Jonathan P. Baird

In a little-noticed decision on its shadow docket, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority allowed Texas to use a racially gerrymandered congressional map in next year’s mid-term election. The map Texas drew was designed to disadvantage minority voters and add five congressional seats for the Republicans.

The Court was doing a big favor for Donald Trump. Redistricting is typically done every 10 years. The Court was responding to Republican panic about the 2026 mid-term elections. Fearing big losses, Trump initiated a gerrymandering arms race to gain advantage in as many states as possible for the Republicans. The purpose was to improve the chances of electing Republicans from Texas to Congress.

It is notable that the Supreme Court had previously held for more than 30 years that the government violates equal protection when it uses race as a predominant factor in districting. That is exactly what Texas did.

When Texas drew these racially gerrymandered districts, a legal challenge ensued. A three judge panel in the federal court found tha Texas map was unconstitutionally racially gerrymandered. The Court said the map was designed to dilute the power of black and brown voters.

The conclusion was not superficially arrived at. The judges had conducted a nine day hearing with over 20 witnesses with thousands of exhibits introduced. The factual record was over 3,000 pages. In a 160 page decision, the majority opinion, authored by a judge appointed by Trump, found Texas impermissibly used race as a basis for drawing election districts.

The decision would have prevented Texas from slicing and dicing Latino voters into districts for the purpose of weakening their voting strength. Texas is only 40% white but white voters control 73% of the state congressional seats. The trial court decision, if it had been put into effect, would have forced Texas back to the 2021 map which had already given the Republicans an advantage.

What was upsetting about the Supreme Court’s decision was not only the bottom line result. It was the way the decision was effectuated, once again on the shadow docket where decisions are offered without any substantial rationale and with no oral argument. There is no solace in the fact the decision is preliminary. The Court absurdly said that Texas made a strong showing of irreparable harm and that the equites and the public interest favor it. The idea this decision is in the public interest is laughable.

In response to a detailed 160 page opinion, the Court put forth five paltry, embarrassing paragraphs. To quote Justice Elena Kagan’s dissent, the Court intervened “ based on its perusal, over a holiday weekend of a cold paper record”. Kagan went on:

“We are a higher court than the district court but we are not a better one when it comes to making such a fact-based decision.”

The Supreme Court is a court of appellate jurisdiction. Its role is supposed to be limited since it does not re-try the facts. The Supreme Court and appellate courts generally are bound to accept the trial court’s fact-finding unless it is clearly erroneous.

In reversing the federal district court, the Supreme Court showed disdain and disrespect for a lower court. With barely any explanation, the Court majority brushed aside very detailed fact-finding. While the Court can say what the law is, they don’t have the power to say what the facts are. In this case, they swatted the facts away and erased them.

There is a pattern of the Supreme Court doing that. Chief Justice John Roberts did exactly the same thing in the Shelby County case which eviscerated the Voting Rights Act.

To say it is a bad look doesn’t go far enough. Lawyers and judges should be declaring a five alarm fire. The Court has been corrupted. It is now a Republican Party subsidiary. They have sided with the Trump regime in 90% of shadow docket cases that have reached them. The best that can be hoped for is that fear of loss of all credibility will rein them in occasionally.

The justifications offered by the conservative majority were exceedingly weak. They said the lower court failed to honor the presumption of legislative good faith. But the Texas legislature did not even try to camouflage this racial gerrymander as simply a partisan one. Texas admitted the use of race. The High Court also chastised the lower court for not coming up with its own viable alternative map but that doesn’t make the racial gerrymandering go away.

The Court said the challenge to the new districts came too close to the next election. But when the trial court made its decision, the election was a year away. The plaintiffs had filed suit as early as they possibly could. The Supreme Court is, in effect, encouraging states to monkey around with gerrymandering before elections.

To appreciate the harm the Texas redistricting case represents, a wider angle lens is required. The Supreme Court has been reading the 14th Amendment out of the Constitution. Given the history of racism and white supremacy in the United States, we need to understand that the whole point of the 14th Amendment was the recognition of Black people as full citizens. Full citizenship, requires, among other things, equal voting rights. The Supreme Court has entirely lost that thread.

The historian Eric Foner once wrote that the 14th Amendment was the most consequential addition to the Constitution since the Bill of Rights. Sherrilyn Ifill says it was our nation’s reset after the Civil War but we have not honored its legacy. The reset was about creating a multi-racial democracy.

For 100 years, the 14th Amendment was almost snuffed out. It came back to life in the 1960’s but it has been strangled again. The Supreme Court has almost murdered it. I would suggest that re-invigoration of the Reconstruction amendments, the 13th, 14th and 15th is one means to advance the goal of multi-racial democracy. Those amendments don’t have to be enfeebled. Some day lawyers and jurists will bring them back to life.

Among the most repellent things Donald Trump has said were his comments on December 2 that Somali immigrants were “garbage”. He said, “They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in my country. Their country is no good for a reason. Their country stinks”. He went on to say Somali immigrants “have destroyed our country”. He singled out Congresswoman Ilhan Omar who is Somali saying she “shouldn’t be allowed to serve in Congress” and she “should be thrown out of our country”.

Minnesota has the largest concentration of Somalis in the country. About 84,000 people of Somali descent live in Minnesota. They have settled in Minnesota over the last three decades. The great majority are U.S. citizens or legal residents. There are very few undocumented Somalis.

Trump’s comments followed his first term remarks where he referred to African nations and Haiti as “shithole” countries.

Intentional dehumanization such as Trump’s racist rant creates a permission structure for violently-inclined MAGA followers to act out against people of color. Some portion of white supremacists in the MAGA base get their switch flipped by the venom. Acts of violence or shootings against those perceived as Somali are predictable along with accompanying manifestos justifying the acts based on great replacement theory.

Congresswoman Omar has received many death threats. In February 2019, the FBI arrested a Coast Guard Lieutenant for plotting to assassinate Omar. Later in April 2019, a man threatened to assault and murder Omar in a phone call to her office and he ended up pleading guilty. Trump re-tweeted a tweet that falsely said Omar partied on the anniversary of 9/11. Omar has been a prime target of online hate. The newest Trump comments further endanger her life.

It is notable that none of the cabinet members or people around Trump publicly reacted to the racist offensiveness of his comments about Somalis. Profiles in courage – not. It is more like profiles in moral debasement. Nothing that comes out of Trump’s mouth would propel his circle of sycophants to say a peep. Silence is golden like everything around Trump.

Trump’s language is reminiscent of the German Nazi terminology directed against Jews. The Nazis saw Jews as racially inferior sub-humans. Negatively categorizing entire groups as garbage is unacceptable and below any standard of civilized public discourse.

In justification of his remarks, Trump cited alleged fraud committed by Somali immigrants. Dozens of Somali immigrants have been charged with fraud for allegedly stealing $1 billion from Minnesota’s COVID-19 pandemic relief.

Even if Somalis were engaged in fraud, they are still entitled to the presumption of innocence like all criminal defendants. In the United States, estimates for the total amount of COVID-19 relief fraud range from hundreds of billions to over $1 trillion. The Paycheck Protection Program, Economic Injury Disaster Loans and unemployment insurance all experienced widespread fraud because prevention controls were relaxed.

There is no reason to single out Somalis considering the national scope of the fraud. They were hardly alone. Also, it prejudices the fraud cases of the Somali defendants when a President weighs in. Because of the President’s influence, a fair trial becomes much harder to accomplish.

What Trump does not mention is the unprecedented corruption of his own regime. Being a convicted felon himself, you might think that someone with his track record for self-dealing and for pardoning white collar fraudsters would tread lightly. He just pardoned Juan Orlando Hernandez, the former President of Honduras, who was convicted in federal court for drug trafficking 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S. Trump has used the pardon power to normalize corruption. His hands could not be dirtier. He makes the 19th century robber barons look like choir boys.

As bad as the overt racism, Trump’s comments about Somalis also reflect total ignorance of Africa and its history. I was reminded of a book I read a long time ago, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, by Walter Rodney, a historian from Guyana. Trump evinces no awareness of the history of slavery and European colonialism in Africa. Africa was robbed by the Europeans and later by the Americans. It was made poor because of the slave trade and economic exploitation. Rodney writes:

“The question as to who and what, is responsible for African underdevelopment can be answered at two levels. Firstly, the answer is that the operation of the imperialist system bears major responsibility for African economic retardation by draining African wealth and by making it impossible to develop more rapidly the resources of the continent. Secondly, one has to deal who those who manipulated the system and those who are either agents or unwitting accomplices of the said system. The capitalists of Western Europe were the ones who actively extended their exploitation from inside Europe to cover the whole of Africa.”

American slave traders and capitalists followed up on the exploitation and to some extent replaced the Europeans. Rodney doesn’t remove the ultimate responsibility for development from the shoulders of Africans but he recognizes that African poverty must be seen inside the context of colonialism and imperialism.

Like the rest of Africa, Somalia was victimized by European colonialists, primarily Italians. European powers colonized Somalia in the late 19th century as part of the scramble for Africa. Both the British and the Italians had colonies there and Somalia did not gain independence until 1960. It has become the model for a failed state considering the constant warring but the historical background is not appreciated as evidenced by Trump’s scapegoating. He quite obviously knows nothing about Somalia.

It is like the news cycle has already moved on from the Somalis as garbage comments. The public is anesthetized to the racism. America’s collective response to the comments has been pitifully weak. Voltaire once said, “Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities”. Those words still ring true. We must never forget that all human beings have inalienable rights by virtue of being human.

Back during the first Trump term when we witnessed the child separation policy ripping families apart, I thought we had reached the height of cruelty. But I was wrong. ICE and Border Patrol are trying for a new standard. And there are so many awful stories to learn about. Somehow the idea of deporting the “worst of the worst” got lost and inexplicably the new mission is persecuting the most innocent.

ICE has been arresting foreign-born spouses of U.S. citizens who are complying with the law and trying to obtain permanent residency. The New York Times just did a feature story about this. In many cases, ICE agents are telling detained spouses at green card interviews that they had overstayed tourist or business visas. Foreign-born spouses are being handcuffed and taken away right from the interview.

The government strategy appears to be to induce couples to give up, abandon their case and accept the foreign spouse’s detention. There has been no consideration for either the fact of marriage or the reality that the couple may have small children.

The Times highlighted the case of Stephen Paul who is married to a British wife. Paul works for the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department and he and his wife have a four month old baby. At her green card interview, federal agents swooped in and took Paul’s wife away. She had been living in the U.S. for 14 months. Paul said, “I had to take our baby from my crying wife’s arms”. Paul went on:

“It’s insane to have them rip our family apart. Whoever is directing this has completely lost touch with their mission to the country.”

Paul’s lawyer said, “In 25 years of practice, I have never seen anything like this”. People like Paul’s wife have always been eligible for green cards in the past. Arrests like this were exceedingly rare as foreign spouses of Americans have typically been approved for permanent residency. The Trump regime is prioritizing fast track deportations regardless of circumstance, no matter how compelling the case or cruel the result.

Paul learned that the government was threatening to deport his wife without a hearing. More generally, this has become their go-to play. Paul’s lawyer had to file a lawsuit in federal court to halt her removal. That worked and secured her release.

The Times also reported the case of Audrey Hestmark. She and her German-born husband, Tom, reported to a government office for a green card interview. Her husband was a robotics engineer. The immigration officer asked if he had overstayed his visa and he responded truthfully. His lawyer had assured him it was a non-issue. Hestmark said:

“Suddenly, we were ambushed by three masked men in bulletproof vests with guns who told Tom they had a warrant for his arrest, that he is here unlawfully.”

The agents handcuffed Tom and gave Audrey a card with a QR code for the ICE website. Tom was then disappeared to an immigration detention center where he remains to this day.

Then there is the case of the interfaith chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Ayman Soliman. Soliman is Egyptian and has been in the U.S. since 2014. He had been in trouble with the Egyptian military regime as he had been working as a journalist. Because of his work, he was detained four times by the Egyptian authorities and he had been tortured. He came to the U.S. on a visa to study film and once here he applied for asylum. In June 2018, he was granted asylum.

In July, ICE took Soiiman into custody after he appeared at a routine check-in with ICE. His asylum status had been revoked. He spent 73 days in detention. Without proof, the government stated he was part of a terrorist organization. During his 73 days in detention, Soliman said he never saw sunlight, never breathed fresh air and never ate a raw fruit or vegetable.

Because of his popularity for his work pastoring to very ill and dying children, Soliman got widespread support in Cincinnati. He received 760 letters of support from people in the community. The support was so intense that ICE released him from custody and he now awaits a green card determination.

I also wanted to mention the story of Ruperto Vicens-Marquez who has lived in the U.S. for two decades. He and his brother Emilio co-own a locally well-known Mexican restaurant, Emilio’s Kitchen, in Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey, a seashore community. Ruperto is head chef. He had moved to the U.S. from Mexico in 2007. He had a visa that was legally renewed and he was authorized to be in the U.S. until 2029.

Ruperto did not show up at work on October 17. ICE had picked him up a block away from the restaurant, said he had entered the U.S. illegally and falsely asserted he had an order of removal from the U.S. ICE held Ruperto at their immigration detention facility in Newark for over a month. The town of Atlantic Highlands was so upset, advocates in the community organized two demonstrations and created a GoFundMe campaign that raised almost $100000 for legal defense. On October 18, Ruperto was released by an immigration judge’s order.

The Department of Homeland Security says that 500,000 immigrants have been deported since Trump took office. NPR says 300,000 is a more accurate number.

In immigration court, ICE attorneys are short-circuiting due process by filing motions to pretermit which, if granted, avoid giving immigrants any chance to argue their asylum claim. When such motions are granted, people get deported without a chance to testify. The need for zealous immigration lawyers has never been greater.

Someday this entire enterprise of indiscriminate and racist deportation will be seen for the crime it is. It fits in with other seedier episodes of U.S. history like the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese-American internments and Operation Wetback. If justice ever prevails again, there should be investigations and prosecutions of officials like Kristi Noem, Stephen Miller and Greg Bovino for their violations of due process which have characterized this regime.

ICE officials invariably say they are just following orders but maybe they should be considering whether their orders are legal. When what you are doing is heartless and mean as a crazed rottweiler, it is time to bail.

Inside the American Jewish community, there has been a major conflict going on about how to see the source of antisemitism in the United States. On one side are the mainstream Jewish organizations like the Anti-Defamation League and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations who are focused on activists on the left who have opposed Israel’s war in Gaza. They conflate opposition to the Israeli state and its Gaza war with antisemitism.

On the other side are large numbers of unaffiliated Jews, especially progressive young Jews, who are far more worried about fascism and antisemitism emanating from the Republican right. Many of these Jews actively oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza but they are not antisemitic. These Jews have more universalist values and oppose human rights violations wherever they happen.

Events have vindicated those who see the major threat as coming from the Republican right. As a Jewish person, I would go back to the events at Charlottesville in the first Trump term. Hearing Nazis and their sympathizers chanting “Jews will not replace us” was sobering. Then we saw the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh by a right wing extremist who believed in the great replacement theory.

Since then, the growth of the fascist and antisemitic threat coming from the Republicans has become so much more apparent. There is an internal war inside the Republican Party between Jew-hating neo-nazis, the groypers, and old-line Republicans. An entire generation of young Republicans appear to be infected by the antisemitic and racist virus.

Back in October, Politico published an article about the leaked Telegram chat conducted by leaders of young Republican groups throughout the country. In 2,900 pages of chats, many millennial and Gen Z Republicans spoke of their love of Nazis and Hitler, their hatred for Blacks, gays and women and their desire to put Jews in gas chambers. They always dress up the hate in ironical transgressiveness but the underlying world view is clear.

These were Republican leaders, not rank-and-filers. Although they were reported as being young, they ranged up to age 40. They included a state senator and a member of the Trump administration. The Jew-hating showed up in many of the 28,000 exchanges from January to August 2025 among leaders of Young Republican chapters in Arizona, Vermont, Kansas and New York.

The danger from the right has been highlighted by Tucker Carlson’s recent interview with Nick Fuentes. Why was Carlson, an important right wing podcaster, giving such prominence to someone who regularly trafficks in the belief that “organized Jewry” is responsible for society’s problems? Fuentes has called Hitler “really fucking cool”.

I think the interview reflects Carlson’s knowledge that the Republican Party has been flooded by extremists and he is attempting to maintain his relevance by speaking to this growing faction. Rod Dreher has estimated that 30%-40% of all Republican staffers under age 30 are followers of Nick Fuentes. And Carlson is not the only right wing podcaster indulging antisemitism. Candace Owens also deserves mention. With a huge audience, like Fuentes, she blames George Soros and Jews for every imaginable social ill.

Trump is old and it remains an open question what comes next in Republican politics. It is legitimate to ask if the Republicans will become an explicitly racist and antisemitic, pro-nazi political party. A major part of their base, especially their youth, has those politics.

Many of the antisemites on the Republican right have latched onto Gaza as an issue they can exploit. They criticize U.S. support for Israel from an America First perspective. That perspective is at odds with the evangelical Christian Zionist faction of the Republicans but it connects to an earlier isolationist tradition in the party.

The groypers realize that there is massive worldwide opposition to Isreal’s Gaza campaign because of its brutality and its war crimes. Their opposition is sheer opportunism. They want to recruit from those who are legitimately horrified.

The mainstream Jewish organizations have minimized the antisemitic threat from the right because their highest priority has been defense of Israel. They are happy Trump has not interfered with Netanyahu. They play to Trump to keep the money and weapons to Israel flowing. That is also why they give a pass to Elon Musk when he makes nazi salutes. Not seeing Israel’s war crimes is a willful blindness to keep the money spigot on.

The October 7 attack on Israel was criminal and murderous but Israel’s response has been disproportionate and even more murderous. An estimated 67,000 Palestinians have died since October 7, 2023 with nearly a third of the dead under age 18.

Israel’s far right government, led by Jewish racists and fascists like Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, has been credibly accused of ethnic cleansing and genocide. It is not antisemitic to criticize the actions of the Israeli state but the mainstream Jewish organizations see it that way. Of course, there have been isolated examples where criticism of Israel from the left has been antisemitic but these examples are the exception. Overwhelmingly, the criticisms of Netanyahu’s government have been entirely justified.

The Anti-Defamation League has gone completely off the rails with its assertion that New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has promoted antisemitic narratives. Any close observer of Mamdani knows that charge is baseless, even laughable.

Sadly, it is Israel’s own actions in Gaza that are doing more to create antisemitism than anything else. If the mainstream Jewish organizations would take their blinders off, they could see that.

One of our two major political parties is at risk of being captured by explicit racists and antisemites. Drawing on the lessons of history, fascism and antisemitism need to be stopped before they gain more traction. We face a moment like Germany experienced in 1932 when people failed to speak out enough. We all know the consequences of that.

When it comes to corruption, it is impossible to keep up with the Trump regime. There is always more and worse. The corruption is constant and recurring and you don’t have to look hard to find it.

I would lead off with Trump’s scheme to obtain a $230 million settlement from the Department of Justice (DOJ) for alleged violation of his rights in the 2022 Mar-a-Lago search for classified documents and in the 2016 election. The chutzpah is unbelievable. Trump wants taxpayers to pay him back for the investigation into his bad acts.

On the classified documents case, Trump removed many boxes of federal records from the White House that were famously photographed in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom. No one knows what he was up to in snatching the documents because a poor-excuse-for-a-judge made the case go away in spite of the law. Then the Supreme Court compounded the injustice by granting Trump immunity.

Trump is now seeking payment from the DOJ attorneys who previously represented him. He filed an administrative claim for the money and under the DOJ manual, settlement of claims over $4 million “must be approved by the deputy attorney general or an associate attorney general”. These two people are former Trump lawyers who represented him and his closest associate.

You might ask: how can you be both the lawyer for the complaining party and the decision maker? Trump is shaking down the DOJ and getting his own former lawyers to decide the case. In America, the general rule in litigation is that parties pay their own costs and attorney’s fees but not here. The government is being treated like a personal piggy bank because Trump is in office to plunder.

Then there is the matter of his pardons. Pardoning white collar fraudsters who have demonstrated no remorse is the signature Trump move. The pardons come in two flavors: those who have provided financial support and those who have shown political loyalty.

To grease the process, Trump fired the highly ethical government pardon attorney Liz Oyer and replaced her with Ed Martin, a far right political operative. As Martin posted on X: “No MAGA left behind”. Trump fired Oyer after she refused to restore gun rights to actor Mel Gibson after he lost those rights due to a domestic violence conviction.

The outstanding example of misuse of the pardon power is Trump’s pardon of the Binance chief, Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ. Binance is a cryptocurrency exchange and CZ was possibly the most influential person in that entire industry. Forbes estimates his wealth at $89 billion making him one of the wealthiest people in the world.

CZ had pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective money laundering program. He paid a $4.3 billion fine and served four months in prison. CZ had been allowing drug traffickers, child sex abusers and terrorist groups like al Qaeda to move money on his platform.

In October Trump granted CZ a full and unconditional pardon. Binance and the crypto industry generally had poured money into the Trump coffers in the 2024 election campaign. During the campaign, Binance became the infrastructure provider for World Liberty Financial, a crypto business owned by the Trump family. Binance accepted World Liberty stablecoin as payment for a $2 billion investment by Abu Dhabi investment firm, MGX. That pay-for-play move, channeling $2 billion into Trump’s pocket, enormously boosted the family crypto business.

The connection between the CZ pardon and putting $2 billion into Trump family hands is no accident. When questioned about it on 60 Minutes, Trump said he didn’t know who CZ was. Even for someone who has such a loose relationship to the truth, that’s a stretch. If someone gave your family $2 billion, you wouldn’t remember who they were?

Crypto has become the preferred shadowy vehicle for contributing to the Trump regime. It is anything but transparent. It is the means to suck up and get favors with outsiders not knowing. Trump has made $3 billion since becoming president last January. Forgotten is the Domestic Emoluments Clause of the Constitution that prohibits presidents from receiving any benefit or payment other than their fixed salary. Trump pretends that clause of the Constitution doesn’t exist and no one has held him to account.

Along with using the pardon power to reward wealthy donors and to enrich himself, Trump has also used it to reward political loyalists like the January 6 rioters and 77 people associated with his fake electors plots from the 2020 election. This list included Rudy Giuliani and his former chief of staff Mark Meadows. He also pardoned MAGA ally, George Santos, who had barely begun to serve a 7 year sentence for fraud, identity theft and money laundering.

There are many other shady operators who Trump has inexplicably pardoned. Being a wealthy white collar criminal would appear to be the key qualification for pardon consideration. At least 8 people to whom Trump granted clemency in his first term have since been charged with a crime. That is also true for a number of the January 6 rioters who have again gotten into trouble with the law.

One irony is that there are many people rotting in prison serving long mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses. They deserve consideration for a pardon but get passed over.

Americans of whatever political stripe have been conditioned to expect the office of the Presidency is about serving the national interest. Trump follows a different autocratic tradition rooted in looting. He is about serving himself by using the office to maximize personal and family wealth. This is the tradition of strongmen like Putin, Pinochet and Mobutu. The nation becomes an entity to be exploited for private gain.

In Trump corruption schemes, the DOJ deserves special mention. They have degenerated into a tool of the regime and the stink of corruption is all over them. Instead of prosecuting cases that demand investigation like Tom Homan’s potential bribery, they close investigations of their political ally while pursuing regime opponents. If there is ever accountability, many of these DOJ lawyers deserve disbarment.

The only thing we can be sure of is that while this regime remains in power, corruption will continue and repression will worsen. It is a law of life with autocrats.

We have been living through a frightening and depressing time. It is like the realization of Sinclair Lewis’s 1935 novel, It Can’t Happen Here. In his novel, a charismatic and demagogic politician becomes President, hordes power by promising to restore American greatness and systematically dismantles democratic institutions. The resemblances to our time are uncanny.

Trump 2.0 is the American version of fascism. With Congress neutered and reduced to a nonentity and with the Supreme Court almost a rubber stamp, power has been flowing to our wannabe monarch. All the Trump promises to help working people deal with the cost of living have evaporated as he shows himself to be a benefactor to the billionaire class, only.

Trump has shown it can happen here which is why the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City is so momentous. Mamdani has provided a roadmap not just for winning elections but for defeating fascism. He did this at a time that the popularity of the Democratic Party has been at all all-time low.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll this summer showed nearly two-thirds of Democratic Party voters believed “the leadership of the Democratic Party should be replaced with new people”. The overall favorability of the Democrats in September was 37%, not a better number than Republicans’ favorability.

Many Democrats have been disgusted by the weak fightback elected Democrats have displayed to MAGA fascism. It doesn’t matter how awful and extreme Trump is. The Democratic leaders like Schumer and Jeffries say almost nothing memorable in response. They play dead and exhibit de facto capitulation.

Building a mass movement to oppose fascism is essential but the Democrats have been tangential to the massive No Kings demonstrations, including the October 18 protest. They roll over when bullied as exemplified by the cave-in of the moderate Democratic senators who folded on the government shutdown. They let down over 20 million people who will now face skyrocketing premiums making health care unaffordable.

About the Democrats, I am reminded of the line from the Bob Dylan song: “Something is happening here but you don’t know what it is, Do you, Mr. Jones”.

Mamdani bucked the unfavorability trend by running with an unshakable focus on the issues of affordability. He ran on stabilizing out-of-control rents, free public buses, lowering child care costs, creating city-owned grocery stores, raising the corporate tax rate and imposing a millionaire’s tax. Mamdani’s message was pure economic populism, directed at helping working people and he delivered the message brilliantly and creatively, especially on social media.

Mamdani won because he excited people and he gave simple, clear and persuasive reasons to vote for his candidacy. Young people who normally ignore elections came out to vote for him in droves. He appealed by taking a bold anti-establishment stance as a democratic socialist.

This message, also championed by Bernie Sanders and AOC, flies in the face of the Democratic Party leaders who offer no message besides opposing Trump. It is hard to inspire voting when your message is mush.

To oppose fascism requires a vision of an alternative society that puts people before profit. Working people are getting slammed now by the cost of living whether it is housing, health care or food. Democrats can win back many working class voters they have lost by addressing basic economic needs. There is no magic to this but Democrats must be unafraid to criticize the billionaire class that is hogging wealth.

In 1936, about the business and financial monopolies, Franklin D. Roosevelt said,” They are unanimous in their hate of me – and I welcome their hatred”. Democrats need that spirit.

Elections now are not just about winning. They are about how we can fight burgeoning fascism and gross income inequality. I think Mamdani’s vision of democracy and socialism provide such an alternative.

Billionaires spent millions slandering and misrepresenting Mamdani in attack ads but it didn’t work. The race was the highest turnout in a mayoral election in over 60 years. The Mamdani campaign had a network of 100,000 grassroots organizers, canvassing for him to turn out the vote.

The Mamdani example could be replicated. There are many moderate Democrats saying this could only happen in New York City and they could not be more wrong. The issues around affordability are universal. Democrats can win elsewhere by translating the message in ways that speak to specific localities.

Centrist Democrats argue that they can win moderate Republican voters in the suburbs by moving to the center. Invariably that means watering down any strong message. The centrist Democrats want candidates who will avoid confrontation with wealthy donors who bankroll them. They minimize the threat of fascism and act like we are in a normal election cycle. Many of us wonder if there will be any elections or any fair elections in 2026 and 2028 because of the fascism.

Trump can say we are living in a golden age but prices don’t lie. I am surprised people are not having heart attacks at check out counters.

The great secret of our world is that it is working people, not billionaires, who make history. Working people usually get screwed by the nobles, blue-bloods and Elon Musks of this world but as the Mamdani campaign illustrates that is not an inevitability. 45 years ago, the labor organizer John McDermott wrote this about the American working class:

“Our class is a very young class, going back only 200 years or so. As every conservative knows, it is the rowdiest, least governable, most idealistic, ornery, noisy, inventive, and disputatious class of people who’ve ever come over the horizon of history.”

The Mamdani win shows American workers want no part of fascist authoritarianism or an economy that serves only the 1%. The challenge for Democrats is to learn from this example.

It is not everyday that you see a President issuing an Executive Order directing the full weight of the federal government against an imaginary organization. Such is the case with Trump’s September order targeting anti-fascism. In the Executive Order, he designated Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization”. This was followed by National Security Presidential Memorandum – 7 that continued in the same vein.

The most peculiar thing about this initiative is the fact that there is no Antifa organization. The government cannot tell us who the leader of Antifa is and where that leader is based.

Antifa, which is short for anti-fascism, is an umbrella term for a range of people on the political left who oppose Nazism, white supremacy and sexism. They are a loose, decentralized collection of individuals who gained some notoriety in Portland Oregon five years ago during the George Floyd protests. Since that time, they have been dormant and out of the spotlight.

In the absence of any public display and in the aftermath of the Charlie Kirk assassination, Trump resurrected Antifa to be a “major terrorist organization”. At a presidential roundtable discussion on October 8, Trump referred to Antifa as “paid anarchists”. Again, specifics are never provided about who these people are and who is paying them. I was reminded of the many signs at the No Kings demonstration that said “Hey Trump, nobody paid us to be here! We all hate you for free!”.

Trump has asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio to designate Antifa a foreign terrorist organization. Stephen Miller, Trump’s Deputy Chief of Staff, has said that Antifa has extensive foreign ties.

At the presidential roundtable, far right influencer of Pizzagate fame, Jack Posobiec said Antifa goes back 100 years to the Weimar Republic before the Nazis ruled Germany. He compared the anti-fascists who opposed Hitler coming to power to the people opposing Trump today. If we step back for a moment and think about that comparison, Posobiec would appear to have no problem placing Trump into the position of Hitler. Both opposed anti-fascists. Forgotten is the reality that America fought fascism, not anti-fascism, in World War 2.

The Trump regime is intent upon creating an entire mythology and history of a non-existent organization.

The question inevitably arises: why is Trump scapegoating an imaginary organization? I think the answer is that such a designation would allow the Trump regime wide latitude to prosecute anyone liberal or left who opposes his policies. Stephen Miller has stated, “The Democratic Party is not a political party. It is a domestic extremist organization”. Miller says there is a large and growing movement of left-wing terrorism in this country that is well-organized and well-funded.

Nothing could be more ridiculous. As someone very familiar with the American left over the last 50 years, I can authoritatively state the left is overwhelmingly non-violent and rejects terrorism. The Trump regime is manufacturing an Antifa crisis to achieve other ends. Like other dictatorships, they want to repress all opposition to their authoritarian rule. This is of a piece with their putting troops in the streets when there is no rebellion or insurrection. They are the architects of the problems they allege they are solving.

Antifa is like a ghost. You can fill it with a grab bag of people you deem anti-capitalist, anti-Christian, anti-white or anti-family. The vagueness of pinning down who Antifa is allows for a fishing expedition. Antifa could potentially include anyone who could be painted as left wing or a dissenter.

Criminal liability aside which is no small thing, the threat here is to free exercise of First Amendment rights. Like happened during Red Scares in the past, fear of getting into trouble could become the great inhibitor of free speech. The regime is targeting speech, not action.

It is easy to imagine how this may play out both in social media and in university settings. We already have the shakedowns of major universities. To avoid the possibility of liability, the subject of anti-fascism and anything progressive would become taboo. Stool pigeons would reinforce conformity by threatening to name names.The effect would be chilling, a replay of McCarthyism.

The example of Professor Mark Bray illustrates how these issues have played out in the academic world. Bray teaches in the History Department at Rutgers University. He is an expert on Spain. In 2017, Bray wrote the book, Antifa: the Anti-Fascist Handbook. The book didn’t get much attention then. However, this fall, years after the book appeared and after Trump pushed to categorize Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization, Bray started receiving death threats. Somone published information about his family and his home address on X.

Even though he was a very popular professor, Turning Points USA, Charlie Kirk’s organization, circulated a petition labelling him “Dr Antifa” and calling for him to be fired. FOX reported the story also using the pejorative Dr Antifa in referring to Bray. The death threats escalated. Fearing for their safety, Bray and his family fled to Spain. Anyone who voices unpopular ideas could become the next Bray. What is considered acceptable speech could be dramatically narrowed by a new enforced norm.

Antifa is being used as a vehicle by the Trump regime to criminalize all dissent. All freedom loving people of whatever stripe, whether libertarian or on the left, must oppose advancing authoritarianism and the threat to free speech represented by the Antifa Executive Order.

Over the last month or two, the Trump regime has been blowing up boats mostly off the coast of Venezuela. As of this writing on October 26, the U.S. military has killed 43 people in ten separate attacks. It is a kill first, ask questions later approach. The president of Colombia has said we killed a fisherman. The Trump regime has provided no evidence to support its claim that the vessels were carrying drugs.

Extrajudicial murder is now U.S. policy. No need for evidence, trial or any judicial process. If Trump wants you dead, that’s enough. These murders are crimes and people who have been murdered are not recognized as human beings with any rights. They have been dehumanized by an erratic individual who last week was self-promoting for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The Venezuela episode demonstrates unprecedented recklessness and it is unclear if Trump intends a much wider scale attack on that country. The U.S. Navy has amassed an armada offshore. Congress has not been debating our foreign policy even though it is that branch of government that has the sole constitutional authority to declare war. Congress has been reduced to a nullity.

Without knowing more about the history of Latin America, it would be easy to see this episode as bizarre and exceptional. I would argue it is entirely consistent with America’s imperialist history in Latin America. Since the 19th century, America has used its enormous military, economic and political power to exercise control over Latin America. The best overview I have seen is Eduardo Galeano’s book, Open Veins of Latin America. Galeano writes:

“Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European – or later Unites States – capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources. Production methods and class structure have been successively determined from outside for each area by meshing it into the universal gearbox of capitalism.”

I would go back to the Monroe Doctrine in the early 19th century as a defining framework that declared European powers cannot colonize or interfere in the Americas. The Monroe Doctrine laid the groundwork for U.S. hegemony in the region.

Next came the Mexican-American War from 1846-1848 in which the U.S. vastly expanded its territory, taking enormous swaths of land from Mexico.

Our imperialism took off though in the late 19th century. In 1898, the U.S. intervened in Cuba’s fight for independence and the Spanish-American War led to our control over Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam. The Platt Amendment in 1901 gave the U.S. the right to intervene in Cuban affairs and to establish naval bases. Around the same time, we also secured control over the Panama Canal.

In 1904. President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine with his Roosevelt Corollary that claimed the U.S. had the right to intervene in Latin American affairs to maintain stability. This led to numerous U.S. interventions in Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. The era is well-described by Major General Smedley Butler in his book, War is a Racket:

“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of the country’s most agile military force – the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from a second lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.”

In 1954, the CIA engineered a coup in Guatemala that overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. Later in 1973, the U.S. assisted the fascist military of Gen. Augusto Pinochet in overthrowing another democratically elected leader, Salvador Allende.

There were numerous other U.S. interventions I have not mentioned like the Dominican Republic in 1965 and U.S. support against revolutionaries in Nicaragua and El Salvador. Our government supported brutal military dictatorships like existed in Argentina during the dirty war. Behind the scenes, the U.S. provided substantial support to Operation Condor, a terror campaign/international death squad conducted by Latin military dictatorships in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Trump’s Venezuela initiatives blowing up boats and threatening military action must not be seen as an isolated foray. It fits inside the long history of interventions. There have been many American regime change efforts in Latin American history. What is going on now is an increasingly unilateral Big Stick diplomacy characterized by macho posturing. It is a reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine.

Latin America still holds vast reserves of critical minerals, oil and gas reserves and a third of the planet’s arable land. The desire for economic imperialist control remains constant.

The cast of characters in charge of our foreign policy is anything but reassuring. I think it is extremely worrisome that Admiral Alvin Holsey, the head of the U.S. Southern Command responsible for Latin America, resigned abruptly. It is a tragic state of affairs when the direction of a great power correlates to the whims of a dictator and the stooges who surround him. Military adventurism by the so-called peace president would appear to be in the cards.

The only good thing I would say about Columbus Day is that as a federal worker it provided me a three day weekend. To the extent I had thought about it, I have considered the holiday a big mistake. If there is going to be a commemoration, the replacement, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, is vastly preferable. Although we as a nation have continually dishonored and mistreated Native Americans, they are our true founders.

Still, the presidential proclamation issued by the White House on October 9 came as a surprise. In the proclamation, Trump laid it on thick. Christopher Columbus became “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”. Trump went on to say Columbus “was guided by a noble mission to discover a new trade route to Asia, bring glory to Spain and spread the gospel of Jesus Christ to distant lands”.

This idealized image and glorification has no basis in the historical record. Columbus never set foot in America. In 1492, he first landed in the Bahamas and then two months later on the island of Hispaniola (now the Dominican Republic and Haiti). Sailing off to points unknown was risky. I would concede that.

What Columbus wanted the most was gold which was becoming the new standard of wealth. After extensive finagling, he had persuaded the King and Queen of Spain to finance his expedition with three ships. The deal Columbus worked was that he could take 10% of the profit if he brought back gold and spices. He would also become governor of the new-found land and he would obtain a new title, Admiral of the Ocean Sea.

Columbus returned to Spain with indigenous slaves and gold. By exaggerating the gold potential, he again persuaded the Spanish Crown to finance a return journey to the Caribbean in 1493, this time with 17 ships. In the second trip, Columbus did not find gold but he went from island to island collecting slaves. He rounded up 1500 Arawak Indians. Of that 1500, he picked 500 of the fittest to take back to Spain for sale. Of that 500, 200 died on the trip back to Spain. The motive behind these voyages was pure greed. They were about as noble as Trump building a golf course in Qatar.

Columbus made two more expeditions first to Venezuela in 1498 and then to the coast of Central America in 1502. The other source of information we have is Bartolome de Las Casas, who transcribed Columbus’s journal and who wrote a multivolume History of the Indies. Las Casas wrote:

“Endless testimonies…prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives…But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy: small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then..The admiral, it is true was blind as to those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians.”

The presidential proclamation talks of gallantry but is devoid of any specificity. The great explorer reflected an imperialist mentality attuned to the Doctrine of Discovery. Under the Doctrine of Discovery, Christian explorers believed they had a divine right and calling to lay claim to territories uninhabited by Christians.

Dehumanization of Native Americans is implicit in the presidential proclamation. It indulges white Christian nationalist fantasy predisposed to seeing Columbus as an adventurous hero entering a vacant wilderness. Those who were displaced, enslaved or killed do not register in this mythology.

It may be that the Columbus myth appealed to early Americans because they were making voyages across the ocean parallel to what Columbus did. Possibly settlers to America saw themselves in him. Still you have to ask: how can you be the person who discovered America when you never landed there? Also an estimated 50 to 60 million Native American people already lived there.

White supremacy is foundational to the Columbus myth. The justification for our settler colonialism was that the “savages” had to be conquered. Somehow the fact that Columbus ushered in a genocide against Native Americans gets overlooked. It is estimated that tens of million indigenous people died in the Americas within the first 100 years of European colonization.

One oddity of the presidential proclamation is the touting of Columbus for spreading the gospel of Jesus. It is entirely contrary to the First Amendment admonition that government should play no role in establishing any religion. Considering how much Columbus trafficked in slavery, seeing him as spreading any religion is ludicrous.

Trump and other partisans of the holiday have tried to play the honoring Italian-American card. They have played to traditionalist Italian-Americans who are clinging to the old myth but there are far better ways to honor Italian-Americans. It would be better to have a holiday honoring Joe Dimaggio than Christopher Columbus.

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has written about the origin of the Columbus Day holiday. FDR proclaimed Columbus Day a federal holiday in 1934. She wrote that he was trying to solidify a new Democratic coalition that included Italian-Americans. The Ku Klux Klan had been very strong in 1920’s America and had been attacking Blacks, Jews, and Catholics. Ironically, the origin of the federal holiday was an effort to move beyond racism.

Like other Trump initiatives, the presidential proclamation is an effort to turn back the clock to a time before the Civil Rights movement so that we unlearn lessons we have learned over the last 75 years. If there is ever going to be acknowledgement of our sins and any effort toward rectification, honoring Indigenous Peoples’ Day, not Columbus Day, is one small step forward.