The Majority of Voters Have Elected an American Fuhrer

In speech after speech, Trump, JD Vance, and others have spoken as if they will have boundless power after January 20, 2025. They are not wrong.

Ralph Nader
Nov 10, 2024

Common Dreams


On September 17, 1787, the last day after the drafting of our Constitution in Philadelphia, Ben Franklin was leaving the building when a prominent resident, Elizabeth Willing Powel, asked him “Well Doctor, what have we got—a republic or a monarch?” Franklin replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

On November 5, 2024, our fragile Republic became a Monarchy-elect. A majority of voters elected a Dictator. This is no exaggeration. Look at just some of the damage Donald Trump has done and the appalling things he has said. In July 2019, he declared, “With Article II, I can do whatever I want as president.” And he did, throughout his four years, he violated all kinds of federal laws and provisions of the Constitution, mostly openly, with impunity. He obstructed justice from the White House as a way of life. He defied over 125 congressional subpoenas. He is a very successful fugitive from justice with lawyers skilled at endlessly delaying judges and courts where federal and state prosecutors have obtained indictments. His convictions and adverse civil verdicts are like water on a duck’s back.

He openly admires foreign dictators and meets with them proudly, musing about wanting to be more like them. Moreover, he is gathering around him a large number of vengeful, dictatorial Trumpsters readying to take over the federal departments and agencies. The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, 900-page report prepared a detailed blueprint for the corporate state that is the definition of fascism, American style. Together with Trump, they have their “enemies list” both individually and collectively.

Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs. With Elon Musk in the lead.

In speech after speech, Trump, JD Vance, and others have spoken as if they will have boundless power after January 20, 2025. They are not wrong. They control the compliant Republican House and the Senate. The U.S. Supreme Court (6 to 3) decided fanatically last June that a president’s “official” conduct no matter how extreme was immune from criminal prosecution. Three of the justices were Trump’s nominees.

He believes his presidency will be above the law. There is no one to challenge him. Ordinary citizens have no “legal standing” to sue. And as is the practice, he will replace all the federal prosecutors working at the Department of Justice, under the new attorney general whom he chooses.

Trump may be on facts and policies, “dumb as a rock,” “with a low IQ!”—to use his words about other persons, but when it comes to knowing the electorate and the mass media, he is a master magician who induces mass masochism. As with violent climate disruptions are “a hoax, drill baby drill.”

He weaves a web of fantasy about his past failed business and presidential records and constantly repeats his megalomaniac refrain: “Only I can fix it.”

His daily lies often come across to his supporters as a form of entertainment garnished with massaging their own grievances and biases into political campaign fodder. He tells those who think they are victims, that he is their savior. He promises a paradise in America in his next presidential term but doesn’t have a clue about how to get there.

As far as the media, his denunciations of them, “fake news,” and the “failing New York Times,” only result in journalists giving him constant top-level coverage, even repeating in CAPITAL LETTERS his pejorative nicknames for people who are not given a chance to reply in the press.

True, the major newspapers have exposed his numerous dark sides—whether personal against women; commercial against workers, students and creditors; against the government with his tax evasions; or as past president, with his brazen violations of law and overt unethical self-enrichment.

Mark Green and I contributed two books—Fake President: Decoding Trump’s Gaslighting, Corruption, and General Bullsh*t in 2019 and Wrecking America: How Trump’s Lawbreaking and Lies Betray All in 2020—about dangerous, corrupt Donald.

However, in the end, nothing stuck or mattered. Do-little Donald’s fulminating lies were embraced by his followers. His slippery Teflon persona was underestimated. Voter acceptance of the Trumpian mirage reflects poorly on the majority of the voters who cast their ballots for him.

Trump did have some crucial luck. A weak, arrogant Democratic Party leadership, loaded with inhibitory corporate campaign money, constrained by corporate conflicted political and media consultants, who control the party’s campaigns and bar input from the experienced citizen community (see, winningamerica.net) made it impossible for the Democratic Party to learn from its past mistakes or its recurring disastrous strategies.

Trump played the Democratic Party, from its bungling nomination process to the anemic Harris campaign like a fiddle—repeatedly, personally, and without a teleprompter, he fed his crowd blatant falsehoods, hateful rhetoric, and delusionary promises. And he gave the middle finger to the “deep state.”

People must realize they are, with all voters, in a two-party duopoly Trap, excluding full access to third-party and independent candidates. No Western country erects, as the USA does, such barriers to ballot access and many other exclusions and endless harassment. (See Theresa Amato’s book, Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny). A competitive democracy we are not. Still, at the presidential level, alternative candidates are often on the ballot if not in the news or in the debates. But most voters want “to be with a winner,” and glumly or willingly accept their electoral incarceration.

Get ready this January for chaos, revenge, greed, rampant abuses of power, and the unbridled control of corrupt plutocrats and oligarchs. With Elon Musk in the lead.

Fascistic states flow into exercises of terror. The majority of the voters have elected an American Fuhrer. Trump will be our founding father’s greatest nightmare. They inserted numerous protections in our Constitution to block another King George III tyrant with their separation of powers and checks and balances. Come 2025 these protections will be shredded.

If Trump puts RFK Jr in charge of health, get ready for a distorted reality where global health suffers

WASHINGTON, DC - JULY 20: Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. speaks during a hearing with the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government on Capitol Hill on July 20, 2023 in Washington, DC. Members of the committee held the hearing to discuss instances of the U.S. government's alleged censoring of citizens, political figures and journalists. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images).

The Conversation

November 08, 2024

A key figure in Donald Trump’s election campaign and a likely figure in his incoming administration is Robert F. Kennedy Jr, or RFK Jr for short. After abandoning his own tilt at president, the prominent anti-vaxxer endorsed and campaigned for Trump, helping propel him to victory.

Kennedy promoted the banner “Make America Healthy Again” during the campaign. Now Trump has made clear Kennedy will play a significant role in health.

He has been promised a “big role” in guiding health policy, and Trump has said he would enable Kennedy to “go wild” on health, food and medicines.

So, who is Kennedy and what could his vision of a healthy America mean for public health in the US and globally?
Who is RFK Jr?

RFK Jr was born into a famous American political dynasty. He is the son of Robert F. Kennedy, who served as US attorney general under his brother John F. Kennedy, who was president. Robert F. Kennedy was then a senator before he was assassinated during his own run for the presidency in 1968.

His son, RFK Jr, was a prominent and effective environmental lawyer and activist, helping to pursue litigation against corporations, including Montsanto and DuPont.

For the past 20 years, however, he has been better known for his embrace of various conspiracy theories and as a key source of vaccine misinformation spreading on social media.

Kennedy has recently said he is “not going to take anyone’s vaccines away”. However, he continues to make false claims about COVID vaccines, and to promote false facts about vaccines and autism when there is scientific consensus there is no causal link.
What role will he have?

Although Trump has publicly committed to Kennedy having a major role, it is unclear what that will be.

Based on a video obtained by Politico, Kennedy said he was promised control of federal public health agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and its sub-agencies, as well as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health.

Such broad authority would be unprecedented. Appointments to major agencies and cabinet positions in the US government require approval by Congress. Kennedy’s lack of experience in health care or public health, and his absence of scientific training and credentials, will make such an approval uncertain. His unscientific allegations would resurface and there would be an almost certain media circus.

Even if Kennedy was in a position of authority, many changes to these federal agencies would require Congressional oversight. For instance, any changes to how drugs are approved would be challenging to implement in the short term.

This is not to underestimate the damage Kennedy could do. In the past, Trump circumvented Congressional approval for various posts by appointing “acting officials”. So even without any official post, Kennedy’s potential influence in the Trump administration is alarming.
More misinformation

It is no surprise Trump has embraced Kennedy as the “health czar” of his second presidency. They have both spread COVID misinformation and promoted unproven treatments, particularly early in the pandemic. These include promoting hydrocholoroquine (when there is strong evidence of its toxic effects to the heart).

Kennedy leverages the language of science to give a veneer of credibility. He promises to return health agencies “to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science” and to “clean up” agencies he accuses of being corrupt. He may well roll back regulatory controls that protect the health of Americans from unproven treatments.

If Kennedy is to be the health czar of the Trump presidency, his platform to recruit Americans to his anti-science agenda would be considerably enhanced. The result? The very real threat of worsening the public’s health.

Outbreaks of vaccine-preventable infections, such as measles, will rise.

Many Americans also grew up with fluoridated water and have not witnessed the impacts of widespread dental caries (tooth decay). So, Kennedy may be well placed to convince enough of the American people that fluoridated water is dangerous, and that fluoride should be an individual’s choice.

Governments and public health officials may face an uphill battle to maintain fluoride in the community water supply, rolling back one of the greatest public health achievements of the past century.

If Kennedy’s anti-science claims gain traction, his legacy will be the opposite of the banner “Make America Healthy Again”. The health of the American population will deteriorate with far-reaching impacts for decades to come.
There are global implications, too

The potential harms of elevating someone like Kennedy to positions of authority and influence will not just affect Americans.

For instance, after Kennedy and his anti-vaccine organisation visited Samoa in 2019, the deaths of two children were falsely attributed to the measles vaccination. Vaccination rates in Samoa plummeted to 31% (half the previous rate) and a subsequent measles outbreak killed 83 people.

Kennedy questioned if the deaths were related to a “defective vaccine” and denied he had any hand in spreading misinformation.

One of the outstanding achievements of the previous Trump presidency was Operation Warp Speed, which enabled the development, testing and mass production of COVID vaccines at unprecedented speed, saving many millions of lives around the world.

Should another pandemic occur over the next four years, with Kennedy in the White House, the US is unlikely to provide similar leadership.

Kennedy has been deeply critical of COVID vaccine development, including in his best-selling 2021 book, The Real Anthony Fauci, about the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Kennedy said COVID vaccines were not sufficiently tested and continued to advocate for disproven COVID treatments, specifically hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

In a podcast earlier this year, Fauci recalled a presentation Kennedy gave him about vaccinations. For 40 minutes Kennedy “showed slide after slide after slide that […] made no sense at all”.

Later, Fauci spoke with Kennedy saying:
Bobby, I believe you care about children and you care that you don’t want to hurt them. But you got to realise that from a scientific standpoint, what you’re saying does make no sense.


Unfortunately, in the distorted reality of a Trump administration with Kennedy at his side, truth and science may no longer matter. And the health of the world will suffer.

Nancy Baxter, Deputy Executive Dean (Research Centres), Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney and Anne Kavanagh, Professor of Disability and Health, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Trump's Planned Immigrant Purge Sends Stagnant Private Prison Stocks Soaring

"The GEO Group was built for this unique moment... and the opportunity that it will bring," said the firm's chair.


Attendees hold signs reading “Mass Deportation Now!” during the third day of the 2024 Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 17, 2024.
(Photo: Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Nov 08, 2024
COMMON DREAMS


The chairperson of a leading U.S. private prison corporation on Thursday gushed over the "unprecedented opportunity" presented by the prospect of Republican President-elect Donald Trump delivering on his campaign promise to begin the mass deportation of unauthorized immigrants on his first day in office.

As Common Dreamsreported Thursday, Trump's campaign confirmed that "the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrants" ever is set to start immediately after the former president returns to the White House on January 20.


GEO Group stock surged more than 56% from the close of trading on Tuesday, Election Day, to Friday's closing bell. Competitor CoreCivic shares skyrocketed 57% over the same period. By contrast, GEO Group stock saw just a 21% rise in the three months preceding Election Day. CoreCivic inched up just 11% over the same period.

"The GEO Group was built for this unique moment in our company's [and] country's history, and the opportunity that it will bring," GEO Group founder and chairperson George Zoley said during a Thursday earnings call call in which he hailed the "unprecedented opportunity" ahead, according to a company statement and coverage by HuffPost.




"While our third-quarter results were below our expectations due to lower-than-expected revenues in our electronic monitoring and supervision services segment, we believe we have several potential sources of upside to our current quarterly run rate, with possible future growth opportunities across our diversified services platform," Zoley continued.

"We have 18,000 available beds across contracted and idle secure services facilities, which if fully activated, would provide significant potential upside to our financial performance," he noted. "We also believe we have the necessary resources to materially scale up the service levels in our [Intensive Supervision Appearance Program] and air and ground transportation contracts."

Zoley added that "as we evaluate and pursue future growth opportunities, we remain focused on the disciplined allocation of capital to further reduce our debt, deleverage our balance sheet, and position our company to evaluate options to return capital to shareholders in the future."

According to a study published last month by the American Immigration Council, deporting the estimated 13.3 million people in the U.S. without authorization in one massive sweep would cost around $315 billion, while expelling 1 million undocumented immigrants per year would cost nearly $1 trillion cumulatively over a decade.

On Thursday, Trump insisted "there is no price tag" on his deportation plan. He dismissed concerns that such an operation would require the use of concentration camps like the mass detention centers—which one Trump official euphemistically compared with "summer camp"—of his first administration.

The private prison industry has also thrived during the Biden administration, which is on pace to match the 1.5 million people deported during Trump's previous presidency. Although President Joe Biden signed an executive order "on reforming our incarceration system to eliminate the use of privately operated criminal detention facilities" early during his tenure, the directive did not apply to detainees in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody.

The number of immigrants detained by the Biden administration doubled between 2021 and 2023. In July 2023, more than 90% of immigrants detained by ICE each day were locked up in private facilities. In January 2020, the last month of Trump's first term, 81% of daily detainees were held in private lockups.

In 2022 a bipartisan U.S. Senate probe corroborated allegations of staff abuse against migrants jailed at facilities owned by LaSalle, a private prison company that claims to be "run with family values." Whistleblowers and others have also revealed abuses from torture and medical neglect to sexual assault of children and forced sterilizations at privately run immigration detention centers.

'Communities were destroyed': Mass deportations of 1930s and 1950s show harm of Trump plan

Photo by Jannik on Unsplash
black metal frame under blue sky during daytime

Amy Goodman

and
Democracy Now

November 10, 2024

Donald Trump has made the mass deportation of immigrants a centerpiece of his plans for a second term, vowing to forcibly remove as many as 20 million people from the country. Historian Ana Raquel Minian, who studies the history of immigration, says earlier mass deportation programs in the 1930s and '50s led to widespread abuse, tearing many families apart through violent means that also resulted in the expulsion of many U.S. citizens. “These deportations that Trump is claiming that he will do will have mass implications to our civil rights, to our communities and to our economy, and of course to the people who are being deported themselves,” says Minian. She also says that while Trump's extremist rhetoric encourages hate and violence against vulnerable communities, in terms of policy there is great continuity with the Biden administration, which kept many of the same policies in place.




This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.


AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: We end today’s show looking at Donald Trump’s threat to deport as many as 20 million immigrants living in the United States. It’s a threat he repeated on an almost daily basis on the campaign trail, including at the Republican National Convention.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s why, to keep our families safe, the Republican platform promises to launch the largest deportation operation in the history of our country, even larger than that of President Dwight D. Eisenhower from many years ago. You know, he was a moderate, but he believed very strongly in borders. He had the largest deportation operation we’ve ever had.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re joined right now by a historian who’s closely studied past mass deportation programs in the United States. Ana Raquel Minian is an associate professor of history at Stanford University and the author of In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States Their recent piece for Dissent magazine is titled “Trump’s Deportation Model.”

So, Professor Minian, if you can start off by talking about Trump’s victory, what that model is, and, you know, his famous motto, “Make America great again”? Go back in history and talk about the mass deportations of people in the United States.

ANA RAQUEL MINIAN: Thank you.

In many ways, we think that Trump is a new model, a person who completely goes against the grain of American history in terms of deportations, in terms of his treatment of immigrants. But as he noted himself, that is absolutely not true.

What he was referring to when he spoke about Eisenhower was an operation that occurred in 1954 titled Operation Wetback. And this was a massive deportation campaign. The tactics were military tactics. They brought tanks. They brought Border Patrol people all throughout the border, airplanes. People were grabbed from their houses and taken to the border, stopped outside of their jobs and taken to the border. Their families didn’t know where they had been. It was a very cruel operation. In the year 1954, the year of Operation Wetback, over 1 million people were deported. And this is the model that Trump says that he is going to expand.

And it comes at huge costs to America, to its communities and to the people themselves. In the United States, when Operation Wetback happened, communities were destroyed. People were left without central members, without churchgoers, without breadwinners. Families came to [inaudible]. Families who relied on some of the folks who were deported had to either rely on welfare or find jobs immediately. Children were left without parents. Many jobs, many employers needed workers who were deported. It was bad for the U.S. economy. It was also bad for American civil rights. Many Mexican Americans, people who were born in the United States, could be walking through the streets and considered to be Mexican just because they, quote-unquote, “looked Mexican,” and their civil rights were not protected. Their constitutional rights were not protected.

The deportation of American citizens is something that we have seen over and over again. For example, in the 1930s, there was also a massive deportation campaign against Mexicans. It occurred, of course, during the Great Depression. We estimate that from 350,000 to a million people were deported and that over 60% of those were American citizens. These deportations that Trump is claiming that he will do will have mass implications to our civil rights, to our communities and to our economy, and of course to the people who are being deported themselves.


NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could explain? If you could put that in the context of more recent history? In other words, how does Trump’s proposal — or, in fact, what is actual policies that he implemented in the four years he was in power, from 2016 — on immigration, how do they compare with what the Biden administration did and what Kamala Harris said herself, since it was also central to her, immigration border security was also central to her campaign?

ANA RAQUEL MINIAN: Absolutely. In many ways, the Biden administration also led an extremely anti-immigrant movement. His administration first continued the “return to Mexico” policy, continued Title 42. What did these policies do? These policies meant that either asylum seekers could not even apply for asylum in the United States, even though asylum is something that we abide to because of our own national law and because of international agreements, and it said that — and the “Remain in Mexico” policy said that if we were to accept asylum seekers to apply for asylum, they had to wait while their cases were adjudicated in northern Mexico. While people waited in northern Mexico for either Title 42 to go away or for the “Remain in Mexico” policy to be allowed in, people lived in terrible encampments where they were regularly raped, tortured, mugged. It was absolutely brutal, the conditions there. In fact, I once interviewed a woman who had fostered a child during Trump’s zero-tolerance policy, the policy that Trump implemented that separated children from their parents while in detention. And this woman, who had fostered one of these little kids who was separated from his father while crossing the border because of the Trump administration, said, “Right now the Biden administration’s 'Remain in Mexico' policy is basically a zero-tolerance policy in reverse.” Why? The conditions in northern Mexico were so brutal that some parents made the heart-wrenching decision of sending their children across the border, because unaccompanied minors were the only ones who could get into the United States while their parents had to wait in northern Mexico. Even recently, the Biden campaign has dramatically reduced the number of asylum seekers who can come into the country. These policies have been devastating to asylum seekers and migrants.

But there is, I believe, a big difference between what Trump did and what Biden did, even if not so much numerically. The rhetoric that Trump implemented, the anti-immigrant discourse, calling Mexicans “animals,” all Central Americans as belonging to MS-13, calling people rapists, that is not something that we heard so much from the Biden administration or from Kamala Harris’s campaign. And that rhetoric matters. That rhetoric leads to violence in Latino communities, and eventually it also pushes people, administrations, to move further and further toward anti-immigrant policies. Additionally, Trump’s family separation policy was explicitly created for purposes of deterrence. What does this mean? Trump implemented the zero-tolerance policy to cause harm to asylum seekers in order to warn other asylum seekers not to try to come into the United States. The very purpose of this policy was to cause harm. This is different from the policies that Biden has implemented and that Kamala Harris promised to implement, as well, even though they, too, would have created massive harm.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And if you could say, given all of that, especially what you said the distinctions are between Kamala and Biden and Trump — you know, so many exit polls have found, across the board, there was an increase in the number of votes for Trump, and obviously Latinx community is a massive and highly diverse community, but among this community, however defined, there was also an increase in the number of people who voted for Trump. How do you understand that?


ANA RAQUEL MINIAN: I do want to emphasize your first point, which is: Why are we even thinking of a Latinx community when we think of votes? We know, for example, that Cubans have regularly voted Republican, that Mexicans have switched back and forth. So, I have been a little disturbed by this concept of a Latinx community and the blame that has been put on this community for the election of Trump nowadays.

But there is a history that we must understand. For example, if we look at the Mexican American community, right now the biggest Latinx community is of Mexicans. And Mexicans have changed — Mexican Americans have changed their views around migration many times. Up until the 1970s, most Mexican Americans viewed immigrants as a huge problem. Why? When immigrants arrived in the United States, they were cast as bringing disease, bringing crime — just like nowadays. And so, Mexican Americans had an option. One of these options was to say, “Look, we are not them. We don’t want them here. If they don’t come, we won’t be stereotyped as criminals. We won’t be stereotyped as bringing in disease. Stop them from coming.” So this was a very common speech and rhetoric of the Mexican American community up until the 1970s. This type of rhetoric began to change —

AMY GOODMAN: We have 10 seconds.

ANA RAQUEL MINIAN: — because of the civil rights movement — because of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when Mexican Americans said, “Actually, these people are our brethren. We are still being discriminated. Instead of stopping their discrimination — instead of fighting for them not to come, let us say they should not be discriminated, either.”

AMY GOODMAN: Ana Raquel Minian, we have to leave it there, and we thank you so much for being with us, associate professor of history at Stanford University, author of In the Shadow of Liberty: The Invisible History of Immigrant Detention in the United States. I’m Amy Goodman, with Nermeen Shaikh.

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LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for INTERNMENT

‘Inflation is radioactive’: Trump’s victory is part of a global populist wave

Photo by Rui Alves on Unsplash
a fruit stand with fruits

The Conversation
November 10, 2024

Was the U.S. election the latest eruption of populism across the globe? The Conversation

 U.S. senior politics editor Naomi Schalit brought this question to James D. Long and Victor Menaldo, two political scientists at the University of Washington who are specialists in comparative politics. They discussed how Donald Trump’s victory mirrors a movement in advanced industrialized countries that are liberal democracies to throw incumbents out of office after a prolonged period of post-pandemic inflation.

Naomi Schalit: It looks like the price of groceries played a big part in the rejection of Kamala Harris.

James Long: The person running against the unpopular incumbent party won this election, just like the person running against the unpopular incumbent won the 2020 election. Trump was the unpopular incumbent then, and although Harris was not technically the incumbent now, she represents the incumbent party. And it’s hard to win as an unpopular incumbent.

I don’t necessarily interpret the election results as a shift in the levels of racism or sexism or xenophobia necessarily. I think it’s just that those types of things probably got packaged up into feelings about immigration policy, and perhaps even anxieties about the economy, like inflation.

Victor Menaldo: I think we learned or confirmed that inflation is radioactive and that folks have a very long memory when it comes to price increases, and they will not simply embrace a reduction in the inflation rate as much as they’ll remember that the cumulative change in the level of inflation was 20% on average since 2021. So even if inflation is trending in the right direction, in terms of its rate, it’s the accumulation of the increased cost of living that I think has a lot of bite for voters.

Schalit: You can talk about inflation being down at 2.1% but the groceries still are really expensive.

Menaldo: That you paid 20% more on average for these over three years is what matters. That affects your standard of living and your budget.

More importantly, I think the Democrats are totally and utterly out of touch. They are not a working-class or middle-class party, though they pretend to be, and they advance policy agendas that people really don’t like. I think Harris, to her credit, understood that and ran away from things like defunding the police and banning fracking, but she wasn’t able to outrun them

. 

Supporters of candidate Donald Trump react to election results coming in at a GOP watch party in Pewaukee, Wis., on Nov. 6, 2024. Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images

Schalit: Are you seeing an echo here in the U.S. of a political phenomenon – populism – that you’ve seen elsewhere in the world?

Menaldo: The populism of our time that we’re seeing in advanced industrialized countries that are liberal democracies combines three elements. One is antipathy to experts and the cultural and political elite. It’s protectionism and isolationism, or at least nationalism, and it’s very closely related to that skepticism of, if not hostility to, immigration.

So you’re just seeing this crop up in places like Sweden, the Netherlands, France, Germany, obviously Brexit in 2016. Brexit, a populist revolt that led the U.K. to withdraw from the European Union, was an early canary in the coal mine. And the United States is not immune from that. You see the same syndrome and the same symptoms in terms of hostility to the elites, whether they’re political or cultural.

In most of these countries, left of center parties are, for whatever reason, choosing policies or chose policies that were very unpopular. And I just think it’s really that simple. Whether they’re good or bad is a separate topic. It’s about their popularity.

Schalit: After the last four years of bad news about him, indictments, convictions, all the things he says – Trump managed to ride all of that back to the White House. That’s extraordinary to me.

Long: Is it that the Democrats are so toxic or that Trump is so popular? Of course, those can both be true, and it can be different for different types of people. But I think regardless of how true it is, Democratic Party elites don’t know the answer to that question, and that means they’re going to keep losing until they can answer it for themselves. Maybe Biden knew the answer to that question in 2020, and that’s why he didn’t talk then about a lot of the things that are toxic now.

The Democrats’ inability to connect to the parts of the constituency that they won even as recently as 2020, and they should be winning, like Latino voters and African American men and younger people – I mean, they’ve lost young men – their inability to do that, whether it’s because they’re toxic or he’s popular or both, well, they have to figure out an answer to that question, and then they have to find a way to win locally and nationally.

Schalit: When you look out over the political landscape globally, what has happened in these countries where they threw out the establishment and elected a populist?

Long: I’m not sure that Trump’s thrown out the establishment. I think he’s rearranged who the establishment is. The Republican Party has stayed the same. He’s basically purged the Liz Cheneys of the party, so the party is his party. I think the role that captains of industry, like Elon Musk, will still play will be very influential, as it always is for any administration, particularly Republicans. I do think this is a huge rejection of the cultural establishment, for sure – journalists, academics, NGOs, people online, you know, kind of the mainstream media. I think this is a huge rejection of them and their wisdom and their whatever they think their insights are.

 

Giorgia Meloni, leader of the Italian far-right party ‘Fratelli d'Italia’ (Brothers of Italy), holds a placard saying ‘Thank You Italy’ on Sept. 26, 2022, in Rome, after the country voted to put her populist party in power. Andreas Solaro/ AFP via Getty Images

Menaldo: In terms of other countries, it’s a mixed bag. It’s varied, like after Brexit and Tory leader Boris Johnson’s short honeymoon period, everything went south for the Conservative Party, and they look now like they are dead in the water. They’re a spent political force.

If you think about France, because of their electoral system, even though the right did well, there was a coalition against populism of the center and the left, and so they’ve held that at bay. We’ll see if that dam breaks. If you think about a place like Italy, Giorgia Meloni seems to have moderated a lot of her populism and co-opted a lot of the establishment, or maybe the establishment found the way to accommodate her.

If you look at Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany, where center-left parties have been humbled, it’s also mixed. In these cases, you have populism in advanced industrialized democracies with pretty healthy checks and balances and still-relevant opposition parties and free media and stuff like that. I don’t think the populists were able actually to vanquish their foes and be as successful as they might have wanted to be.

But if you think of Viktor Orban in Hungary or Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey, those are examples where they change things fundamentally toward illiberal democracy. So those are examples of a lot of populist success. If you consider Narendra Modi in India, or a lot of the Latin American populists – for example, Hugo Chavez or Nicolás Maduro, or even the earlier ones like Juan Peron – those populists also did quite well. But those are developing countries, and democratic institutions and civil society and economic pluralism was less pronounced, so it’s difficult, I think, to analogize to those places. And in India, Modi has been strongly challenged and beaten back.

Similarly, Trump is constitutionally prevented from running again, so this is the beginning of the end for him. And he’s 78. So he’s a lame-duck, old president.

James: Even so, does the Trumpist message carry past 2028, or will Democrats be in a position again to throw the rascals out?

James D. Long, Professor of Political Science and Co-founder of the Political Economy Forum, University of Washington and Victor Menaldo, Professor of Political Science, Co-founder of the Political Economy Forum, University of Washington

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Despite Red Wave, Election Brought Some Victories for Economic Equality

Illinois and Washington both saw victories for progressive tax policy, and three red states passed paid sick leave.

By Sarah Anderson

November 10, 2024

Source: Inequality.org





If you’ve ever questioned whether our country has an inequality problem, this election should provide all the evidence you need. As billionaires used their financial firepower to throw support their preferred candidates’ way, Americans who’ve been left behind took out their frustrations at the ballot box.

How do we get started on this next chapter in the fight to reverse extreme inequality? With Senate Republicans still short of a filibuster-proof supermajority, next year’s debate over the expiration of the Trump tax cuts could still present one opportunity.

But it’s also likely that any near-term policy progress will have to start at the city and state levels and work its way up to the federal level. Three progressive tax victories from Tuesday are an encouraging sign.

Washington state’s Initiative 2109 was the most important tax-related ballot measure of the year. Hedge fund executive Brian Heywood bankrolled this campaign, hoping to repeal the state’s innovative capital gains tax on high earners.

With 62 percent of votes counted, the rollback proposal went down in a 63-37 landslide.

“This victory shows that advocacy in support of creating a more equitable tax code works,” Melinda Young-Flynn, Communications Director at the Washington State Budget and Policy Center, told Inequality.org.

“So many groups and individuals – including business owners, labor unions, teachers, racial justice advocates, parents, lawmakers, and many more – have worked together for more than a decade to help the public at large in our state make the connection between commonsense progressive taxes and the very real needs of our communities.”

Introduced in 2022, Washington state’s path-breaking policy imposes a 7 percent excise tax on capital gains from the sale of stocks, bonds, and other assets that exceed $250,000 per year (excluding real estate sales). Who makes that much from their financial investments? Fewer than 1 percent of the state’s richest residents.

Prior to the introduction of this tax in 2022, Washington’s wealthy had flourished under a state constitution that prohibits income tax. The capital gains tax does an end-run around that ban and the state supreme court has ruled it constitutional.

In its first two years, the capital gains levy has raised $1.3 billion for investments in child care and early learning, public schools, and school construction.

“The people of Washington have sent a clear message,” says Young-Flynn. “The well-being of kids takes precedence over tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy. All those of us who care about economic justice know it’s well past time to stop giving the ultra-wealthy a special deal in the tax code at the expense of everyone else.”

Washington state voters also beat back an effort to allow employees to opt out of a new payroll tax for long-term care insurance if they waive the benefit of that state-operated program. If this measure had passed, it likely would’ve rendered the insurance program financially unviable. Fortunately, voters rejected the proposal by a 55-45 margin.

In Illinois, voters expressed support for an extra 3 percent tax on income of over $1 million, with revenue going to property tax relief. With 89 percent of votes counted, Illinois voters approved the ballot measure by an 89-11 margin. While this measure is nonbinding, organizers hope this victory will stoke efforts to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2026 to authorize the new tax on the rich.

In addition to these fair tax victories, I’m heartened by the passage of pro-worker reforms in several “red” states — in sharp contrast to the positions of their Republican representatives in the U.S. Congress. Voters in Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska approved guaranteed paid leave and Missouri and Alaska also passed state minimum wage hikes.

A friend just wrote to me with this message: “A tree outside my window is nearly bare. Perhaps it is an image of our national life this morning. We have a choice: to focus on the bare branches or to appreciate the colorful leaves.”

These state victories against the scourge of inequality are some of the colorful leaves I’m appreciating today.

'Make a big difference': Dems win nearly all swing state Senate races despite Harris loss

Kari Lake in Peoria, Arizona in November 2023 (Gage Skidmore)
Carl GibsonNovember 09, 2024

Democrats may have lost the White House and their U.S. Senate majority, but one silver lining is that in nearly every battleground state, Republicans lost close Senate races.

According to USA TODAY, almost all of the Senate races in the states that decided the Electoral College majority — like Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — broke for Democrats. The lone exception is Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania), with the Associated Press (AP) calling the race for Republican Dave McCormick. This may change, however, as NBC News has yet to call the race and Casey has yet to officially concede. With 126,000 more votes that have yet to be counted, Casey is only behind McCormick by 41,000 ballots.

While the AP has yet to call the Arizona Senate race, Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona) currently leads Republican Kari Lake by roughly 30,000 votes. There are roughly 622,000 more outstanding ballots remaining. The bulk of those votes are in reliably Democratic Maricopa County, which houses Phoenix.

Some of the marquee Senate races that ended up in Democrats' favor include Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Michigan) defeating former Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) in the Mitten State, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wisconsin) winning a third six-year term over Republican businessman Eric Hovde in the Badger State and Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-Nevada) prevailing over Republican Sam Brown.

While red-state Democrats like Sens. Sherrod Brown (R-Ohio) and Jon Tester (D-Montana) lost their reelection battles, they still outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris by eight percentage points and 13 percentage points, respectively. And control of the House of Representatives still has yet to be determined, with neither party currently clinching the 218 seats needed for a majority in the lower chamber of Congress.

Democrats' strong performance in down-ballot races is particularly surprising given that President-elect Donald Trump swept Vice President Kamala Harris in almost all of those states (Arizona ballots are still being counted, but Trump is ahead). USA TODAY reported that even though Senate races are for federal office, voters often split tickets as they feel more personally connected to Senate candidates given their strong relationship with their home states.

"[V]oters in some places are making real distinctions to say this is not somebody who is aligned with Trump or represents him in the same way, or this is someone who has the state’s interest in mind in a way that other candidates don’t,” University of Wisconsin-Madison political science professor Barry Burden told the paper. “And that really is a different story from one state to the next.”

READ MORE: GOP Senate candidate's business received millions from bank linked to Mexican drug cartel

Democratic Senate candidates' success could also be chalked up to candidates staking out their own positions independent from President Joe Biden, whose popularity rating has been underwater for several years. While Gallego touted his positions on border security, Slotkin emphasized her pro-manufacturing industry positions, Rosen talked up her work with Republicans to improve Nevada's infrastructure and Baldwin embraced Wisconsin's farmers.

"[Swing state voters are] much more responsive to who the individuals are and to their performance in office and much less susceptible to the Washington style of defining politics," Burden said. He described voters who split their tickets between both parties as "more casual voters," though he observed that "they end up being the ones who make a big difference."

Click here to read USA TODAY's article in its entirety.

AMERIKA

Crisis calls from LGBTQ+ youth spiked by 700% after Election Day

Photo by BĀBI on Unsplash
woman in white tank top
Orion Rummler, The 19Th

November 10, 2024

Editor’s note: If you or a loved one are in crisis, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.

When the presidential race was called for Donald Trump in the early hours of Wednesday, calls and texts to a leading LGBTQ+ youth suicide prevention organization exploded in a massive outpouring of anxiety over the election results.

The Trevor Project saw an overall 700 percent increase in calls, texts and chats compared to prior weeks. The organization offers a lifeline via phone, online chat or text to LGBTQ+ youth who struggle with thoughts of depression, self-harm or suicide while navigating coming out to their families or facing discrimination. Right now, the services are experiencing long hold times at an especially vulnerable time for LGBTQ+ people.

LGBTQ+ youth are afraid, confused and anxious about the outcome of the election in these conversations, a spokesperson for the Trevor Project said. Their crisis services usually focus on supporting the mental health of queer and trans youth from ages 13 to 24 while they navigate relationships, gender identity and coming out. Now, the vast majority of young LGBTQ+ Americans are seeking emergency help due to what they described in text and chat messages to the helpline as “election anxiety.”

These pleas for help are not happening in a vacuum. They are the result of a political environment that has brought transphobia into the political mainstream, especially from Trump’s campaign. The former president’s campaign spent over $20 million on ads portraying trans people as harmful to society or attacking Vice President Kamala Harris’ support of trans people. Trump has pledged to enact extreme anti-LGBTQ+ policies in his second term, such as attempting to charge teachers with sex discrimination for affirming students’ gender identities. Some of his proposals mimic state anti-LGBTQ+ laws that have gone into effect in the past few years.

Those state laws and the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding them have been steadily eroding the mental health of LGBTQ+ youth. Prior research from the Trevor Project, in partnership with the polling firm Morning Consult, found that state proposals restricting the rights of LGBT+ youth in schools, sports and doctor’s offices negatively affect their mental health. New research by the Trevor Project, published in the journal Nature Human Behavior, found that state laws targeting transgender people caused trans and nonbinary youth to be more likely to attempt suicide within the past year.

The spike in crisis services outreach is alarming, said Jaymes Black, CEO of The Trevor Project. But, Black added, the organization is not surprised that the wave of anti-LGBTQ+ policies of the past few years continues to harm young people’s mental health. “The current political environment in the U.S. is heavy, but it is so important for LGBTQ+ young people to know that they do not have to shoulder this weight alone,” Black said.

“LGBTQ+ young people: your life matters, and you were born to live it,” Black added.

The Trevor Project encourages LGBTQ+ youth to take a break from news and social media, silencing notifications when trying to relax and finding community wherever possible, whether in person or online. Additional resources include calling the Trans Lifeline, which has specific resources and upcoming meetings for those “dealing with post-election grief;” texting hotlines such as THRIVE Lifeline and Steve Fund; calling the LGBT National Youth Talkline; or reaching out to a counselor through the Crisis Text Line.

Another way to seek help when in crisis or contemplating suicide is by reaching out to a trusted friend, community or family member.

Lambda Legal, an LGBTQ+ legal group, has compiled a list of state-level resources for LGBTQ+ youth, including mentorship programs and community centers. To connect with new friends and discuss shared hobbies, Q Chat Space offers an online community for LGBTQ+ teenagers. Parents of LGBTQ+ youth looking for supportive spaces can find state and local PFLAG chapters across the country, or join virtual meetings.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on Facebook and X.

Trump’s First Term Was Bad for Trans People. His Next Term Promises to Be Worse.


Here are six ways a second Trump administration may try to target trans people. We must organize our resistance now.

By Lewis Raven Wallace , 

Truthout

Published November 8, 2024

Dozens of protesters gather in Times Square near a military recruitment center to show their anger at President Donald Trump's decision to reinstate a ban on transgender individuals serving in the military on July 26, 2017, in New York City.

Spencer Platt / Getty Images

Donald J. Trump’s successful 2024 campaign for president prominently featured ads that declared: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.” The campaign spent an unprecedented amount of money on commercials specifically targeting trans and nonbinary people, particularly trans women, and Trump himself has denigrated trans advocacy and visibility, claiming it will come to an end when he returns to the presidency.

During his first campaign in 2016, Trump appeared relatively unconcerned about issues related to trans people and trans rights. While racism and sexism had been core to his career and image, anti-LGBTQ sentiments had not — he tended toward the northeastern socially liberal sensibilities held even by many conservatives in places like New York City.

Yet, in his first term as president, Trump pursued policies that limited trans people’s access to health care, restricted trans people’s protections from discrimination in jobs and housing, and banned trans people from the military.

The development of Trump’s anti-trans sensibilities from 2016 to the present reflects the growing alliance between Trump and socially conservative activist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council and Moms for Liberty. As Trump has reshaped his political image, he has joined these groups in grabbing onto trans folks as a convenient scapegoat and a focus of some of their most aggressively backwards policies.

Here are six ways in which Trump has promised to target trans and queer people during his second administration:

1. Trump Will Repress Trans Youth in Schools and Punish Teachers Who Support Them

In the name of “Parents’ Rights,” Trump’s website outlines his plans to investigate and defund schools and programs “pushing Critical Race Theory or gender ideology on our children.” Gender ideology has been largely interpreted by right-wing activists to mean any discussion of pronouns, nonbinary and queer identity, and trans-affirming stories, including children’s books featuring trans characters.

Trump also plans to push for a federal “Parental Bill of Rights” similar to those proposed in dozens of states, which require teachers and administrators to notify parents if students want to change their pronouns, and encourage parents to police how gender is taught in schools and whether trans youth are allowed to use the restrooms and locker rooms that align with their identities. These anti-trans education laws, already active in over half of U.S. states, are facing legal challenges which are bound to continue if the U.S. government passes a similar federal law.

2. Trump’s Policies Will Target Trans Women and Girls in Sports

Trump’s platform, which he refers to as “Agenda 47,” names “keep[ing] men out of women’s sports” as one of his 20 priorities for his next administration.

Trans people may be restricted not just from accessing trans-specific care in many cases, but also potentially from accessing any care.

Of course, there is no extant issue with “men” attempting to play on women’s sports teams. In action, this means Trump will continue to malign transgender women as men pretending to be women, calling on junk science to claim that trans women and girls have an unfair advantage in sports. Trump has indicated that he would attempt to use executive action to punish schools that allow trans girls to play on girls’ teams. Congress could also pursue passage of a federal law to this effect — a 2023 bill, HR 734, was stopped by the Democratic-controlled Senate but passed the House.

3. Trump Will Push for a Restrictive Federal Definition of Gender

Taking his anti-trans virulence a step further, Trump plans to redefine gender at the federal level as a binary recognizing only male-assigned men and female-assigned women. This flies in the face of current medical consensus, which defines gender as a category distinct from sex assigned at birth. These definitions are key to interpreting anti-discrimination protection — if sex is narrowly defined as a binary of male and female, federal Title IX protections can no longer be interpreted to protect trans people from discrimination. Trump has also vowed to reinstate rules from his previous administration that allowed federal housing programs to openly discriminate against unhoused trans people who seek services in sex-segregated housing facilities, using similarly narrow and regressive definitions of biological sex to force women into men’s shelters or turn them away entirely.

4. The Trump Administration Will Roll Back Health Care Access for Trans People

The legal definition of sex and gender also has a bearing on trans people’s access to necessary health care, an area in which Trump has been clear about his priorities.

During his first presidency, Trump’s administration set a precedent by rolling back federal protections against health care discrimination for trans people under the Affordable Care Act. If these policies are reinstated, trans people may be restricted not just from accessing trans-specific care in many cases, but also potentially from accessing any care — as open discrimination on the basis of gender identity may become legal (again) under Trump. While individual health insurers and health care providers are free to not discriminate, they will not be prevented from doing so by the federal government; on the contrary, they’ll virtually be cheered on to do just that.

Trump also claims he will criminalize gender-affirming care for minors, punishing physicians who provide such care by restricting Medicaid and Medicare funding and even opening DOJ investigations into these doctors. He has also vowed to stop providing gender-affirming care in federal prisons and to enforce Republicans’ restrictive definitions of gender in prisons and detention centers.

A study in 2017 found that already over a quarter of trans people had postponed necessary medical care out of fear, and that those who delayed care were more likely to be depressed and to attempt suicide. If these rules unfold as Trump has claimed they will, doctors and health care providers will be fearful of providing trans-affirming care, and trans and nonbinary people will be even more afraid to access care at all, causing devastating ripple effects for trans people’s mental health and physical well-being. Trans people in federal prisons, like trans people in many state facilities, will be forced into housing situations that make them even more vulnerable to transphobic violence, and unable to medically transition while incarcerated.

5. The Trump Administration Will Deport and Abuse Trans and Queer Migrants and Refugees

Trump’s campaign rhetoric had included the accusation that a Kamala Harris administration would support “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” — a statement which referred to Harris’s agreement that the federal government should in fact provide gender-affirming health care to migrants it is holding in cages without charges.

In addition to keeping trans migrants from getting the care they need while incarcerated, the Trump administration’s open plans to carry out mass deportations affect the health and safety of trans and queer communities in myriad other ways. Many refugees and migrants are trans and queer people pushed out of their own home communities, who are then vulnerable to violence and discrimination throughout their path of migration. Indiscriminate deportation will mean trans and queer immigrants are swept up into dangerous and unwelcoming detention facilities, subject to rape and abuse, and turned into easy targets for violence and discrimination.

6. Trump Will Ban Trans People From the Military (Again)

When President Joe Biden took power in 2021, he acted quickly to roll back Trump’s previous policy banning trans people from open military service. A majority of U.S. residents polled in 2021 (66 percent) supported trans military service. While Trump has not made as much noise recently on this particular issue, in all likelihood, a second Trump administration will lead to a second set of attacks on transgender troops, in spite of the unpopularity of this policy and the multiple legal challenges to the ban during Trump’s first term. Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation plan that lays out the right-wing movement’s visions for a Trump presidency in detail, says “gender dysphoria is incompatible with the demands of military service,” and calls for a ban on use of public money for “transgender surgeries” and abortions.

This election will no doubt usher in an era of fear and regression for trans and queer communities, particularly young people and transfeminine people who are the primary targets of the rhetorical attacks. Over just a decade, trans people have gone from being a little-known minority (at less than 1 percent of the adult population) to a hotly debated scapegoat, in the crosshairs of the new culture wars. But cultural debates aside, the changes to safety, health access and economic security will necessitate sustained grassroots resistance including mutual aid, policy advocacy, and likely defiance of unjust rules and laws. Small, community-driven trans advocacy organizations are already doing this work across the country, and in regions where the repression Trump is pursuing is already well underway — they deserve and need our support as their work becomes ever more challenging and urgent.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Lewis Raven Wallace
Lewis Raven Wallace (he/they/ze) is an independent journalist based in Durham, North Carolina, and the author and creator of The View from Somewhere book and podcast. He’s currently a Ford Global Fellow, and the Abolition Journalism Fellow with Interrupting Criminalization. He previously worked in public radio, and is a long-time activist engaged in prison abolition, racial justice, and queer and trans liberation. He is white and transgender, and was born and raised in the Midwest with deep roots in the South.