Trump Wants to Bury Slavery. My Family Went South to Unearth It.


Trump wants a populace unaware of the Black freedom struggle — because it is a guide for defeating his fascist plans.

By Jesse Hagopian , 

Truthout

September 12, 2025

Visitors browse an exhibition about slavery in the United States at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on August 28, 2025, in Washington, D.C.Alex Wong / Getty Images
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Donald Trump wants slavery buried — without even a headstone to mark that it existed.

In August, he fumed that the Smithsonian was “OUT OF CONTROL” for showing “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was.”

He has always trafficked in historical distortion. But his latest denial of slavery’s horrors is an escalation: It seeks to put the truth in chains, shackling history in service of his brand of MAGA fascism. Authoritarianism depends on erasing, distorting, and rewriting history so that violence and repression appear justified and inevitable. That’s why Trump has declared war on museums, schools, and curricula: If he can control the story of slavery, he can control the meaning of freedom


In a recent social media post, Trump lashed out at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, accusing it of focusing too much on slavery and not enough on the “Success” and “Brightness,” of the United States. His words came as his administration launched a 120-day review of museum exhibits, demanding curators “adjust any content” that does not sufficiently align with “American ideals.” He further boasted that he had instructed his attorneys to “go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.” In other words, this was no stray rant — it was a declaration of intent to make museums the next battlefield in his war on truth.

To be clear, this isn’t the first time Trump has lied about slavery. In a June 2024 speech to the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition, he falsely claimed that George Washington “probably didn’t” own enslaved people. In reality, Washington “owned” 123 enslaved Black people, and the total number of enslaved people on his Mount Vernon chattel labor complex (politely referred to as his plantation) swelled to 317 when he married his wife, Martha. That’s because she brought with her another 153 enslaved human beings inherited from her first husband. Washington owned Black people until his last breath, and upon his death, he bequeathed his human property to his wife.

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Trump’s Goal of Burying History Won’t Work If Teachers Refuse to Stop Teaching
Trump wants education to become indoctrination, and the Democratic Party isn’t fighting back. But we can.  By Jesse Hagopian , Truthout February 11, 2025

Washington was no “benevolent master.” He aggressively pursued runaway slaves — including Ona Judge, who escaped from his plantation and was never caught. He condoned the brutal violence that kept slavery in place. There is record of Washington ordering an enslaved man to be whipped for walking on the lawn. His secretary once recorded that “no whipping is allowed without a regular complaint & the defendant found guilty of some bad deed” — with “guilt” determined entirely by Washington or his overseers. Overseer Humphrey Knight reported to Washington in 1758: “As to the Carpenters, I have minded em all I possibly could, and has whipt em when I could see a fault.”

This was the daily terror George Washington used that kept human beings in chains.

Trump’s recent comments attempting to whitewash slavery are part of a broader movement to replace critical thinking with what I call “Uncritical Race Theory” — an ideology that denies the brutality of slavery and the centrality of it to the U.S. economy, while promoting the idea that racism either doesn’t exist; or if it does exist, primarily harms white people; or is only the product of individual prejudice, never systemic or institutional.

Uncritical Race Theory vs. Education

Uncritical Race Theory is quickly becoming official state doctrine — even if its architects are too dishonest to call it that — and it’s spreading across the country.

Florida’s official curriculum — not the Klan’s youth handbook, but the state’s actual standard — now claims slavery was of “personal benefit” to Black peoples. Under Trump, the National Park Service even scrubbed Harriet Tubman from its Underground Railroad webpage, replacing her story of defiance with a sanitized theme of “Black/White cooperation.”

In Oklahoma, the assault on truth has reached a new low. Superintendent Ryan Walters decreed that teachers moving from California or New York must pass a certification exam before entering a classroom — a modern-day loyalty oath straight out of the McCarthy era. The kicker? It’s not overseen by educators or universities but by PragerU. Despite its name, PragerU isn’t a university; it’s a $60 million right-wing media company producing slick propaganda targeting kids that is designed to normalize whitewashed myths. Already, PragerU curriculum is approved for use in classrooms in public schools in at least eight states, including Florida, Oklahoma, Texas, Montana, Louisiana, South Carolina, Idaho, and Arizona.

And at the federal level, Trump is cutting PBS funding while embracing PragerU as the White House’s preferred alternative. PragerU explicitly notes it aims to capitalize on the defunding of PBS to go “toe-to-toe with PBS Kids.”

Consider one PragerU’s cartoons: Two kids travel back to meet Christopher Columbus and ask about his enslavement of Indigenous people. Columbus shrugs: “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.” The children assure him slavery isn’t allowed in the 21st century, and Columbus convinces them it isn’t fair to judge him by the standards of the future. In short, the video teaches children not to “see the problem” with slavery, that criticism of enslavement is unfair, and that the real danger lies not in mass human bondage but in judging history too harshly.

Yet, even in his own time, Columbus faced condemnation. Bartolomé de las Casas, a Spanish colonist turned Dominican friar, publicly denounced the violence against the Indigenous Taíno people. In his History of the Indies, de las Casas wrote that the Spanish “took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags … roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, ‘Boil there, you offspring of the devil!’… They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground … then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive.”

His opposition proves that Columbus’s actions were not judged harshly only by later generations — they were decried by people who witnessed them firsthand.

In another video, PragerU commits a full-on memory hole rewrite by putting deceitful words into the mouth of Frederick Douglass. The cartoon depicts kids traveling back to 1852 to meet Douglass, who tells them, “Our founding fathers knew that slavery was evil and wrong … they wanted it to end … there was no real movement anywhere in the world to abolish slavery before the American founding … our system is wonderful.”

Pause for a moment to let this flagrant insult to truth and this obscene perversion of history sink in. PragerU actually portrays Frederick Douglass — a man who dedicated his life to destroying slavery — as declaring “our system is wonderful.” And not in some vague, ahistorical sense, but in 1852, the very year Douglass delivered his most blistering indictment of the United States in his famous oration, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?”

In that speech, Douglass declared, “There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour … for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.”

Where Douglass eviscerated the United States for its barbarity and hypocrisy, PragerU recasts him as a cheerleader for American exceptionalism. This is not history — it is indoctrination. It erases the radical truth-telling of one of the greatest abolitionists in history and replaces it with the very lies he spent his life fighting.
Unearthing History They Want Buried

In his book How the Word Is Passed, poet, historian, and best-selling author Clint Smith writes:


The history of slavery is the history of the United States. It was not peripheral to our founding; it was central to it. It is not irrelevant to our contemporary society; it created it…. We can learn this history by standing on the land where it happened. And we can learn this history from our own families, by sitting down and having conversations with our elders and getting insight into all that they’ve seen.

While Trump and his coterie of uncritical race theorists work to bury history, I went South this summer to unearth mine.

Several years ago, my father discovered the locations of the plantations where our family had been enslaved. Since then, my father, brother, son, and I have been traveling to Lawrence County and Morgantown, Mississippi, to stand on that land and to continue work on a documentary about our family’s history of enslavement and resistance. Being there with three generations of our family was no abstract history lesson — it was an act of radical remembering.


There are still people alive today who knew those who had been enslaved. That history isn’t distant — it’s still breathing beside us.

We went to honor Thomas and Laura Lenoir, my great-great-grandparents. Laura was born in 1852, the same year Frederick Douglass delivered his scorching speech condemning slavery. That connection brought history into sharper focus. I found myself wondering: What would Laura say today about PragerU’s grotesque distortions — about the attempt to twist the year of her birth into a fable that recasts Douglass’s searing denunciation as praise for the very system that enslaved her?

Last summer, we installed a headstone to mark Thomas and Laura’s resting place and legacy. As we gathered with community members, a woman in her 90s approached me with something that stopped me cold: she had once been friends with my great-great-grandmother Laura. That revelation hit me like a thunderclap. There are still people alive today who knew those who had been enslaved. That history isn’t distant — it’s still breathing beside us.

Then she told another story I’ll never forget. During Jim Crow, Black families in her town built a preschool for their children. The Ku Klux Klan burned it down, hoping to drive them away. But the community members didn’t run. They armed themselves, rebuilt the school in a tent, and stayed. They fought back. They held on.

Later in our trip, we had the opportunity to meet with descendants of those who had enslaved our family. They gave us a rare and chilling gift that had been passed down through their family: an original copy of The Laws of Mississippi, 1823. Inside was a statute criminalizing Black education and gathering, which states: “All meetings or assemblages of slaves, or free negroes, or mulattoes, mixing and associating with such slaves, at any school or schools for teaching them reading or writing … shall be deemed and considered an unlawful assembly … The officer … shall have power to inflict … twenty lashes on his or their bare back … and shall be entitled to receive … twenty-five cents for each slave so punished.”

This was their blueprint for white supremacist control designed to choke out Black literacy before it could ever become resistance. And yet, in the face of these laws, our ancestors gathered anyway. Learned anyway. Taught anyway.

In fact, while searching courthouse records, we made a stunning discovery: the signature of my great-great-grandmother Laura Lenoir. Whereas many documents signed by formerly enslaved people had an X, Laura hand signed her name!

So we know she could write. Did she secretly learn during slavery, risking everything? Was she part of the extraordinary wave of learning during Reconstruction, when Black communities built the public schools and a movement for mass education? Did she ever feel the sting of the lash for daring to write, as that law demanded?

We may never know the details. But we know this: she learned. She wrote. And she passed the value of education for liberation on to her posterity; Laura had 15 children, with one dying as a child, and she put all 14 of her surviving children through college. Her son York Alanozo Lenoir — my great-grandfather — even became a teacher and principal and started Black schools around the South. Despite the government sanctioning beatings for literacy and the KKK burning down schools, my family and their communities refused to submit to white supremacist terror.
Radical Remembering in an Age of Lies

This is the history Trump and his allies want erased — not because it’s divisive, but because it’s powerful. Because it tells the truth about Black resistance, Black dignity, and the long shadow of slavery. The lies of today’s politicians and groups like PragerU are so dangerous because they revive the logic of those 1823 laws: controlling knowledge to control freedom.

And let’s be clear: Trump’s lies, and the policies that follow them, aren’t only about disgracing Laura and Thomas or making history palatable for those who want a fantasy version of the U.S. Trump wants a populace unaware of the Black freedom struggle — because it is a guide for defeating his fascist plans.


This isn’t the first time we’ve faced fascism in the U.S., and it isn’t the first time we’ve fought back.

“Authoritarian regimes often find history profoundly threatening,” writes Jason Stanley, in his book, Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. “At every opportunity, these regimes find ways of erasing or concealing history in order to consolidate their power… All of this is true of authoritarianism in general, but it is especially true of one specific kind of authoritarian ideology: fascism.”

We are watching this fascist formula being rolled out around the country: deploying federal agents to occupy majority-Black cities under the banner of “law and order”; threatening to send the National Guard into urban areas with Black leadership; purging diversity, equity, and inclusion programs; demanding loyalty tests for teachers; and imposing Uncritical Race Theory as official curriculum.

Trump’s fascist project piles onto the U.S.’s ongoing systemic racism — the racial wealth gap, voter suppression, mass incarceration, and police terror — all legacies of slavery and Jim Crow.

When the woman in her 90s told me how her community armed itself and rebuilt their preschool in a tent after the KKK burned it down, I understood two things on a much deeper level: This isn’t the first time we’ve faced fascism in the U.S., and it isn’t the first time we’ve fought back — defending our communities and expanding our rights in the process.

Let her story summon in you the courage to join the struggles of today: to defend history in our schools and museums, to resist occupying armies in our cities, to stop immigration raids that are tearing families apart, and to reject every policy that seeks to bury truth and terrorize the vulnerable.


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.

Jesse Hagopian
Jesse Hagopian is a Seattle educator, the director of the Zinn Education Project’s Teaching for Black Lives Campaign, an editor for Rethinking Schools, and the author of the book, Teach Truth: The Struggle for Antiracist Education. You can follow him at IAmAnEducator.com, Instagram, Bluesky or Substack.

DIRTY AIR, DIRTY WATER 

In ‘Latest Pro-Polluter Move,’ Trump EPA to End Emissions Data Collection

“EPA cannot avoid the climate crisis by simply burying its head in the sand as it baselessly cuts off its main source of greenhouse gas emissions data,” said one Sierra Club campaigner.

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A Phillips 66 oil refinery operates in Wilmington, California.
(Photo by Citizen of the Planet/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Sep 12, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Citing US President Donald Trump’s anti-climate executive actions, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin on Friday unveiled a proposal to end a program that requires power plants, refineries, landfills, and more to report their emissions.

While Zeldin claimed that “the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is nothing more than bureaucratic red tape that does nothing to improve air quality,” experts and climate advocates emphasized the importance of the data collection, which began in 2010.

“President Trump promised Americans would have the cleanest air on Earth, but once again, Trump’s EPA is taking actions that move us further from that goal,” Joseph Goffman, who led the EPA Office of Air and Radiation during the Biden administration, said in a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, a group for former agency staff.

“Cutting the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program blinds Americans to the facts about climate pollution. Without it, policymakers, businesses, and communities cannot make sound decisions about how to cut emissions and protect public health,” he explained.

As The New York Times reported:

For the past 15 years, the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program has collected data from about 8,000 of the country’s largest industrial facilities. That information has helped guide numerous decisions on federal policy and has been shared with the United Nations, which has required developed countries to submit tallies of their emissions.

In addition, private companies often rely on the program’s data to demonstrate to investors that their efforts to cut emissions are working. And communities often use it to determine whether local facilities are releasing air pollution that threatens public health.

“By hiding this information from the public, Administrator Zeldin is denying Americans the ability to see the damaging results of his actions on climate pollution, air quality, and public health,” Goffman said. “It’s a further addition to the deliberate blockade against future action on climate change—and yet another example of the administration putting polluters before people’s health.”

Sierra Club’s director of climate policy and advocacy, Patrick Drupp, stressed Friday that “EPA cannot avoid the climate crisis by simply burying its head in the sand as it baselessly cuts off its main source of greenhouse gas emissions data.”

“The agency has provided no defensible reason to cancel the program; this is nothing more than EPA’s latest action to deny the reality of climate change and do everything it can to put the fossil fuel industry and corporate polluters before people,” he added. “The Sierra Club will oppose this proposal every step of the way.”

Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, similarly said that “the Trump administration’s latest pro-polluter move to eliminate the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program is just another brazen step in their Polluters First agenda.”

Responding to the administration’s claim that the proposal would save businesses up to $2.4 billion in regulatory costs, Alt said that “under the guise of saving Americans money, this is an attempt on the part of Trump, Lee Zeldin, and their polluter buddies to hide the ball and avoid responsibility for the deadly, dangerous, and expensive pollution they produce.”

“If they succeed, the nation’s biggest polluters will spew climate-wrecking pollution without accountability,” she warned. “The idea that tracking pollution does ‘nothing to improve air quality’ is absurd,” she added. “If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Hiding information and allowing fossil fuel companies to avoid accountability are the true goals of this rule.”



BlueGreen Alliance executive director Jason Walsh declared that “the Trump administration continues to prove it does not care about the American people and their basic right to breathe clean air. This flies in the face of the EPA’s core mission—to protect the environment and public health.”

“The proposal is wildly unpopular with even industry groups speaking against it because they know the value of having this emissions data available,” he noted. “Everybody in this country deserves to know the air quality in their community and how their lives can be affected when they live near high-emitting facilities.”

“Knowledge is power and—in this case—health,” he concluded. “The administration shouldn’t be keeping people in the dark about the air they and their neighbors are breathing.”

This proposal from Zeldin came a day after the EPA moved to reverse rules protecting people from unsafe levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), often called ”forever chemicals,” in US drinking water, provoking similar criticism. Earthjustice attorney Katherine O’Brien said that his PFAS decision “prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country.”

EPA Seeks to Reverse Rules Protecting Drinking Water From ‘Forever Chemicals’

One environmental attorney said that the EPA proposal “prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country.”


A child pours tap water into a glass in this undated photo.
(Photo by Teresa Short/Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Sep 12, 2025
COMMON DREAM

Public health and environment defenders on Friday condemned the Trump administration’s announcement that it will no longer uphold Environmental Protection Agency rules that protect people from unsafe levels of so-called ”forever chemicals” in the nation’s drinking water.

In addition to no longer defending rules meant to protect people from dangerous quantities of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)—called forever chemicals because they do not biodegrade and accumulate in the human body—the EPA is asking a federal court to toss out current limits that protect drinking water from four types of PFAS: PFNA, PFHxS, GenX, and PFBS.

The EPA first announced its intent to roll back limits on the four chemicals in May, while vowing to retain maximum limits for two other types of PFAS. The agency said the move is meant to “provide regulatory flexibility and holistically address these contaminants in drinking water.”

However, critics accuse the EPA and Administrator Lee Zeldin—a former Republican congressman from New York with an abysmal 14% lifetime rating from the League of Conservation Voters—of trying to circumvent the Safe Drinking Water Act’s robust anti-backsliding provision, which bars the EPA from rolling back any established drinking water standard.

“In essence, EPA is asking the court to do what EPA itself is not allowed to do,” Earthjustice said in a statement.

“Administrator Zeldin promised to protect the American people from PFAS-contaminated drinking water, but he’s doing the opposite,” Earthjustice attorney Katherine O’Brien alleged. “Zeldin’s plan to delay and roll back the first national limits on these forever chemicals prioritizes chemical industry profits and utility companies’ bottom line over the health of children and families across the country.”

Jared Thompson, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said that “the EPA’s request to jettison rules intended to keep drinking water safe from toxic PFAS forever chemicals is an attempted end run around the protections that Congress placed in the Safe Drinking Water Act.”

“It is also alarming, given what we know about the health harms caused by exposure to these chemicals,” Thompson added. “No one wants to drink PFAS. We will continue to defend these commonsense, lawfully enacted standards in court.”

PFAS have myriad uses, from nonstick cookware to waterproof clothing to firefighting foam. Increasing use of forever chemicals has resulted in the detection of PFAS in the blood of nearly every person in the United States and around the world.

Approximately half of the U.S. population is drinking PFAS-contaminated water, “including as many as 105 million whose water violates the new standards,” according to the NRDC, which added that “the EPA has known for decades that PFAS endangers human health, including kidney and testicular cancer, liver damage, and harm to the nervous and reproductive systems.”

Betsy Southerland, a former director of the Office of Science and Technology in the EPA’s Office of Water, said in a statement Friday:
The impact of these chemicals is clear. We know that this is significant for pregnant women who are drinking water contaminated with PFAS, because it can cause low birth weight in children. We know children have developmental effects from being exposed to it. We know there’s an increased incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer with these chemicals.

Two of the four chemicals targeted in this motion are the ones that we expect to be the most prevalent, and only increasing contamination in the future. With this rollback, those standards would be gone.


Responding to Thursday’s developments, Environmental Advocates NY director of clean water Rob Hayes said that “the EPA’s announcement is a big win for corporate polluters and an enormous loss for New York families.”

“Administrator Zeldin wants to strip clean water protections away from millions of New Yorkers, leaving them at risk of exposure to toxic PFAS chemicals every time they turn on the tap,” he added. “New Yorkers will pay the price of this disastrous plan through medical bills—and deaths—tied to kidney cancer, thyroid disease, and other harmful illnesses linked to PFAS.”

While Trump administration officials including Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have claimed they want to “make America healthy again” by ending PFAS use, the EPA is apparently moving in the opposite direction. Between April and June of this year, the agency sought approval of four new pesticides considered PFAS under a definition backed by experts.

“What we’re seeing right now is the new generation of pesticides, and it’s genuinely frightening,” Nathan Donley, the environmental health science director at the Center for Biological Diversity, told Civil Eats earlier this week. “At a time when most industries are transitioning away from PFAS, the pesticide industry is doubling down. They’re firmly in the business of selling PFAS.”

Democratic Senators Call for JPMorgan CEO to Testify on Bank’s Epstein Ties

“The American people deserve to know what happened at JPMorgan and other banks that financed Mr. Epstein,” they wrote.

By Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg , 

Truthout

September 12, 2025

People walk outside of the JPMorgan Chase headquarters in New York.Eduardo Munoz Alvarez / VIEWpress


Democratic senators are calling for a congressional hearing on JPMorgan Chase and other banks’ ties to accused child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.

“The American people deserve to know what happened at JPMorgan and other banks that financed Mr. Epstein,” 10 Democratic members of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee wrote to Committee Chair Tim Scott (R-South Carolina).

“The Committee should hold a public hearing as soon as possible to examine failures and advance reforms that protect our communities,” they continued.

The letter was signed by Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts), Jack Reed (Rhode Island), Tina Smith (Minnesota), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nevada), Chris Van Hollen (Maryland), Raphael Warnock (Georgia), Andy Kim (New Jersey), Ruben Gallego (Arizona), Lisa Blunt Rochester (Delaware), and Angela Alsobrooks (Maryland).

The senators called for JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon to testify before the committee under oath.



The letter was spurred by an investigation published on September 8 in The New York Times Magazine. The Times reported that JPMorgan may have enabled Epstein’s crimes by continuing to work with him despite repeated warnings from employees as early as 2006.

Over the course of the bank’s relationship with Epstein, JPMorgan processed over $1 billion in transactions and opened at least 134 accounts for victims of his sex trafficking operation, according to the Times. The bank made more than $8 million in fees off of Epstein in one year alone.

“During a time when Epstein was regularly sexually abusing teenage girls and young women, JPMorgan processed more than 4,700 transactions, totaling more than $1.1 billion, for him, including payments to his victims,” the Times reported. “It also wired his money to Russian and Eastern European banks that appeared connected to Epstein’s sex-trafficking operations.”

Deutsche Bank, where Epstein was also a client, has also been accused of enabling Epstein’s sex trafficking operation. The bank subsequently paid victims of Epstein and regulators more than $100 million in settlements.

“Deutsche Bank executives, meanwhile, similarly estimated that Mr. Epstein could generate up to $4 million in annual revenues for the bank and decided to bank him in spite of his record,” the senators wrote. “So, despite repeated warnings from their employees, JPMorgan — and other financial institutions like Deutsche Bank — continued to do business with Mr. Epstein, potentially enabling his significant crimes.”

The Trump administration has moved to weaken regulations for the banking industry, but the senators say the Times investigation shows “we need more transparency, not less.”

“As the Trump Administration takes steps to loosen safeguards — such as rolling back anti-money laundering rules, halting enforcement of laws to combat anonymous shell companies, and firing bank examiners — our understanding of these vulnerabilities is more important than ever,” they wrote.

JPMorgan has faced multiple lawsuits over its relationship with Epstein. The U.S. Virgin Islands, where Epstein owned two islands, sued JPMorgan, arguing that the bank was “indispensable to the operation and concealment of the Epstein trafficking enterprise.” Epstein allegedly trapped and abused many of his victims on his Virgin Islands compound. The bank settled the case in 2023 for $75 million.

Also that year, JPMorgan settled a lawsuit filed by about 200 victims for $290 million.

Haley Robson, who was sexually abused by Epstein when she was in high school, contacted CEO Dimon directly about the bank’s integral role in Epstein’s crimes.

“I don’t understand how so many people, colleagues, knew what was going on, or had evidence and information that could have helped us, and chose not to speak up,” Haley Robson wrote in a letter to Dimon, The Daily Beast reported in 2023.

“I may not be as smart as you, but we should at least agree that the information you withheld has hurt me and many others,” she continued.

This week, federal lawmakers published a book of notes and drawings made for Epstein’s 50th birthday that was turned over by Epstein’s estate. The book reportedly includes contributions from former President Bill Clinton, Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz, and President Donald Trump. Trump has denied he authored the note signed “Donald Trump,” which features what appears to be the outline of a woman or girl’s body.

“Happy Birthday — and may every day be another wonderful secret,” Trump allegedly wrote.

Another contribution to the book, which is unsigned, shows a drawing of Epstein at a child’s birthday party, giving three young girls balloons, and a second drawing of women in bikinis massaging him. The first picture is labeled 1983 and the second is labeled 2003. One of the women has Epstein’s initials tattooed on her exposed buttocks.

“What a great country,” the contributor wrote.

'Costs are down!' Trump declares inflation 'solved' as gas and grocery prices soar

TRUMP LIES

David Badash,

 The New Civil Rights Movement
September 12, 2025 


U.S. President Donald Trump gestures as he arrives at LaGuardia Airport in New York, U.S., September 11, 2025. REUTERS/Ken Cedeno

President Donald Trump has declared inflation “solved” as Americans are paying more for everyday goods like gas and groceries.

“I’ve already solved inflation,” Trump told “Fox & Friends” on Friday morning. “Costs are down.”

Inflation is now the highest it’s been since January, according to CNBC.

“Look at the energy costs,” he added. “You’re gonna have $2 gasoline pretty soon.”

The national average price of gas as of Friday is $3.19, according to AAA. Nationwide, prices are as high as $4.65 and as low as $2.71.

The president went on to boast, “I’ve solved just about every problem.”

But statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor show Americans are paying more—in some cases far more—at the pump and at the checkout line.

“Inflation inched higher last month as Americans closed out the summer paying more for both groceries and gasoline,” NPR reported on Thursday. “Consumer prices in August were up 2.9% from a year ago, according to a report Thursday from the Labor Department. That’s a sharper annual increase than the previous month, when inflation was clocked at 2.7%.”

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to lower prices “on day one.”

Yet, due in part to his sweeping tariffs, “Virtually all major grocery categories are now more expensive than they were a year ago, some substantially so,” according to Axios. “This was the biggest month-over-month increase since August 2022, the tail end of a year of huge monthly increases in grocery prices.”

The price of coffee is up nearly 21%, the price of uncooked beef steaks is up nearly 17%, apples are up nearly 10%, and bananas are up almost 7%.

Overall, the cost of groceries in August was up 0.6% over July’s prices, and the price of gas jumped 1.9% in just one month, according to NPR.

USA

Trump’s Lisa D. Cook Firing: Use of Racism in Power Grab

Saturday 13 September 2025, by Malik Miah


Trump’s August 25 late night internet post firing Lisa Cook from the Board of Governors of Federal Reserve System, the country’s central bank, came as a surprise. Why her?

For some time, Trump has been railing against — and threatening to fire — the Chairman of the Board, Jerome Powell. Because the Fed has been setting the basic interest rate not to his liking, Trump’s drive is to take it over and eliminate its independent status.

But he fired Cook, the only Black Governor, instead. She was the first Black woman to serve on the Board of Governors.

The day after Cook was fired the White House released a photo. It showed Trump, his cabinet and other officials giving a thumbs-up to the firing of Cook. Of the 24 people in the photo only one was Black.

Cook sued Trump with her lawyers contesting the firing as political interference. On September 9 a preliminary injunction temporarily blocked Trump’s decision but the administration immediately announced its intention to challenge the injunction at the U.S. Court of Appeals. This swift response is an attempt to see her gone by the time the Fed meets next week.

Black Reaction

Many in the Black community responded angrily. They say Trump’s effort to oust Cook fits a pattern of purging non-white voices from the higher ranks of government leadership.

As LaTosha Brown, co-founder of the organization Black Voters Matter, noted:

“His goal is to get control of the Federal Reserve and for that to no longer be an autonomous, independent body. But what he does recognize is that in America everything is about race. It is as lethal as a nuclear bomb.”

Race and economics (class) always intersect in the United States. That’s the case whether people are buying a home or seeking available job opportunities.

Who Is Lisa D. Cook?

Cook is a former economics professor whose research focused on racial disparities, the history of financial institutions, and crises in financial markets and innovation.

Cook taught economics and international relations at Michigan State University. Previously she was on the faculty of Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. She was a Marshall scholar who received degrees from Oxford University and Spelman College, a historically Black women’s college in Atlanta.

Cook dedicated much of her scholarship to examining how racial discrimination and targeted violence created barriers to economic advancement for African Americans. She also advised the Nigerian and Rwandan governments on banking reforms and economic development.

In other words, Cook is a well-respected and qualified economist and scholar. As business and economic experts told CNN, the Fed benefits greatly from having leaders with diverse professional and personal backgrounds.

Saqib Bhatti, co-founder and executive director of the Action Center on Race & the Economy, noted that in making the case for Cook’s nomination, only two of 417 Federal Reserve staff positions were Black while 318 of them were white. He concluded, “That’s a really big problem.”

In 2022 Cook was confirmed to the Fed’s Board of Governors by the Senate in a party-line vote to fill an unexpired term and later appointed for a term ending on January 31, 2038. Republicans have argued that she was unqualified and found her research overly focused on race. Democrats brushed off such critiques but refused to call out the racism of the opposition.

A member of the Board of Governors can only be removed for cause. The alleged “cause” was an error she supposedly made in mortgage applications before she was elected to the Fed. It has nothing to do with her qualifications or performance on the Board.

Powell said Cook remains on the Board unless legitimate cause is validated for her firing. If she is removed, Trump will be in the driver’s seat in taking over the Board. He has two votes already and with the resignation of Governor Adriana D. Kugler on August 8 Trump has nominated Stephen Miran, head of the White House Council of Economic Affairs, to finish out that term. Miran is considered the architect of Trump’s tariff policy. And if the Fed’s decisions on interest rates are dependent on Trump’s (or any subsequent president) wishes, it raises unknown consequences for the U.S. and global economy.

Reporters found that at least two members of the Trump Cabinet have similar discrepancies on their mortgage applications. The charge against Cook not only serves to get rid of someone who didn’t vote the way Trump wanted but pushes back racial justice and undermines the long-term gains of African Americans.

The Fed was established in 1913, but there was not a person of color on the Board of Governors until Andrew Brimmer, a Black man, was appointed in 1966. The first woman to serve on the Fed’s Board was Nancy Teeters, appointed in 1978. Cook, the first Black woman, was appointed almost fifty years later. Like all members, she has a 14-year term.

Hatred for Diversity

Trump’s attempt to fire Cook comes as his administration has more broadly tried to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), efforts across the federal government. Earlier this year, Trump fired Gwynne Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on National Labor Relations Board, and Gen. Charles Brown Jr., a Black man who was the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the country’s armed forces.

Trump’s even pressured private-sector companies and institutions — often successfully — to end DEI programs. He is using the government’s purse to bludgeon universities into dismantling attempts to equalize the playing field.

Trump, and other white nationalists argue that merit is the basis on which people should be judged. And then they put their fingers on the scale by launching campaigns of misinformation and even slander. For example, Trump claimed former President Barack Obama, the first Black President, was not born as a U.S. citizen (the “birtherism” lie) and therefore was not eligible for the office. The lie becomes Trump’s truth.

Last In, First Out

Typical for Blacks in all jobs, Cook is the last hired and first fired.

While Cook refused to resign and filed a lawsuit asserting that Trump has no power to remove her from office, Trump’s Justice Department initiated a criminal investigation of her. She is an obstacle to be removed.

Activist LaTosha Brown explained to the Guardian why Trump picked Lisa Cook:


He picked her because he is betting that, in an industry that is probably 90% or more white male, his odds of removing her are greater than the odds for removing others from the board. That in itself is rooted in the history and how insidious racism is built into the fabric of how we see people of color in this country.

Trump also dismissed Carla Hayden, the first Black person to serve as librarian of Congress, after a reactionary advocacy organization accused her of being a “radical.”

Trump says he acts on his instincts no matter the facts. He seeks a return to the founding of the country where only European settlers were “real” Americans. Cook is clearly being fired because of racism.

In defending Cook, racism must be a central part of the argument. But Democrats, who oppose Trump, just want to focus on the independence of the central bank.

In Defense of DEI

While many liberals and even some on the left are quiet about DEI, it is crucial that DEI and wokeness be defended from the right’s racist attacks.

Why is that?

Diversity is a way to say the country is not only white, in fact non-whites will soon be a majority. To say diversity should be reflected in society’s institutions is not complicated. Yet Trump calls it “reverse discrimination” against whites, especially white men.

Equity is a call for fairness and equality. The Black-led civil rights movement saw the fight was to end legal segregation, but much more was necessary. That’s why the 1963 March on Washington was about jobs and freedom. Affirmative action can help close the gap between oppressed minorities and the majority white population.

Inclusion is simple: Let Blacks and others finally be accepted for their skills, knowledge, and abilities as equals. Lisa Cook has incredible expertise, but Trump and other right-wingers deny it.

Trump and his white nationalist base reject DEI (also called “wokeness”) and threaten to criminalize those who support full equality.

In his second term, Trump has managed to pick only one Black person to serve in his cabinet: Scott Turner, secretary of housing and urban development. In fact, in judging the Trump cabinet, we can say it’s one of the most unqualified group of people ever picked. As Rashad Robinson, a civil rights leader and former president of the group Color of Change, explained:

We live in a very diverse country, a country with many different types of people that come from many different backgrounds, and the president exhibits his values by who he puts in office.

“This is not simply that Donald Trump has put only one Black person in his cabinet. It’s that Donald Trump has gone out of his way to find some of the most unqualified and ill-equipped people to put in those jobs as a way to actually avoid having to put Black people in his cabinet.

We should keep in mind that in this country the exploitation of the working class and the oppression of Blacks and other people of color are intertwined aspects of capitalist rule.

The Lisa Cook battle of a successful Black woman who is a professional economist is important for the working class, Black community, labor movement and the socialist left. Trump’s sexism and racism can be defeated by opposing what can be easily seen as a blatantly unfair attack.

Source: Against the Current.

Attached documentstrump-s-lisa-d-cook-firing-use-of-racism-in-power-grab_a9167.pdf (PDF - 916 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article9167]


Malik Miah is a retired aviation mechanic, union and antiracist activist. He is an advisory editor of Against the Current.


International Viewpoint is published under the responsibility of the Bureau of the Fourth International. Signed articles do not necessarily reflect editorial policy. Articles can be reprinted with acknowledgement, and a live link if possible.

'What an idiot': Trump's attack dog mocked as 'mortgage fraud' allegation crumbles

Matthew Chapman
September 12, 2025

RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: Bill Pulte, nominated to be the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, testifies during a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 27, 2025. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon/File Photo


President Donald Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte has been on a tear accusing various critics of the administration of mortgage fraud — most recently Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, whom he claimed improperly took out mortgages on two separate properties as primary residences. However, a new Reuters report throws this in serious doubt, by revealing that preliminary loan documents indicate she had disclosed to her credit union one would be a vacation home.

The apparent misfire, which could significantly complicate Trump's attempts to fire Cook from the Fed, resulted in an explosion from commenters on social media, who broadly mocked Pulte — particularly since separate reporting suggested his parents had in fact committed the same fraud he tried to pin on Cook.

"Wait, so the entire claim that Cook claimed two primary residences was…false?" wrote Maryville College history professor Aaron Astor.

"I’ve been saying all along, as someone who’s handled extensive mortgage litigation, that these loan files are very complicated and can be thousands of pages," wrote veteran and former trial lawyer John Jackson. "Now it appears Lisa Cook did nothing wrong and was actually defamed by @pulte. What an idiot."

"So the bad faith pretext was also just fake?" wrote Bloomberg columnist Matthew Yglesias.

"Wowow, @pulte!! Is this why even right wingers think you're a loose canon [sic]?" wrote national security journalist Marcy "emptywheel" Wheeler. "Will you go to prison for lying to the FBI?"

"I really do hope she sues every single person possible, so that there is as much discovery as can possibly be provided, and that she keeps right on suing even after that," wrote MSNBC columnist Kali Holloway.

"Catching up on FHFA Director Bill Pulte's efforts, it sounds like Lisa Cook did not claim two primary residences at the same time, but Pulte's dad did?" wrote Mother Jones reporter Dan Friedman. "Tough week for that guy."

" Trump fired a Black woman economist from the Federal Reserve based on a lie pushed by a Twitter influencer, and the documents prove it," wrote investment banker Evaristus Odinikaeze. "Lisa Cook did not commit mortgage fraud. There was no double primary residence. Just another smear campaign used as political cover. Will there be accountability for the people who lied? Or does character assassination now pass as policy?"

"So, the only mortgage fraud discovered in all of this was Bill Pulte's family? May she sue the hell out of everyone," wrote former congressional staffer and Democratic campaign strategist Rhonda Elaine Foxx.

New docs blow hole in Trump admin’s mortgage fraud allegations against Fed official

Matthew Chapman
September 12, 2025 

RAW STORY

FILE PHOTO: Lisa Cook testifies before a Senate Banking Committee hearing on her nomination to be a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors (for a second term), on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., June 21, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo


New documents obtained by Reuters contradict allegations made by a Trump administration bureaucrat that Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook committed mortgage fraud.

Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte had previously claimed to have unearthed documents indicating Cook, who had been unwilling to follow President Donald Trump's demands to lower interest rates, had declared two separate residences as her primary home in mortgage statements, which, depending on the jurisdiction, can be against the law when it causes banks to lend under more favorable terms.

But according to Reuters, "A loan estimate for an Atlanta home purchased by Lisa Cook ... shows that Cook had declared the property as a 'vacation home.'"

"The document, dated May 28, 2021, was issued to Cook by her credit union in the weeks before she completed the purchase and shows that she had told the lender that the Atlanta property wouldn’t be her primary residence," said the report. "The document appears to counter other documentation that Cook’s critics have cited in support of their claims that she committed mortgage fraud by reporting two different homes as her primary residence, two independent real-estate experts said."

The revelation could be an obstacle to Trump's efforts to fire Cook from the Federal Reserve, which he justified by pointing to Pulte's unproven allegations. Cook has filed a lawsuit challenging her dismissal as unlawful.

Pulte, whose agency oversees the government-sponsored housing finance entities Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, has issued similar mortgage fraud claims against other Trump critics, including Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and New York Attorney General Letitia James, both of whom deny any wrongdoing.

A recent report found that Pulte's own father and stepmother may have been pulling that exact scheme on properties in Michigan and Florida. Upon Reuters' investigation into the matter, officials in Bloomfield Township, Michigan, revoked the couple's homestead exemption.

With Premiums Set to Rise, a Reminder: ‘Medicare for All Would Save $650 Billion’ Annually

“Your periodic reminder that health insurance is not healthcare,” said one advocate. “It’s an unnecessary middleman designed to restrict access to healthcare and exploit people for profit.”


Supporters of US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) hold signs during an event on healthcare September 13, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Sep 12, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

Health insurance premiums are set to skyrocket in the coming months, which has prompted many progressive advocates to remind Americans that a less expensive alternative is possible.

As The Washington Post reported on Friday, the cost of health insurance is “on track for their biggest jump in at least five years” thanks in part to the actions of congressional Republicans and President Donald Trump.

Dems Say They’ll Stand Firm Against Budget Deal Unless GOP Halts Attack on Healthcare



Healthcare Giants Have Raked in ‘Sick Profits’ From Trump Tax Cuts While Stiffing Patients: Report

Citing new research from KFF, the Post noted that most people who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are set to see their premiums rise by over 75% unless Congress steps in and renews enhanced subsidies that had been passed into law under the American Rescue Plan in 2021.

Congressional Democrats have said that they will not vote to fund the government past its current rapidly approaching deadline unless Republicans in Congress agree to an extension of the enhanced health insurance tax credits.

The Post report also pointed to Trump’s trade war threats as a justification being cited by insurers to raise rates. Even though Trump has yet to actually levy tariffs on pharmaceutical imports, his Commerce Department is currently investigating their impact and the president himself has said that the tariffs could be as much as 250%.

“Some insurers, in legal filings with regulators, have said explicitly that the expected tariffs were raising insurance prices,” the paper explained. “A document from United Healthcare of New York states that, to account for ‘uncertainty regarding tariffs and/or the onshoring of manufacturing and their impact on total medical costs, most notably on pharmaceuticals, a total price impact of 3.6% is built into the initially submitted rate filing.‘”

Given all this, longtime supporters of Medicare for All encouraged their fellow Americans to consider a different way of handling healthcare.

“Next year, Americans will see the biggest jump in health insurance costs in 15 years,” commented former US Labor Secretary Robert Reich. “Meanwhile, the six largest health insurers raked in more than $31 billion in net income last year. Still not sure if we need Medicare for All?”

Warren Gunnels, a staffer for US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), cited studies by the Congressional Budget Office and Yale to argue that Medicare for All would be a net money saved.

“Your daily reminder: Medicare for All would save $650 billion and 68,000 lives each and every year while providing comprehensive healthcare to every man, woman, and child with no premiums, no deductibles, and no co-payments,” he wrote.


Melanie D’Arrigo, the executive director of Campaign for New York Health, argued that the best part of Medicare for All is that it would simply make the private insurance industry obsolte.

“Your periodic reminder that health insurance is not healthcare,” she said. “It’s an unnecessary middleman designed to restrict access to healthcare and exploit people for profit. The fiscal and moral path forward is universal healthcare with Medicare for All.”

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) reacted to the news of insurance price hikes with a simple message.

“Medicare for All. Now,” he wrote.

The GOP's answer to our gathering health crisis? A eugenicist without the slightest clue

John Stoehr
September 10, 2025

COMMON DREAMS


People sign up for health insurance information in Los Angeles. 

REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson/File Photo

If the Republicans cared about the public’s wellbeing, they wouldn’t have confirmed Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as head of the US Department of Health and Human Services. He had no business there, but that didn’t matter. Their top concern has been the wellbeing of Donald Trump.

Kennedy is now giving the Republicans a headache with insane talk of vaccines causing autism and how he had no choice but to fire the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director because, he said, she told him she was not trustworthy. But that headache isn’t borne of caring about people. It’s borne of concern that people might figure out the Republicans don’t care about them.

The secretary was under pressure before he fell to pieces last week during testimony before a Senate committee. More than a thousand former HHS workers had signed a petition calling on him to resign. The pressure only increased afterward. Kennedy’s sister and her son, a former congressman from Massachusetts, added their voices.

Here’s the New York Daily News reporting on it:

“‘Robert Kennedy Jr. is a threat to the health and well-being of every American,’ Joe Kennedy wrote on X the day after the hearing. As a purveyor of misinformation and sower of confusion, RFK is not adequately ‘protecting the public health of our country and its people,’ the secretary’s nephew said. “At yesterday’s hearing, he chose to do the opposite: to dismiss science, mislead the public, sideline experts and sow confusion.’


The Daily News report added: “The essential values of ‘moral clarity, scientific expertise, and leadership rooted in fact’ required of anyone taking on current challenges to public health in the US are simply ‘not present in the Secretary’s office,’ Joe Kennedy said. ‘He must resign.’”


But even if he resigned today, the fact remains that the Republicans who confirmed him still don’t care about public health. In addition to taking away Medicaid benefits from millions of people over the next decade, there’s the immediate emergency facing anyone who buys their health insurance through state exchanges (aka “Obamacare”).

If the congressional Republicans do nothing, and no one expects them to do anything, there are about 20 million enrollees in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces who will see their monthly premiums jump by an average of 75 percent, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

And that’s if they’re lucky.


Charles Gaba, a health policy expert and founder of ACAsignups.net, told me in an interview last week (see below) that some people who are currently getting expanded federal subsidies could see their monthly premiums jump by “100 percent, 200 percent, 300 percent or more.”

Charles explained “there are two main reasons for this: congressional Republicans allowing the improved tax credits which have been in place since 2021 to expire, and the Trump administration changing the underlying ACA tax credit formula to make it even less generous yet.”

The Obamacare crisis won’t happen gradually over 10 years, like the Medicaid crisis will. It will happen over the next four months if congressional Republicans do not act by the end of this month.


Congressional Democrats, meanwhile, are trying to ramp up the pressure on their Republican colleagues by getting insurance providers to inform enrollees in September what’s going to happen.

In a letter, Democratic senators including Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told insurers “individuals and families need clear, direct information from their health plans as soon as possible about their rising premiums and cost-sharing requirements, and worsening coverage.” They said the info should be sent "as early and directly as possible … Under these dire circumstances, annual premium notices set to be released in October will not come soon enough."

Axios said some Republicans are open to extensions “but they're also worried about the projected $335 billion cost over 10 years.”


That, my friend, is the tell.

The Republicans took one trillion dollars away from Medicaid and food stamps to cut taxes for rich people who will never notice their taxes were cut. Before that, the Republicans confirmed a conspiracy theorist, crank and weirdo as secretary of health and human services.

Do you think they’re really concerned about the public’s concern?


“There's still a small chance of Congress extending the tax credits this month, but it's unlikely,” Gaba told me, “and even if they do, I expect them to either weaken them, include a poison pill provision so they can blame a failure to extend them on Democrats, or both.”
JS: Lots of people still don't know they are going to be facing an enormous spike in their premiums. How bad is it going to be?

CG: Very, very bad.


As you know, I've spent the past several months shouting from the rooftops that tens of millions of Americans (around 23 million, give or take) enrolled in individual market health insurance policies are facing massive net premium increases starting January 1, 2026.

The increases will range widely depending on a variety of factors, of course, including where they live, what their household income is, how old they are and what policy they're currently enrolled in.

Overall, I estimate gross premium hikes (for those not currently receiving subsidies) will average around 23 percent, while the healthcare policy analysts at KFF estimate that net increases – that is, what the enrollees actually pay after federal tax credits are applied – will increase by an average of 75 percent nationally.

There's about 1.8 million unsubsidized enrollees on-exchange and 1-2 million off-exchange, who will be hit with the 23 percent average.


Meanwhile, there's around 21 million currently subsidized enrollees who will face the 75 percent average … and again, in many cases it will be much more than that: 100 percent, 200 percent, 300 percent or more for the same policy they're currently enrolled in.

There are two main reasons for this: congressional Republicans allowing the improved tax credits, which have been in place since 2021, to expire, and the Trump administration changing the underlying ACA tax credit formula to make it even less generous yet.

There's still a small chance of the Congress extending the tax credits this month, but it's unlikely, and even if they do, I expect them to either weaken them, include a poison pill provision so they can blame a failure to extend them on Democrats, or both.


Again, this will be happening well before the midterms, starting Jan. 1, 2026 – less than four months from now. And yes, my own family is among those facing this, as are you, as I understand it.
Kennedy testified last week. If you were a Senate Democrat, what would you have asked him about exploding insurance premiums?

To resign.

Seriously.

I thought about another long-winded answer, but there's no longer any point in arguing or debating his justifications for what he's done.

He's a eugenicist without the slightest clue about protecting the public from legitimate health crises and who, in fact, has caused and is causing more of them to happen daily. He needs to resign. Now.
He's going to try phasing out the COVID vaccine. I don't know what better evidence there is that it worked than the fact that we're still alive. Yet here we are, giving this man the benefit of the doubt.

Absolutely. During the depths of the COVID pandemic, conspiracy theorists were making all sorts of absurd claims that they were being "magnetized," that Bill Gates was using the vaccine to implant microchips into our bloodstreams (which is not only insane but ironic, given that Elon Musk is literally installing microchips into people's brains now via Neurolink), that it was supposedly causing Parkinson's-like shaking, etc, etc. All of this was complete garbage.

The boldest claim I heard was that everyone who took the COVID vaccine would shortly be dead, and in the months and years that followed, any time a public figure passed away from any cause (old age, hit by a car, whatever), somehow that "proved" their claim, which is absurd. Over 270 million Americans have received at least one COVID vaccine. Yet the vast majority of us are doing fine four years later.

It's absolute lunacy, doubly so when you consider that Operation Warp Speed — the public-private partnership by the first Trump administration to accelerate the development of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines — was a massive, legitimate success, which the Trump administration can sincerely claim bragging rights for. Yet somehow, his own base has decided that the very product of that success is some sort of liberal/Democratic conspiracy. Absolute madness.
The press corps can't be let off the hook. I can't count how many times I have read the phrase "vaccine skeptic," as if Kennedy is considerate and thoughtful, rather than liars and scammers. I don't know how to get truth-tellers to privilege facts over lies. Do you?

One of the reasons I've gained whatever respect I have for my healthcare data wonkery over the past decade-plus is that I do my best to use reliable sources. I cite those sources and when I make a mistake (which does happen from time to time), I do my best to own up to it, correct it and explain how I got it wrong.

While there are exceptions, a large portion of the press corps has allowed themselves to become bothsides stenographers who mindlessly repeat whatever drivel comes out of the mouths of Trump, Kennedy, Mehmet Oz and other charlatans in this administration. In many cases they're continuing to do this even as the Trump administration defunds, bullies and extorts their own organizations.

Unfortunately, I don't know how to get them to change their behavior; all I can control is my own, including doing the best I can to get my own data analysis and reporting right.
The erosion of science (vaccines), the erosion of health care (Obamacare), the erosion of the safety net (Medicaid). It's like the Republicans don't care about public health at all unless it affects them personally, and perhaps not even then (in the case of mass shootings). If people die, they die. Thoughts and prayers. Yet they enjoy a reputation for caring about people. How did this happen?

I don't think it was any one thing; racism and misogyny have played a major role, of course, along with decades of attacks on public education and on education in general. Regardless of what got the ball rolling, though, that it gained momentum makes perfect sense to me.

When the Republican Party started to become a slave to its most extreme elements, it started scaring away its genuinely sane, decent members, which, in turn, made those who remain more extreme and awful on average, which scares off more moderates, turning those who remain more extreme yet, and so on.

If this was the only part of the equation, it would be a recipe for the death of the party. However, the other factor is that as it's scaring off more and more moderate voices, it's also attracting more extreme members who had previously been shunned by both major parties.

Once Donald Trump came along, the floodgates were opened – he welcomed in and praised the most awful, racist, bat---- members of society. So here we are — with a Republican Party that seems to consist of almost nothing but the worst dregs of society.

TACO Trump Gets Rejected by Korean Workers Detained in Mass Immigration Raid

Leigh Kimmins
Thu, September 11, 2025 
THE DAILY BEAST


Andrew Harnik / Getty Images


Donald Trump offered to let hundreds of South Korean workers detained during an immigration raid stay in the U.S.—a deal that was overwhelmingly rejected by those affected.

The raid, carried out last week at the $4.3 billion Hyundai Motor battery plant under construction in Georgia, resulted in the arrest of around 300 South Koreans and more than 150 other foreign nationals.

Trump—who touts his hardline approach to immigration—privately offered the workers a chance to remain in the country to help train American staff, South Korean officials said Thursday, Reuters reports. The move delayed the departure of a flight chartered to take the workers home, the officials said.

Only one person chose to remain in the U.S., they added.



News of Trump’s offer comes after he has been dubbed “TACO”—a nickname meaning “Trump Always Chickens Out”—for his policy flip-flopping throughout his second administration.

TV footage aired in South Korea showed the dissenting group boarding buses at 2 a.m. Thursday to head for Atlanta’s airport. They were taken from a detention facility surrounded by barbed wire, though—unlike typical deportations—they were not shackled, following demands from Seoul.

Trump’s offer came after backlash in South Korea over the raid, which involved armored vehicles and heavily armed federal agents.

U.S. immigration officials raided a Hyundai plant just 10 days after President Donald Trump met with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and pledged closer economic cooperation between the two countries. / Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesMore

President Lee Jae-myung said Thursday the arrests had thrown Korean businesses in the U.S. into “serious confusion” and warned it could chill future investment. He had met with Trump at the White House just 10 days before the immigration sweep at the Georgia site.

“Our businesses that are investing in the United States will no doubt be very hesitant,” Lee said at a press conference marking his first 100 days in office.

South Korean Foreign Minister Cho-hyun confirmed that Washington and Seoul have agreed to discuss creating a new visa category to help companies legally send specialists to U.S. plants, amid long-standing complaints that existing work visa channels are too slow and restrictive.

The raid, carried out last week at the $4.3 billion Hyundai Motor battery plant under construction in Bryan County, Georgia, resulted in the arrest of around 300 South Koreans. / Justin Sullivan/Getty

Lawmakers in Seoul acknowledged that some workers may have overstayed the 90-day visa waiver program or entered on short-term B-1 business visas, but said previous U.S. administrations had allowed more flexibility to support high-tech investment projects.

China’s foreign ministry said a smaller number of Chinese nationals were also detained in the raid and urged Washington to “ensure the legitimate rights and interests of the involved Chinese citizens.”

The Guardian, meanwhile, cited leaked documents that reported that at least one of the workers who was collared by ICE was living and working in the country legally.

The Daily Beast contacted the White House for comment.

WSJ editors rip Trump's latest 'blunderbuss raid' and warn of looming repercussions

Daniel Hampton
September 12, 2025

RAW STORY

An activist holds a banner to protest against a huge immigration raid last week at the site of a U.S. car battery project involving Hyundai Motor and LG Energy Solution in the U.S. state of Georgia, at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, South Korea, September 12, 2025. REUTERS/Kim Hong-ji

The Wall Street Journal's conservative editorial board ripped the Trump administration's mass deportation effort, citing the fallout from last week's "blunderbuss raid" on a Hyundai plant in Georgia.

Last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted a major raid on an electric vehicle battery plant under construction in Ellabell. Nearly 500 workers, including over 300 South Korean nationals, were detained for visa and immigration violations.

The raid caught the Journal editors' attention on Friday evening.

"Still think mass deportation has no economic or political consequences? The fallout from last week’s blunderbuss raid on a Hyundai plant in Georgia continues to reverberate in South Korea, and it pays to listen to President Lee Jae Myung’s remarks this week," the editors wrote.

“This could significantly impact future direct investment in the U.S.,” Lee said at a news conference. Companies in the country “can’t help hesitating a lot” about making new investments in the United States, fearing their workers could wind up in detention facilities.

Lee noted the workers were not meant to be in the United States long term.

"When you build a facility or install equipment at a plant, you need technicians, but the U.S. doesn’t have that workforce and yet they won’t issue visas to let our people stay and do the work," he said.

The Journal lamented that statement "may be hard for Americans to hear, but it’s true. The U.S. doesn’t have the workforce to do these jobs."

And while the Trump administration has insisted that some of the workers entered the country illegally and others were working on expired visas, the Journal warned that there will be repercussions.

"Whatever the case, raids like the one in Georgia are a deterrent to the foreign investment Donald Trump says he wants," the said.

The Georgia raid comes as the Trump administration cracks down on both legal and illegal immigration nationwide. In a Chicago suburb, a man was shot dead by ICE during a traffic stop confrontation.