone gender transition from military service, claiming it would affect unit cohesion. At the same time, it included a variety of exceptions that allowed other transgender soldiers to stay in the armed forces. President Joe Biden repealed Mattis’s memo within days of taking office in 2021, restoring the Obama-era policy landscape.</p><p>After Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued his own policy guidance to enact Trump’s order in February, a group of transgender soldiers sued the Department of Defense to block it from taking effect. Their service records contradict the White House’s assertions that transgender Americans are inherently unfit for military service. The seven named plaintiffs in the case noted that they have been “awarded over 70 medals for their honorable service and distinctive performance—in many instances after coming out as transgender” and accumulated more than a century of collective military service.</p><p>“<span>Thousands of transgender people serve in our nation’s armed forces,” they told the justices, in a brief earlier this month. “They have served—and continue to serve—with honor and distinction. It is a statistical certainty that transgender servicemembers have sacrificed their lives defending our country. Yet [Executive Order] 14183 and the Hegseth Policy seek to purge all of them from our military solely because they are transgender.”</span></p><p><span>Antidiscrimination protections for transgender Americans in federal law are inconsistent at best. In 2020, the Supreme Court held that language in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination “on the basis of sex,” also covered sexual orientation and gender identity. Congressional Democrats </span><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2021/02/18/equality-act-introduced/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">introduced</a><span> the Equality Act to extend those protections to other federal antidiscrimination laws but failed to pass it before Republicans retook the House in the 2022 midterms.</span></p><p>This decision comes at a precarious time, as the future of constitutional protections for transgender Americans are also an open question at the moment. Under the Supreme Court’s precedents, the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection clause requires a higher standard of judicial scrutiny when the government enacts laws and policies that affect certain groups of people. Race, religion, and national origin are among the categories considered “suspect classifications,” meaning that laws discriminating along those lines receive the strictest possible scrutiny from judges. Laws that discriminate on the basis of a person’s sex also receive a heightened form of scrutiny.</p><p>The Supreme Court is currently debating whether to treat gender identity as a suspect classification, in the pending case <i>United States v. Skrmetti</i>. (More on that one later.) But even when a group is not considered a suspect classification, it can still receive a measure of constitutional protection from laws that target it. In the 1996 <i>Romer v. Evans,</i> the justices overturned a Colorado constitutional amendment that denied any antidiscrimination protections to gay, lesbian, or transgender residents.</p><p>Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the court, held that the justices need not apply a heightened level of judicial scrutiny because the amendment could not survive even under rational-basis scrutiny, one of the easiest thresholds for the government to meet. “Its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects; it lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests,” he wrote in his majority opinion.</p><p>A federal district court in Washington state ultimately sided with the soldiers in <i>Schilling, </i>who asserted a range of equal-protection and due-process violations. Judge Benjamin Settle largely agreed with them by echoing Kennedy’s reasoning in <i>Romer.</i> He noted that the government had provided no evidence to support its claims that transgender soldiers, as a whole, “lack honesty, humility, and integrity,” and instead told the courts that they must automatically defer to the Pentagon’s judgment.</p><p><span>“Because the military has operated smoothly for four years under the [Biden-era policy], any claimed hardship it may face in the meantime pales in comparison to the hardships imposed on transgender service members and otherwise qualified transgender accession candidates, tipping the balance of hardships sharply toward plaintiffs,” Settle wrote. “There can be few matters of greater public interest in this country than protecting the constitutional rights of its citizens.”</span></p><p>Other federal judges have castigated the Trump administration for its flimsy rationales for imposing a ban. Judge Ana Reyes, a federal district court judge in the District of Columbia who heard a similar legal challenge, <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/192797/trump-legal-war-federal-courts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">criticized</a> the Justice Department’s lawyers in March for not reading the academic studies cited by Hegseth’s memo, which she described as “cherry-picked” and Hegseth’s portrayal of them as “misleading.”</p><p>Since the Supreme Court did not explain its reasoning in blocking Settle’s injunction, one can only speculate about its rationale. But it does not require much of a logical leap to conclude that things look dire for transgender Americans at the high court. One factor that courts use when considering a preliminary injunction is whether one is necessary to preserve the status quo while litigation continues. Denying it in this case will allow the Pentagon to discharge transgender soldiers from the military—precisely the kind of “irreparable harm” that injunctions are designed to prevent.</p><p>Courts also look at which side is most likely to succeed on the merits of their case when issuing a preliminary injunction. That look is not necessarily conclusive for a case’s outcome, but it can be indicative. In <i>Schilling</i>, a majority of the justices apparently do not think the transgender plaintiffs are likely to prevail on their equal-protection and due-process claims. That would track with the justices’ signals in oral arguments in <i>Skrmetti</i> last December, where they <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/189040/supreme-court-rule-transgender-rights" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">appeared ready to rule</a> that laws targeting gender identity are not eligible for heightened scrutiny under the equal protection clause.</p><p>It is telling that the justices did not wait until <i>Skrmetti</i> to release Tuesday’s orders, even though it could be directly implicated by the results of that case. That outcome makes the most sense if the court is already aware that its pending ruling in <i>Skrmetti</i> will not affect how the lower courts approach <i>Schilling</i>. After all, if the court were on the verge of delivering a landmark ruling in favor of transgender rights in <i>Skrmetti</i>, it almost certainly would not have allowed the ban to go into effect in <i>Schilling</i>.</p><p>Finally, it is notable that even<i> Romer</i>’s reasoning—that a law or policy violates the equal protection clause when it serves no rational purpose other than to harm a specific group of Americans—apparently held no weight among the justices. The Trump administration has made no secret of its animus toward transgender Americans. At least some of the justices <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/supreme-court-analysis-sam-alito-homophobia.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">appear to openly share</a> that hostility. The Supreme Court’s silent allowance is an ominous sign for its own future actions—and a green light to the Trump administration when it comes to discriminating against transgender Americans elsewhere.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194936/transgender-troops-rights-supreme-court</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194936</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Law]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court]]></category><category><![CDATA[Supreme Court Watch]]></category><category><![CDATA[LGBTQ]]></category><category><![CDATA[LGBTQ Rights]]></category><category><![CDATA[Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination]]></category><category><![CDATA[Transgender Rights]]></category><category><![CDATA[Anti-Transgender Discrimination]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pete Hegseth]]></category><category><![CDATA[The Insecurity Complex]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Ford]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 20:43:43 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/7bb1327d022ef00aca883e5abf3eb06231f05a17.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/7bb1327d022ef00aca883e5abf3eb06231f05a17.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
  20. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Team Scrambles for New Reason to Keep Abrego Garcia Deported]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>The Trump administration isn’t rushing to bring home Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland resident whom the White House mistakenly shipped to El Salvador on the basis of his alleged involvement with the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13. Instead, they seem intent on finding enough evidence to keep him out of the country for good.</p><p><span>The Justice Department has been quietly investigating a 2022 Tennessee traffic stop involving Abrego Garcia, and recently spoke with an Alabama inmate—Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes—who it believed had potential connections to the 29-year-old, </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/justice-department-investigating-2022-abrego-garcia-traffic-stop/story?id=121492776" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ABC News</a><span> reported Tuesday.</span></p><p><span>At the time of the traffic violation, Abrego Garcia was driving Hernandez-Reyes’s car. Abrego Garcia was ticketed for speeding. He had eight passengers in the vehicle and told officers that they had been working construction in Missouri, according to ABC.</span></p><p><span>Hernandez-Reyes reportedly told investigators that he operated a “taxi service” in Baltimore. Sources familiar with the conversation told ABC that Hernandez-Reyes said he met Abrego Garcia in 2015 and sometimes hired Abrego Garcia to transport undocumented immigrants from Texas to other areas of the country.</span></p><p><span>It’s not clear if Hernandez-Reyes’s testimony is enough to charge Abrego Garcia, but what is plain is that the White House is not prioritizing his return home.</span></p><p><span>“The interview of Hernandez-Reyes, however, appears to be a new and aggressive step in the government’s efforts to gather potentially incriminating information about Abrego Garcia’s background–even as it resists calls for him to be provided typical protections to respond to such accusations through the American legal system,” according to ABC News.</span></p><p><span>Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally more than a decade ago but was allowed to remain in the U.S. and evade deportation back to El Salvador when an immigration judge ruled in October 2019 that a return to his home country could expose him to violence or persecution from a local gang, Barrio 18. Abrego Garcia was never charged with a crime, and the </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194010/kilmar-abrego-garcia-case-trump-deported-error-another-hit" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">only alleged tie</a><span> between the construction worker and MS-13 stemmed from a 2019 report of a </span><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2025/04/17/maryland-police-officer-report-abrego-garcia-prison/83141240007/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">since-fired</a><span> Maryland police officer. The report also did not definitively link Abrego-Garcia to the gang.</span></p><p><span>Donald Trump himself appears confused about Abrego Garcia’s connection to Latin American gangs. The president entered into a </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/full-transcript-trumps-exclusive-100-days-broadcast-interview/story?id=121291672" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">terse exchange</a><span> with ABC News last week when he insisted that a doctored photo of supposed gang tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real. Experts say the photo was </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194671/stephen-miller-donald-trump-kilmar-abrego-garcia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">obviously photoshopped</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Trump administration officials acknowledged in court filings last month that Abrego Garcia’s forced exit from the country was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court has ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S., but the White House has since contested that ruling, arguing that Abrego Garcia “will never live” in America again.</span></p><p><span>Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has derided the idea that he would return Abrego Garcia to the U.S. as “preposterous,” protesting that he does not have the authority to remove “terrorists” from prisons.</span></p><p><span>Despite that, Trump has claimed that he does actually have the power to bring Abrego Garcia home—but that he won’t do so.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194934/donald-trump-team-reason-not-return-kilmar-abrego-garcia</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194934</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mass Deportations]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kilmar Abrego Garcia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Justice]]></category><category><![CDATA[Traffic]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 19:34:05 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/460af04919c987d619c9bb57542986db0b42f157.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/460af04919c987d619c9bb57542986db0b42f157.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Calling a Child the N-Word Made One Woman $700,000]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>What happens when you call a 5-year-old Black child a racial slur in public? If you’re Shiloh Hendrix of Rochester, Minnesota, you apparently get rewarded with more than $700,000 in donations.<br></p><p>In case you missed it, a video went viral last week showing Hendrix, a white woman, admitting to using the <i>n</i>-word against a young Black child at a public park. When confronted by Sharmake Omar, the man recording the video, she doubled down, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/03/playground-racial-slurs-video-fundraiser/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">saying</a>, “If that’s what he’s going to act like,” as if racist slurs are an appropriate response to a child allegedly going through a diaper bag.</p><p>A grown woman used a racist slur against a 5-year-old, defended it on camera, and now has raised nearly three-quarters of a million dollars on GiveSendGo. This is the most grotesque example I’ve seen recently of what some people call “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/nov/06/forget-virtue-signalling-vice-signalling-is-now-all-the-rage-and-the-tories-are-experts" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">vice signaling</a>”—the conservative movement’s twisted mirror image of virtue signaling, where people donate money specifically to show support for reprehensible behavior.</p><p>On her GiveSendGo page, which initially sought a modest $20,000 before rapidly increasing to a goal of $1 million, <a href="https://people.com/shiloh-hendrix-woman-who-appeared-to-hurl-racist-slur-at-child-gets-over-600k-fundraising-page-11727908" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Hendrix claims</a> she’s in a “dire situation” because her personal information has been leaked online. “I fear that we must relocate,” <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/woman-who-called-kid-n-word-raises-over-300000-relocate-2067470" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">she wrote</a>, claiming she and her family have received threats.</p><p>But here’s the thing: There’s no evidence that her address has actually been “leaked,” as she claims. And even if it had been—which to be clear, I’m not advocating for—the appropriate response would be filing a police report, not raising nearly a million dollars. A new apartment’s security deposit and first month’s rent isn’t a $700,000 expense, last I checked.</p><p>This isn’t just about one racist woman in Minnesota. It’s about a pattern that’s played out repeatedly in recent years—a sort of patronage system for bigotry that’s become embedded in conservative fundraising culture.</p><p>We saw similar dynamics with Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny, and others who’ve become right-wing causes célèbres. The playbook is simple: Do or say something awful, get rightfully called out for it, claim victimhood, and watch the money roll in from people who want to show their support for what you did while pretending it’s about “free speech” or “fighting cancel culture.”</p><p>As <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/shiloh-hendrix-minnesota-mother-slur-givesendgo-rcna204891" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">MSNBC’s Ja’han Jones</a> put it, “The idea of doling out money, particularly in an economy as unstable as ours, to support a woman accused of blatant racism may seem absurd to some—and I certainly won’t argue against that framing—but the fact that conservatives are rallying around her speaks to the victimhood mindset that’s gripping today’s Republican Party.”</p><p><a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/she-called-a-five-year-old-the-n-word-crowdfunding" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Will Sommer of The Bulwark</a> noted that some conservatives are trying to draw parallels to a fundraiser for Karmelo Anthony, a Black student charged with murder in the stabbing death of Austin Metcalf. White nationalist Nick Fuentes specifically referenced Anthony’s fundraiser, tweeting, “So I don’t want to hear ONE WORD about the Shiloh Hendrix fundraiser. Either everybody gets to be tribal or nobody does.”</p><p>It’s a false equivalence, of course. Anthony’s case involves a serious criminal charge that will require substantial legal defense. Hendrix, on the other hand, is fundraising simply because she got caught being racist on camera.</p><p>What’s particularly disturbing about this phenomenon is how it creates financial incentives for public displays of bigotry. When calling a 5-year-old the <i>n</i>-word can net you $700,000, we’ve created a perverse reward system.</p><p>GiveSendGo, the self-described “Christian” crowdfunding platform hosting Hendrix’s campaign, has become the go-to for these sorts of fundraisers. The site eventually had to restrict comments on Hendrix’s page due to the flood of overtly racist remarks from donors, but it’s still happily processing the payments. Its founder, Jacob Wells, offered the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/05/03/playground-racial-slurs-video-fundraiser/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">weakest possible response</a>, saying the company “does not endorse or condone the personal views or actions of individual campaign organizers or their supporters, nor do we control the motivations of donors.”</p><p>Just taking a cut of the proceeds while shrugging off responsibility, I guess.</p><p>Some conservative figures have expressed discomfort with the whole situation. Anti-transgender activist Riley Gaines, for instance, questioned, “What’s the goal in rewarding this?” and Aaron Prager worried that supporting Hendrix would only reinforce perceptions that Republicans are racist.</p><p>But these voices of reason are drowned out by the likes of YouTuber Tim Pool, who framed the fundraiser’s success as evidence that “white guilt” is “largely over.” <i>Red Scare</i> podcast host Anna Khachiyan justified supporting Hendrix “on principle” to fight against what she called “gay race communism.” (Yes, really.)</p><p>This isn’t just about one incident in Rochester, Minnesota, though the local implications are serious.</p><p>The broader issue is how social media and crowdfunding platforms have created ecosystems where being publicly racist can be financially rewarding. Where doing the wrong thing isn’t just excused but celebrated and incentivized.</p><p>Ultimately, Hendrix’s windfall represents something deeply broken in our politics and culture. It shows how easily prejudice can be monetized; how readily people will open their wallets to support behavior they know is wrong but secretly endorse.</p><p>It’s not about free speech or fighting cancel culture or any of the other fig leaves being used to justify this. It’s about a woman who called a 5-year-old autistic child a racial slur, doubled down when confronted, and is now being rewarded with more money than many Americans will see in a decade.</p><p>If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, I don’t know what would.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194925/shiloh-hendrix-right-ring-fundraising</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194925</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Shiloh Hendrix]]></category><category><![CDATA[Racism]]></category><category><![CDATA[GiveSendGo]]></category><category><![CDATA[Far Right]]></category><category><![CDATA[Media]]></category><category><![CDATA[media criticism]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Parker Molloy]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 19:13:46 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1dfef9e77f5b95fd2cb667a78982626bb4229d81.png?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1dfef9e77f5b95fd2cb667a78982626bb4229d81.png?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Shiloh Hendrix, as pictured on her GiveSendGo page</media:description><media:credit>Shiloh Hendrix/GiveSendGo</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Kristi Noem Gets Brutal Fact-Check on Deporting U.S. Citizens]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was brutally called out Tuesday after she claimed the United States was not deporting its own citizens. </p><p><span>During a hearing before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Representative Lauren Underwood of Illinois </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919766815976173651" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">asked</a><span> Noem if she believed that the U.S. government had the authority to deport American citizens.</span></p><p><span>“No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens,” Noem said. </span></p><p><span>“OK great, I’m so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority, because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen,” Underwood said. “And as I know everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date.”</span></p><p><span>“No, they haven’t. That is not true,” Noem replied. </span></p><p><span>“Secretary Noem, that was not a question,” Underwood said. </span></p><p><span>Last month, the Trump administration </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/03/politics/what-happens-with-us-citizen-children-caught-up-in-trumps-deportation-push" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">deported</a><span> three American children to Honduras, alongside their immigrant mothers. Attorneys for the mothers have said that they wanted their children to remain in the U.S., but authorities have said the opposite. Border czar Tom Homan insisted that the children hadn’t technically been deported, and that the mothers had made a “parental decision” to remain with their children. </span></p><p><span>“If we didn’t do it the story today would be, ‘Trump administration separating families again,’” Homan </span><a href="https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=fe0681e78f8d491395b785fd5160b14f" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span>. “No, we’re keeping families together.”</span></p><p>While the official number of deportees who are actually American citizens is unknown, <i>The Washington Post</i> documented at least <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/2025/05/02/citizens-caught-trump-immigration-crackdown/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">12 instances</a> in which U.S. citizens had been swept up in Trump’s immigration crackdown. A DHS spokesperson told the outlet, “We don’t have data to provide you on the deportation of U.S. citizens because we don’t deport U.S. citizens.”</p><p><span>Crucially, as the Trump administration continues to conduct deportations while </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194875/stephen-miller-definition-due-process-immigration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">denying due process</a><span> to detainees, it’s likely the number of U.S. citizens wrongly removed will only continue to rise. </span></p><p><span>Underwood also asked Noem if she believed that the Constitution guaranteed due process to everyone in America. Noem repeatedly refused to give a “yes” or “no” answer. </span></p><p><span>“Ma’m, I am trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department, and you as its leader should be able to give us a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer, because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed,” Underwood said. </span></p><p><span>The Trump administration has continued to fight judges, flouting a Supreme Court </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/193924/deportation-supreme-court-habeas-ruling" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ruling</a><span> requiring the government to allow detainees “to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” As a result of Donald Trump’s mounting threats against the judiciary, at least </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194803/judges-rule-against-trump-target-maga-threats" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">11 federal judges</a><span> and their families have been threatened and harassed since they ruled against Trump on issues of deportations, federal funding, and his war on “wokeness.” </span></p><p><span>Trump has </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193969/donald-trump-asked-attorney-general-deport-us-citizens" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">instructed</a><span> Attorney General Pam Bondi to look into the legality of deporting prisoners who are U.S. citizens to foreign prisons, as he did with 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador in March. He even said he’d help fund the construction of new prisons overseas. Even though Trump’s scheme to outsource the incarceration of American prisoners has absolutely no basis in U.S. law, Bondi </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194003/donald-trump-attorney-general-key-question-deport-citizens" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">refused</a><span> to give answers about the (il)legality of the idea. </span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194931/kristi-noem-brutal-fact-check-deportations-us-citizens</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194931</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Homeland Security]]></category><category><![CDATA[Kristi Noem]]></category><category><![CDATA[House of Representatives]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mass Deportations]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[u.s. citizens]]></category><category><![CDATA[due process]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 19:10:52 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/386337b136ee09799cbe5a3cc1dc750226702e75.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/386337b136ee09799cbe5a3cc1dc750226702e75.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Supreme Court Lets Trump Move Forward on Cruel Trans Military Ban]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>The Supreme Court is allowing Trump to temporarily move forward with his ban on transgender people serving in the military. The court’s three liberal Justices—Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson—all dissented, according to the </span><a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/050625zr_6j37.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>brief order</span></a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Trump’s ban “generally disqualifies from military service individuals who have gender dysphoria or have undergone medical interventions for gender dysphoria,” according to Solicitor General D. John Sauer.</span></p><p><span>Trans people are a hindrance to “</span><span>military effectiveness and lethality,” Sauer wrote in a filing to the high court’s justices.</span></p><p><span>Litigation over the constitutionality of the ban is still ongoing. A Bush-appointed judge in a lower court blocked Trump’s executive order banning transgender troops in the military, which he signed on his first day in office.</span></p><p><span>Judge Benjamin Settle in Washington issued a nationwide injunction in March, ruling there’s “no claim and no evidence that [plaintiff] is now, or ever was, a detriment to her unit’s cohesion, or to the military’s lethality or readiness, or that she is mentally or physically unable to continue her service.”</span></p><p><span>Trump’s ban—and the claims that trans people are worse at operating lethal machinery simply because they are trans—is nonsensical. This is purely a culture-war item, a bone to throw at a base that’s been obsessed with transgender people for years now.</span></p><p><span><i>This story has been updated.</i></span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194927/supreme-court-trump-transgender-military-ban</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194927</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Transgender]]></category><category><![CDATA[justice]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><category><![CDATA[Military]]></category><category><![CDATA[LGBTQ]]></category><category><![CDATA[Discrimination]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 18:42:19 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/82db76208fa04c4a8529516d05d0ed1ad4cfa928.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/82db76208fa04c4a8529516d05d0ed1ad4cfa928.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[GOP Senator Tanks Controversial Trump Nominee for D.C. Prosecutor]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Senator Thom Tillis is likely just tanked Trump’s nominee for U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia.</span></p><p><span>Tillis is opposing Trump’s pick, Ed Martin—who has been described as a “</span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/17/us/politics/ed-martin-us-attorney-washington.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>far-right election denier</span></a><span>” and a “</span><a href="https://abovethelaw.com/2025/02/turning-over-u-s-attorneys-office-to-conspiracy-theorist-working-out-as-expected/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>conspiracy theorist</span></a><span>”—on the grounds of his legal and political support for January 6 insurrectionists.</span></p><p><span>“Mr. Martin did a good job of explaining the one area that I think he’s probably right, that there were some people that were over-prosecuted, but there were some [200 to 300 of them] that should have never gotten a pardon,” Tillis told reporters Tuesday, adding that he met Martin the night before. </span></p><p><span>“If Mr. Martin were being put forth as a U.S. attorney for any district except the district where January 6 happened, the protest happened, I’d probably support him, but not in this district.… Whether it’s 30 days or three years is debatable, but I have no tolerance for anybody who entered the building on January 6.”</span></p><p><span>Martin did his part to spread misinformation to help Trump on January 6, </span><a href="https://x.com/EagleEdMartin/status/1346907779492143106" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>writing on X</span></a><span>: “</span><span>I’m at the Capitol right now. Abd [<i>sic</i>] I was at the POTUS speech earlier. Rowdy crowd but nothing out of hand. Ignore the</span><a href="https://x.com/hashtag/FakeNews?src=hashtag_click" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span> #FakeNews</span></a><span>.” Now this is coming back to bite him. </span></p><p><span>Tillis’s lone “no” vote among Republicans is likely enough to cause Martin’s nomination to die in the Senate Judiciary Committee. The U.S. attorney to D.C. serves as both the legal representative of the federal government and the local district attorney.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194923/republican-senator-tillis-trump-nominee-ed-martin-dc-prosecutor</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194923</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Thom Tillis]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ed Martin]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[justice]]></category><category><![CDATA[Washington D.c.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[green politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[North Carolina]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 17:59:42 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/be51a40e1c02306f4b875561f9fc89b7699fad3b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/be51a40e1c02306f4b875561f9fc89b7699fad3b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>Senator Thom Tillis</media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Why MTG’s Own Party Is Terrified of Her Next Move]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>At least one thing has Republicans in D.C. on edge: Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s quest for power.</p><p><span>Now that Governor Brian Kemp is officially out of the race, the fervent MAGA acolyte is </span><a href="https://archive.ph/o/i2hBF/https://ajcdigital.slack.com/archives/D07F61J2ZL7/p1746525069341079" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">rumored</a><span> to be one of a dozen conservatives considering a run for a Georgia Senate seat.&nbsp;</span></p><p><span>But moving Greene to the upper chamber isn’t the concern—instead, Republicans worry that her conspiratorial, shock-and-awe style isn’t enough to win over Georgia voters beyond her district, believing that a Greene run could “alienate independent voters and disillusioned Republicans,” the </span><a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/politically-georgia/republicans-fret-about-a-possible-marjorie-taylor-greene-run-for-senate/SVMTQDJGMVG7TKSWYXEHP7EZM4/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>Atlanta Journal-Constitution</i></a><span> reported Tuesday.</span></p><p>In a hypothetical matchup conducted by the paper, Senator Jon Ossoff led Greene by double digits, crushing her with a 17-point lead. That’s in large part thanks to Greene’s lack of popularity with independents in the state,&nbsp; according to <i>AJC</i>. Just 25 percent of independents in the mock poll backed a Greene Senate bid—a significant drop from Kemp’s 46 percent favorability with the same bloc.</p><p><span>Conservatives had flagged Kemp as the party’s best bet to snag what is believed to be the Democrats’ </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/us/politics/brian-kemp-senate-georgia-jon-ossoff.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">most vulnerable</a><span> Senate seat. Instead, his exit announcement has given Ossoff—and the Democratic Party—a remarkable lift.</span></p><p>“It’s possible that Greene could win a Republican primary,” Republican consultant Mark Rountree told <i>AJC.</i> “But it’s unlikely she could win a general election, and conservatives would once again have blown an opportunity to defeat Democrats in Georgia.”</p><p><span>If the </span><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/marjorie-taylor-greene-penned-conspiracy-theory-laser-beam-space-started-deadly-2018" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Jewish space lasers</a><span> conspiracy theorist does decide to run, her platform would likely be nearly identical to Donald Trump’s. On Monday, Greene lamented that conservatives in both chambers weren’t completely on board with Trump’s plan, and that party members should simply “stick with the agenda” and “ignore the people” trying to do something different.</span></p><p><span>But nothing is set in stone right now.</span></p><p><span>“The polling shows that I can win the governor’s primary or the Senate primary or continue to represent my district,” Greene said to NewsNation Monday about a prospective bid. “That’s a choice that I can make. And I’ll give it some thought.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194914/mtg-republicans-terrified-run-senate</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194914</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Marjorie Taylor Greene]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Brian Kemp]]></category><category><![CDATA[Georgia]]></category><category><![CDATA[House of Representatives]]></category><category><![CDATA[Senate]]></category><category><![CDATA[Democratic Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Jon Ossoff]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 17:23:27 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/726254735cf81e380a5872885e9b2513747097fe.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/726254735cf81e380a5872885e9b2513747097fe.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Accidentally Admits He Hasn’t Made Any Trade Deals]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that the U.S. doesn’t “have to sign” any trade deals, inadvertently admitting that his administration hasn’t made any progress during the 90-day pause on his <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194072/federal-reserve-jerome-powell-warning-consequences-donald-trump-tariffs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">disastrous tariffs</a>. </p><p><span>During a tense meeting to discuss tariffs with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the president attempted to move the goal posts on actually completing any agreements with foreign countries.</span></p><p><span>“Everyone says, ‘When, when, when, are you going to sign deals?’ We don’t have to sign deals!” Trump said. </span></p><p><span>“We don’t have to sign deals. They have to sign deals with us. They want a piece of our market, we don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market. They want a piece of our market,” Trump rambled.</span></p><p><span>The president’s unwieldy statements downplaying the importance of the trade deals seemed to be cushioning the likelihood that negotiations would ultimately fail. Trump’s remarks also revealed that his administration has yet to complete a single trade deal. </span></p><p><span>Last month, Trump claimed to have already struck </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194421/donald-trump-claim-200-trade-deals" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">200 trade agreements</a><span> with foreign countries, a remark so outlandish it sent members of his administration </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194467/donald-trump-scott-bessent-brooke-rollins-trade-deals" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">scrambling</a><span> to make it make sense. (There are also only 195 countries in the world.)</span></p><p><span>Instead of pledging to sign deals, Trump presented his own plan Tuesday. The president claimed that “at some point over the next two weeks,” he intended to sit down with members of his Cabinet and offer individualized deals to each country seeking tariff relief. </span></p><p><span>“We’re gonna say, ‘Here’s what this country—what we want, and congratulations we have a deal!’ And they’ll either say ‘Great,’ and they’ll start shopping, or they’ll say, ‘Not good, we’re not gonna do it,’” Trump said. </span></p><p><span>Trump claimed that the offers would include “very fair numbers,” but that they might also include other requests. He also said that his administration would be open to adjusting the deals based on how the countries responded. </span></p><p><span>“And then you people will say, ‘Oh it’s so chaotic,’ no, we’re flexible,” Trump said, referring to the press.</span></p><p><span>In any case, Trump continued to emphasize that his goal wasn’t actually to make deals, just to put out offers. “In some cases we’ll sign some deals, it’s much less important than what I’m talking about,” he said. He warned that in one day, he could present 100 offers, but “they don’t have to sign.”</span></p><p><span>Still, Trump said he wanted countries to “pay for the privilege of being able to shop in the United States of America.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194920/donald-trump-admits-no-trade-deals</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194920</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[The Art of the Deal]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade deal]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 16:58:49 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/0938cdb47f9525623abab9b943e75d2a9e1cfbd5.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/0938cdb47f9525623abab9b943e75d2a9e1cfbd5.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Aaron Schwartz/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Canada PM Gives Trump Middle Finger on Wild In-Person Statehood Pitch]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney declared in the White House Tuesday that Canada would not submit to U.S. ownership. Donald Trump, however, wouldn’t back down.</p><p><span>“As you know from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale,” Carney said. “Having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign, it’s not for sale. It won’t be for sale ever.”</span></p><p><span>“Never say never,” Trump said, telling reporters that only time would tell, while seated inches away from the Canadian leader. “I had many things that people said were not doable but ended up being doable.”</span></p><p><span>Carney won Canada’s top leadership post in April in large part due to his staunch position against Trump’s growing threats to annex the country.</span></p><p><span>In the months leading up to the election, Canada’s Liberal Party was believed to be on its deathbed. But that all changed with Trump’s tariff talk, which radically ramped up anti-American sentiment amongst Canadian voters, alongside Trump’s bizarre and public ambitions to occupy Canada.</span></p><p><span>Trump has actively aggressed U.S. relations with Canada since his first term. Recent rhetoric about annexing Canada to become America’s “fifty-first state” has not played well with the Canadian people or its leaders, causing some residents of the country to candidly dub Trump an “</span><a href="https://x.com/acyn/status/1917046828702568621?s=46&amp;t=CIY7fYccGpYmPpiAuYI8fQ%20X%20(formerly%20Twitter)X%20(formerly%20Twitter)" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">asshole</a><span>.”</span></p><p>Responding to reporters Tuesday, Trump said there was nothing that Carney could say or do to lift his tariffs on Canada. “It’s just the way it is,” Trump said, when asked why he wouldn’t budge.</p><p><span>Carney appeared disturbed by the admission, interjecting to respond to several of Trump’s prior points.</span></p><p><span>“Respectfully, Canadians’ view on this is not going to change, on the fifty-first state,” Carney said as Trump grimaced beside him. “Secondly, we are the largest client of the United States. In the totality of all the goods, we are the largest state. We have a tremendous auto sector between the two of us.</span></p><p><span>“You know, 50 percent of the cars that come from Canada is American, that’s unlike anywhere else in the world,” the prime minister continued, gesturing to the reporter who inquired about tariffs. “This will take some time and some discussions, and that’s why we’re here, to have those discussions, and that’s represented by who’s sitting around the table.”</span></p><p><span>Trump was quick to respond. “See, the conflict this—and this is very friendly; this is not going to be like, ‘We had another little blow up with somebody else,’ that was a much different—this is a very friendly conversation,” he said. “We want to make our own cars, we don’t really want cars from Canada.</span></p><p><span>“At some point, it won’t make economic sense for Canada to make those cars,” Trump continued, claiming that the U.S. would make its own steel. “We really don’t want Canadian steel, and we don’t want Canadian aluminium and various other things because we want to be able to do it ourself.”</span></p><p><span>Trump then continued to lie about the two country’s trade situation, equating Canada’s trade deficits with the U.S. with “subsidies.” Trade deficits are indicators that America’s neighbors are purchasing more of its goods than they sell in return. In 2023, that differential—or deficit—was nearly $41 billion with Canada, according to the </span><a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/current_press_release/ft900.pdf#page=47" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">U.S. Census Bureau</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Shortly afterward, Trump abruptly ended the meeting, refusing to allow Carney another opportunity to respond to the American press.</span></p><p><i>This story has been updated.</i></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194917/donald-trump-canada-pm-might-take-over-country</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194917</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Canada]]></category><category><![CDATA[Prime Minister]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mark Carney]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Statehood]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 16:34:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e8d6636ba040f1f7b041d49b04a0589a895c14a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/3e8d6636ba040f1f7b041d49b04a0589a895c14a.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Trashes Canada Just Minutes Before Prime Minister Visits]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump made a wild post Tuesday slamming Canada, just moments before Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney arrived at the White House for a tense meeting to discuss tariffs.</p><p><span>“I look forward to meeting the new Prime Minister of Canada, Mark Carney. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple TRUTH—Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 Billion Dollars [<i>sic</i>] a year, in addition to giving them FREE Military Protection, and many other things?” Trump </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114461575736468146" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote</a><span> in a post at 11:23 a.m. on Truth Social.</span></p><p><span>“We don’t need their Cars, we don’t need their Energy, we don’t need their Lumber, we don’t need ANYTHING they have, other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need EVERYTHING from us! The Prime Minister will be arriving shortly and that will be, most likely, my only question of consequence.”</span></p><p><span>Carney arrived at the White House at noon, according to </span><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-administration-carney-tariffs-immigration-doge-live-updates-rcna204660/rcrd78535?canonicalCard=true" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">NBC News</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Trump’s meeting with Carney will be their first in-person interaction since Trump announced he would impose 25 percent tariffs on U.S. exports to Canada. The U.S. president has facilitated a rapid breakdown in relations between the neighboring countries, continually criticizing Canada’s dependence on the U.S. and repeatedly joking that it should become the fifty-first state. </span></p><p><span>Carney </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193581/canada-prime-minister-donald-trump-tariffs-economic-dominance" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">responded</a><span> to Trump’s aggression in April, proclaiming that Canada’s old relationship with the U.S. was “over” and that the country would begin seeking new trading partners. </span></p><p><span>After Carney’s Liberal Party won Canada’s national election late last month, he started out his new term by </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194531/canada-prime-minister-mark-carney-election-donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">dissing</a><span> Trump.</span></p><p><span>“As I have been warning for months, America wants our land, our resources, our water, our country. But these are not idle threats. President Trump is trying to break us so that America can own us,” Carney said. “That will never ever happen.”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194915/donald-trump-trashes-canada-prime-minister-visit</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194915</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Canada]]></category><category><![CDATA[Prime Minister]]></category><category><![CDATA[Mark Carney]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[deficit]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade War]]></category><category><![CDATA[Social Media]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 16:24:08 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ae1173d880304ca604e773c3e0d308c173446057.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ae1173d880304ca604e773c3e0d308c173446057.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Alex Wong/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Law Firm Deals Aren’t Working Out How He Hoped]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>President Donald Trump may have thought he was getting a legal war chest by threatening several major law firms—but it seems the famed dealmaker didn’t know exactly what he was signing on to. </p><p><span>In a series of letters to Representative Jamie Raskin and Senator Richard Blumenthal obtained by </span><a href="https://www.thebulwark.com/p/brian-kemp-dream-post-trump-gop-republican-party-senate-governor-georgia" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">The Bulwark</a><span>, several major law firms that cut deals with the Trump administration provided details on the terms of their agreements—and it’s looking like the president may have gotten the short end of the stick.</span></p><p><span>While the firms had reportedly agreed to provide millions of dollars of pro bono work for specific causes, many asserted that they had total authority over the selection of their clients.</span></p><p><span>Allen Overy Shearman Sterling LLP wrote that its agreement to provide $125 million in pro bono work “does not call for, or permit, the administration or any other person or entity to determine what clients and matters the Firm takes on, whether they be pro bono matters or otherwise.” The firm said it had simply agreed to provide free legal services across “three specified areas,” including assisting veterans, ensuring fairness in the justice system, and combating antisemitism. </span></p><p><span>The Bulwark reported that other firms’ deals had similar stakes. Latham &amp; Watkins wrote that it “maintains its complete independence as to the clients and matters the firm takes on,” while Simpson Thacher &amp; Bartlett wrote that their agreement with the government did not “dictate or restrict what pro bono matters we will take on moving forward.” Cadwalader, Wickersham &amp; Taft wrote that they “have not and will not restrict our pro bono activities or the positions we take on behalf of those clients.”</span></p><p><span>Nine law firms have signed deals with the president, promising nearly $1 billion in pro bono work. </span></p><p><span>Meanwhile, Trump has projected a far grander view of what he could call on firms to do for him. The president </span><a href="https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-trade-war-04-08-25/card/trump-floats-enlisting-law-firms-for-pro-bono-help-with-tariffs-NXwch72Zjc35w1cKIYsD" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">claimed</a><span> that the major law firms who struck deals stood at the ready to help him make deals with foreign countries to alleviate the weight of his sweeping reciprocal tariffs. He also floated the idea of using his battalion of attorneys to help the coal industry. In the White House, discussions had begun about deploying lawyers at DOGE and the DOJ, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><i>The New York Times</i></a><span> reported last month.</span></p><p><span>Other firms seem to be using a different legalese to prevent themselves from being strong-armed by Trump. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher &amp; Flom LLP executive partner Jeremy London </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/16/us/politics/law-firms-deals-trump.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">said</a><span> that the firm had agreed to provide $100 million in pro bono work that “the president and Skadden both support,” which could potentially provide an out should the firm be remanded to work on a specific cause.</span></p><p><span>Last month, Raskin and Blumenthal penned letters to five major law firms they accused of being “complicit in efforts to undermine the rule of law” and demanded information on the deals. </span></p><p><span>A group of Democratic lawmakers sent another </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194376/democrats-warn-law-firms-caved-donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">series of letters</a><span> to law firms last month, warning that the Trump administration’s scheme to use “coercive and illegal measures” to blackmail firms could potentially violate federal laws against bribery, defrauding the public, and even racketeering. </span></p><p><span>If the firms have truly maintained authority over selecting which clients they represent, and which matters they take up, then some of these concerns may be moot. However, the lawmakers raised the possibility that by signing a deal with Trump, the firms were opening themselves up to extortion, asking what each firm planned to do to “ensure that the administration will not be able to require more from the firm beyond the provisions currently in place?”</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194912/donald-trump-law-firm-deals-falling-apart</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194912</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[law firms]]></category><category><![CDATA[Skadden Arps]]></category><category><![CDATA[The Art of the Deal]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 15:59:29 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/83d755aa10e10457c791f03193932836970f682b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/83d755aa10e10457c791f03193932836970f682b.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Alex Wroblewski/AFP/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump Treasury Secretary Crashes When Asked Easy Question on Tariffs]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stumbled and deflected when </span><a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919764721449808358" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>asked</span></a><span> a simple, direct question about tariffs at a congressional hearing on Tuesday.</span></p><p><span>“Who pays tariffs, Mr. Secretary?” asked Representative Mark Pocan.</span></p><p><span>Bessent began to ramble on indirectly, frustrating Pocan. “Who pays tariffs? Mr. Secretary, please, the question is very simply, Who pays tariffs? Mr. Chairman, I’d like him to answer that question; he wants to answer other questions.”</span></p><p><span>Bessent replied shakily. “Well, Congressman, if the congressman, if the exporters, the … uh, dislike tariffs so much, why wouldn’t they? If, I think what you’re trying to get me to say—”</span></p><p><span>“Did you remember the question? I’m not sure you did,” Pocan said. “Who pays tariffs?”</span></p><p><span>“It’s a very complicated question.” </span><span><br></span></p><p><span>“Reclaiming my time. People pay tariffs, right?”</span></p><p><span>“No, no, no,” Bessent muttered, while Pocan reclaimed his time.</span></p><p><span>“You clearly aren’t gonna answer, I’m not gonna waste my time having you go ‘uh uh uh uh.’”</span></p><p><span> The Trump administration is doing everything in its power to gaslight Americans into thinking that the tariffs will be positive; that we’ll just have some short-term discomfort before everything is cheap and made in America again. That couldn’t be further from the </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194072/federal-reserve-jerome-powell-warning-consequences-donald-trump-tariffs" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>truth</span></a><span>.</span></p><blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">a stammering Bessent refuses to answer Mark Pocan's question about who pays tariffs <a href="https://t.co/ah1uaiW6gg" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">pic.twitter.com/ah1uaiW6gg</a></p>— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1919764721449808358?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">May 6, 2025</a></blockquote></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194911/trump-treasury-secretary-bessent-question-tariffs-costs</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194911</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of the Treasury]]></category><category><![CDATA[Trade]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Scott Bessent]]></category><category><![CDATA[Congress]]></category><category><![CDATA[House of Representatives]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 15:28:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/c906cab23cbcf05106f136f8d8e3df1550d0e506.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/c906cab23cbcf05106f136f8d8e3df1550d0e506.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Own Words Come Back to Bite Him in Brutal Ruling]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Donald Trump’s braggadocio just upended one of his executive orders.</p><p><span>U.S. Judge Beryl Howell issued a permanent injunction against the president Friday night, ruling that his executive order targeting the law firm Perkins Coie was not only unconstitutional but amounted to an “unprecedented attack” on the pillars of the judicial system.</span></p><p><span>“No American President has ever before issued executive orders like the one at issue in this lawsuit targeting a prominent law firm with adverse actions to be executed by all Executive branch agencies but, in purpose and effect, this action draws from a playbook as old as Shakespeare, who penned the phrase: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers,’” Howell wrote in a scathing </span><a href="https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.278290/gov.uscourts.dcd.278290.185.0.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">102-page opinion</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Trump signed an </span><a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/addressing-risks-from-perkins-coie-llp/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">executive order</a><span> against Perkins Coie in March, revoking the firm’s security clearances and their access to government buildings, and nixing government contracts with the firm, in part because they represented Hillary Clinton during her 2016 campaign.</span></p><p><span>But Howell dismantled the order, based on Trump’s own claims about forcing other law firms into submission. During an April 8 speech cited in Howell’s ruling, Trump peacocked that “lots of law firms have been signing up with Trump.”</span></p><p><span>“$100 million, another $100 million, for damages that they’ve done,” Trump said at the time. But they give you $100 million, and then they announce, ‘We have done nothing wrong.’ And I agree, they’ve done nothing wrong. But what the hell, they’ve given me a lot of money considering they’ve done nothing wrong.”</span></p><p><span>Also at fault was deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, whose comments about another law firm—Susman Godfrey—included flaunting that the administration had effectively finagled upward of a billion dollars in “free legal work” thanks to the executive branch’s pressure campaign.</span></p><p><span>Trump’s and Miller’s comments effectively proved that the president had singled firms out for “retribution” based on whether they were willing to cut a deal with the White House.</span></p><p><span>Perkins Coie said in a statement that the decision “affirms core constitutional freedoms all Americans hold dear, including free speech, due process, and the right to select counsel without the fear of retribution.”</span></p><p><span>It is unclear if the Trump administration plans to appeal the ruling.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194908/donald-trump-words-bite-ruling-law-firm</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194908</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[law firms]]></category><category><![CDATA[courts]]></category><category><![CDATA[judge]]></category><category><![CDATA[Beryl Howell]]></category><category><![CDATA[Perkins Coie]]></category><category><![CDATA[Hillary Clinton]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2016]]></category><category><![CDATA[revenge]]></category><category><![CDATA[Stephen Miller]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 14:40:35 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a9f6a3e4e5615da6c763e254985052dbd7befbb5.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/a9f6a3e4e5615da6c763e254985052dbd7befbb5.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Annabelle Gordon/The Washington Post/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Own Intel Agencies Destroy His Main Defense on Deportations]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>U.S. spy agencies do not believe that the Venezuelan government has authority over the Tren de Aragua gang—a development that directly contradicts Trump’s justification for his illegal, extrajudicial deportations of Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. </span></p><p><span>“While Venezuela’s permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States,” a memo from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence read, according to<i> </i></span><i><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/us/trump-venezuela-gang-ties-spy-memo.html?partner=slack&amp;smid=sl-share" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>The New York Times</span></a></i><span><i>.</i></span></p><p><span>Trump has been claiming the exact opposite since he invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in March to summarily round up Venezuelan immigrants and deport them without basic due process. </span></p><p><span>Trump first invoked the wartime powers act in March, </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192813/trump-japanese-internment-law-deport-venezuelans" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>asserting</span></a><span> that “this is a time of war. Because Biden allowed millions of people, many of them criminals, many of them at the highest level.… Other nations emptied their jails into the United States, it’s an invasion. These are criminals, many many criminals … murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords. People from mental institutions. That’s an invasion.” He also said Tren de Aragua gang members were committing crimes in the United States “at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”</span></p><p><span>The memo directly delegitimizes his argument, further confirming that Trump is operating well outside the bounds of his executive powers.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194905/intel-memo-trump-defense-deportations-venezuela-gang-el-salvador</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194905</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Immigration]]></category><category><![CDATA[Deportation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Alien Enemies Act of 1798]]></category><category><![CDATA[Venezuela]]></category><category><![CDATA[Tren de Aragua]]></category><category><![CDATA[War]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 14:39:23 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/cc1de856023b5c4dd98bdb34ca03a5141381cbf8.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/cc1de856023b5c4dd98bdb34ca03a5141381cbf8.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[RFK Jr. Wildly Defends Terrifying Idea for Registry of Autistic People]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is still advocating for the creation of a disease registry that tracks people diagnosed with autism.</p><p>During an appearance Monday night on Fox News’s <i>The Ingraham Angle,</i> Kennedy tried to explain why the government would need to collate citizens’ private medical records into a massive database—a plan that was <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194245/rfk-jr-disease-registry-track-autistic-people" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">announced</a> last month by the National Institutes of Health, and then reportedly <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2025/04/24/no-new-autism-registry-hhs-says-contradicting-nih-director-jay-bhattacharya-claim/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">abandoned</a> two days later after severe backlash. </p><p><span>“One in every 31 kids today. In California, which has the best database, it’s one in every 20 children, one in every 12.5 boys,” Kennedy claimed. </span></p><p><span>“This is an existential disease,” Kennedy continued. “Every other disease like this has a registry so that—and its voluntary—public health officials can monitor the numbers. It’s not private information, it’s not information that is gonna go out to other agencies, it’s a voluntary system where your privacy is protected. Just a system for keeping track of a disease that is now becoming debilitating to the American public.”</span></p><p><span>A </span>Centers for Disease Control and Prevention <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/74/ss/ss7402a1.htm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">report</a><span> published last month found that one in 31 children aged 8 years old has been identified with autism spectrum disorder. Days before that report had come out, Donald Trump was already </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/193872/donald-trump-theory-autism-vaccines" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">spouting</a><span> those exact numbers before claiming that autism could potentially be caused by vaccines. </span></p><p><span>While the CDC has documented an increase in diagnoses from 2000, when only one in 150 children born in 1992 was diagnosed with autism, experts have attributed some of the rise in diagnoses to a widening definition of autism spectrum disorder, which encapsulates a broader range of symptoms, as well as people being more aware of and willing to get diagnostic testing, according to </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Health/rfk-jr-questioned-rising-autism-rates-experts-gets/story?id=118648320" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">ABC News</a><span>. </span></p><p><span>Under Kennedy’s guidance, the CDC has </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/192488/rfk-jr-cdc-study-vaccines-autism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">launched</a><span> a study on connections between vaccines and autism, despite extensive research debunking the conspiracy theory.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194909/robert-f-kennedy-jr-defends-registry-autistic-people</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194909</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Robert F. Kennedy Jr.]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[Department of Health and Human Services]]></category><category><![CDATA[Public Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[autism]]></category><category><![CDATA[Register]]></category><category><![CDATA[vaccines]]></category><category><![CDATA[Anti-vaccine movement]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Edith Olmsted]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 14:28:02 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/363f98334e5dc9da13281fd74e2646466af66f60.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/363f98334e5dc9da13281fd74e2646466af66f60.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Pete Hegseth Made an Order on Ukraine Trump Knew Nothing About]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>Pete Hegseth canceled military aid flights to Ukraine just a week into Trump’s second term without the president even knowing, </span><a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/order-by-hegseth-cancel-ukraine-weapons-caught-white-house-off-guard-2025-05-06/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>according to</span></a><span> </span><span>Reuters</span><span>.</span></p><p><span>The ignominious defense secretary called off 11 Ukraine-bound planes carrying artillery, shells, and other weapons. Trump was completely unaware that Hegseth had made the call, as the </span><span>TRANSCOM records simply show a verbal order from “SECDEF”—the secretary of defense—stopping aid flights to Ukraine until February 5.</span></p><p><span>The order initially sparked mass confusion within the administration, as national security officials in the White House, the Pentagon, and the State Department couldn’t figure out who ordered the halt in flights.</span></p><p><span>This is yet another example of the chaos and lack of cohesion that Hegseth has brought to the Pentagon from day one. But the administration is treating the communication failure like business as usual.</span></p><p><span>“Negotiating an end to the Russia-Ukraine War has been a complex and fluid situation. We are not going to detail every conversation among top administration officials throughout the process,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told Reuters. “The bottom line is the war is much closer to an end today than it was when President Trump took office.”</span></p><p><span>The move also aligns with the growing anti–European Union, anti-Ukraine, pro-isolationist views that Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance hold, as evident in their infamous Signalgate group chat messages.</span></p><p><span>“This is consistent with the administration’s policy to move fast, break things, and sort it out later,” said retired Marine and defense expert Mark Cancian. “That is their managing philosophy.” </span></p><p><span>This is one of multiple </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194182/pete-hegseth-reaction-second-signal-group-chat" target="_blank" rel="nofollow"><span>reports</span></a><span> on the internal disarray at Hegeth’s Defense Department.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/post/194902/pete-hegseth-shocked-trump-order-cancel-ukraine-weapons</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194902</guid><category><![CDATA[Breaking News]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[United States]]></category><category><![CDATA[Pete Hegseth]]></category><category><![CDATA[Foreign Policy]]></category><category><![CDATA[Ukraine]]></category><category><![CDATA[Russia]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republicans]]></category><category><![CDATA[Republican Party]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Malcolm Ferguson]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 13:07:53 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5d9da5813fc41a03f6674f4ebaebcb562624a8c3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/5d9da5813fc41a03f6674f4ebaebcb562624a8c3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Andrew Harnik/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Transcript: Trump Humiliated by Karl Rove’s Brutal On-Air Poll Warning]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><i>The following is a lightly edited transcript of the May 6 episode of the</i> Daily Blast<i> podcast. Listen to it <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-daily-blast-with-greg-sargent/id1728152109" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">here</a>.</i></p><p><b>Greg Sargent: </b>This is <i>The Daily Blast </i>from <i>The New Repub</i><i>lic, </i>produced and presented by the DSR network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.</p><p>A whole lot is happening for President Trump on the immigration front. Trump just rolled out <a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/194865/trump-pay-undocumented-immigrants-self-deport-trap" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a plan to pay</a> undocumented immigrants $1,000 to self-deport. And Trump just made some <a href="https://x.com/atrupar/status/1919190628761477578" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">dark comments</a> about the Supreme Court, suggesting that the justices had better rule his way on this issue or they’ll face the wrath of the people—meaning the wrath of MAGA. All this comes as Karl Rove, of all people, just hit Trump with a <a href="https://x.com/Acyn/status/1919224773269393605" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">surprising warning</a> on this issue. <span>Rove said Trump is undermining his own standing on immigration. And the way Rove made this point captures something essential about this moment, so we’re going to unpack all of this with Lakshya Jain, co-founder of the election site <a href="https://split-ticket.org/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Split Ticket</a>. Lakshya, good to have you on.</span></p><p><span><b>Lakshya Jain: </b>Thanks for having me.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Let’s start with what President Trump said about the Supreme Court. To catch people up, the courts have said in several cases now that migrants he’s deporting are entitled to due process, </span><span>and that the administration must facilitate the return of wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Trump seems angry about all this. Here’s what he said to reporters while on a plane.</span></p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><b>Donald Trump (audio voiceover): </b><i>The people elected me in a landslide with every single.... We won every swing state. We won everything there is to win by big numbers. Not only swing state, we won the popular vote by millions of votes. They elected me. This was a number-one issue. And now we have judges that are radicalized and they’re crazy. Because they want us to have ... if you believe this, they want us to have a trial for every person that came in illegally into our country. So they come into our country illegally, and then we’re supposed to take weeks, I guess, and months to have a trial on every criminal that we have, murderers all over the country? I don’t think the Supreme Court will stand for that, and I can’t believe it. Because you know what? If they do, we’re not going to have a country.</i></p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><b>Sargent: </b>Now this is nonsense. Trump and Republicans won’t spend more to beef up immigration courts, which would process migrants faster. But that aside, Lakshya, Trump and Stephen Miller are getting more vocal about their real position, which is to end due process entirely for large numbers of migrants. This is a warning to the high court—that they’ll face backlash if they don’t side with Trump on ending due process. They seem to think this is a winner for them. I think it’s not. What are your thoughts, Lakshya?</p><p><b>Jain: </b>It’s funny that <span>Trump is choosing this, of all the issues, because if you had to pick an issue on which the Democratic Party is just not trusted at all by the American public, it would be immigration. That is an issue where Democrats are far and away way less trusted historically and recently than the Republican Party. Yet this is the one particular case where if you have to fight about immigration as a Democrat, this is probably the case to do it because the specifics of it </span><span>are really bad for Trump. And it’s not due to anything about Abrego Garcia as a person. It has to do with the fact that a lot of American voters just believe that the Trump administration is overstepping their constitutional authority here, even as they may give him the benefit of the doubt slightly on immigration. This is one case where even that approach gets pushed and they’re like, <i>Hold on. No, this is a little bit too far for us.</i></span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Yeah, and it actually is broader than just Abrego Garcia, right? I think it goes to due process more generally for migrants. Remember, they’re trying to end due process for as many migrants as they can. We had this<i> Post </i>poll recently that found that a majority of independents—52 percent—opposed sending undocumented immigrants who are suspected criminals to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing. That’s the key: without a hearing. Lakshya, that tells me there’s a pretty decent chance <span>that for the middle of the country, due process matters. What do you think?</span></p><p><span><b>Jain: </b>It does. It plainly does. I think we’ve seen this over and again. It’s just one of those things where the specifics of the issue are really bad for the Republicans, because denying people due process has never gone down well with the American public. And I think that’s a large part of the reason why Trump, when he raises the salience of this ... well, </span><span>he’s already getting slammed by the American public on stuff to do with economics, stuff to do with taxes. He’s already losing their trust. This is not something where they’re giving him really favorable marks, partly because they’re mad at everything else, and partly because he’s picking the wrong angle to fight on.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>I think that’s exactly right. And this brings me to Karl Rove. Listen to what he said over the weekend.</span></p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><b>Karl Rove (audio voiceover): </b><i>... G</i><i>oing out there and saying, for example, </i>This guy from Maryland, I don’t know whether he’s a good guy or a bad guy. I don’t know if he’s a gang member or not.<i> But the fact is, bring him back to the United States, lay out the facts in a court of law, and get it done. It does no good to let that thing go out there for four or five weeks and eat away at the president’s approval on immigration. Take a look at the difference between approval ratings on the border, where he is in positive territory by a good margin, <span>and handling the issue of immigration, which includes these other things. It’s significantly less, and he’s upside down.</span></i></p><div class="section-break"><br></div><p><span><b>Sargent: </b></span><span>Lakshya,</span><span> we should note that it’s a bit rich for Karl Rove to be talking about renditions this way, given George W. Bush’s record. But still, there are a couple of really important things here. First, note that Rove says the Abrego Garcia thing is eating away at Trump’s broader approval on immigration. It’s extremely rare that you hear a Republican say something like that. What do you think of it?</span></p><p><b>Jain: </b>Yeah, I think Karl Rove is correct here, which is crazy for me as a Democrat to say. I never thought I’d be saying I agree with Karl Rove, but he is correct that Trump’s handling of the Garcia case is actually eroding his standing on the immigration issue. And it’s gotten to the point where he’s actually, I would say, lost his edge on immigration entirely. If you look at the numbers, if you look at the data—whether it’s the <i>Times</i>/Siena poll, whether it’s Blue Rose’s data—everywhere shows <span>Donald Trump is not popular in immigration any longer. And I think a large part of the reason is because he’s insistent on fighting the angle that migrants do not deserve due process. And that, people start to get a little bit queasy with. They may not like migrants being here, but they also don’t like the attitude of deporting them without a hearing. That seems to be a little bit of an overstep.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>And that is really the Trump–Stephen Miller position right now. To go back to what he said about the Supreme Court, h</span><span>e’s basically putting the Supreme Court on notice, <i>If you make us give due process to migrants, well, you’re not going to have a country anymore.</i> Which is his coded way of saying the wrath of MAGA is going to be unleashed, because for MAGA, it’s all about preserving the country from these invaders and so forth, right? Here Trump is essentially saying straight out, <i>This is our issue. We’re going to fight to the death on the insistence that we don’t have to give due process to migrants.</i></span></p><p><b>Jain: </b>Yeah, and I think some of this comes down to the veil of invincibility that the Trump administration has been operating with. A lot of it has come down to: They say, <i>Well, we won the election so we can do what we want. </i>And if anything showed us from 2016 to 2020 and then 2020 to 2024, it’s that the American public forgives a lot. And while they may be, in a sense, right that the American public is inclined to forgive a lot, that’s usually <span>not something that’s true if the economy is going poorly. Once that happens, you start losing all types of battles everywhere. Because voters, when they’re mad, and [it’s] <i>you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.</i> This is also part of why you see Kamala Harris’s declining numbers throughout the campaign. It’s partly because of this: Voters are mad at Biden and they were like, <i>Well, we’re not going to give her the benefit of the doubt on anything.</i></span></p><p><span>Again, the Trump–Steven Miller angle here, </span><span>which is to go and deport the migrants, don’t give them due process and everything—if you had a roaring stock market and a great economy, you may be able to get away with that. But when people don’t have confidence about how you’re running the country, that’s going to extend elsewhere. </span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Yeah, I think that’s exactly right. I want to highlight one other thing from Rove from that clip we listened to, because it’s key the distinction he made between the border and immigration as separate issues. </span><span>Trump is all about trying to conflate these two, so everything is always about the border, the border, the border, we have to have a secure border. But it’s absolutely right that immigration is its own issue in the sense that it turns on questions like, What do we do about undocumented immigrants in this country right now? What do we do about the Dreamers? What do we do about Abrego Garcia, </span><span>and so forth?</span></p><p><span>That’s an area where Trump is not necessarily that strong because his extremism suddenly bleeds through very rapidly and becomes clear to, I think, the middle of the country once the specifics start, like the deportations. We’re seeing more and more news accounts of people who are getting deported wrongly or getting literally kidnapped off the streets. </span><span>So for Karl Rove to say, <i>Mr. President, you’re conflating the border and immigration and you’re losing on immigration,</i> is really striking to me.</span></p><p><span><b>Jain: </b>It is. It’s very striking to me too. The border as an issue is basically the Republicans’ old reliable; it’s their old faithful. If you start losing the trust advantage on that, you’re losing one of the issues that propelled the party </span><span>to the White House again, that gave them control of Congress, and that actually powered a lot of their gains in the southern border region of the U.S. So it’s worrying if you’re the Republican Party and you’re suddenly seeing that your president is losing the issue advantage on this type of thing. How are you going to hold on to all of your new voters?</span></p><p>And Greg, if I can point out one thing, it’s that raising the salience and conflating the border issue with immigration as a whole is a big mistake for Trump. What we’re seeing and what we saw is that a lot of immigrants actually swung to Trump in this last election. We had a <i>Post</i> <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/04/29/trump-immigrant-voters-split-ticket/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">piece</a> that talked all about it where we said that it’s really striking how in New York, New Jersey, and all these other areas, Trump made a lot of gains with immigrant voters, which you would not have expected.<i> </i>But if you’re starting to conflate the border with stripping migrants of due process and deporting even legal immigrants, that’s where you start to wonder,<i> Is that the angle to pick? Is that the battle to fight? </i>Because now you’re picking something which could actually eat into your support with regular immigrant voters. And that might be a problem for the Trump administration politically speaking, too, because those are new voters that aren’t really super attached to them.</p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Exactly. Voted on cost of living.</span></p><p><span><b>Jain: </b>Exactly. </span><span>Exactly.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>Well, I want to read some more data out from </span><span>G. Elliott Morris</span><span>, who’s a data analyst as well, and I want to try to get at a particular thing about this issue—which is that the polling on deportations is really, really screwed up. We often get public polls which do something along the lines of saying, <i>OK, do you think undocumented immigrants should be deported, yes or no?</i> And you often get a majority saying yes, because w</span><span>hat is being offered to them is a choice of law being enforced versus law not being enforced. But when you start digging into the specifics, you get something different. </span><span>G. Elliott Morris</span><span> found that on the question of deporting undocumented immigrants who have lived in the U.S. for more than 10 years, 37 points underwater; deporting undocumented immigrants who are parents of U.S. citizens by birth, 36 points underwater; d</span><span>eporting undocumented immigrants who have not broken laws in the U.S. except for immigration laws, 18 points underwater; and so forth.</span></p><p><span>So what you have is as soon as the complexities of the situation for many of these undocumented people is explained to voters, they suddenly aren’t so sure they want them removed. I think this is a problem in our public opinion discourse, don’t you, L</span><span>akshya</span><span>? We have to get beyond this </span><span>tendency of public pollsters to just say, <i>Do you want illegals removed, yes or no?</i></span></p><p><span><b>Jain: </b>Well, I’ve said for a long time, Greg, I think issue polling is in many ways broken in America. And that’s not to say that positions that are unpopular are popular, or that positions that are popular are actually unpopular. I think issue polling is in general broken in the way it’s conducted, broken in the way we use it.</span></p><p><span>Let me start with this. When you have a poll that says something like, </span><span><i>Do you support blank?</i> it’s important to remember that the public hasn’t really been given a presentation of what’s going on as either side would frame it. So you have to be really careful in how you interpret it. Secondly, the devil is often in the details. For an issue like immigration, of course you’re going to get people saying, <i>Yeah, I want you to deport all illegals.</i> That’s obviously what the voters are going to say. </span><span>Now, if you use that to say, <i>Well, that’s that, voters have spoken, they want this,</i> but you don’t look into the specifics, you’ll find that that actually opens up a lot of political trap doors and a lot of issues where neither side should be ignoring them.</span></p><p><span>And I think the Garcia case is a perfect example. Because had you polled right after the election, <i>Do you think migrants with suspected gang ties should be sent to a </i></span><span><i>foreign prison, even if it circumvents due process? </i>I think you could probably get better poll numbers than what you’re getting right now. The thing is, when it’s actually implemented and people realize what’s going on, they react very differently, because issue polling cannot really properly capture the attitudes of the public until it’s properly elevated into the mainstream—unless you’re very careful with how you phrase it. </span><span>Abortion is another great example of this, by the way.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>It’s interesting you say that because Democrats are very willing, obviously, to engage on abortion, but they’re still pretty skittish about engaging on immigration. And to your point, on these specifics, Democrats could be turning this issue into a winner for themselves by engaging on the specifics, along the lines of how majorities oppose deportations for people in the U.S. more than 10 years or who haven’t broken any laws other than immigration laws. </span><span>These are places where Democrats can pick fights and win. Abrego Garcia, they can pick fights and win.</span></p><p><span>It seems to me, Lakshya—and I want to ask you about this—that if they don’t do that, they actually play into Trump’s hands in the following way. Trump and Stephen Miller, again, want everything to be about the border. They want everything to be about crime, right? <i>We need unshackled power; otherwise, we won’t be able to get public safety under control.</i> If Democrats don’t engage on the issue, they let </span><span>Stephen Miller and Trump frame it that way. Whereas when they point out the specific things that Trump is doing, they make it harder for Trump and Stephen Miller to move the subject to something that favors them. What do you think? Am I right or wrong about that?</span></p><p><span><b>Jain: </b>I’ve said a combination of things on this. Trump’s approval on cost of living is like minus 15, which is actually atrocious. And Trump’s approval, </span><span>when it comes to immigration, is like minus three or minus four. And so salience-wise, if you want to talk about an issue and <i>only</i> one issue, it would be cost of living. But with that said, I’ve never really felt that that is the way to approach it for two reasons. Firstly, the issue with the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case goes way beyond just numbers and public opinion. </span><span>You have to know what those numbers are to pick your battles appropriately and to know how to frame it, but the fact remains that if you let a president basically ignore a Supreme Court order, that opens the door to a lot of terrible things later on. So just from the beginning—because I know everyone has this criticism about poll nerds—I think that angle of not engaging because you’re doing better on cost of living is a terrible idea.</span></p><p><span>Now, secondly, Greg, to your point, I think that </span><span>you’re not going to turn a 30–70 issue into a 70–31 from engaging on it, and this is the mistake that a lot of activists and organizers make. But I also think that when an issue is 50–50, you can eat away into the president’s support with a critical block of voters if you can frame it correctly and if you can go on the offensive. I think public opinion is malleable to some degree. And the realities of the case are really bad for Trump to the point where I do think </span><span>that if Democrats were smart in how they engaged on it and avoided the emotional appeals and just stuck to,<i> This is a violation of due process rights, </i>they could not only make some gains but also neutralize the trust advantage that Republicans enjoy on a very pertinent and potent issue. </span><span>Which I think is critical because otherwise this is always going to come up.</span></p><p><span>And if you’re going to lose a battle now, you may as well lose it in May 2025 rather than 2026, because this is not the only time immigration is going to come up. You’re going to have to fight about it at some point, and this is probably the issue that you want to fight about.</span></p><p><span><b>Sargent: </b>And as Karl Rove is warning, it’s actually eroding, that broader support on immigration generally. Just to close this out, Lakshya, what do you think of this proposal to pay undocumented immigrants $1,000 to self-deport? I want to point out </span><span>before we get to your answer, we’re back to Mitt Romney’s 2012 position. People may forget this, but in those days, the Republican position was self-deport, not end due process completely. It looks to me like this is not something the middle of the country will go for: handing taxpayer money to undocumented immigrants who might have jobs here, who might have roles in communities, who might be</span><span>, at this point, pretty Americanized to leave. I don’t see it. What do you think?</span></p><p><span><b>Jain: </b>Again, I think a lot of this comes down to the angle the Democrats choose to fight it with. I don’t think that’s going to be popular, but I also think if you choose to go on this from a “no human is illegal” angle, you’re going to lose the specifics and you’re going to lose the battle. I think if you go on it from an angle of, “This is costing taxpayers a lot of money for something stupid; why don’t you find them, and then </span><span>for the ones that have been productive for this country, send them to the back of the line and give them a temporary permit or something,” if you engage on it in that sense, that’s actually Obama 2008, Obama 2012. And you could actually win on that angle.</span></p><p><span>I think the mistake here is mostly that when our party—I say our because I’m a Democrat—sees this type of suggestion of ... I</span><span>t’s absurd on its face, paying immigrants $1,000 to self-deport. Firstly, that’s not nearly enough financial incentive to get someone to leave the United States of America for their home country. And secondly, it’s a ridiculous idea in implementation, conceptualization, and how it would even work. But if you start going with the angle of, “This is abominable because no human is illegal,” understand that battle’s already been lost. </span><span>We’ve lost that battle over and again in the court of public opinion. What we haven’t lost on is that this guy is wasting taxpayer money at a time when money is already tight for the American people. Why are you doing that instead of fining them $5,000? Instead of rewarding them, say, <i>Hey, you’re fined $5,000, now go to the back of the line. Maybe we can give you a work permit, but you’re going to have to start over again.</i></span></p><p><b>Sargent: </b>Exactly. By the way, what has not been lost by Democrats is the argument over what we should do with people who are here, have been here for a long time, and have become productive members of U.S. society. That one is a winner for Democrats still. Lakshya Jain, always great to talk to you, man. Thanks for coming on.</p><p><b>Jain: </b>Thanks, Greg.</p><p><b>Sargent: </b>You’ve been listening to <i>The Daily Blast</i> with me, your host, Greg Sargent. <i>The Daily Blast</i> is a <i>New Republic </i>podcast and is produced by Riley Fessler and the DSR Network.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194901/transcript-trump-humiliated-karl-rove-brutal-on-air-poll-warning</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194901</guid><category><![CDATA[Podcast]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Karl Rove]]></category><category><![CDATA[Polls]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[The Daily Blast with Greg Sargent]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 11:22:36 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ade495c5a4f3a390b85dec93f8cffe05f60a28b3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ade495c5a4f3a390b85dec93f8cffe05f60a28b3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description>GOP strategist Karl Rove in New York City on November 8, 2022.</media:description><media:credit>Roy Rochlin/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[May Is Mental Health Awareness Month. Guess How Trump Is Marking It?
  21.  
  22. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>May is Mental Health Awareness Month—a time when the nation is supposed to recommit to the mental health and well-being of millions struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, and addiction. But instead of renewed support, the American people are getting a very different kind of message from the Trump administration: one of disinvestment, dismantling, and disregard.</span></p><p>More than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness—and over half receive no treatment. That’s not just a failure. It’s a warning. It’s also a statistic that we are not improving on. And while every administration should be expected to step up during Mental Health Awareness Month, this one is actively stepping away.</p><p>Here’s what that looks like in real terms:</p><p>The Trump administration’s proposed budget threatens to dismantle key supports for mental health care across the country. In April, it called for eliminating federal grants that fund school counselors and psychologists—resources that, since the pandemic, have been the only mental health support available to many students in under-resourced districts or without the means to seek private care. The budget also slashes funding for the Department of Health and Human Services targeting suicide prevention, overdose response, and youth mental health programs at a time of record need. </p><p>Most significantly, the administration seeks deep cuts to Medicaid—the nation’s largest mental health payer—by turning it into a block grant and imposing work requirements. Experts warn this would strip coverage from millions, especially those with serious mental illness, while allowing states to restrict benefits or add bureaucratic barriers. Other vital services are also on the chopping block. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline faces funding threats that could mean longer wait times for callers in crisis, while community behavioral health clinics that provide 24/7 care and keep people out of emergency rooms and jails risk being defunded. Meanwhile, experienced mental health experts are being replaced by political appointees, raising concerns that evidence-based policy is being sidelined in favor of ideology—just as the nation’s mental health crisis deepens.</p><p>Congress has a role here too. They can’t absolve themselves of their responsibility. Many of these programs—from school-based mental health to the 988 crisis line—were funded through bipartisan legislation. The money was appropriated. Are lawmakers now going to allow those investments to be quietly erased through backdoor administrative cuts? Will they step up to defend the programs they once championed—or let them die in silence?</p><p>This isn’t just bureaucratic reshuffling. It’s targeted sabotage. And it’s happening at the exact moment we should be doing more—not less.</p><p>The Biden administration had built on a decade of bipartisan momentum to invest in mental health. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, or <span>SAMHSA, </span><span>was strengthened. Medicaid waivers gave states more flexibility to expand care. The 988 crisis line launched nationally. Community-based programs grew. And the president declared, in his 2024 State of the Union, that “mental health is health”—reaffirming the federal government’s role in protecting and expanding it.</span></p><p>But the “Make America Healthy Again” agenda, now guiding federal policy under Trump, is aggressively undoing that progress. The strategy is clear: Shrink the federal footprint, offload responsibility to states, and hollow out the programs that make care accessible for people without wealth or privilege.</p><p>It would be one thing if mental health crises were abating and cases of serious psychosis were in decline. But the opposite is true, in part driven by stress from the Trump economy—from the ruinous tariffs to cuts in the social safety net. Financial stress is among the most common drivers of anxiety and depression. A recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention/Census Bureau study found that adults facing economic hardship were three times more likely to experience serious psychological distress. A 2023 Kaiser Family Foundation report found that nearly 60 percent of low-income adults reported worsening mental health tied directly to economic pressures.</p><p>We’ve seen this before. During the Great Recession, “deaths of despair”—suicides, overdoses, alcohol-related illness—spiked. During Covid-19, similar patterns emerged. And when safety nets shrink, those deaths increase. Every dollar cut from Medicaid, housing aid, or food assistance translates into lives lost.</p><p>This isn’t theoretical. This is what happens when economic and health policies collide.</p><p>Yet the administration continues to downplay the urgency. Mental health remains a talking point for campaigns and press releases—but the actual policies tell another story. You don’t honor Mental Health Awareness Month by gutting the programs that keep people alive.</p><p>We are not in a post-crisis moment. The crisis is now. Youth suicide is rising. Drug overdoses killed over 100,000 Americans last year. Emergency rooms are full. Schools are overwhelmed. Veterans are dying by suicide. Those with the most serious mental illnesses, always forgotten in the system, are in even deeper trouble. And every one of these outcomes is made worse by policies that make care harder to get.</p><p>We are at a crossroads. One path builds on progress and makes mental health a permanent part of our health and economic infrastructure. The other treats it as expendable. A luxury. A side issue.</p><p>Our message is simple: Do not be fooled by lip service. Pay attention to the policy. This administration is choosing to walk away from mental health—during Mental Health Awareness Month, no less. And millions will pay the price.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194867/may-mental-health-awareness-month-trump</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194867</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[mental health]]></category><category><![CDATA[Health]]></category><category><![CDATA[suicide]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Benjamin F. Miller, Norman J. Ornstein, Kavita Patel]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/44f31e2c30bc28222636396bb98306966d2136b6.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/44f31e2c30bc28222636396bb98306966d2136b6.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Chris Kleponis/CNP/Bloomberg/Getty Images</media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Republicans Are Already Plotting to Steal the Midterms
  23. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>For a president who’s talked constantly about winning, Donald Trump has so far been rife with losses—in the stock market, on the diplomatic front, in the courts, and in <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/07/trump-poll-approval-ratings-tariffs-stock-markets/82976151007/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">public approval</a>. His <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/194463/100-days-trump-clown-show-fascism" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">first 100 days</a> were nothing short of a disaster, hampered not just by Trump’s own ineptitude but by the ineptitude of his sycophantic subordinates and his presidential proxy, Elon Musk. Trump has fumbled <a href="https://thehill.com/policy/international/5201752-trump-greenlights-israel-strikes/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">peace talks</a> between Israel and Hamas; <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/28/europe/western-allies-zelensky-trump-hnk-intl/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">alienated</a> Ukraine while kowtowing to Putin; fired <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2025/04/22/federal-government-layoff-tracker-state-department-reportedly-cutting-15-of-us-staff-epa-firing-dei-workers/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">tens of thousands</a> of workers (many of whom, following legal challenges, he has been forced <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x382je03o" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">to rehire</a>); had his national security team publicly exposed as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">incompetent</a> buffoons; thus far failed in his plans to capture Greenland or the Panama Canal; and stumbled into a <a href="https://apnews.com/article/tariffs-timeline-trade-war-trump-canada-mexico-china-a9d714eea677488ef9397547d838dbd0" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">global trade war</a> that’s likely to drag down the entire economy. It would not be remotely surprising if the economy is in the midst of recession when voters head to the polls in November for the midterm elections. Things are currently going so badly, in fact, that a recession is far from the worst-case scenario.</p><p>Meanwhile, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/06/politics/florida-wisconsin-turnout-special-elections/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">special elections</a> in Florida and Wisconsin have suggested that voters are already fed up with the Trump administration and point to the possibility that the 2026 midterms could be a blue wave. As Trump’s failures continue to mount, Republicans have good reason to fear a backlash.</p><p>Perhaps this explains why Trump is intent on bolstering the election denial movement, which has lately notched a number of key victories. On March 25, the president signed <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/03/preserving-and-protecting-the-integrity-of-american-elections/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Executive Order #14248</a>, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections,” which neither preserves nor protects our elections but rather undermines them. It is a clarion call to Republicans throughout the nation, who are being encouraged to question the legitimacy of any election loss and ultimately establish a permanent electoral advantage by challenging and removing eligible voters from the rolls. Now, with Trump’s executive order, they have insurance: a way of tipping elections in their favor by choosing the voters rather than having the voters choose them.</p><p>The order instructs the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, or EAC, to amend its national mail voter registration form to require that all voters present documentation proving they are citizens, in the form of an ID that conforms with the REAL ID Act of 2005, a military ID, government-issued photo ID (all of which must indicate citizenship status or be accompanied by proof of citizenship), or a passport. A <a href="https://cdce.umd.edu/news/news-1-10-eligible-us-voters-say-they-can%E2%80%99t-easily-show-proof-their-citizenship" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">study</a> from the University of Maryland found that this measure alone could disenfranchise approximately one in 10 voters—over 21 million Americans—who do not possess such documents and may have difficulty obtaining them.</p><p>The result is a poll tax of sorts that would add a cost to voting for those who would have to acquire new IDs, and disenfranchise those unable to acquire them or unaware of the new requirements—a burden that studies have found would fall disproportionately on voters of color, Democrats, and independents.</p><p>It’s not at all clear that the president has any power to issue such instructions in a country where elections are managed by the states and the bipartisan EAC. Richard Hasen, director of the <a href="https://law.ucla.edu/academics/centers/safeguarding-democracy-project" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Safeguarding Democracy Project</a> at UCLA School of Law, believes many parts of the executive order are unconstitutional. The EAC “is an independent agency,” he said. Trump “may try to argue under the unitary executive theory that he has such power, but that will have to be resolved in the courts.” (Trump was dealt a blow on April 24, when a U.S. District Court judge halted the executive order’s proof of citizenship requirement.) Hasen characterized Trump’s executive order as a “power grab,” issued “perhaps in the hopes of influencing how future elections are run in order to try to help his preferred candidates and party win.”</p><p>Constitutional law professor Doug Spencer of the University of Colorado Boulder said that, while the EAC order is a “gray area,” he, too, fears that the likely result of any such effort would be to disenfranchise voters who have trouble proving their citizenship, putting an “onus” on voters to secure what should be an inalienable right. It’s “going to lead to many people who have a fundamental right not being able to exercise it,” he said, “and, in my opinion, that’s a problem for a country that wants to call itself a democracy.” Spencer also cautioned that it was far from obvious that the executive order would actually work as intended. In recent years, the Republican Party’s share of low-propensity voters—those who don’t consistently vote, a group disproportionately affected by restrictions—has grown significantly. In other words, the issuance of an executive order intended to make it easier for Republicans to win elections could ironically disenfranchise a growing part of its base.</p><p>But even if it does disenfranchise some Republican voters, the executive order goes further than simply making voting more onerous, providing several ways for Republicans to both win elections and challenge elections they have lost. It directs the U.S. attorney general to sue states that count mailed ballots that are postmarked before Election Day but arrive afterward, effectively killing vote-by-mail. It also mandates that state election officials share voter databases with the secretary of homeland security, and the administrator of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the cost-cutting commission run by billionaire Elon Musk, <span>all</span><span> </span><span class="il">of</span><span> </span><span>whom could challenge lists, potentially purging voters</span><span>.</span></p><p>The penalty for noncompliance is extreme. The executive order instructs the attorney general to prioritize investigations into any state that refuses to comply with the information-sharing dictum, and to “review for potential withholding of grants and other funds that the Department awards and distributes, in the Department’s discretion, to State and local governments for law enforcement and other purposes.”</p><p>In other words, if state election officials refuse to comply with Trump’s unlawful edict to share their voter rolls with Elon Musk, among others, the attorney general could withhold law enforcement grants, which could lead to rising crime. It’s a threat, an effort to terrorize anyone who resists into submission.</p><p>“He’s going after the voter rolls in big cities, in blue states,” said Tabitha Bonilla, an associate professor at Northwestern University’s <a href="https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Institute for Policy Research</a>. She sees the move as part of a larger pattern. “For more than a decade, the Republican Party has really pushed to put restrictions in place for voting.”</p><p>Hasen agrees. “The EO should be seen as part of a broader trend on the part of some Republican officials to try to make voting and registration harder,” he said, “as with the push to pass the SAVE Act.”</p><p>The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/22/text" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act</a>, or SAVE Act, is essentially Trump’s executive order in legislative form, minus the major coercive components. It will undoubtedly face a <a href="https://www.npr.org/2025/03/12/nx-s1-5301676/save-act-explainer-voter-registration" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">filibuster</a> in the Senate, which is why Trump issued the executive order. It nevertheless passed the House of Representatives on April 10 and, in the unlikely event that it becomes law, could also disenfranchise millions of voters. For instance, its requirement that a name on an ID, like a driver’s license, match that on a birth certificate could prevent millions of married women from being able to vote.</p><p>Voter purges like the ones Trump is encouraging are, as Bonilla indicated, nothing new, but they have been accelerating. The <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/issues/ensure-every-american-can-vote/vote-suppression/voter-purges" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Brennan Center</a> has noted that “jurisdictions have substantially increased the rate at which they purge voter rolls” over the past couple of decades. This did not abate in the lead-up to the 2024 election, when Republicans across the country purged voter rolls in an attempt to improve their odds of victory, with varying degrees of success.</p><p>In recent years, Republicans have weaponized this process, however. In North Carolina, for instance, officials removed <a href="https://www.ncsbe.gov/news/press-releases/2024/09/26/nc-election-officials-removed-nearly-750000-ineligible-registrants-start-2023" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">747,000</a> names from their rolls prior to the 2024 election. They claimed they were just doing routine maintenance, and two-thirds were removed because they had died or moved. But the others—more than 200,000—were removed because the state has aggressively gone after voters deemed “inactive” in recent years.</p><p>The state’s Republicans are currently trying to go even further, by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/us/politics/north-carolina-supreme-court-election-ballots.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">challenging</a> tens of thousands of votes that have already been counted. After losing a state Supreme Court election to incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs by just 734 votes, Republican Jefferson Griffin is seeking to challenge the eligibility of more than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/07/us/politics/north-carolina-supreme-court-election-ballots.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">65,000 votes</a>. As crazy as it sounds, he may very well prevail. He has already gotten one <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/elections/new-court-decision-disputed-north-carolina-race-means-65000-votes-are-rcna199746" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">lower court</a> to rule that all of those voters must prove their eligibility for their ballots to be counted. The North Carolina Supreme Court, which currently consists of five Republicans and one Democrat (with Riggs recusing herself from the case), ruled to accept 60,000 ballots. A federal judge is now set to determine the fate of the rest.</p><p>North Carolina is an extreme example, but it is hardly unique. In Georgia, for instance, <a href="https://www.ajc.com/politics/sweeping-cancellation-of-455k-voter-registrations-planned-in-georgia/4KTEZHQTANH4NFNKXI4I3U4NEU/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">455,000 names</a> are set to be removed from the rolls this summer, many of whom should be eligible voters. Purging nearly half a million names from the rolls isn’t enough for Republicans in the state’s House of Representatives, who are attempting to <a href="https://publicintegrity.org/politics/elections/who-counts/election-partnership-voters-consequences-eric/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">cut ties</a> with the Electronic Registration Information Center, or ERIC, a nonpartisan group that helps states maintain voter rolls. A cursory look at nine red states that have recently broken with the organization reveals why: Nearly all of them have replaced ERIC with alternatives that make it easier to purge voters.</p><p>Trump’s executive order is an attempt to centralize and nationalize this game plan: reduce the number of voters likely to vote Democratic to begin with, challenge any reasonably close elections that you lose, and make voters who voted against you prove they were eligible after the fact. It’s not a new effort, Bonilla explained, but one that “reenforces the movements that are already underway … to continue to remove people.” It would also likely dramatically expand those movements by introducing them in states where voting rights are far more expansive than they are in states like North Carolina and Georgia, where mass purges are commonplace. If Trump were to succeed in claiming vast powers to decide who can and can’t vote, it would effectively amount to a hostile takeover of American democracy.</p><p>Still, this executive order can—and likely will—be weaponized, even if none of its draconian measures ever come into effect. Say the Democrats win back control of one or both chambers of Congress in the midterms. Trump may very well argue that they did so only because they refused to comply with its dictates, indicating widespread fraud, and he may potentially use that as a pretext to order the attorney general to stop states from counting ballots that arrive after Election Day. It is a way to delegitimize election results Trump doesn’t like—and might even be a pretext to attempt to overturn the results themselves. It’s the culmination of an election denial movement that has only grown stronger after January 6.</p><p>Most Republicans today still <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/03/politics/cnn-poll-republicans-think-2020-election-illegitimate/index.html" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">do not believe</a> that Trump lost in 2020. His preposterous lies about elections rigged by unscrupulous bureaucrats and foreign invaders are now treated as gospel by much of a Republican base that is primed to doubt the legitimacy of any election the party loses. Led by a president who cannot countenance the idea of losing, Republicans are working tirelessly to ensure the party never does.</p><p>For Trump, this is a question of existential importance, and not just because he doesn’t want Democrats to regain power and litigate everything he’s doing as president. The last time he lost power, after all, he quickly found himself embroiled in several criminal and civil cases, some of which related to his conduct as president. He may have ended up being sentenced to prison had he not won the 2024 election. He believes his political rivals were directly responsible for the legal problems that ensnared him after he left office in 2021 and likely fears returning to life as a private citizen under a Democratic president.</p><p>He’s also spoken recently of seeking out a third term, despite the apparent constitutional restrictions on doing so. If he decides to actually pursue this route, surely it would be nice for him to know that he’d be starting off with a field goal–like advantage, and that, if he loses, he can simply direct the attorney general to start challenging every vote that went against him. That seems a much easier route than the last time he tried to overthrow the government.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194658/republicans-steal-2026-midterms-election-denial-plot</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194658</guid><category><![CDATA[Magazine]]></category><category><![CDATA[June 2025]]></category><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[State of the Nation]]></category><category><![CDATA[Voting Rights]]></category><category><![CDATA[voter suppression]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[North Carolina]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2028]]></category><category><![CDATA[Election 2026]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Ross Rosenfeld]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4753ddf16092c32d356b3eb4ab8d4fa85cebcd22.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/4753ddf16092c32d356b3eb4ab8d4fa85cebcd22.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit></media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[Trump’s Movie Tariffs Won’t Save Hollywood]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p><span>“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Donald Trump </span><a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114452117143235155" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">posted Sunday</a><span> on Truth Social. America’s cultural elite would agree with that statement. It (OK, “we”) would even agree that globalization, and especially China—Trump’s favorite bad guy—are a big part of the problem. But slapping a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced in Foreign Lands,” as Trump is suggesting (</span><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/05/trump-announces-tariff-on-foreign-films/83452190007/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">a White House statement</a><span> on Monday afternoon stated that “no final decisions have been made”), would make it harder, rather than easier, to find anything decent to watch on Saturday night. This puts the Hollywood tariff in the same culture-war category as </span><a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/02/us/white-house-harvard-tax-status" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">revoking Harvard’s tax exemption</a><span>, </span><a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/02/us/trump-news#humanities-endowment-doge-grants" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">zeroing out the National Endowment for the Humanities</a><span>, Trump’s </span><a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-lede/the-trump-show-comes-to-the-kennedy-center" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">hostile takeover of the Kennedy Center</a><span>, </span><span>and </span><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/under-trump-national-science-foundation-cuts-off-all-funding-to-scientists/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">evisceration of the National Science Foundation</a><span>.</span></p><p><span>Hollywood’s problem is most assuredly not any kind of trade imbalance. The Motion Picture Association </span><a href="https://www.motionpictures.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/2025-NTE-Report.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">reported</a><span> last fall that the movie business generated a $7 billion trade surplus in 2022, the most recent year for which data were available. That’s the main reason not to put tariffs on foreign production. Tariffs are supposed to address trade imbalances.</span></p><p><span>The economic problem with Hollywood is management’s global search for cheap labor. “We are allowing California to become to the entertainment industry what Detroit has become to the auto industry,”</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> Michael F. Miller Jr., a vice president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, </span><span class="MsoHyperlink">told</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> <i>The New York Times</i> last month. Miller estimated that in the last three years, film and television production lost 18,000 full-time jobs, most of them in California.</span></p><p><span class="apple-converted-space">Using tariffs to force production back to the U.S.</span><span class="apple-converted-space"> would be awkward because some foreign production by American studios <i>has to</i> occur overseas. That’s especially true of the “action and adventure” films that command </span><a href="https://culturaleconomics.org/globalization-and-the-rise-of-action-movies-in-hollywood/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">about 60 percent</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> of market share these days and often tell stories of international intrigue. The Mission: Impossible films, for instance, have been </span><a href="https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/mission-impossible-filming-locations" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">set in</a><span class="apple-converted-space"> Prague, Dubai, Mumbai, Barcelona, and </span><span>Helsetkopen, Norway, among other places.</span></p><p><span>On the other hand, a lot of studio production for the </span>Mission: Impossible<i> </i><span>films is done at London’s Pinewood Studios, for no reason other than to save costs. Labor isn’t especially cheap in the United Kingdom; Pinewood is favored because the U.K. extends generous film subsidies for film production. Its government judges these sufficiently important that Prime Minister Keir Starmer </span><a href="https://www.equity.org.uk/news/2024/equity-calls-for-union-rates-following-starmer-pinewood-studios-speech" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">gave a speech</a><span> last December at Pinewood to tout them.</span></p><p><span>The U.S. government, by contrast, extends no tax subsidies for film production. Apparently Jon Voight, one of Trump’s three “special ambassadors” to Hollywood, </span><a href="https://deadline.com/2025/05/jon-voight-save-hollywood-plan-trump-approval-1236383155/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">favors creating some</a><span>. From a policy standpoint, that’s a much better idea than a movie tariff. But it’s a political loser for Trump because MAGA judges Hollywood a citadel of wokeness. Indeed, cutting Hollywood’s taxes would be a political loser even for a Democrat, because Hollywood is also associated with economic privilege.</span></p><p><span>A better idea is to expand existing tax benefits in California, which lately has lost business not only to other countries but also to other states. Last fall, California Governor Gavin Newsom </span><a href="https://www.gov.ca.gov/2024/10/27/governor-newsom-proposes-historic-expansion-of-film-tv-tax-credit-program/#:~:text=Hollywood%2C%20California%20%E2%80%93%20Governor%20Gavin%20Newsom,current%20%24330%20million%20annual%20allocation." target="_blank" rel="nofollow">proposed</a><span> more than doubling the state’s film and television tax credit from $330 million to $750 million. According to Newsom’s office, for years the existing program has been oversubscribed, meaning more productions applied for the tax credit than the state could accommodate under the $330 million ceiling. Seventy-one percent of productions that couldn’t secure California’s tax break ended up filming elsewhere.</span></p><p><span>I haven’t explained why a movie tariff would make it harder to find anything good to see on Saturday night. And what has China got to do with it? It’s not like film production is shifting to China. Allow me to explain.</span></p><p><span>When I agree that Hollywood is dying, I’m thinking not only about the labor problem of film production migrating out of the United States but also about the quality of the movies themselves. American movies have gotten really crappy! I’m a big movie buff, and I can count on one hand the number of American films I saw last year. </span></p><p><span>The reason is globalization. The U.S. share of the global box-office revenue shrank from 60 percent in the 1990s to less than 40 percent today, according to a 2021 study (“</span><a href="https://culturalaffairs.indiana.edu/doc/Digest/Issue%207_Fall%202023/Leung_Digest%20Issue%207.pdf" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Globalization and the Rise of Action Movies in Hollywood</a><span>”) by the economists Shi Qi of William and Mary and Tin Cheuk Leung of Wake Forest. The American movies this foreign audience craves aren’t the finely crafted, film-festival-ready </span>oeuvre<span> of Martin Scorsese or Steven Soderbergh or Spike Lee. What it likes are big stupid movies where lots of stuff gets blown up, preferably featuring superheroes. So that’s what Hollywood makes.</span></p><p><span>China is a huge part of this new audience; it’s now the world’s second-largest consumer market for movies, accounting for at least 10 percent of Hollywood’s annual grosses. It’s odd, I know, to think it a problem that China consumes </span><i>too much</i><span> of something made in America. But it </span><i>is </i><span>a problem because China’s moviegoers, for whatever reason, face significant cultural barriers in appreciating even halfway-ambitious American movies. Also, their government won’t permit any film with a serious theme that might call attention, however indirectly, to political repression at home. The result is that Hollywood makes a lot of big, dumb superhero movies.</span></p><p><span>Putting a tariff on foreign production won’t affect that problem. But unless Trump plans to exempt from his tariff foreign-</span><i>language</i><span> films, which as best I can tell he doesn’t, Trump will be doubling the price of a movie ticket to see a foreign film, by which I mean a foreign-language film made by foreigners. Two facts these days about foreign films: (1) They are almost always better than American-made films (even most indies, I’m sorry to report), and (2) They draw a very small audience, consisting mostly of the despised, Harris-voting cultural elite. I’m not a snob, I swear! I actually </span><i>like</i><span> the </span>Mission: Impossible<span> franchise! But most of the films I saw last year were foreign-language films because Hollywood just didn’t have a lot to offer me. </span></p><p><span>A tariff on foreign production would be a tariff on practically the only films that the cultural elite can still bear to watch. For Trump, I sense, that isn’t a bug. It’s a feature.</span></p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194884/trump-movie-tariffs-save-hollywood</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194884</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[Hollywood]]></category><category><![CDATA[Imports]]></category><category><![CDATA[Movies]]></category><category><![CDATA[Art]]></category><category><![CDATA[tariffs]]></category><category><![CDATA[Economy]]></category><category><![CDATA[California]]></category><category><![CDATA[Gavin Newsom]]></category><category><![CDATA[China]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Timothy Noah]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1cf7cb85b78881421699dc8e22060910e6307eb3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/1cf7cb85b78881421699dc8e22060910e6307eb3.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
  24. </media:credit></media:content></item><item><title><![CDATA[How Republicans in Congress Enable Trump’s Tyranny
  25.  
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  29. ]]></title><description><![CDATA[<html><head></head><body><p>Last week, a reporter asked President Donald Trump who he thought the College of Cardinals should elect as the next pope when they gather later this week in conclave. It was a ridiculous question—presidents should not comment on such things in general, and I doubt Trump could name a single cardinal anyway. He dismissed it with what I took to be an obvious joke: that the cardinals should elect him instead.</p><p>South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham then took the joke too far. “I was excited to hear that President Trump is open to the idea of being the next Pope,” he <a href="https://x.com/LindseyGrahamSC/status/1917331380297478530" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">wrote on Twitter</a> last week. “This would truly be a dark horse candidate, but I would ask the papal conclave and Catholic faithful to keep an open mind about this possibility! The first Pope-U.S. President combination has many upsides. Watching for white smoke.… Trump MMXXVIII!”</p><p><span>The post stands out to me not for the sectarian insult it represents to millions of American Catholics, or because of the oblique reference it makes to an unconstitutional third term in 2028, but for the sheer embarrassment of it all. Graham’s toadying may be more outward than most of his colleagues’. Still, it symbolizes how Republicans in Congress have reduced themselves to a body of servile functionaries, acting less like duly elected members of a coequal branch of government and more like fawning courtiers at Louis XIV’s Versailles.</span></p><p><span>The fundamental story of Trump’s second term has been his usurpation of powers traditionally granted to the legislative branch. Congress created the networks of federal agencies and programs that help govern the country; Trump has asserted the power to shut them down at will. Congress has the constitutional power to set tariffs and other taxes; Trump has unilaterally imposed them on most of the world in ways that are not only economically ruinous but likely illegal as well.</span></p><p>Congress entered the Trump era in an already weakened condition. I’ve <a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/158733/reform-congress-2020" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">written before</a> on how the legislative branch has devolved into a largely theatrical enterprise. Rank-and-file lawmakers have little impact on legislation. Party leaders wield near-absolute powers over the flow and wording of bills. The constant churn of fundraising and messaging have all conspired to sap its vitality and energy.</p><p>Over the last three months, we’ve seen something even more ominous: Republican senators and representatives acting as willing partners in the destruction of their own branch of government’s power, all on Trump’s behalf. The Constitution is designed for tension between the three branches of government; it cannot function if one branch proclaims its supremacy and the other two give up without a fight.</p><p>Most of Congress’s complicity is through sheer inaction. House and Senate Republicans largely agree with Trump’s war on the federal government and welcome his campaign against the so-called “administrative state.” To that end, they have taken no real steps to stop Trump from laying off civil servants en masse, shuttering entire agencies, and refusing to spend congressionally authorized funds. Many have cheered on DOGE, even as it effectively supplants them in the American constitutional order.</p><p>This complicity also comes through the lack of oversight. Since it wields the power of the purse, Congress has the right to demand information from the executive branch on how federal funds are spent. There are no signs that House or Senate Republicans are interested in exercising that power against the Trump administration, even on highly unpopular issues like DOGE. Elon Musk, the group’s troubled head, skipped a House Ways and Means Committee meeting in March where he was asked to testify.</p><p>The gap is especially stark because of the GOP’s unrelenting aggressiveness against the previous administration. <i>The Washington Post</i>’s Phillip Bump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/05/01/trump-biden-corruption-house-oversight/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">noted last week</a> that Republicans on the House Oversight Committee spent two years claiming that President Joe Biden was the corrupt beneficiary of foreign deals struck by his troubled son Hunter. Georgia Representative James Comer, the committee’s chairman, alleged that the elder Biden had “swindled” investors overseas and become “compromised by foreign governments.”</p><p><span>Comer and his allies found no evidence to support those claims, and their much-ballyhooed push to impeach Biden for his alleged profiteering went nowhere. If Republicans are interested in presidents potentially abusing their office for private gain, however, Trump has given them multiple avenues of inquiry. They could look into </span><a href="https://newrepublic.com/article/190562/crypto-memecoins-trump-scam-tech" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">Trump’s official meme coin</a><span> and who profited from its precipitous rise and fall, or whether the slapdash tariffs last month </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/10/donald-trump-ignites-insider-trading-accusations-after-global-tariffs-u-turn" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">led to insider trading</a><span> within the White House, or the recently announced </span><a href="https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-family-crypto-venture-tapped-part-2b-emirati/story?id=121415842" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">$2 billion Emirati cryptocurrency deal</a><span> with the Trump family—to say nothing of sundry other opportunities for graft and corruption.</span></p><p>In recent days, Republicans have also taken some affirmative steps to help Trump fight the other two branches. The House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/01/politics/judges-contempt-undermined-house-republicans" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">voted last week</a> to approve a measure that would make it easier for the Trump administration to defy court orders. “No court of the United States may use appropriated funds to enforce a contempt citation for failure to comply with an injunction or temporary restraining order if no security was given when the injunction or order was issued pursuant to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65(c), whether issued prior to, on, or subsequent to the date of enactment of this section,” the section read.</p><p>Rule 65(c) itself is not new. It requires federal courts to order litigants to post a bond of sorts when seeking injunctions and temporary restraining orders against the opposing side. The bond’s purpose is to cover costs and damages if the opposing side is later found to have been wrongly enjoined or restrained by the court. Notably, this rule does not apply to the government itself: The Justice Department doesn’t have to pay up when asking the courts to enjoin someone else.</p><p>As a result, federal judges typically set it to $0 when the federal government is a party to litigation. This avoids the basic inequity of requiring the federal government’s opponents to pay up to obtain relief while not holding the government to the same standard. That exercise of discretion avoids troubling scenarios where a litigant has to effectively pay the court to safeguard their own constitutional rights, which could create perverse incentives for the government.</p><p>Rule 65(c) first drew the Trump administration’s attention in March as it sought to staunch the bleeding from dozens of legal setbacks, especially against DOGE. The president issued an executive order to direct the federal government’s lawyers to more aggressively seek Rule 65(c) securities when they defend the administration’s policies and actions in court.</p><p>“This anti-democratic takeover is orchestrated by forum-shopping organizations that repeatedly bring meritless suits, used for fundraising and political grandstanding, without any repercussions when they fail,” the White House complained, without a hint of irony. “Taxpayers are forced not only to cover the costs of their antics when funding and hiring decisions are enjoined, but must needlessly wait for government policies they voted for.”</p><p>The House proposal is disturbing in a few ways. For one thing, it effectively punishes Americans for seeking legal redress from the government. The Trump administration framed it as a means of kneecapping liberal public-interest law organizations: Its stated goal, the White House said, was to deter “activist organizations fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in donations” from “functionally inserting themselves into the executive policymaking process and therefore undermining the democratic process.”</p><p><span>Second, the provision would apply retroactively and to ongoing litigation, not simply to future cases. This is not unconstitutional by itself: The ex post facto clause, which generally bars Congress from passing laws with retroactive effect, only applies to criminal cases and not civil ones. At the same time, it serves only to disrupt and defund litigation that has already succeeded against the government, effectively rewarding acts that have been found to likely be illegal and unconstitutional.</span></p><p><span>Third, and perhaps most importantly, the provision would give tacit approval to contempt of court. Divided Argument’s Samuel Bray </span><a href="https://blog.dividedargument.com/p/the-house-judiciary-committee-moves" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">noted last week</a><span> that the legislative language isn’t very well crafted: A judge could get around it by setting a bond of $1 instead of $0. At the same time, the provision contemplates a scenario where someone could violate court orders and the courts, hamstrung by Congress, would be powerless to stop it. That is a significant threat to both the rule of law and to judicial independence.</span></p><p>The Supreme Court, to its partial credit, took steps to preserve its own authority in recent weeks. (I only give them partial credit because they created this monster in the first place.) Their order last month to immediately halt Alien Enemies Act deportations came from an unmistakable concern that the Trump administration was trying to evade judicial review.</p><p>The same thing can’t be said for Congress. Republican lawmakers may think that they are following their constituents’ wishes by reflexively obeying Trump’s whims. Allowing a president to usurp the powers of one branch and ignore the orders of another one is not in anyone’s long-term interest—and especially not theirs. Graham and his colleagues can’t make Trump a pope, but they are making him into a king.</p></body></html>]]></description><link>https://newrepublic.com/article/194898/congressional-gop-enables-trump-tyranny</link><guid isPermaLink="false">194898</guid><category><![CDATA[Politics]]></category><category><![CDATA[Donald Trump]]></category><category><![CDATA[GOP]]></category><category><![CDATA[House GOP]]></category><category><![CDATA[Law]]></category><category><![CDATA[Constitution]]></category><category><![CDATA[Lawfare]]></category><dc:creator><![CDATA[Matt Ford]]></dc:creator><pubDate>Tue, 06 May 2025 10:00:00 GMT</pubDate><enclosure url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ad59e37919838e00e3df19afdda6528b3b38d3d9.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2" length="0" type="image/jpg"/><media:content url="https://images.newrepublic.com/ad59e37919838e00e3df19afdda6528b3b38d3d9.jpeg?w=1200&amp;q=75&amp;dpi=1&amp;fm=pjpg&amp;fit=crop&amp;crop=faces&amp;ar=3:2"><media:description></media:description><media:credit>Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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