‘Everything Is for Sale’: Trump Exploits 250th Anniversary of US Independence for Yet Another Grift

“Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise.”

The Washington Monument is illuminated with a projection of US President Donald Trump’s “Freedom 250” initiative during the New Year’s Eve show at the National Mall in Washington, DC on December 31, 2025.
(Photo by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Feb 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Allies of the Trump administration, in partnership with the White House, are reportedly using the upcoming 250th anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence as another opportunity to solicit deep-pocketed donors, enticing them with promises of access to the president and other rewards.

The New York Times reported Sunday that donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250—a group announced by President Donald Trump in December—have been promised a path to “gain access to, and seek favor with, a president who has maintained a keen interest in fundraising, and a willingness to use the levers of government power to reward financial supporters,” including through his crypto scam and ballroom project.



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Trump has described Freedom 250 as a “public-private partnership” dedicated to organizing “a celebration of America like no other” later this year. Listed as official corporate sponsors of the initiative are prominent corporate names, including ExxonMobil, Mastercard, and Palantir.

The Times obtained a donor solicitation document circulated by Meredith O’Rourke, Trump’s top fundraiser. Donors who give at least $1 million to Freedom 250 “will receive prominent logo placement at Freedom 250 events,” which are expected to include UFC fights and an IndyCar race.

Freedom 250 appears to have been created to dodge oversight that applies to America250, a bipartisan congressional commission formed to plan official celebrations of the nation’s semiquincentennial.

“American history is being subordinated to Trump’s cult of personality,” Dan Friedman and Amanda Moore wrote in Mother Jones last week. “The president’s face is suddenly ­everywhere—next to George Washington on America250-themed National Parks passes; alongside Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt on giant banners hanging from federal buildings; on a $1 coin under consideration by the US Treasury.”

“Faced with sporadic pushback from a congressional commission overseeing America250 and from career officials at various agencies, Trump is now seeking to evade even these modest constraints,” they added, pointing to the launch of Freedom 250.



Public Citizen demanded a congressional probe of Freedom 250’s activities, which the watchdog organization’s co-presidents described as a “potential diversion of taxpayer funds for highly partisan purposes.” According to the Times, roughly $10 million in taxpayer funds has “already been redirected to Freedom 250 from America250 for a fleet of six mobile museums called ‘Freedom Trucks’ that rolled out last month.”

“ Donald Trump and his henchmen have sabotaged what should be a unifying moment and appear intent on instead creating a highly divisive, corporate-funded, ideologically extremist exercise,” said Public Citizen’s Lisa Gilbert. “Once again, nothing is sacred in the Trump administration, not even the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Everything is for sale to corporate and potentially foreign interests.”

Leaked DHS Document: Tiny Fraction of Immigrants Detained Under Trump Have Violent Criminal Records

The DHS report shows only 14% of immigrants taken into custody by ICE in 2025 had either been charged with or convicted of violent criminal offenses.


Federal agents detain a person after attending a court hearing at immigration court at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building in New York City, New York, on July 1, 2025.
(Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Feb 09, 2026

COMMON DREAMS


A leaked document obtained by CBS News reveals that only a tiny fraction of immigrants detained by the Trump administration last year have violent criminal records.

According to CBS News, the internal US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document shows that just 14% of immigrants taken into custody by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in 2025 had either been charged with or convicted of violent criminal offenses.

The DHS report also shows 40% of immigrants detained last year have no criminal record at all except for civil immigration law violations, such as living unlawfully in the US or overstaying a visa, which CBS News noted “are typically adjudicated by Justice Department immigration judges in civil—not criminal—proceedings.”

The internal document undermines President Donald Trump’s past claims that his administration is focused primarily on deporting “the worst of the worst” undocumented immigrants, such as those belonging to criminal gangs. In reality, the document shows, less than 2% of immigrants detained last year had any sort of gang affiliation.

As noted last month by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, ICE during Trump’s second term has grown more aggressive in detaining people with no prior criminal offenses save for civil immigration law violations.

In January 2024, for example, immigrants with no prior criminal record accounted for just 6% of ICE detainees. By January 2025, that percentage surged to 43%.

ICE has drastically ramped up its arrests of immigrants in the last year, as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller has demanded that the agency hit arrest quotas of at least 3,000 per day.

While ICE has not yet reached that goal, they did make an estimated 393,000 arrests during Trump’s first year back in the White House, an average of more than 1,000 per day.

CBS News notes that the internal DHS document “does not include arrests by Border Patrol agents, who the Trump administration has deployed to places far away from the US-Mexico border, like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis,” where they “have undertaken aggressive and sweeping arrest operations, targeting day laborers at Home Depot parking lots and stopping people, including US citizens, to question them about their immigration status.”

Faith Groups Sue Over Trump’s Christian Nationalist ‘Religious Liberty Commission’

“The Religious Liberty Commission isn’t about protecting religious liberty for all; it’s about rejecting our nation’s religious diversity and prioritizing one narrow set of conservative ‘Judeo-Christian’ beliefs,” said one critic.


Pastor Paula White bows her head in prayer with Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, and President Donald Trump at the Museum of the Bible on September 8, 2025 in Washington, DC, where Trump addressed his Religious Liberty Commission.
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Feb 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


“Religious freedom for some is religious freedom for none.”

That’s what Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president and CEO of Interfaith Alliance, said in a Monday statement as faith groups filed a federal lawsuit in the Southern District of New York over President Donald Trump’s so-called Religious Liberty Commission.

Since Trump launched the commission last year, critics have warned that its true intent is to advance a Christian nationalist agenda. Brandeis Raushenbush, his alliance, Hindus for Human Rights, Muslims for Progressive Values, and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund renewed that argument in the complaint, which names Trump, US Attorney General Pam Bondi, the Department of Justice, the commission, and its leader, Mary Margaret Bush, as defendants.

“The government has no right to pick and choose which religious beliefs to promote, and which to marginalize,” said Brandeis Raushenbush. “The Trump administration has failed to uphold our country’s proud religious freedom tradition, and we will hold them accountable. Today’s lawsuit is our recommitment to fight for religious liberty for all with every tool available to us.”

The complaint argues that “the composition and operations of the commission violate the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA),” which Congress enacted in 1972 “to curb the executive branch’s reliance on superfluous, secretive, and biased ‘advisory committees.’” Under the law, “every advisory committee must meet public transparency requirements, be in the public interest, be fairly balanced among competing points of view, and be structured to avoid inappropriate influence by special interests.”

“While this body is ostensibly designed to defend ‘religious liberty for all Americans’ and celebrate ‘religious pluralism’ it actually represents only a single ‘Judeo-Christian’ viewpoint,” the complaint states. “It held its first three meetings at the Museum of the Bible and has closed its meetings with a Christian prayer ‘in Jesus’ name.’”

“Only one of its members is not Christian, and the Christian members do not represent the full diversity of the Christian faith,” the filing continues. “The commission’s meetings have repeatedly referenced the belief that the United States was founded as a ‘Judeo-Christian nation’ and the membership reflects that viewpoint. All members of the commission advocate for increased religiosity, and specifically their brand of ‘Judeo-Christian’ religiosity, in public life.”

“The commission’s members have promoted the primacy of a Judeo-Christian worldview in the public sphere, advocated for discrimination against minority groups under the guise of ‘religious liberty,’ and otherwise supported policies that threaten religious freedom for all those who do not conform to their particular worldview,” the document details.

Ria Chakrabarty, senior policy director of Hindus for Human Rights, said Monday that “by stacking this Religious Liberty Commission with a narrow set of voices and hiding the commission’s work from the public eye, the Trump administration is evading the transparency and balance that federal law requires.”

“Hindus for Human Rights is proud to stand with our multifaith partners to defend a pluralistic democracy where Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, Christians, Buddhists, and nonreligious people all belong as equals,” she added.



Ani Zonneveld, president and founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, noted that “as a Muslim American organization, we have seen firsthand how elevating a singular religion above others, especially in a country as religiously diverse as the United States, leads to the oppression and possible persecution of minority faiths.”

The plaintiffs are represented by Democracy Forward, which has filed over 150 lawsuits against the Trump administration since the president returned to power last year, and the decades-old Americans United for Separation of Church and State—whose president and CEO, Rachel Laser, stressed that “the Religious Liberty Commission isn’t about protecting religious liberty for all; it’s about rejecting our nation’s religious diversity and prioritizing one narrow set of conservative ‘Judeo-Christian’ beliefs.”

Blasting the commission’s public meetings as “a vivid example of this favoritism,” Laser added that its “true purpose and operations can’t be squared with America’s constitutional promise of church-state separation.”

Specifically, Laser’s group and other advocates of church-state separation have long pointed to the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which bars government from making any “law respecting an establishment of religion.”

“Since the nation’s founding, the values of religious liberty and pluralism have been central to the American identity. These values are now under accelerated attack,” declared Perryman, who’s also on the Interfaith Alliance board. “The fatally flawed way this commission was assembled makes clear that the outcome isn’t just un-American, it’s against the law.”

THE NEW GOP

‘One More Billionaire Front Group’: Centrist Dems Mocked Over New Initiative Led by Corporate Lobbyist

Next American Era will be headed by Cheri Bustos, former chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee who has lobbied for powerful corporations.


Then-Rep. Cheri Bustos (D-Ill.) spoke with Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) spoke in the US Capitol 
(Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Jake Johnson
Feb 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Centrist Democrats led by Cheri Bustos, a corporate lobbyist who previously headed her party’s campaign arm in the US House, are launching a policy and advocacy organization aimed at pressuring Democrats to embrace the kind of “pro-growth” deregulatory agenda associated with the so-called “abundance” movement.

The new organization, named Next American Era, was formed “with an eye toward 2028” as Democrats work to recover from their crushing defeat to President Donald Trump in the 2024 elections, Axios reported Sunday, noting that the group describes itself as a “hub for center-left policy and advocacy.”

Bustos, whose lobbying client list in 2025 included OpenAI and Larry Ellison’s Oracle, said Next American Era plans to “air issue-focused ads during the midterm elections and the 2028 presidential campaign, but it won’t endorse candidates,” Axios reported.

Bustos said the founders of Next American Era share “many of the same principles as the Abundance movement,” a loose assortment of organizations and individuals—including large corporations and prominent billionaires—broadly supporting views expressed by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson in their 2025 book Abundance.

“She said cutting red tape, streamlining regulations, and supporting workforce training are among the top policy goals of her group, which is structured as a 501(c)(4) political nonprofit,” Axios reported.

Lindsay Owens, executive director of the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive think tank, called those proposed objectives “some of the weakest economic policies we’ve polled in the last 18 months.”

“Not sure why you’d want to put ads out on these for candidates unless it’s an opp,” Owens added.



Abundance takes aim at what Klein and Thompson characterize as an overly burdensome regulatory approach that is purportedly hindering progress toward more affordable housing, public transportation systems, and a renewable energy revolution. Critics, such as antitrust advocate Zephyr Teachout, have criticized the so-called abundance agenda as far too ambiguous.

“I still can’t tell after reading Abundance whether Klein and Thompson are seeking something fairly small-bore and correct (we need zoning reform) or nontrivial and deeply regressive (we need deregulation) or whether there is room within abundance for anti-monopoly politics and a more full-throated unleashing of American potential,” Teachout wrote in her review of the book for Washington Monthly.

Critics have also noted the enthusiasm with which corporations and billionaires have glommed onto the abundance narrative.

“The ambiguity of the abundance agenda’s policy proposals, strategic or otherwise, allows private interests to leverage ‘abundance’ as a Trojan Horse for their preferences,” the Revolving Door Project observed last year. “The growing abundance movement has institutional support from fossil fuel and Big Tech affiliates, including the sprawling Koch network and crypto and AI industry players.”

Axios observed that Next American Era is one of “several center-left groups” that “have popped up or expanded in the past 18 months, including the think tank Searchlight Institute, Majority Democrats, and WelcomePAC.”

“Just one more billionaire front group. Just one more neoliberal policy shop,” reporter and political analyst Austin Ahlman wrote mockingly on social media in response to the launch of Next American Era. “Just one more polling outfit cooking the numbers on behalf of corporate interests and we’ll win bro, I promise.”

‘Statistics Are Human Beings With the Tears Wiped Away’: Silicosis, Dead Workers, and Corporate Greed

The counter-top manufacturing industry doesn’t want to protect workers from harm; it wants protection from the workers it harms.


Sun Valley, CA - October 31: Stone countertop fabricators wear masks to help protect against airborne particles which can contribute to silicosis at a shop on Tuesday, Oct. 31, 2023 in Sun Valley, CA.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

Les Leopold
Feb 09, 2026

Common Dreams

Those who cut our artificial stone countertops are breathing in silica dust and dying. Not just a few. In fact, so many that in Australia they’ve banned the product and adopted safer substitutes. In the US, however, the industry wants to ban workers from suing the manufacturers and Republicans are doing their bidding, introducing H.R. 5437, The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Stone Slab Products Act.

Dr. David Michaels, the former head of OSHA, points us to California’s tearless Silicosis Surveillance Dashboard: 511 cases of silicosis have been diagnosed among these workers; 29 have died (average age 46); 54 underwent lung transplants; and 98 percent of these workers are Latino.

In 2021, there were only two diagnosed silicosis cases in California. In 2025 there were 214. “The number of cases is rising rapidly,” Dr. Michaels wrote to me, “That’s the important point.”

Here’s the more tearful description form Dr. Michaels during testimony last month before the House:
The hallmarks of the disease: shortness of breath and diminished exercise capacity that progresses to an inability to climb even one flight of stairs. A short walk that should take just 20 minutes can take an hour. Working is difficult or impossible. People cough incessantly. They can’t sleep because it is difficult to breathe and they are kept awake coughing. Over time, people with more advanced silicosis require supplemental oxygen and can’t leave home without an oxygen tank. And they are at increased risk of dying from lung cancer.

The crime behind this slaughter is that safer, profitable substitutes are available. As Michaels testified:
There are substitute products that are comparable in use and cost, but which do not kill workers. Many substitutes are made from amorphous silica—a different and a safer material than crystalline silica. Since Australia banned countertops containing crystalline silica, countertops are fabricated from alternative products that look and cost the same but are safer for workers.

But switching to safer products involves costs that the manufacturers would prefer to avoid. Why lose any profits at all? Why go through the disruptions involved in producing new products? Better to be shielded by your political allies.

The countertop manufacturing industry doesn’t want to protect workers from harm; it wants protection from the workers it harms. It worries this could become another asbestos epidemic that has cost asbestos manufacturers billions of dollars in payments to the victims. This time around, the industry is in position to nip it in the bud, given that the Republicans are in full control of all three branches of government.

What the industry dreads are third-party suits. Workers are not permitted, in nearly all circumstances, to sue their own employers for illnesses and exposures at work. Those claims are covered by state workers’ compensation programs. But harmed workers can and do sue manufacturers of equipment or substances that cause them harm. And if the harm can be proved to a jury, the compensation can be steep. It doesn’t make up for the damage to the exposed workers, but it provides some support to their families and pressures the industry to find safer substitutes for its harmful products.

The solution preferred by the countertop industry is simple: get a free pass, which is what this killer legislation would do. It would shield the entire industry from “persons who claim personal injuries as a result of exposure to silica dust produced during the alteration of such products in the course of their employment by third-party fabricators.”

Nice. No change needed, no interruption of profitable production, no switching to new products. No nothing except a few political donations to grease the skids. And at least some of that corporate-funded grease comes from millionaire Marty Davis, the CEO of Cambria, a large counter manufacturer, who has donated more than $800,000 to Republicans, and encouraged Trump to challenged the outcome of the 2020 election.

On this piece of legislation, the Democrats are saying the right things. Rep. Henry C. “Hank” Johnson (D-Ga.), the ranking Democrat on the House Courts, Intellectual Property, Artificial Intelligence and the Internet Subcommittee committee, which is pushing this legislation, said it as clearly as could be said:
The bill behind today’s hearing would give blanket immunity to artificial stone manufacturers and suppliers, preventing injured workers from seeking justice in court. It would dismiss the hundreds of cases pending against these manufacturers.

…Our courts determine liability all the time. People petition the court, have their grievances heard, a judge and jury consider the evidence, and a judgment is rendered.

Manufacturers are asking for a different scenario – one where the deep pockets go to Congress, Congress makes a snap judgment, and the big businesses never have to go to court again. That’s not how our justice system is supposed to work, and I condemn the blatant misuse of this committee to shield corporations at the expense of the American worker.

If only more Democrats would speak like this more often, millions of working people might hear them.


The quote in the headline of this article is attributed to journalist Paul Brodeur, author of “Expendable Americans.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


Les Leopold is the executive director of the Labor Institute and author of the new book, “Wall Street’s War on Workers: How Mass Layoffs and Greed Are Destroying the Working Class and What to Do About It." (2024). Read more of his work on his substack here.
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Trump, Extreme Wealth Concentration, and Our Societal Crisis

The US government simply has not done enough to ensure that the livelihoods of all Americans are protected or improved in this new Gilded Age. What it has done is made sure the rich get richer by the minute and more politically powerful year after year.


John Ripton
Feb 09, 2026

Common Dreams

The decline of Keynesian economic theory in the 1970s marked a tipping point in the evolution of capitalism in the United States. Beginning with the Great Depression, Keynesian economic policy facilitated the expansion of social welfare programs to mitigate the social inequities of the nation’s economic system. In the last quarter of the 20th century, however, rising political conservatism targeted public expenditures for social services. Cuts in education and health, including reductions in social welfare programs and the weakening of the social safety network for the poor, were then and continue today to be goals of political conservatives. Conservatives, furthermore, argue that cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations promotes investment, economic growth and job creation; and that smaller government and less regulation of market forces distributes wealth the most equitably. These ideas are variously known as supply-side economics, neoliberal economics or simply “trickle-down theory.” Historically, though, trickle-down theory has failed to benefit American working families. In fact, during the course of the last several decades this market strategy has encouraged vast accumulation of private wealth and accelerated its concentration on both a national and global scale. Tragically, it has had deeply injurious social consequences. The societal crisis America finds itself in today relates directly to extreme concentration of wealth.

Absent effective public regulation of economic activities, government and law protect investors and corporations in their aggressive pursuit of wealth. The distribution of wealth in the U.S. is a primary indicator of who benefits most from the political and legal organization of American society. In the third quarter of 2025, according to Federal Reserve data, the top 1% of Americans held 31.7% of all wealth while the bottom 50% held 2.5% (Federal Reserve 2025). That is the highest concentration of wealth in the post-WWII era (Economic Inequality), greater than almost any other developed country. Another indicator of the government’s weak support for workers and their families is the federal minimum wage. It is $7.25/hour. At forty hours per week this represents a monthly income of $1160 and a yearly income of $13,920. In 2025, the federal poverty level for individuals was $15,650 and $32,150 for families of four (Poverty Level). These dismal figures show how dire wages are for many millions of Americans. In real terms (inflation-adjusted) the average wage of American workers peaked 48 years ago in 1978 (Wages Peaked).

If one takes a closer look at wealth concentration and the average American’s opportunity to accrue wealth since the 1970s and 1980s, it offers more evidence of how the last few decades of capitalism’s development have denied workers a fair share of the tremendous wealth that has been generated. Indeed, a 2023 Rand Corporation analysis revealed that, since 1975, $79 trillion in wealth had been transferred from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. (Massive Wealth Transfer ). This massive redistribution of wealth continues today. In 2023 alone, $3.9 trillion in wealth was siphoned from working Americans to the richest Americans, enough to give every full-time worker in the bottom 90% a $32,000 raise for the year (2023 Wealth Transfer). When it comes to gaining wealth for the average working American, owning a home is the principal path. Home ownership, however, is completely out of reach for the poor and millions more in today’s middle class find it unattainable. The median home price to annual income ratio was 5 in 2025. In other words, the median price of a home was equal to 5 years of salary. The ratio was 3.7 in 1985 when a median-price home was $82,800. Today a median-price home is $416,900. Not only is the distribution of wealth radically unequal, the pathway to increased wealth in home ownership has narrowed dramatically.

The political division and violence in America today stems in large measure from a political system whose policies have encouraged radical disparities in incomes and wealth.

These data amply illustrate the crisis poor and increasingly middle income people in the United States face. The poorest Americans, the bottom 20%, simply do not have enough money to meet their daily needs. Nearly a third of all households lives on less than $50,000 annual income (Household Income). In the richest country in the world 36.8 million Americans live in poverty (Poverty), including 9 million children without adequate access to food, shelter and healthcare (Children). At the same time, the more than 900 billionaires in the U.S. have a collective wealth of $6.9 trillion, their wealth increasing 18% in 2025 alone (Fortune). As reported in Forbes, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, now has wealth of $778 billion (Elon Musk). It would take the average American worker 16 million years to make that much (Extrapolated).

The US government simply has not done enough to ensure that the livelihoods of all Americans are protected in this new Gilded Age. In fact, the government actually provides 40% more benefits to the wealthy than to the impoverished. In his 2023 book Poverty, By America, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond draws attention to this fact. From recent government data “compiling spending on social insurance, means-tested programs, tax benefits, and financial aid for higher education,” Desmond calculates that the top 20% of income earners on average receives $35,363 in government benefits and individuals in the bottom 20% receive an average $25,733 (p. 99). This reality is a result of policies, policies that benefit wealthy Americans and corporations at the expense of working people. Public policy, in turn, is shaped by corporate lobbying and political contributions as well as professional research that supports goals of the wealthiest and most influential: smaller government, broad corporate deregulation, limited worker protections, and tax breaks favoring the wealthy over working Americans.

It has not always been this way. Between 1947 and 1979, the period when Keynesian economic theory and policies prevailed, “hourly wages grew 2.2 percent. From 1979 to the present, average growth in hourly wages fell to 0.7 percent per year, only one-third of the average rate in the earlier postwar period” (Economic Policy Institute). In the first three decades after WWII labor unions tripled weekly earnings of manufacturing workers across the nation. Collective bargaining gained “for union workers an unprecedented measure of security against old age, illness and unemployment, and, through contractual protections, greatly strengthening their right to fair treatment at the workplace” (Labor Unions). Significantly, one-third of workers (32.3% in 1959) were unionized in this post-war period (Bureau of Labor Statistics ). By 2024, the percentage of wage and salary workers in unions fell to 9.9 percent (Bureau of Labor Statistics). Concentrated wealth, particularly corporate wealth, and government failure to protect workers dampened wages. Also, in the 1950s the statutory taxes on U.S.corporate and personal wealth were much higher, though the effective tax rate was considerably lower due to corporate tax loopholes and rich taxpayers recategorizing income as derived from investments (Tax Rates). The statutory corporate income tax was over 50 percent (Economic Policy Institute). Today it is 21 percent (Corporate Tax). While it is difficult to determine the percentage of taxes actually paid by wealthy individuals and corporations in the early post-war era, it is clear that the statutory personal and corporate income tax is lower today than it was 70 years ago. Of course, enforcement of steeply progressive taxation would make billions of dollars, even trillions, available to fund social programs that distribute income and wealth more fairly.

The pro-democracy citizenry must organize around a political vision that emphasizes several political projects: a just, progressive taxation system; a guaranteed household income; universal healthcare; quality public education; free preschool education; and scientific and technological initiatives for a sustainable economy.

A society riven by such income and wealth inequality is inherently unstable. The political division and violence in America today stems in large measure from a political system whose policies have encouraged radical disparities in incomes and wealth. The loss of 6.5 million manufacturing jobs since 1979 (1979 and 2025), for example, has been facilitated by trade agreements that enable corporations to chase the cheapest wages throughout the world. Runaway companies have gutted industrial towns without consequence, leaving behind poorer communities of people with limited resources to rebuild their lives and neighborhoods. The federal government, moreover, has done virtually nothing to force corporations to pay reparations for the social disintegration left in their wake. As the coastal regions and large metropolitan centers of the nation were generally integrated into the surging commerce of unbridled globalization, distant rural regions experienced economic stagnation and decline. It is little wonder that an authoritarian political figure that exploits these divisions has risen to the presidency of the United States.

In his seminal book Capital in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty provides an analysis of capitalism in which he notes that “the history of the distribution of wealth has always been deeply political” (p. 20). Reduction of taxes that favors the wealthy is one political determination reflecting the unstemmed power of concentrated wealth. While this political maneuver undermines a primary income and wealth distributive mechanism (taxation system), it further restricts the resources for funding other re-distributive projects such as social welfare, public education and healthcare. Smaller government and privatization of public services are corollary results.

A principal dynamic factor in the process of wealth accumulation and concentration over the last several decades is the growth of profits as the economic growth rate has slowed down. Put another way, the wealthy are taking a larger and larger slice of diminishing income and wealth production. As the vast inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth deny the provision of basic living necessities to tens of millions and circumscribe opportunity for most Americans, social instability and political division and violence escalate. In response, an authoritarian regime consolidates its power around armed force to repress those protesting its anti-democratic policies. Its armed repression inevitably leads to bloodshed.

The pro-democracy citizenry must organize around a political vision that emphasizes several political projects: a just, progressive taxation system; a guaranteed household income; universal healthcare; quality public education; free preschool education; and scientific and technological initiatives for a sustainable economy. These political goals stand in stark contrast to an authoritarian regime that advances the interests of the one percent. They offer a view of the future that is constructive and inspirational, one that generates broad social justice and appeals to the vast majority of Americans.


Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.


John Ripton
John Ripton writes political essays and research articles. He holds a Master in International Affairs and PhD in History. His dissertation explores the historical impact of global capitalism on Salvadoran peasants and how it contributed to the revolutionary struggle against authoritarian and dictatorial regimes. John's articles and essays have been published in journals, magazines, newspapers and other publications in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
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Trump-Heckling Auto Worker Keeps His Job and Faces No Discipline: UAW

“That’s a union brother who spoke up,” said UAW president Shawn Fain. “He put his constitutional rights to work. He put his union rights to work.”


President Donald Trump tours the assembly line at the Ford River Rouge Complex on January 13, 2026 in Dearborn, Michigan.
(Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Feb 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

TJ Sabula, the auto worker who called President Donald Trump a “pedophile protector” last month, is reportedly keeping his job.

According to a report from the Detroit News, United Auto Workers (UAW) vice president Laura Dickerson said on Monday that Sabula is not getting fired from his job at a Ford truck plant in Dearborn, Michigan, and he will not face any discipline for his heckling of the president.

Dickerson, who discussed Sabula’s case at the UAW’s annual Community Action Program conference in Washington, DC, also took a shot at Trump for giving Sabula the middle finger while appearing to mouth or yell “fuck you” back at the auto worker.

“In that moment, we saw what the president really thinks about working people,” Dickerson said. “As UAW members, we speak truth to power. We don’t just protect rights, we exercise them.”

UAW president Shawn Fain also took time during the conference to offer appreciation for Sabula, the Detroit News reported.

“That’s a union brother who spoke up,” said Fain. “He put his constitutional rights to work. He put his union rights to work.”

Sabula, who said he decided to called Trump a “pedophile protecter” for his attempts to block the release of files related to late billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, had been suspended from his job after the incident took place.

Critics of the president quickly rushed to Sabula’s aid, however, as two separate GoFundMe campaigns aimed at raising money for the auto worker raked in a total of over $800,000.

In an interview published last month by the Washington Post, Sabula said he had “no regrets whatsoever” about yelling at the president, even though it led to his suspension.

“I don’t feel as though fate looks upon you often, and when it does, you better be ready to seize the opportunity,” Sabula told the Post. “And today I think I did that.”

​Use of Ireland Airport for Trump Deportation Flights Denounced as ‘Absolutely Reprehensible’​

“The US Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane mass deportation campaign must be denied any form of facilitation... to the degree that is legally possible,” said the head of Amnesty International Ireland.


A Palestinian man with his hands bound steps off the private jet that deported him and seven other Palestinian men from the United States to Israel, January 21, 2026.
(Photo: screen grab of footage obtained by Haaretz)

Jessica Corbett
Feb 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS

Amnesty International Ireland on Monday joined Irish politicians and other critics in condemning the use of Shannon Airport as a refueling stopover for some of US President Donald Trump’s deportation flights.

Outrage over the use of the Irish airport has mounted since an investigation published Thursday by the Guardian and +972 Magazine detailed how a private jet owned by Trump donor and business partner Gil Dezer was recently chartered by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) through the company Journey Aviation to deport Palestinians to the Israeli-occupied West Bank..

Private Jet of Billionaire Trump Donor Used to Deport Palestinians From US to Occupied West Bank

“It is absolutely reprehensible that any ICE deportation flights would be allowed stop and refuel in Shannon,” said Duncan Smith, a Labour Party foreign affairs spokesperson.

Smith called on the prime minister, or taoiseach, Micheál Martin, and Minister for Transport Darragh O’Brien, both members of the party Fianna Fáil, to “intervene and ensure this ends.”

“Ireland cannot in any way be complicit in these ICE flights,” he added, according to the Irish Times.

The newspaper published a collection of other reactions from representatives for the country’s political parties:
Green Party leader Roderic O’Gorman said, “It is deeply disturbing to learn that Shannon is being used to facilitate the cruel actions of Donald Trump’s ICE.” He called for the government to clarify the matter.

Social Democrats foreign affairs spokeswoman Senator Patricia Stephenson also said it was deeply disturbing: “The coalition must make a statement on whether it knowingly facilitated these flights,” which she claimed were a violation of the human rights of the deportees.

Sinn Féin foreign affairs spokesman Donnchadh Ó Laoghaire said the matter “requires immediate clarification” as he questioned if the flights were compliant with international law.

People Before Profit-Solidarity TD Paul Murphy said, “The fact that these were flights deporting Palestinians just adds insult to injury.”

Weighing in with a Monday statement, Stephen Bowen, executive director, Amnesty International Ireland, similarly said that “we are deeply troubled at these reports of ICE deportation flights refueling at Shannon, including to states of which deportees are not even citizens.”

“The US Trump administration’s cruel and inhumane mass deportation campaign must be denied any form of facilitation by Ireland to the degree that is legally possible,” he argued. “Our government must do everything it can to refuse to allow such stopovers without first assessing if any individuals on board face a real risk of serious harm if transferred.”

Ireland’s Department of Transport has noted that “stops at Irish airports by private aircraft and commercial charters which are technical stops for non-traffic purposes (ie, not picking up or setting down passengers), do not require prior authorization from the Department of Transport.”

Bowen said that “whilst we understand the intricacies of aviation law, it is wholly unbecoming for states to hide behind these when such cruelty and rage is being deployed to weaponize immigration control. Ireland still has legal obligations under the international human rights treaties it has ratified. There can be no doubt that serious human rights violations are taking place during ICE deportations, with many detainees denied legal due process before being deported.”

“We are currently looking into this very worrying matter and will be writing to government soon,” he added. “However, the government should already be looking at all possible ways to stop Ireland being a link in a chain of suffering, fear, and systemic abuse.”

Separately on Monday, Seamus Culleton, an Irishman who is married to a US citizen and has been in an ICE detention facility in Texas since September despite having no criminal record, called on the taoiseach to raise his case with Trump during a White House visit planned for St. Patrick’s Day.



Culleton told the Irish Times that his message to politicians in his homeland is: “Just try to get me out of here and do all you can please. It’s an absolute torture, psychological and physical torture. I just want to get back to my wife. We’re so desperate to start a family.”

“I’d be so grateful if we could just end this,” he added. I’ve been detained now for five months. It’s just a torture, I don’t know how much more I can take.“

A spokesperson for Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs—led by Minister Helen McEntee of the Fine Gael party—confirmed that it was providing “consular assistance” through the consulate in Austin and “our embassy in Washington, DC is also engaging directly with the Department of Homeland Security at a senior level in relation to this case.”

Responding to Culleton’s description of his experience Smith of the Labour Party noted that “just last week I raised the concerning fact that data showed an increase in Irish citizens interacting with Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention and deportation procedures.”

MMr. Culleton’s testimony is absolutely harrowing, and marries with what immigration lawyers on the ground tell us about the very real and disturbing conditions that Irish citizens are facing inside ICE detention facilities,“ Smith said, urging McEntee to ”seek any and all information“ about everyone from Ireland now in US custody.

‘We Rely on Hispanic Labor’: ICE Raids Trigger Economic Alarm Bells in Trump States

“What happens if everyone who is Hispanic thinks they’re at risk?”


US Border Patrol teams take security measures at the border with Mexico against any illegal crossings in El Paso, Texas, on May 8, 2025.
(Photo by Can Hasasu/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Brad Reed
Feb 09, 2026
COMMON DREAMS


Communities in two red states that voted for President Donald Trump in the 2024 election have found themselves being unexpectedly hurt by his mass deportation agenda.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday that construction trade groups in southern Texas have been sounding the alarm about aggressive immigration raids on work sites that are leading to serious delays of projects, which in turn are raising prices for buyers and lowering profit margins for sellers.

Things have gotten so severe, wrote the Journal, that materials suppliers have started laying off workers and one concrete company filed for bankruptcy due to a drop off in sales that it blamed on the immigration raids.

Mario Guerrero, chief executive of the South Texas Builders Association, said that the raids were “terrorizing job sites,” and grinding economic activity to a halt.

“They are basically taking everyone in there working, whether they have proper documentation or not,” said Guerrero, who acknowledged backing Trump in the 2024 election.

Luis Rodriguez, a manager at a tile supplier called Materiales El Valle, confirmed to the Journal that immigration enforcement agents have started targeting all immigrants in the area, whereas in the past they would only detain specific people for whom they had an arrest warrant.

With workers afraid to come to their jobs, Rodriguez said he’s started trying to recruit employees at local community colleges, where he has offered classes on installing tiles.

So far, he said, “nobody is coming forward” to fill the gap left by immigrant workers.

A Monday report in the New York Times similarly found that Trump’s mass deportation policies have rocked the tiny town of Wilder, Idaho, which is still reeling from a federal raid that took place last year at a race track frequented by the local immigrant community.

As a result, 75 immigrants living in Wilder—just over 4% of its total population—have so far been deported.

Wilder resident David Lincoln told the Times that the raid “nearly destroyed” the community, and he said that it could have devastating impact on the town’s agricultural economy once planting season begins this year.

“What happens if everyone who is Hispanic thinks they’re at risk?” Lincoln told the Times. “There’s fear now that didn’t exist here before. I don’t know how you make that go away.”

Chris Gross, a farmer in the town, expressed shock that so many members of the community have simply vanished in such a short time.

“We rely on Hispanic labor,” said Gross. “Nobody thought something like this could happen here.”

Federal officials targeted Wilder for a raid after they were sent a tip from an informant about an alleged illegal gambling ring being operated at the local race track.

However, immigration attorney Neal Dougherty told the Times that the focus of the raid was clearly on immigration rather than trying to bust up an unlawful gambling operation.

“The one thing everyone got asked was, ‘Where were you born?’” Dougherty explained. “Not, ‘Did you see gambling?’ Not, ‘Did you participate in gambling?’ Just, ‘Where were you born?’”

The reporting came after a self-professed three-time Trump voter, identified only as “John in New Mexico, Republican,” called in to C-SPAN last week to apologize for previously supporting the president, whom he called a “rotten, rotten man,” citing his immigration operations and racist post about the Obamas.

Trump just proved he's a ghoul — or a moron

Sabrina Haake
February 8, 2026 

RAW STORY



On Thursday, Trump addressed the 2026 National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., a tradition President Dwight Eisenhower began in 1953 to solemnify the confluence of faith, gratitude, and public service. At Eisenhower’s ceremony, after he swore the oath of office, he delivered an unscripted and spontaneous prayer of humility, calling on God to “make full and complete our dedication to the service of the people.”

Seventy-odd years later, at this year’s breakfast, Trump met Eisenhower’s prayer of humility and raised him one.

Instead of somber reflection or words to soothe an anxious nation, Trump delivered a blasphemous meditation on Trump: 77 minutes of self-indulgence, grievance and hatred of others.

Making it political

Trump opened by maligning the press, complaining that he never gets “a fair break from the fake news, which is (points dismissively) back there.” By the third sentence he was referring to himself reverentially as “Sir” while calling everyone else by their first name.

Claiming he’d “done more for religion than any other president,” Trump announced that Democrats were anti-religion, and said anyone who votes for Democrats must be Godless.

Treating prayer like a stump ad, Trump claimed Democrats oppose voter identification because “they cheat,” and fondly reminisced over his election win like it was a good game.

“Beating these lunatics was incredible, right, what a great feeling, winning every swing state, winning the popular vote...”

Prayer to promote violence

Forgetting the prayer theme of the breakfast, Trump bantered about murdering people in fishing boats off the coast of Venezuela like it was locker room talk.

“I was just talking to a great leader from El Salvador and he said, man, that was some attack, I've never seen anything like that one. Right? Right?” Going in for the brag, Trump joked to the murderous Nayib Bukele from across the room, laughing, “That was good even by your high standard, right? That was a hell of an attack.”

Only ghouls or morons would think that was funny. In a rule of law world, Trump would be hauled into the International Criminal Court on multiple charges of murder.


He also used his remarks to admire El Salvador’s torture prison, CECOT, saying President Bukele (“so incredible, such a great ally”) operates “prisons so large you can't see from one side to the other.”

Trump said he’d sent CECOT “a lot of the people that we capture, the murderers, the drug dealers, the people that came into our country illegally and have already committed massive crimes… We had 11,888 murderers and many of them are in (Bukele’s) prisons right now.”

Eleven thousand murderers? Drug dealers?? Massive crimes??? Reports from CBS News and the Cato Institute found that under 12 percent of the 250 men illegally sent to CECOT had any prior criminal convictions, even minor. Meanwhile, Trump skipping due process to have innocent people tortured will go down as one of the worst abuses of government power in American history.

Demonizing immigrants

After lying about who he is having deported, and why, Trump continued his un-Christlike tirade against immigrants as "monsters" and "vicious people" who "only gave us the worst."

Encouraging Christians to fear immigrants, Trump said, “You can’t have people going to church and coming out and have criminals taking advantage, and doing things that nobody even wants to describe.” In response to calls from Pope Leo XIV for Trump to deal with immigrants “humanely” and with “dignity,” Trump reverted to, "we have to get the bad ones out."


On brand, he then segued to his ICE crackdown in Washington, D.C., claiming it removed more than 2,000 “monsters” from the streets. Federal arrest data show that over 80 percent of the immigrants arrested in D.C. under Trump’s “crime emergency” campaign had no prior criminal records. None at all, not even unpaid traffic tickets.
Thou shalt not lie

During Trump’s first term, one analyst counted more than 30,000 specific falsehoods. At least his National Prayer Breakfast remarks offered continuity. When he wasn’t lusting after violence and cruelty, every sentence out of Trump’s mouth was an easily disproved lie. In his national push to target law-abiding immigrants, Trump is bearing false witness.


The Bible doesn’t mince words about lying liars who lie.“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.“
“He who breathes out lies will perish.”
“No one who practices deceit shall dwell in my house.”

But Trump’s flock, lavishing him with praise at the prayer breakfast, willingly overlooks lies from their golden calf.

That Christo-nationalists continue to idolize Trump as “Chosen” while he governs by falsehood proves that Christianity in the time of Trump is not about Christ. It’s not about loving thy neighbor, helping the poor, or peace. It’s about power: God’s name appears in the Bible 4,000 times, while Trump’s name appears in the Epstein files more than 38,000 times. Trumpers don’t care. There could be videos of Trump raping children in those files, it wouldn’t matter to MAGA’s “Christians.”

After erecting golden statutes of himself, Trump is now planning to build a 250 foot arch that will dwarf the Lincoln Monument. Trump’s arch, by design, scale, and metaphor, will shrink American history. Next to Trump’s imposing arch (let’s name it “Sir”), sacred monuments to the world’s greatest experiment will be reduced to doll-like replicas.

Christianity under Trump has rotted into unadulterated power-cult worship. It won’t end well. Someone should remind MAGA that God executed the Israelites who worshipped a golden calf, then sent them a plague for good measure.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.