A disturbing report from the Guardian on the recruitment of 10,000 new ICE agents, with reduced training and background checks. Experts in the story raise concerns about the possible recruitment of violent extremists and white supremacists …
‘Trump’s private army’: inside the push to recruit 10,000 immigration officers
Here is a good short video by Robert Reich on the steps our government is taking towards "fascism".
Representative Greg Landsman (Ohio D.) has a clear, succinct summary of the corruption of the Trump administration …
https://www.facebook.com/reel/1430483077978222 Rep. Greg Landsman on the corruption of the Trump administration
On September 4, 1910, Labor organizer Samuel Gompers penned a piece in the New York Times on the significance of Labor Day. Here is a link to the NYT archival record, but there is actually cleaner reading version to be found here.
Just a few quotes that seem particularly pertinent to our current situation:
In our second “Gilded Age,” let us support the organization of Labor in tandem with all resistance to emergent autocracy.
Today is the anniversary of two important moments in the history of US activism for a more democratic union: the 1963 March on Washington and the arrest in 1917 of ten suffragists who were picketing outside the White House.
Here is today’s Library of Congress entry on these events.
One thing that the Women’s Suffrage protests and the March on Washington had in common was a years-long road of action, planning, theorizing, discourse and movement-internal politicking leading up to the iconic moments and beyond. These roads were not always pretty and often involved a narrowing of the ambitions of the movement. The Women’s Suffrage Movement was notably exclusive of Black women. The Civil Rights Movement, which began as an effort to comprehensively reorder American society in more democratic directions – economically, politically, and spiritually, as well as legally –became increasingly focused on civil rights per se, such that even now we tend to forget that the 1963 march was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. (This article by Robin D.G. Kelley in The Boston Review gives an interesting account of the backstory of the March in this regard.) There is no action without compromise, but we do ourselves a disservice when we lose sight of broader historical goals and of the full array of conditions that were driving those goals.
In comparison to our current situation, these two movements also have in common that they were directed against a society and a government that were established and that at least in principle adhered to a set of democratic ideals of freedom, equality, and justice for all – while, clearly, also unfairly and brutally oppressing many members of that society. Dr. King’s idea of a “promissory note,” while perhaps contributing to a narrowing of the movement’s original vision, does seem to have resonated with a segment of the white majority, and it did pithily capture a contemporary reality.
Our situation is different. We are faced at this moment not with challenging a democratic-in-principle society to once again expand its understanding of what freedom, equality and justice mean. We are faced with resisting that society’s abandonment of those democratic ideals and its slide into cruelty, injustice, stupidity and cowardice. Some of this slide is a “know-nothing” backlash precisely against the efforts to expand our democracy (Black Lives Matter, marriage equality, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, honest accounting of American history). Resistance must succeed. And it must lead ultimately to an expansion of democracy, not a return to the recent status quo. It is an opportunity.
Just in case some of you did not see Gov. JB Pritzker Monday, I wanted to share this with you. He gives me hope! There are a few democrats who seem to know how to fight Trump, and for my money he’s on the top of the list. I hope others follow his lead. Pritzker said many wonderful things in his talk, but I think my favorite is that he told the people who are aiding and abetting Trump that “we are watching and we are taking names…If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.” I have not heard anyone make it clear to the enablers that there is a downside for what they are doing.
My plan is to rewatch this whenever I’m feeling a little hopeless. Hope you like it too!
How stripping diversity, equity and inclusion from health care may make Americans sicker
Here is a very concerning analysis of how medical research and public health reporting are being stripped of the ability to assess health disparities by race …
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU has done a lot of excellent long-view and just-in-time online programming around actions undertaken by the Trump administration and others. They pull together great panels, and Barb and I have learned a lot from their constitutional, legal and political analyses. You can check out the center and sign up for their newsletter here: https://www.brennancenter.org/
Here is Center director Michael Waldman’s briefing today on Trump’s National Guard threat for Chicago:
| President Trump has threatened to send troops to Chicago to “straighten that one out.” New York City, he says, might be next. Already, armed National Guard regiments are patrolling the streets of Washington, DC. All this on top of the deployment of troops to Los Angeles earlier in the summer. The deployment of out-of-state troops to occupy cities cannot plausibly promote public order. It’s blunt force, a brutal power grab. It runs afoul of the Constitution and the proper role for states. I write history books and consider myself an expert on the presidency. I can think of few analogies — not in this country, anyway — for such a move by a chief executive. Why is this particular turn so alarming? After all, public safety is important, and fighting crime is a worthy goal. My colleague Liza Goitein explains the legal and constitutional issues: ———————————————————— Trump is on even thinner legal ice with this plan than he is in Los Angeles and DC. Unlike in the capital, the president doesn’t command the Illinois National Guard unless he calls them into federal service (i.e., “federalizes” them). There are various laws that authorize him to federalize the Guard, but none of them would apply here. In Los Angeles, Trump is relying on a law (Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code) that authorizes federalization when “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States,” meaning federal law. Immigration law is federal law. Trump claimed that the protests rendered him “unable . . . to execute” ICE raids. Although dozens of raids happened during the protests and the administration did not cite a single raid that was thwarted, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals deferred to Trump’s assessment. But that law simply wouldn’t apply to the type of crime Trump has cited in Chicago — essentially, violent street crime. The laws that are implicated are largely those of Illinois and Chicago, not the “laws of the United States.” Even under the Insurrection Act — which is the main exception to the law barring deployment of the military for domestic law enforcement — the president may deploy troops to execute the law only in situations involving either federal laws or those state laws designed to protect the constitutional rights of classes of people (basically, civil rights laws). Nor can Trump ask other states’ governors to send their Guard forces into Chicago, as he did in DC under a law known as Section 502(f), which authorizes governors to voluntarily use their Guard forces for missions requested by the president or secretary of defense. Under this law, presidents have asked governors to deploy Guard forces within their own states, in other states that consent, or (as only Trump has done) in DC without local consent. No governor has sent Guard troops into another state that did not consent, as would be the case here. That’s because Guard forces deployed under this law remain state officers as a legal matter. And under the Constitution, states are sovereign entities vis-à-vis one another. That means one state cannot invade another, even at the president’s request. If the president wants to send one state’s National Guard forces into an unwilling state, he must federalize them first. But to federalize them, he needs statutory authority. And there is no statutory authority to federalize the Guard to police local crime. The Pentagon reportedly sees its planned military deployment in Chicago as a model for other cities. And of course, the other cities Trump has name-checked in this context are governed by Democrats: Baltimore, Los Angeles, New York, and Oakland. Flooding “blue” cities with soldiers on the pretext of fighting crime would be an unprecedented abuse of power that would violate states’ rights and threaten our most fundamental liberties. The plan is profoundly un-American. And it is illegal. ———————————————————— Public safety matters greatly. But facts belie the (ever shifting) rationale. New York, for example, remains one of the nation’s safest large cities. As Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told Attorney General Pam Bondi yesterday, crime has dropped dramatically, even this year. Fighting crime is not a rationale — it’s a pretext. The cities targeted so far have two things in common: a Black mayor and a fusillade of presidential rhetoric denouncing them as “hellholes.” Bill Kristol, founder of The Bulwark and a longtime prominent Republican, surveyed the past week and put it this way: “What we are seeing is not merely a ‘slide toward authoritarianism.’ It’s a march toward despotism. And it’s a march whose pace is accelerating.” What can be done to push back? Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker warned federal forces, “Do not come to Chicago. You are neither wanted here nor needed here.” Trump, in turn, mused, “They say . . . ‘He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator.’ A lot of people are saying, ‘Maybe we’d like a dictator.’” He added, “I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator.” (As presidential quotations go, it’s about as reassuring as Richard Nixon’s “I am not a crook.”) Pritzker and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul can play pivotal roles. States and cities can go to court — an epic legal battle. They can rally the public in their states and around the country. They can monitor and document the conduct of deployed forces. We must all speak out when our Constitution is under threat. Get some rest this Labor Day. It’s going to be a busy fall. |
I sent this to MSNBC’s Morning Joe this morning. I’ve decided it’s as important to get after the media as our representatives.
Hi Joe and Mika,
You sometimes do a good job and I appreciate that your job is difficult–bringing unbiased news to the people.
Lately you have both been very disappointing in this goal. You are normalizing and sometimes legitimizing Trump. I cannot think of a worse thing to do at this time in our nation’s history.
Mika–you talked about there truly being a crime problem in DC when Trump moved guards into the city.
Joe–you talk about the 2026 election like it is a given that we will have it and that it will be fair and that the results will be honored.
Why do you let Trump set the ground rules of the discussion????
Trump putting troops in DC has NOTHING to do with crime in DC. If it did, among other things, they would not be located where they are.
This and so much else he is doing has to do with stealing the 2026 election. THAT should be your focus. When you make people believe that the next election will fix this, you take away their need to mobilize and take action NOW. You normalize Trump and his minions at the nation’s peril.
PLEASE STOP IT. You know better, or at least you should. Actually I can tell that you do know because you have in the past addressed that exact issue, so you are clearly aware of the problem. Now act like it all the time, not just some of the time. It matters to our survival as a democracy! You should be better than this. If you listen to Gov. Pritzker’s latest talk every single day, it will inform you as you inform us. And that will be a strong step in favor of our democracy, so we can keep it.
Sincerely,
Barbara L Krenz
Affirming Democracy, Gathering Resistance 