'Red meat for the Trump base': Yale historian destroys MAGA dream as 'a fantasy'

Amy Goodman
Democracy Now!

December 30, 2024

NO VIDEO 

Donald Trump has set his sights on the Americas, threatening to retake the Panama Canal if Panama doesn’t lower fees for U.S. ships. The United States controlled the waterway until 1977, when President Jimmy Carter signed a landmark treaty to give Panama control of the canal. Trump has also recently floated the idea of annexing Canada, and even a possible “soft invasion” of Mexico. Pulitzer Prize-winning Yale historian Greg Grandin explains the practical impossibilities of such plans but analyzes the political impacts of Trump’s statements. “There’s no way the United States is going to fill out greater America. This is red meat for the Trump base,” says Grandin. “It’s classic Trump.”


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

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We turn now to look at how President-elect Trump has threatened to retake the Panama Canal. The United States controlled the waterway after its completion in the early 20th century. But in 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed a landmark treaty to give Panama control of the canal, which, by providing a path through Central America, revolutionized maritime shipping. During a speech in Arizona Sunday, Trump threatened to retake the canal.

PRESIDENT-ELECT DONALD TRUMP: If the principles, both moral and legal, of this magnanimous gesture of giving are not followed, then we will demand that the Panama Canal be returned to the United States of America, in full, quickly and without question.


AMY GOODMAN: Panama’s President José Raúl Mulino rejected Trump’s threat in a video he posted online.
PRESIDENT JOSÉ RAÚL MULINO: [translated] I want to express that every square meter of the Panama Canal and its adjacent areas belong to Panama and will continue to belong to Panama. The sovereignty and independence of our country are not negotiable.


AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Trump announced he’s picking Trump loyalist, local official Kevin Marino Cabrera from Miami to serve as U.S. ambassador to Panama.


For more on this and Trump’s vow to maybe also annex Canada, as he continually to refers to “Governor Trudeau,” and even a possible soft invasion of Mexico, we’re joined by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Greg Grandin, history professor at Yale University, his recent op-ed in The New York Times headlined “The Republicans Who Want to Invade Mexico.” His forthcoming book, America, América: A New History of the New World.

Thanks for joining us, Professor Grandin. First, your response to Panama?

GREG GRANDIN: Well, Panama is interesting. I mean, I think there’s a lot of things going on. Obviously, Trump is not president yet, and he’s sending out messages that are meant to set a tone. In some ways, it’s classic Trump. He’s saber-rattling about these fantasies about taking back the canal. But I think the real kind of prosaic reason why he’s doing that is to place, you know, single pressure on Panama to clamp down on immigration, and particularly to close down the Darién Gap. Last year, I believe the numbers are quite off the charts. Something like 400,000 migrants traipsed through the very narrow jungle Darién Gap as part of the migration into the United States. And by placing the pressure on Panama about the canal, this is Trump’s way of, you know, bait and switch, in some ways.

But I think there are other things also going on. In some ways, it’s distraction. The more we talk about Greenland, the more we talk about Canada and “Governor Trudeau,” and the more we talk about taking back the Panama Canal, the less we’re talking about Syria or Gaza or, you know, these other hot spots that require significant attention and real diplomacy, rather than this kind of circus act.


But I also think that it also — it speaks to this signal shift in the global order. I think that, you know, the liberal — the old liberal order, multilateral order, that Trump stands apart and above from and has pledged to overthrow, you know, it presided over untold number of hypocrisies and atrocities. But at least the premise that it was founded on was that nations were to cooperate with each other to create a peaceful world, and hence diplomatic protocol. Trump, by just talking about taking the canal or taking Greenland or turning Canada into the 51st state, is really harkening back to a world where the doctrine of conquest still reigned, you know, where the presumption wasn’t cooperation. The presumption was rivalry, competition and domination, in which smaller nations suffer what they must and bigger nations do what they will.

And I think that, you know, this is classic — this is classic Trump. There’s no way the United States is going to fill out greater America. This is red meat for the Trump base. If you go to Twitter, you can see all of these MAGA maps in which greater America is filled out from Greenland down to Panama. And it’s a fantasy. There is not going to be a kind of return to territorial annexation in any significant way. I mean, the United States is not Israel, right? In Israel, there is a Greater Israel actually being created. In the United States, it exists more in the kind of fantasy life of his rank and file. And I think that some of that is what is going on.

And let me just add, it’s Panama. Panama is one of the largest offshore money-laundering shelters in the world. By some accounts, some $7 trillion exists in these offshore accounts. And if he really wanted to make America great again, he would go after not the Panama Canal or worry about immigration, he would shut down — he would shut down the ability of these offshore financing to function, and he would tax that money. And then we’d have high-speed trains. We’d have healthcare. We’d have a nation, as he likes to put it.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, just as we talked about Greenland and China and the U.S. interest in Greenland, what about the Panama Canal and the possibility of a larger canal being built through Nicaragua, and the role of China versus the U.S.? Is Trump seeing it in this context?


GREG GRANDIN: I think, I mean, obviously, Latin America and its relationship with China is always a geostrategic concern for national security types. And it has been, and has been for quite a while. And in terms of the Panama Canal in particular, there are alternatives on the table. Claudia Sheinbaum in Mexico has talked about creating an interoceanic corridor, a combination of roadways and trains, in that thin kind of waistband area of Mexico, that would compete with the Panama Canal. Nicaragua, of course, is run by a degraded version of the Sandinistas, but they’ve been in talks with China. But this has been going on for decades, so it’s unclear how real they were.

The thing about building alternatives to the Panama Canal is that this happens whenever — it’s been going on for quite a long time, for at least a century, because, of course, the problem with the Panama Canal, it’s not a — it’s a lock canal. It’s not a sea level canal. So it takes a long time to fill up the locks, bring them down, bring the ship across. And that’s why the tariffs are so high. That’s why the fees are so high. It’s an enormous operation. So there’s been a dream of a sea level canal for over a century. And maybe the will there is to build it either in Mexico or Nicaragua, but, you know, it’s not anything I would hold my breath for, waiting to see happen. We’d probably have high-speed trains in the United States before that happened.

AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, Trump’s pick for the ambassador to Mexico is Ron Johnson, whose military career began in Panama. In the '80s, he was stationed in El Salvador as one of 55 U.S. military advisers as the Salvadoran military and paramilitaries were killing thousands of Salvadorans. He was a specialist in covert operations, became a member of the elite U.S. Special Forces, informally known as the Green Berets, a highly selective unit that also included figures like Trump's pick for national security adviser, Michael Waltz. He has pushed for the U.S. also invading Mexico, Greg, as we wrap up.

GREG GRANDIN: Yeah, these are bad signs. Ron Johnson just brings us back to Iran-Contra, I mean, right into the heart of it. I mean, he was one of the so-called 55 military advisers on the ground in El Salvador while the United States was helping El Salvador build a death squad state. I mean, he’s got — and then he had a career in the Green Berets and onward to the CIA. He’s been — you know, he’s seen some things. And to name him ambassador to Mexico is, again, sending a strong signal.


Again, Mexico is Mexico. It’s stubborn. It has a strong commitment to sovereignty. On the other hand, it’s poor, and it needs capital, and the United States is the largest trading partner. Claudia Sheinbaum seems to be very astute in not — you know, where we see obsequiousness on the part of Justin Trudeau, Sheinbaum has come back quite strongly, at least rhetorically, on Trump. But on the other hand, Mexico has cooperated with the United States on all sorts of things having to do with migration, and including helping the United States enforce a hard line on migration. I imagine that’s going to continue, no matter what the rhetoric of Sheinbaum. But Mexico does have a — has a much stronger commitment to the idea of sovereignty because of the history, where, you know, you started talking about territorial annexation. I mean, a third of Mexico was lost to the United States. Texas was lost to the United States. The United States almost took the Yucatán in 1948 along with Texas — 1848, along with Texas. So, that history is there.

And, of course, the people that Trump has put in, Marco Rubio as secretary of state, Ron Johnson, Mike Waltz, I mean, they might as well move the State Department down to Mar-a-Lago or down to Tampa. I mean, it’s basically a Florida-based operation, which suggests that we’re going to see a lot of interesting rivalries or a lot of interesting conflicts with Latin America, which will not necessarily be — which might reveal some big cleavages, because one of the things that the mathematic —

AMY GOODMAN: We just have 20 seconds, Greg.

GREG GRANDIN: OK. One of the things that the Trump people want to do is build an alliance with right-wing Latin Americans. And you ain’t gonna do that by threatening to take back the Panama Canal.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, even The Wall Street Journal editorial page, well known for its conservatism, said, “Trump, you did not campaign on this issue. Where is it coming from?” Greg Grandin, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and professor of history at Yale University. We’ll link your New York Timesop-ed headlined “The Republicans Who Want to Invade Mexico.” We’ll also link to Tracy Wilkerson’s piece in The New York Times — Tracy Wilkinson’s Los Angeles Timespiece about Ron Johnson.

OPINION

Robert Reich: Why Musk is wrong about opening America to skilled workers from abroad

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk looks up during a ceremony to mark the re-opening of the Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral, following the 2019 fire, in Paris, France, December 7, 2024. LUDOVIC MARIN/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo

Robert Reich

December 29, 2024

When I was secretary of labor, America’s emerging Big Tech industry pushed to raise the cap on the number of skilled workers allowed into the United States under the H-1B visa program.

I resisted the pressure, telling business that if they wanted skilled workers so badly, they should train Americans for these jobs, including their own workers.

Apparently the same controversy has emerged among Trump advisers over whether and how many skilled foreign workers should be allowed into the United States on work visas.

On the one side are billionaire techies such as Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who sank more than a quarter of a billion dollars into Trump’s reelection effort, and David Sachs, a venture capitalist who also poured a fortune into Trump’s campaign.

(Trump has rewarded Musk by picking him to be co-chair of the so-called “department of government efficiency” and rewarded Sachs by naming him czar for artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency policy.)

Both Musk and Sachs are from Big Tech and want more skilled workers from around the world. Both built or financed businesses that rely on the government’s H-1B visa program to hire skilled workers from abroad.

Trump’s immigration hard-liners don’t agree. Their goal is to radically restrict immigration, deport anyone who’s undocumented, and put up high tariffs to discourage imports from other nations (and their workers).

Which side is right?

On balance, it’s important to keep the pressure on American businesses to educate and train Americans for skilled jobs in the United States.

Allowing many more skilled workers into the United States reduces any incentives on American business to invest in the American workforce. Why do so when they can get talent from abroad?

Allowing many more skilled workers into the U.S. also reduces the bargaining power of skilled workers already in America — and thereby reduces any incentive operating on other Americans to gain the skills for such jobs.

And opening America to skilled workers also reduces the incentive on foreign nations to educate and nurture their own skilled workforces. Why should they, when their own skilled workers can easily migrate to America?

The major beneficiaries in the U.S. of opening the nation to skilled workers from abroad are CEOs and venture capitalists like Musk and Sachs, whose profits and wealth would be even higher if they could siphon off cheaper skilled workers from abroad.

Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/

In the GOP Civil War Over Immigration, Both Sides Are Racists


Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want cheap labor—not a multiracial democracy.

Jeet Heer

THE NATION

 January 3, 2025

ELON MUSK AND MINI-ME

E

lon Musk, House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Vivek Ramaswamy arrive for a meeting on Capitol Hill on December 5, 2024.(Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Democrats are rightly excited by the fact that the MAGA crew have already started viciously fighting among themselves even before Donald Trump’s inauguration. After all, with the Republicans set to enjoy a trifecta (even one that rests on a fragile hold of the House of Representatives), the best hope for Democrats is that internal GOP strife will sabotage Trump’s ability to enact his agenda. This is, in fact, what happened in Trump’s previous go-round as president, when the MAGA king was often thwarted by internal strife in his coalition (particularly the intense battles between GOP institutionalists such as Mitch McConnell and anti-system provocateurs such as Steve Bannon).

The current intramural GOP strife is a familiar battle between a business elite that wants cheap immigrant labor and nativist agitators who believe restriction of immigration is central to the MAGA agenda. As New York magazine reports, “Last week, while Americans were busy celebrating the holidays with their families, a contentious online rift emerged among the MAGA faithful after Donald Trump’s tech-world allies, led by billionaire Elon Musk, began pushing back on attacks on highly skilled foreign tech workers by the movement’s nativist wing.”

The initial instigation for the conflict was Trump’s nomination of Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-born tech entrepreneur, as senior policy adviser for artificial intelligence. The battle soon spread to the larger issue of H-1B visas, which are widely used in Silicon Valley as a way of hiring immigrants.

Leading the charge against both Krishnan and the H-1B program was Laura Loomer, a controversial media personality who reportedly has special access to Trump. As New York noted, “Loomer, who has never been one to shy away from outright racism, also launched attacks on Indian immigrants, calling them ‘third world invaders’ while celebrating the ‘white Europeans’ who she claimed built the country.”

In battling Loomer, Musk and his allies presented themselves as opponents of racism. Musk tweeted that “those contemptible fools must be removed from the Republican Party, root and stem” and added that by “contemptible fools” he meant “those in the Republican Party who are hateful, unrepentant racists.”

While it is true that Loomer and her allies (including former Trump adviser Steven Bannon and pundit Ann Coulter) are racists, that does not mean that Musk and his fellow Silicon Valley allies (notably former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who is working with Musk in advising Trump on subduing the federal government to the MAGA agenda) are animated by truly anti-racist politics in their struggle.

Current Issue

January 2025 Issue

As my Nation colleague Joan Walsh noted, as repugnant as they are, anti-system agitators such as Loomer and Bannon have a point when they deride the H-1B program as exploitative. For decades, progressive pro-labor activists have argued that the H-1B is in effect a guest worker program, creating a reserve army of employees who work for lower wages and have fewer rights than American citizens or those with permanent residency status. The H-1B visa is tied to employment, which means employees are especially vulnerable to exploitation.

On January 2, Bernie Sanders expressed this long-standing leftist position, noting, “The main function of the H-1B visa program is not to hire ‘the best and the brightest,’ but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad. The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make.”

The current GOP civil war is one where both sides have profoundly reactionary and bigoted views of society, although with slight variations. MAGA nativists such as Loomer and Bannon are dreaming of a return to the overwhelmingly white America of the 1950s, with middle-class jobs a patrimony reserved largely for the nation’s dominant ethnic group. Musk and Ramaswamy might want a more multiracial America, but it would still be a profoundly hierarchical one, with immigrants providing the cheap labor that allows the 1 percent to flourish.

Musk’s own history of racism clarifies the fact that both factions in this battle are just offering different strands of bigotry. Musk has a long history of promoting racist myths such as the idea of “white genocide” and the “Great Replacement.” These ideas are, as Julia Black documented in a 2022 article for Business Insider, tied up with his eugenicist belief that people such as himself have superior genes and thus a duty to populate the earth. This is a belief that Musk seems to have acquired from his father, Errol Musk.

As Black reports:


Musk, who has fathered 10 known children with three women, is the tech world’s highest-profile pronatalist, albeit unofficially. He has been open about his obsession with Genghis Khan, the 13th-century Mongol ruler whose DNA can still be traced to a significant portion of the human population. One person who has worked directly with Musk and who spoke on the condition of anonymity for this article recalled Musk expressing his interest as early as 2005 in “populating the world with his offspring. In August, Elon’s father…told me that he was worried about low birth rates in what he called ‘productive nations.’”

Musk’s ally Ramaswamy has cagily recast these arguments in a more politically correct form, as a matter of culture rather than genetics. According to Ramaswamy, Silicon Valley needs to hire immigrants because “American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long.”

One reason not to take Ramaswamy’s claim to care about culture seriously is that he himself, like Musk, has a history of racism. Moreover, these “cultural” justifications for hierarchy are often just barely disguised manifestations of the belief that some people are inherently masters and others inherently servants. The Indian journalist Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, in taking sides with Musk against a nativist critic of the H-1B program, gave the game away by arguing, “Three generations of my ancestors have spoken & written, better English than your blue collar labourer family. I’ll hire you to polish my shoes though, because that’s the only thing you seem to be qualified for.”


Iyer-Mitra’s words show that support of Silicon Valley’s version of meritocracy is perfectly compatible with aristocratic hauteur. Musk’s belief in the greatness of his own genes and the necessary to populate the planet with his DNA is a particularly ludicrous manifestation of the same attitude.

At the very same time that Musk was decrying the racism of Loomer and other critics of the H-1B visa, he was expressing suport for the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD), which is notoriously anti-immigrant. There’s no tension between Musk’s two positions. He is opportunistically anti-racist when he needs workers for his company, but in the long run he wants to keep the multiracial working class disciplined and divided. The best way to do that is to support nativist political movements, whether MAGA in the United States or AfD in Germany.

For progressives, there’s little reason to choose sides between Musk’s cynical racism and the racism of MAGA anti-system agitators like Loomer and Bannon. At best, we can hope that the internal strife will weaken both these noxious forces. The true path forward involves using the political space opened up by right-wing infighting to make a more principled argument for immigration—one based on the goal of creating a multiracial working class with a shared value of cosmopolitan solidarity that can overthrow the plutocrats and their racist coalition.



Jeet Heer is a national affairs correspondent for The Nation and host of the weekly Nation podcast, The Time of Monsters. He also pens the monthly column “Morbid Symptoms.” The author of In Love with Art: Francoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman (2013) and Sweet Lechery: Reviews, Essays and Profiles (2014), Heer has written for numerous publications, including The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, The American Prospect, The Guardian, The New Republic, and The Boston Globe.

Taking on Musk, Sanders Says Corporate 

Abuse of H-1B Visa Program Must End

"We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one important 

prog ram  way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms in theH-1B ."

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks at the Democratic National Convention at the United Center on August 20, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois.

(Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

Jessica Corbett
Jan 02, 2025
COMON DREAMS

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, a longtime advocate of reforming H-1B visas, on Thursday reiterated his argument that "widespread corporate abuse" of the guest worker program must end amid a heated battle among Republican President-elect Donald Trump's allies.

"Elon Musk and a number of other billionaire tech company owners have argued that this federal program is vital to our economy because of the scarcity of highly skilled American engineers and other tech workers. I disagree," said Sanders (I-Vt.), a prominent advocate of pro-worker policies including raising the federal minimum wage, in a lengthy statement.

"The main function of the H-1B visa program and other guest worker initiatives is not to hire 'the best and the brightest,' but rather to replace good-paying American jobs with low-wage indentured servants from abroad," he asserted. "The cheaper the labor they hire, the more money the billionaires make."

"If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers?"

The fight has pitted some far-right, anti-immigrant Trump supporters against Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the billionaires charged with leading the president-elect's proposed Department of Government Efficiency. Musk, who was born in South Africa and is now the world's richest person, has said he once had an H-1B visa and declared last week that "I will go to war on this issue."

Musk is also CEO of the electric vehicle company Tesla and has used H-1B visas as an employer. So has Trump. The incoming president—who in 2016 pledged to eliminate "rampant, widespread" abuse of "H-1B as a cheap labor program"—said Saturday that "I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I've been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It's a great program."

Faced with accusations that those remarks represented a shift from his previous criticism of the program, Trump toldFox News on Tuesday: "I didn't change my mind. I've always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country, and we need competent people... We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in. We're going to have jobs like we've never had before."

As Common Dreamsreported Sunday, progressives are arguing that both the anti-immigrant and billionaire supporters of Trump are wrong. Krystal Ball, co-host of the online news show "Breaking Points," said that "the truth is if you are struggling it's likely because of billionaire robber barons like Trump, Elon, and Vivek, who rig the rules to screw regular people."

Sanders noted that "in 2022 and 2023, the top 30 corporations using this program laid off at least 85,000 American workers while they hired over 34,000 new H-1B guest workers. There are estimates that as many as 33% of all new information technology jobs in America are being filled by guest workers. Further, according to Census Bureau data, there are millions of Americans with advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering, and math who are not currently employed in those professions."

Taking aim at just one of Musk's companies on Thursday, the senator asked: "If there is really a shortage of skilled tech workers in America, why did Tesla lay off over 7,500 American workers this year—including many software developers and engineers at its factory in Austin, Texas—while being approved to employ thousands of H-1B guest workers?"

"Moreover, if these jobs are only going to 'the best and brightest,' why has Tesla employed H-1B guest workers as associate accountants for as little as $58,000, associate mechanical engineers for as little as $70,000 a year, and associate material planners for as little as $80,000 a year?" he continued. "Those don't sound like highly specialized jobs that are for the top 0.1% as Musk claimed this week."

The senator shared his statement on the Musk-owned social media platform X, formerly called Twitter. Multiple other users shared videos of Sanders criticizing the H-1B program on television and the Senate floor going back to 2007, his first year in the chamber.




"If this program is really supposed to be about importing workers with highly advanced degrees in science and technology, why are H-1B guest workers being employed as dog trainers, massage therapists, cooks, and English teachers?" Sanders asked. "Can we really not find English teachers in America?"

The senator expressed support for using the program as a temporary fix for labor shortages in highly specialized areas while also arguing that "in the long term, if the United States is going to be able to compete in a global economy, we must make sure that we have the best-educated workforce in the world. And one way to help make that happen is to substantially increase the guest worker fees large corporations pay to fund scholarships, apprenticeships, and job training opportunities for American workers."

"Further, we must also significantly raise the minimum wage for guest workers, allow them to easily switch jobs, and make sure that corporations are required to aggressively recruit American workers first before they can hire workers from overseas," he added. "It should never be cheaper for a corporation to hire a guest worker from overseas than an American worker."

While Musk, Ramaswamy, and others "are right" that "we need a highly skilled and well-educated workforce," Sanders said, "the answer is to hire qualified American workers first and to make certain that we have an education system that produces the kind of workforce that our country needs for the jobs of the future. And that's not just engineering. We are in desperate need of more doctors, nurses, dentists, teachers, electricians, plumbers, and a host of other professions."

In addition to blasting the ultrarich beneficiaries of the H-1B program like Musk and Trump, Sanders called out decades-old lies about the impacts of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and permanent normal trade relations with China.

"Thirty years ago, the economic elite and political establishment in both major parties told us not to worry about the loss of blue-collar manufacturing jobs that would come as a result of disastrous unfettered free trade agreements," he said. "They promised that those lost jobs would be more than offset by the many good-paying, white-collar information technology jobs that would be created in the United States."

Sanders stressed that "not only have corporations exported millions of blue-collar manufacturing jobs to China, Mexico, and other low-wage countries, they are now importing hundreds of thousands of low-paid guest workers from abroad to fill the white-collar technology jobs that are available."

"At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the richest three people in America now own more wealth than the bottom half of our country, and when the CEOs of major corporations make almost 300 times more than their average workers, we need fundamental changes in our economic policies," he concluded. "We need an economy that works for all, not just the few. And one important way forward in that direction is to bring about major reforms in the H-1B program."

Other progressives echoed the senator—including Nina Turner, who co-chaired his 2020 presidential campaign and said on Thursday that "Sen. Sanders is right. We must stand against worker exploitation in all forms, be it American workers, workers overseas, or immigrant workers here in America. The ruling class wants cheap labor and will game any system to secure it."

Like Turner, Howard University professor Ron Hira, who co-authored the book Outsourcing America, also weighed in on X.

"Sen. Sanders has been leading the fight for H-1B reform for 20 years," Hira said Thursday. "He's made floor speeches and was the only 2016 Dem presidential candidate to publicly criticize Disney for replacing its U.S. workers with H-1Bs. His framing is exactly right. CEOs are trying to pull a fast one."

'The 'nationalist right' and 'tech right' are fighting a 'venomous culture war' in MAGA World

Donald Trump with Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, House Speaker Mike Johnson, RFK Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump Jr, Dana White, and Kid Rock on November 16, 2024 (Wikimedia Commons)

Alex Henderson

December 30, 2024

ALTERNET

Billionaire Tesla/SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and MAGA businessman Vivek Ramaswamy were aggressive supporters of Donald Trump during the 2024 presidential race, and the president-elect has tapped them to head a new advisory commission that he has proposed: the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Although Ramaswamy ran against Trump in the GOP presidential primary, his criticism of him was mild; Ramaswamy was much more forceful in his attacks on former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, another primary candidate. And he ended up dropping out of the race and giving Trump a glowing endorsement.

Musk was a generous donor to Trump's campaign. But Musk and Ramaswamy, in late 2024, have been drawing vehement criticism from other MAGA Republicans after voicing their support for the use of immigrant workers in the tech sector.

The Atlantic's Ari Breland, in an article published on December 30, details the rage that MAGA nativists have been expressing against Trump's picks to lead DOGE.

That rage, according to Breland, has been coming from MAGA firebrand Laura Loomer, "War Room" host Steve Bannon and others.

"Elon Musk spent Christmas Day online, in the thick of a particularly venomous culture war — one that would lead him to later make the un-Christmas-like demand of his critics to 'take a big step back and F--K YOURSELF in the face," Breland explains. "Donald Trump had ignited this war by appointing the venture-capitalist Sriram Krishnan to be his senior AI-policy adviser. Encouraged by the MAGA acolyte and expert troll Laura Loomer, parts of the far-right internet melted down, arguing that Krishnan's appointment symbolized a betrayal of the principles of the 'America First' movement."

Breland adds, "Krishnan is an Indian immigrant and a U.S. citizen who, by virtue of his heritage, became a totem for the MAGA right to argue about H-1B visas, which allow certain skilled immigrants to work in the United States."

Meanwhile, Ramaswamy has infuriated nativists by praising the strong work ethic of immigrant tech experts.

"The tech right and nationalist right are separate but overlapping factions that operated in tandem to help get Trump reelected," Breland reports. "Now, they are at odds. For possibly the first time since Trump's victory, the racial animus and nativism that galvanized the nationalist right cannot immediately be reconciled with the tech right's desire to effectively conquer the world — and cosmos, in Musk's case — using any possible advantage. After winning the election together, one side was going to have to lose."

This MAGA "skirmish," according to Breland, "is a preview of how tension between the tech right and the nationalist right may play out once Trump takes office."

"The nationalists will likely get most of what they want," Breland predicts. "Trump has already promised mass deportations, to their delight. But when they butt heads with Silicon Valley, Trump will likely defer to his wealthiest friends."

Read The Atlantic's full article at this link (subscription required).

Progressives Say GOP's H-1B Visa Feud Distracts From Real Problem: 'Billionaire Robber Barons'

"Billionaires want you to wage a culture war while they win the class war," said one critic.


Elon Musk speaks at an event on November 29, 2023 in New York City.
(Photo: Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times)

Julia Conley
Dec 29, 2024
COMMON DREAMS

Progressive commentators on Saturday weighed in on a dayslong dispute between Republican President-elect Donald Trump's billionaire tech industry backers and far-right MAGA allies over the H-1B guest worker program—saying the program's right-wing supporters and detractors alike aim to distract from the real threat to workers: the billionaire CEOs who exploit both American employees and those who come from abroad.

"Billionaires want you to wage a culture war while they win the class war," said Warren Gunnels, a top adviser to U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), on Friday night.

Gunnels' comments came after Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who spent $277 million to help Trump get elected this year, vowed to go to "war" to protect the H-1B program, which grants temporary visas to highly educated foreign professionals who work in specialized fields such as technology, medicine, and engineering.

Silicon Valley heavily relies on guest workers with H-1B visas, and Tesla, Musk's electric vehicle company, obtained 724 of the visas this year. Musk, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in South Africa, has said he also personally benefited from the program.

Musk—who has spoken out against immigration overall—said he would defend the program after far-right activist Laura Loomer criticized Sriram Krishnan, who Trump named as senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence, over his previous support for making it easier for highly educated foreign workers to come to the U.S. Loomer said the policy was "in direct opposition" to the anti-immigration agenda embraced by Trump, who has vowed to oversee a mass deportation operation.

Trump on Saturday expressed support for Musk's position, saying he is "a believer in H-1B," which he moved to limit during his first term.

"The problem is the oligarchs who became billionaires by exploiting workers, suppressing wages, and shipping jobs abroad."

"I have many H-1B visas on my properties," Trump told The New York Post. "I have used it many times. It's a great program."

Labor rights advocates have raised concerns that workers who come to the U.S. with H-1B visas are vulnerable to exploitation by their employers.

Last year, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) noted in a report that H-1B visas were not being used to "fill genuine labor shortages in skilled occupations without negatively impacting U.S. workers' wages and working conditions." The program's biggest users were companies that laid off thousands of workers in 2022 and 2023.

"The rest of the companies that dominate the program have an outsourcing business model that exploits the program by underpaying skilled migrant workers and offshoring U.S. jobs," wrote Daniel Costa, EPI's director of immigration law and policy research, and Ron Hira, a research associate and job offshoring expert who is also a professor at Howard University.

On the social media platform X on Friday, Hira wrote that "employers favor guest workers because they have fewer rights and less bargaining power."

"[The U.S. Department of Labor] has set the H-1B minimum wages far below market wages," continued Hira. "Employers can and do pay H-1B workers much less than market rates. While H-1B workers can change jobs, they have far fewer employment options and job mobility than U.S. workers. Many call their employment situation 'indentured servitude' because they are effectively bound to their employer. Employers control the visa so they can exercise extraordinary bargaining power over their H-1B workers on wages and working conditions."

In 2023, Hira and Costa called on the Biden administration to close the "outsourcing loophole" in the H-1B program by requiring companies that hire visa holders to file labor condition applications and to ensure the H-1B workers are paid a fair wage—steps that would promote fairer treatment of all workers.

Gunnels pointed out that when Sanders was first elected to the Senate nearly two decades ago, he introduced an amendment that would have "increased the fees companies pay to hire H-1B guest workers to fund scholarships for Americans pursuing degrees in science, engineering, and math"—supporting U.S.-born and foreign workers. The amendment did not become law despite passing 59-35.

The bipartisan budget deal that Musk helped to kill earlier this month included a similar provision, Gunnels said.

Musk said last week that the H-1B visa program is needed because of a "permanent shortage of excellent engineering talent" in the U.S., while Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire entrepreneur who Trump has chosen to run his proposed Department of Government Efficiency along with Musk, said U.S. culture "has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long" and advised Americans to look to a future with "more math tutoring, fewer sleepovers. More weekend science competitions, fewer Saturday morning cartoons."

Krystal Ball, co-host of the online news show "Breaking Points," said the feud between Trump's MAGA allies and his Big Tech supporters promoted two distinct lies.

"Trumpism pushes the lie that if you are struggling it's because of immigrants and trans people," said Ball. "Elon and Vivek are pushing the traditional GOP lie that if you are struggling it's your own fucking fault. The truth is if you are struggling it's likely because of billionaire robber barons like Trump, Elon, and Vivek, who rig the rules to screw regular people."

Former Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner added that American corporations, not workers, have a "culture problem."



"This is about corporations squeezing every last penny out of anyone and anything they can," said Turner. "This framing that American workers have a 'culture problem' and aren't 'motivated' is quite telling, given where it's coming from: billionaire CEOs. What does 'motivated' mean? To them, it seems that it means the threat of being sent back overseas."

Contrary to the dueling GOP narratives on display in recent days, the problem facing American workers is "not the H-1B guest worker from India or the tomato picker from Guatemala," said Gunnels. "The problem is the oligarchs who became billionaires by exploiting workers, suppressing wages, and shipping jobs abroad."

How visas for skilled foreign workers are splitting MAGA in two

Analysis


Tesla CEO Elon Musk and other tech titans are warring with some of US President-elect Donald Trump’s staunchest supporters over immigration visas. Trump has backed Musk and praised the use of H-1B visas to bring skilled foreign workers to the United States, but the issue has become a flashpoint that is ruffling the feathers of his electoral base.


Issued on: 31/12/2024 
By: Sébastian SEIBT

FRANCE24

Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Laura Loomer are shown in this composite illustration. © FRANCE 24


Trump chose to side with Musk in a December 28 New York Post interview in which he expressed support for immigration visas for highly skilled workers after a fierce debate that had been roiling his MAGA supporters.

“I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favour of the visas. That’s why we have them,” the president-elect told the paper. The H-1B visa program allows US companies to hire skilled foreign workers in specialised occupations. No more than 85,000 are issued each year and most are given to tech companies who bring in workers from Asia, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Conflict of interest

But online, the claws came out. Hardline, anti-immigrant MAGA supporters came after Trump’s wealthy tech supporters over the future of H-1B visas and the foreigners who benefit from them.

Some prominent Trump supporters, like conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim activist Laura Loomer, said these visas were an open door to mass immigration. Others, like Musk, defended the visa program as a way to attract the “top 0.1% of engineering talent”.

Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning.

This is like bringing in the Jokic’s or Wemby’s of the world to help your whole team (which is mostly… https://t.co/mtd0cgkNvE— Kekius Maximus (@elonmusk) December 26, 2024

The battle began in earnest when Sriram Krishnan, an Indian-American venture capitalist who previously worked for Facebook, Microsoft and Twitter and is said to be a close friend of Musk, was appointed by Trump in late December to be a senior policy adviser on artificial intelligence.

The move prompted Loomer, who is known for her unwavering support of Trump, to unleash an online tirade. She claimed on X that Krishnan wanted to “remove all restrictions on green card caps” so that foreigners could “take jobs that should be given” to US citizens, and that he loved “mass migration”. The Trump appointment, she added, was “in direct opposition to Trump’s America First agenda”.

Musk, who was born in South Africa, claims he was issued a H-1B visa before later becoming a US citizen. He responded swiftly and violently.

“I will go to war on this issue,” he wrote on X. The Tesla boss didn’t refrain from using profanities to attack his critics. “Take a big step back and F*CK YOURSELF in the face,” he wrote.
The great Republican divide

Steve Bannon, former White House strategist under Trump and a far-right influencer, stepped in and things escalated. Coming to Loomer’s rescue on his War Room podcast, he called the H-1B visa program a “total scam” and said, “we are going to get H-1B visas out, root and stem, and all the workers you brought in”.

“Just like we are deporting 15 million here, we want them deported – out,” Bannon said. “And give those jobs to American citizens today.”

Tech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who will co-chair the Trump-proposed "Department of Government Efficiency" with Musk, took the opposite stance.

“Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence,” he wrote in a long X post that argued foreign workers benefit the US. “A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math Olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers,” he added.

The reason top tech companies often hire foreign-born & first-generation engineers over “native” Americans isn’t because of an innate American IQ deficit (a lazy & wrong explanation). A key part of it comes down to the c-word: culture. Tough questions demand tough answers & if…— Vivek Ramaswamy (@VivekGRamaswamy) December 26, 2024

As the online war over H-1B visas raged, Musk used one of the strongest weapons in his arsenal, according to Loomer. She said Musk removed her blue check mark on X because she “dared to question his support for H1B visas” and that she was now “demonetised” – in other words, no longer guaranteed a share of the advertising revenue generated by her most viral tweets.

On the left, Democrats seemingly revelled in what they called a “civil war” within the MAGA movement.

“It is both an ideological war and a war of influence,” said Thomas Gift, director of the Centre on US Politics at University College London. The expert recalled that Republicans have always been torn between taking advantage of cheap foreign labour, which allows US companies to minimise their costs while remaining competitive, and a more radical “nativist” stance – the belief that every job given to a foreigner would deprive a “native-born” US citizen of an opportunity.

“What is different is that in the Trump era, the debate is [being fuelled] by violent words,” Gift noted.

Walking the supporter tightrope

The two sides of the pro-Trump camp are also trying to figure out who will have the most influence on the future president. In recent weeks, Musk has been able to count on a parade of support from top Silicon Valley bosses at Mar-a-Lago. “There is no doubt that Big Tech leaders [like Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos] have addressed the issue of H-1B visas,” Gift said.

“Tech bosses who support Trump have wind in their sails at the moment, and the money to make themselves heard,” underlined Jérôme Viala-Gaudefroy, a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris specialising in the United States.

“They have more of a class approach to immigration, as opposed to a racial approach, which is definitely the case for Loomer,” he added. In other words, for them, the “right” immigrant is not necessarily White, but absolutely must be highly skilled or already privileged.

This division in Trumpland has erupted before the official inauguration on January 20. But “let’s not kid ourselves”, Gift said. “With the midterm elections in two years’ time, it is clear that most of the important decisions will be taken at the start of his presidency – so both sides are looking to make moves now,” he added.

Trump being in favour of H-1B visas “marks a change in his rhetoric”, Gift observed. For him, the president-elect is lying when he says he has always been in favour of the visa. “He has changed position several times, and in 2016 he even promised to scrap the program,” Viala-Gaudefroy added.

While the debate is a first win for Musk, it is one that could be dangerous for Trump’s base. Loomer and Bannon “represent a significant chunk of the voters that brought Trump to victory”, Viala-Gaudefroy pointed out.

The most radical MAGA factions will surely want to avenge themselves on the Big Tech bosses, and there will be no shortage of opportunities. “H-1B visas are just the first battle in this war of influence,” said Gift.

Viala-Gaudefroy predicted that another flashpoint will be China, “where Musk has major economic interests”. The X boss may even seek to steer Trump away from one of his key campaign promises, notably, imposing heavy tariffs on China.

This article was translated from the original in French by Lara Bullens.

Renowned Washington Post Cartoonist Quits After Refusal to Publish Critique of Jeff Bezos

Censored cartoon and Ann Telnaes
(Substack)

Common Dreams Staff
Jan 04, 2025

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Ann Telnaes has resigned from the Washington Post, where she has worked since 2008, due to what she claims was editorial interference.

Telnaes claimed an editor at the paper killed her draft cartoon depicting Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos and other billionaire tech and media chief executives groveling on their knees at the feet of President-elect Donald Trump.

Along with Bezos, Telnaes depicted Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman bringing Trump sacks of cash. Los Angeles Times owner and billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong was shown with a tube of lipstick.

In a post to her Substack, Telnaes wrote:

“I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations – and some differences – about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time, I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now.”

"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable. For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning because, as they say, “Democracy dies in darkness.”

Over three hundred thousand people canceled their digital subscriptions after Jeff Bezos decided to squash a Washington Post endorsement of Kamala Harris in October.

WaPo staffer resigns after paper spikes cartoon that jabbed billionaires cozying to Trump

Matthew Chapman
January 3, 2025 

RAW STORY

The Washington Post website. (Photo credit: Dennis Diatel / Shutterstock)

A political cartoonist for The Washington Post is quitting her job — and posted an explanation on Substack accusing the paper of censoring her mockery of billionaires, including the paper's owner, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

"I’ve worked for the Washington Post since 2008 as an editorial cartoonist," wrote Ann Telnaes. "I have had editorial feedback and productive conversations — and some differences — about cartoons I have submitted for publication, but in all that time I’ve never had a cartoon killed because of who or what I chose to aim my pen at. Until now."

The cartoon depicted a group of wealthy corporate executives making a religious-like offering of money to a hulking shrine of Trump.

"The group in the cartoon included Mark Zuckerberg/Facebook & Meta founder and CEO, Sam Altman/AI CEO, Patrick Soon-Shiong/LA Times publisher, the Walt Disney Company/ABC News, and Jeff Bezos/Washington Post owner," she noted.

"As an editorial cartoonist, my job is to hold powerful people and institutions accountable," Telnaes concluded. "For the first time, my editor prevented me from doing that critical job. So I have decided to leave the Post. I doubt my decision will cause much of a stir and that it will be dismissed because I’m just a cartoonist. But I will not stop holding truth to power through my cartooning, because as they say, 'Democracy dies in darkness.'"

Her resignation comes amid controversy over Bezos stepping in to block the Post's editorial board from publishing a planned endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris — which led to a flurry of subscription cancelations and the resignation of several members of the editorial board.

Bezos has fiercely defended his decision to intervene against an endorsement, claiming that political endorsements by newspapers undermine public trust in the media.

However, journalism experts argue Bezos doesn't really grasp the nature of newspaper endorsements; editorial boards publish opinion content by definition and are separate from the newsroom. Furthermore, endorsements involve interviewing candidates and informing readers how they responded to various policy and record questions, so they work to inform readers about where candidates stand on the issues.

Inside the GOP plan that destroyed American jobs

Thom Hartmann,

 AlterNet
January 4, 2025 

Construction worker in Manhattan (Shutterstock)

Trump says he’s going to imprison and then deport millions of brown-skinned immigrants. He’s going after the wrong people.

It seems that ever time a Republican goes on one of the national political TV shows, they make sure to get in the lie that “Joe Biden opened the southern border wide open,” or toss in a reference to “Biden’s open borders.”

It is, of course, a viscious lie — but one that’s almost never called out by the hosts because it’s peripheral or tangential to the topic being discussed. And, as is so often the case, this all started with Reagan (more on that in a moment).


While it’s true that two factors have driven a lot of migration over the past few decades (climate change wiping out farmland, and political dysfunction and gangs caused by the Reagan administration devastating the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) the latest main driver of would-be immigrants and refugees is the Republican Party itself.

Lacking any actual, substantive economic issues to run on, the GOP decided after Biden’s election in 2021 to fall back on a familiar ploy: scare white people that brown people are coming for them and/or their jobs. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember well how the GOP pitch to white people was that Black people wanted “our” jobs; now it’s brown people from south of the border.

Trump did this in the most crude, vulgar and racist way possible from his first entrance into the Republican primary through the end of his presidency. It frightened enough white voters that it got him into office once, and the GOP repeated that trick last November.


In doing so, they’re playing with fire. Their daily lies about American policies for the past four years are causing people to put their lives in danger.

The truth is that Joe Biden never “opened” our southern border.

“Open borders” have never been his policy or the Democratic Party’s policy or, indeed, the policy of any elected Democrat or Democratic strategist in modern American history.


Everybody understands and agrees that for a country to function it must regulate immigration, and it’s borders must have a reasonable level of integrity.

Republicans are playing a very dangerous game here. By loudly proclaiming their lie that Biden had “opened” the southern border and was “welcoming” immigrants and refugees “with open arms,” they created the very problem they’re pointing to.

Republican lies like this don’t stay in the United States.


As they get repeated through our media, even when most Americans realize they’re simply wild exaggerations (at the most charitable), the media of other countries are happy to pick up the story and spread it across Mexico and Central America.

This, in turn, encourages the desperate, the poor, and the ambitious to head north or send their teenage children northward in hopes for a better life. Meanwhile, criminal cartels have jumped into the human trafficking business in a big way, exploiting and aggressively repeating the GOP rhetoric to recruit new “customers.”

I lived and worked in Germany for a year, and it took me months to get a work-permit from that government to do so. I worked in Australia, and the process of getting that work-permit took a couple of months.


In both cases, it was my employers who were most worried about my successfully getting the work permits and did most of the work to make it happen. There’s an important reason for that.

The way that most countries prevent undocumented immigrants from disrupting their economies and causing cheap labor competition with their citizens is by putting employers in jail when they hire people who don’t have the right to work in that country.

We used to do this in the United States.


In the 1920s, the US began regulating immigration and similarly put into place laws regulating who could legally work in this country and who couldn’t.

Because there was so much demand for low-wage immigrant labor in the food belt of California during harvest season, President Dwight Eisenhower experimented with a program in the 1950s that granted season-long passes to workers from Mexico. Millions took him up on it, but his Bracero program failed because employers controlled the permits, and far too many used that control to threaten people who objected to having their wages stolen or refused to tolerate physical or sexual abuse.

A similar dynamic is at work today. Employers and even neighbors extract free labor or other favors of all sorts from undocumented immigrants in the United States, using the threat of deportation and the violence of ICE as a cudgel. Undocumented immigrants working here end up afraid to call the police when they’re the victims of, or witnesses to crimes.


Everybody loses except the employers, who have a cheap, pliable, easily-threatened source of labor that is afraid to talk back or report abuses.

It got this way in 1986, when Ronald Reagan decided to stop enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring undocumented people, and directed the government’s enforcement activities instead toward the least powerful and able to defend themselves: brown-skinned immigrants.

The result has been a labor market in the US that’s been distorted by undocumented workers creating a black-market for low-wage labor that many of America’s largest corporations enthusiastically support.

For example, prior to the Reagan administration two of the most heavily unionized industries in America were construction and meatpacking. These were tough jobs, but in both cases provided people who just had a high school education with a solid entry card into the American Dream. They were well-paid jobs that allowed construction and meatpacking workers to buy a home, take vacations, raise their kids and live a good, middle-class life with a pension for retirement.


Reagan and his Republican allies, with healthy campaign donations from both industries, wrote the 1986 Immigration Reform Act to make it harder to prosecute employers who invited undocumented workers into their workplaces.

As Brad Plumer noted in The Washington Post:
“[T]he bill’s sponsors ended up watering down the sanctions on employers to attract support from the business community, explains Wayne Cornelius of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at U.C. San Diego. ‘The end result was that they essentially gutted the employer sanctions,’ he says.”

So Reagan stopped enforcing our labor and immigration laws with respect to wealthy white employers, and the next 20 years saw a collapse of American citizens working in both the meatpacking and construction industries, among others.


Forty-dollar-an-hour American-citizen unionized workers were replaced with seven-dollar-an-hour undocumented workers desperate for a chance at a life in America for themselves and their children.

From the Republican point of view, an added bonus was that levels of unionization in both industries utterly collapsed. Reagan succeeded in transforming the American workplace, and set up decades of potential anti-Latino hysteria that Republicans could use as a political wedge.

Without acknowledging that it was Reagan himself who set up the “crisis,” Republicans today hold serious-sounding conferences and press availabilities about how “illegals” are “trying to steal Americans jobs!” They’re all over rightwing hate radio and in the conservative media on a near-daily basis.


But it’s not poor people coming here in search of safety or a better life who are impacting our labor markets (and, frankly, it’s a small impact): it’s the companies that hire them.

And those same companies then funded Republican politicians who pushed under-the-radar social media ads at African Americans in 2016 and the last election saying that Democrats wanted Hispanic “illegals” to come in to take their jobs.

America, it turns out, doesn’t have an “illegal immigrant” problem: we have an “illegal employer” problem.

Nonetheless, to paraphrase Mitch McConnell, they persist. As the AP noted in a recent article:
“Black lawmakers accused Republicans on Tuesday of trying to ‘manufacture tension’ between African-Americans and immigrants as GOP House members argued in a hearing that more minorities would be working were it not for illegal immigration.”

Tossing even more gasoline on the flame they, themselves, lit, Republicans are now amplifying the warnings and “danger” of undocumented immigrants by pulling out the Bush/Cheney “terrorist” card along with Trump’s “diseased rapist criminals” and “they want to take your job” tropes.

Because the GOP has been playing these kinds of racist, xenophobic games with immigration since the Reagan era, our immigration and refugee systems are a total mess. Trump additionally did everything he could to take an axe to anything that wasn’t a jail or a cage…and turned those jail cells into sweet little profit centers for his private-prison donor corporations.

America needs comprehensive immigration reform and a rational immigration policy that’s grounded in both compassion and enlightened economic self-interest. We need an honest debate around it, stripped of the GOP’s racial dog-whistles. And our media needs to stop taking GOP lies about immigration and the southern border at face value.

Americans — and people who want to become Americans out of hope or desperation — deserve better. And throwing some of these rich white employers in jail instead of terrified immigrants would be a good start.

STATEHOOD OR INDEPENDENCE

'Do something!' Rep. Stacey Plaskett furious as she's told she can't vote for speaker

Matthew Chapman
January 3, 2025 

RAW STORY

Stacey Plaskett, congresswoman from the Virgin Islands. (Screengrab via C-SPAN)

A congresswoman from the Virgin Islands rose in the House during the speakership vote on Mike Johnson (R-LA) to protest the more than a century-long refusal of the House to give a vote on the floor to elected officials from U.S. territories.

"I note that the names of representatives from American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia were not called, representing, collectively, 4 million Americans," said Stacey Plaskett to broad applause from the Democratic side of the chamber. "Mr. Speaker, collectively, the largest per capita of veterans in this country."

"Does the gentlelady have a problem?" the presiding member asked.

"I asked why they were not called," said Plaskett. "I asked why they were not called from the parliamentarian, please."

"Delegates-elect and the resident commissioner-elect are not qualified to vote," came the response. "Representatives-elect are the only individuals qualified to vote in the election of the speaker. As provided in Section 36 of the House rules and manual, the speaker is elected by a majority of the members-elect voting by surname."

"Thank you, Mr. Speaker," said Plaskett. "This body and this nation has a territory and a colonies problem. What was supposed to be temporary has now, effectively, become permanent. We must do something about this."

Ultimately, Johnson was elected speaker on the second ballot, with two rebellious Republicans flipping their votes at the urging of President-elect Donald Trump. Territorial delegates — who may have proved decisive had they been allowed to vote due to the historically narrow GOP House majority — were not given a say.

Watch the video below or at the link here.

'Racism': Rep. Stacey Plaskett unloads on MSNBC after hearing she can't vote for speaker

Matthew Chapman
January 3, 2025 
RAW STORY

Rep. Stacey Plaskett (D-VI) and MSNBC host Joy Reid. (Screengrab via MSNBC)

Stacey Plaskett, a Democratic congresswoman from the Virgin Islands, is sent to Congress as a territorial representative — but she has no right to vote in the election for speaker of the House, a fact she stood up and reminded the nation of during the roll call to confirm Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Friday.

Speaking to MSNBC's Joy Reid on Friday evening, Plaskett more starkly laid out the crisis of disenfranchisement facing citizens of the U.S. territories.

"The fact that I could not vote for speaker, and my children were there with me, Virgin Islanders were watching me and not hearing my name ... and to know that we are people who represent some, the largest Black and per capita of veterans, and still cannot vote for our commander-in-chief and do not have a vote for speaker. I just couldn't sit silent," Plaskett told Reid.

Many states used to be territories but were eventually given statehood, she noted.

"But, in the cases that are called the Insular Cases at the turn of the 20th century, by the same justice that wrote Plessy v. Ferguson, he stated the people who live in the territories are savage aliens who cannot understand Anglo-Saxon principles of law, and therefore should not be given the full rights of American citizenship. Now, mind you, we have signed ourselves up to be part of the draft, and in fact, the people of the island that I live on, that my family is from, St. Criox, sent to this nation, one of the children that we reared, Alexander Hamilton, to actually write the Constitution. And then to turn around and say we can not understand principles of rule of law? It is just absolutely racism, and it's got to stop."

"Yeah, I mean we learned, I think, a lot of people did not understand," replied Reid. "People from Puerto Rico get asked for their passports by TSA agents sometimes ... they cannot vote for the president unless they come physically to the mainland. It is treating the territories as colonies."

"You can move to Brussels, you can move to Paris, you can move to the Congo, and just get an absentee ballot and vote for president," agreed Plaskett. "But if you, Joy Reid, or anyone in your family or anyone else, move to a U.S. territory or resides there, then you give up your right to vote for president. It's got to end."

Watch the video below or at the link here.



- YouTubewww.youtube.com