Confronting Donald Trump and oppose his racism - every time!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/31/we-must-confront-trumps-racism-every-time-no-matter-how-often-he-spews-it/?utm_term=.a8002c77b36f

We must confront Trump’s racism every time — no matter how often he spews it - echo opinion published in The Washington Post by Donna F. Edwards.
Living through week three of attacks by Donald Trump against members of Congress — all deliberately targeting persons of color — has felt as though we are stuck in our great-grandparents’ time warp. It’s exhausting. Some have suggested that the best strategy is to ignore him: Don’t give his racist invective more oxygen; move on to the issues that matter to people. Not so fast.

Despite the desire not to amplify his messages of hate, it’s hard. For anyone who’s ever been on the receiving end of racism and bigotry (and that’s a lot of us these days), moving on becomes a way of life — the slight at work, being followed in a store or pulled over by the police, an epithet hurled in a restaurant or on the street. But when it’s oozing out of the White House, moving on is not an option, especially for elected leaders. Democrats should not be wrestling with whether to respond when the president throws his spittle into the public space, even if it’s on a daily basis. If we simply ignore him because it’s too frequent and too much, we feed the narrative that this language of hate is acceptable and part of our “new normal.” We cannot.

Stop all racist attacks as they happen!  Listen up Donald Trump! Stop it!

It’s startling that no matter how pungent the president’s language and sentiment, Republicans are mostly silent — “crickets,” as the kids say. Whether out of fear or weakness, some let us know that they would not choose that language, falling just short of condemning the president or calling out his racism. They avoid the cameras and demur from a comment. They are simply complicit, co-conspirators in the president’s racism.

The White House staff is racing every day to turn the president’s hate speech into a message or a campaign strategy. They take great pains to show us that he has black friends, too: a photo opportunity with black pastors, lobbying for the release of a black rapper, another statistic on black unemployment. All as if to prove that the president is not a racist; he’s just concerned. This requires us to forget the brown children in cages; name-calling against women of color; the Muslim ban; describing a majority-black district as a “rodent infested mess” where “no human being would want to live” — never mind all of that. The party of Lincoln is six feet under.

Meanwhile, the president is like a man stuck in quicksand, slowly sinking in the muck. Not surprisingly, his racist rants come when bad news is close at hand — his buddy Jeffrey Epstein is arrested; Robert Mueller testifies; subpoenas for his family and staff are set to be enforced; grand jury testimony is sought; impeachment is on the horizon. In the face of all these dark clouds, Trump has surely determined that his only pathway to victory in 2020 is race-baiting his way to a second term. 

Thankfully, the latest polls show that Trump is even beginning to turn off blue-collar white women who supported him over Hillary Clinton in 2016. College-educated white women took a hike from the Republican Party in 2018 to propel Democrats to the House majority. These women may have been able to hold their noses for a private-parts-grabbing showboat in 2016, but they do not appear to be falling for his snake oil this time.

So, the best course for Democrats requires two tracks, which don’t involve moving on. Lean in, as they say. Acknowledge and denounce his racism. Then, remind voters that the president is race-baiting to rally his dwindling base. Remind voters that the president is trying hard to distract from his failure to deliver on his promises to lower the cost of prescription drugs, to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and to drain his swamp. Democrats should remind voters that Trump is using race to divide the country because he doesn’t want us talking about his misdeeds and corruption.

One only hopes that there are simply not enough racist white men in America left to carve Trump’s path to reelection. #VoteBlue!

Baltimore Strong! Donald Trump is wrong to criticize respected Congressman Cummings: racism

Poor People’s Campaign stands with Baltimore

Echo opinion published in the Carroll County Times a Maryland newspaper.

The Maryland Poor People’s Campaign stands united with the citizens of Baltimore in absolute condemnation of the racist and derogatory tweets made by the President of the United States. 

As a non-partisan, fusion movement of organizations and people committed to fighting against the injustices of systemic racism and poverty, we recognize the rhetoric and coded-language contained in the Donald Trump's racist statements.

In the President’s recent vituperative attack on Maryland Congressman Elijah Cummings, Donald Trump tweeted that “...his Baltimore district is far worse and more dangerous. [Baltimore] is the WORST in the USA. ... very dangerous and filthy place ... worst run in the United States ... No human being would want to live there.” This demeaning rhetoric implies that the inhabitants who live in this “disgusting rat and rodent infested mess” are less than human.

The fact of the matter is that, the citizens of Baltimore, are human beings and deserve a president who respects their rights to live just as much as any other American city. They deserve a president who looks at the challenges faced by Baltimore and seeks to improve them. Instead, we have a president who consistently seeks ways to stoke racist fears and promote tropes and stereotypes regarding the poor.

Three weeks ago, the president decided to hold an impromptu parade in celebration of the independence of our country. He diverted budgeted taxpayer dollars from the military and other federal agencies to pay for this unnecessary charade. To date, the American people have been given no clear number of how much was spent, and this administration is fearful of Congressman Cummings’ Oversight Committee bringing that information to light. “PBS NewsHour” on July 11 estimated that the tab is at least $5.4 million dollars.
That figure does not take into account the $102 million that the American taxpayer has paid for the president to have his frequent golf weekends, according to a May 22, Newsweek article, and take his family on lavish trips.

Instead of criticizing Rep. Cummings and disparaging the great city of Baltimore, the Maryland Poor People’s Campaign invites Donald Trump to replace his mouth with his money and join the effort as we work to make our nation great for ALL her/our people.

Shirley Eatmon,  Finksburg Maryland in Carroll County

Where are the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops? Thank you Bishop Mark J. Seitz, El Paso

Much has been written about how the sex-abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church has undermined the credibility and moral authority of Catholic bishops. 

Bishops must take action on immigration!

Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, holds photos of two migrant children who died in U.S. custody.
(CNS photo/David Agren)

Editorial echo opinion published in Commonweal Magazine

Their many failures in addressing that crisis have diminished their ability to bear prophetic witness to the Gospel at a moment when this country is in desperate need of it. The mostly self-inflicted wounds to episcopal authority will not heal overnight, as at least some of the bishops appear to understand. It takes a long time to build trust, and longer still to rebuild it.

Now, another crisis could provide an occasion for the bishops to show that they are more than just company men preoccupied with institutional self-preservation—if only they would recognize this opportunity and seize it. The Trump administration’s vicious mistreatment of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, most of them Catholics from Central America, demands a vigorous response from the church’s leadership. That response cannot be limited to carefully modulated expressions of even more carefully qualified disapproval—nor indeed to any mere expression: it must also involve actions. If, in the abuse crisis, the U.S. bishops got in trouble by trying too hard to protect themselves and the material resources of their dioceses, in this crisis they can succeed only by taking risks and making some serious sacrifices.

Among the things they may have to surrender is their cozy relationship with the GOP. Afraid of alienating a party they still want to influence, and grateful to it for its official opposition to abortion, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has so far been unwilling to denounce Trump’s border policies as emphatically as it denounced the Obama administration’s contraception mandate. 

The latter was treated as an existential threat to the Catholic faith in America, while the former has too often been lamented as if it were just a lapse of judgment, perhaps a little excessive. The circumstances require something much stronger.

Something like what Bishop Mark J. Seitz of El Paso, Texas, did on June 27.

First, he led a group of migrants who had been denied entry to the United States across the Good Neighbor International Bridge into Ciudad Juárez.

Then, after speaking and praying with priests and activists gathered there, Seitz walked with seven other migrants back across the bridge into El Paso, where they were met by border officials. The bishop reports that a “tense” exchange followed, but in the end these migrants were all allowed to enter the country.

Before crossing the bridge into Mexico, Bishop Seitz spoke the following words:

"A government and society which view fleeing children and families as threats; a government which treats children in U.S. custody worse than animals; a government and society who turn their backs on pregnant mothers, babies, and families and make them wait in Ciudad Juárez without a thought to the crushing consequences on this challenged city.… This government and this society are not well. We suffer from a life-threatening case of hardening of the heart.[…] In the America of today, is there no more Golden Rule? Have we forgotten the lessons of Scripture? Have we forgotten the commandment to love? Have we forgotten God?"

That such questions now need to be asked indicates the gravity of the situation. This is not a time for the bishops to pull their punches or hedge their bets. This is a time for them to call on Catholics to do whatever it takes to assist those who are being rounded up in ICE raids or detained in wretched, dehumanizing conditions at the border; a time to demand that children separated from their families be reunited with them as soon as possible.

Whatever-it-takes may include civil disobedience; and if it does, then the bishops should lead by example. When seventy Catholics, including men and women religious, were arrested near the U.S. Capitol during a recent demonstration against President Trump’s border policies, several bishops issued statements of strong support for them. So long as those policies remain in force, there should be more such protests all over the country, and the bishops themselves should participate, even at the risk of arrest. A few Catholic parishes and retreat centers have offered themselves as sanctuaries for families in danger of being separated by ICE agents. That is a good start. Now the bishops should collectively encourage Catholic churches throughout the country to do the same, and they should show they’re serious about this by turning vacant diocesan buildings into sanctuaries and opening the doors of their own chanceries to those in need of refuge. This may entail serious legal complications. 

If it does, so be it. Bishops are pastors before they are property managers, and they must be ready to override the advice of their lawyers. It’s time for them to join Bishop Seitz—to cross the bridge from cautious criticism of the Trump administration’s cruelties to open defiance of them.

Republicans have separated themselves from democracy

An echo opinion letter published in the Idaho State Journal, from Pocatello

Sometimes it takes a tourniquet to save democracy

As we watch the separation of the Republican Party from any semblance of civility in American politics. The tendency of a dictator in training, trying to avoid or destroy all constitutional boundaries that hold a tyrant in check from attaining complete power over compassion while dismantling the branches of government seeking executive control over the voting population by trickery and obstruction.

We, are a nation of human diversity, religious freedoms, free press, and free speech and need to control our Nation by voting for our elected choices. Sometimes it seems we can’t stop hate from splitting our country apart, as it was done once in our history of “uncivility” upon each other.

We have recently sunk to new lows of despair, being currently governed by the swamp of ideological refuse, chaos and those lacking any form of compassion, backed by terror tactics of a massing army of ICE agents doing the bidding of a “dictator wanna be” and his henchmen, who seem to enjoy defying the established laws of our Democracy, Bill of Rights as well as the Constitution.

It has become all too common place but ill-advised to create hate, fear and chaos to split the American population to incite violence and not seek compassion in the world around us. The oppression of the American people and the bloodletting has lasted too long and must be stopped now, by using the means of a political tourniquet called impeachment.

Not only prosecuting the current president but all of his political enablers, established in this administration or the tainted agencies that profess hate and the chaotic division of our country by establishing false values, fake news, conspiracy theories and the lies of foreign entities to the American people.

We are a diverse nation of established freedoms, supposedly set up on a democratic voting system that MUST NOT be controlled by or directed to vote for a president by some other countries decisions to intercede through forms of media lies as a means of directing votes for their favorite fascist.

We have been deceived by our trusting nature, that the balance of established powers can be contained when fear and chaos are the driving forces behind the overthrow of the Republican Party through the assistance of the “Grim Reaper,” self-declared to be the master obstructionist of our Senate in the bloodletting of American values.

Those who try to establish a monarchy or authoritarian control by hate, fear, and violence must be stopped and impeachment is a tool to be used to ensure that the democracy of established American values are retained and preserved in the United States of America. Good luck “Friends of Liberty” in all parties, we are with you.

Danny Higgins, Pocatello Idaho

Racism is an evil Donald Trump diversion tactic

Trump’s Twitter Attacks Are Backfiring
President Trump seems eager to divert attention from impeachment and investigations, but distractions work only if they distract.

Echo opinion published in The Atlantic by David A. Graham

If former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s testimony to the House last week wasn’t the clear victory that many Democrats had hoped it would be, there are indications it didn’t go as well for President Donald Trump as he and his allies have claimed either. (In my opinion, the instant replays reported in the media after the Mueller testimony served to reinforce obstruction of justice incidents and emphasized how corrupt the Trump administration was in trying to cover up evidence.)

The first sign of things not going well came on Friday afternoon, when the president gave a series of nonsensical sound bites to reporters, saying that Barack Obama had ruined the White House HVAC system and calling for an investigation of how Obama, the author of a critically acclaimed memoir and a former president of the United States, got a book deal.

As it turned out, this was merely a warm-up for what was to come: a scorched-earth racist rant against Representative Elijah Cummings, a Maryland Democrat, and his district in Baltimore. The rant has extended into a third day and now also targets Al Sharpton, who Trump claims hates white people. 

Not since the fall of 1814 has there been such a concerted assault on the Charm City from the south, but don’t expect any national anthems to be written about this battle.

Even without the example of Trump’s fusillade against the “squad” of Democratic congresswomen earlier this month, this routine is by now familiar. When faced with a series of headlines that he doesn’t like, Trump endeavors to change the subject, by whatever means necessary.

It’s reminiscent of the old parody motivational poster that reads, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.” Or, in Trump’s case: “The tweeting will continue until the chyrons improve.” In the past, this has worked well for Trump. His ability to change the subject has managed to prevent sustained attention on some of the biggest scandals of his political career. But there are limitations to this tactic, as the oxymoronic poster suggests, and they may be emerging right now.

You don’t have to look hard to see what Trump was upset about. Even though Mueller’s testimony to the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees was short on dramatic sound bites, and the infernal “optics” debate seemed to favor Republicans in the first day or so, it became clear by week’s end that this wasn’t the death knell for investigations that the GOP had hoped it would be. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi didn’t come around on impeachment, but Democrats also showed they were not going to drop the matter and move on. The chairs of the two committees, Jerry Nadler and Adam Schiff, seemed perhaps more resolved to move forward after the hearings.

On Friday, some Democrats said they were conducting an impeachment investigation—while hastening to add that didn’t mean that actually impeaching Trump was a foregone conclusion. 

And on Thursday, in the move that drew the president’s fury, Cummings’s Oversight Committee approved subpoenas for White House communications from the senior advisers Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, as well as the former strategist Steve Bannon.

There are several reasons to question the efficacy of Trump’s distraction here. The first is that it means that a piece of good news for the president Friday afternoon, a Supreme Court decision that allows the Trump administration to begin work on a wall on the southern border while litigation continues, has been largely overlooked.

A second is the same as the point that I and many others made after Trump’s attack on the squad: Exploiting racial tension has been a successful strategy for Trump and many other politicians, but open racism is, in addition to its moral repugnance, a risky electoral ploy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a distraction works only if it distracts. Trump has successfully turned the conversation to his tweets about Cummings, but he has not turned it away from impeachment. In fact, he’s deepened his problems: As of yesterday, 107 House Democrats back an impeachment inquiry, up from the mid-90s last week. That’s almost half the caucus. Non–House members, including Patty Murray, a top Senate Democrat, have also voiced support.

This is in part a testament to Cummings’s standing inside the caucus. There have been tensions between more establishment Democrats and the squad since the start of the Congress—notably between Pelosi and the foursome. When Trump attacked them, Democrats rallied against him, but they may have hesitated to line up too loudly behind the rabble-rousers. 

Cummings, however, is a 23-year House veteran, a committee chair, and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus. 

As my colleague Peter Nicholas notes, he was also a Democrat who was willing to work with the White House, so Trump’s attack shows that he’s willing to go scorched-earth even on members who are far more restrained than Ilhan Omar. The president may have underestimated the extent to which Democrats would rally around Cummings.

The spark of Trump’s fury at Cummings matters too. Setting aside the bile about Baltimore, what Trump is angry about is the subpoenas. No president likes being subpoenaed, but they are a well-established tool of Congress. I wrote in May that the more Trump stonewalls congressional investigations, the more likely it is that Congress acts. Members of the House may flinch at hauling Trump up for impeachment on obstruction of justice related to the Mueller report, or other causes, seeing political peril for themselves, but once Trump starts infringing on their prerogatives as a body, members start getting fired up.

When the president throws this kind of over-the-top tantrum about the Oversight Committee’s tactics, he’s falling into just this trap. His attack on Cummings is designed to change the focus, but he’s actually zooming it in.

Echo: Baltimore Strong!

In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. #BaltimoreStrong!

Representative Elijah E. Cummings

BALTIMORE SUN- Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.

It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run," which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb."

Fort McHenry Maryland

In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from.

Donald Trump will happily debase himself at the slightest provocation. And given Mr. Cummings’ criticisms of U.S. border policy, the various investigations he has launched as chairman of the House Oversight Committee, his willingness to call Mr. Trump a racist for his recent attacks on the freshmen congresswomen, and the fact that “Fox & Friends” had recently aired a segment critical of the city, slamming Baltimore must have been irresistible in a Pavlovian way. @FoxNews rang the (racist Pavlov's) bell, the president salivated and his thumbs moved across his cell phone into action.

As heartening as it has been to witness public figures rise to Charm City’s defense on Saturday, from native daughter House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to Mayor Bernard C. “Jack” Young, we would above all remind Mr. Trump that the 7th District, Baltimore included, is part of the United States that he is supposedly governing. 

Moreover, the White House has far more power to effect change in this city, for good or ill, than any single member of Congress including Mr. Cummings. If there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone’s, perhaps more because he holds the most powerful office in the land.

Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. 

Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.

Why did the Trump campaign have so many conversations with Russians? Mueller Report

Echo opinion letter published in The Post-Star a New York State newspaper:  Editor:

I have been following the coverage of the Mueller investigation from its beginning. I have read many news articles, and because I am too cheap to pay for two upgrades for ESPN and the Golf Channel, my cable package does not include #45's favorite channel. Being unable to hear both sides' opinions, I decided to read the Mueller report. I purchased my copy for $.99 online.

Volume I is a nightmare. It is so redacted, and includes numerous names of Russian persons and organizations, that you need to constantly refer to Appendix A to make sense of it. 

My biggest concern was why were #45's people in contact with so many Russians?

Volume II proved to be much easier to follow. Two parts that people should definitely read are #45's answers to Mueller's questions. For a self-proclaimed "stable genius with a great mind," #45 had difficulty remembering or recalling numerous events.

Reading the possible obstruction of justice cases was much easier. They involved not just #45, but many of the people who he personally knew or worked on his campaign. Each case is quite easy to follow and involves many members of #45's closest allies. My suggestion is that if you really care about what is happening, you should take the time and read this report. 

As for the congressional hearing, I feel badly that Mueller didn't memorize what was in the report so that he could answer more eloquently.

One more thought. I believe that there are 435 members in the House of Representatives. Why is Donald Trump so focused and obsessed with four of them?* If people in the districts they represent don't agree with them, they will vote them out in the next election. That is also true of the next presidential election.

Daniel Trainor, Queensbury/Florida

*Trump escalated his attacks on a group of four minority congresswomen:  

• Representatives Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota 
• Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York 
• Rashida Tlaib of Michigan
• Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts

Donald Trump's loosing political issue is overt racism

Racism Is Not a Winning Issue for Trump
Pundits think Trump’s bigotry benefits him—but a united Democratic Party can easily win.  By Jeet Heer published in The Nation

Like the proverbial dog returning to his vomit, Donald Trump can be trusted to go back to his racism. 

Racism has been a running motif of Trump’s life, from his inheritance of a real estate empire that was sued for not renting to African-Americans, to his calls for the execution of the (innocent) Central Park Five, to his Obama birtherism, to his recent Twitter attack on four Democratic congresswomen, all people of color.

“Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” Trump wrote in reference to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley. Collectively, these women are known as the Squad. Their outspoken progressivism makes them a thorn in the side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, which might be why Trump decided that by cruelly insulting them he could stir up trouble among the Democrats.

Trump’s remarks were intemperate, but not devoid of strategy. 

Much political reporting suggests that the president made his comments with intent. “Trump is all-in on us-versus-them politics and does not care if he occasionally crosses the line into racism,” Mike Allen argued at Axios. One might question whether racism is an external line or more accurately seen as a deeply held internal view. Allen quoted one Trump ally as saying, Trump “believes the more he puts ‘The Squad’ front and center, the better his re-election chances get.”

Many analysts believe that Trump’s strategic racism is a shrewd play. Amy Walter, national editor of Cook Political Report, tweeted, “This fight w/ the squad is exactly where Trump wants 2020 fought. The more media/Dems engage him, the better for him. All this fight does is re-polarize the partisans and leaves the up-for-grabs voters (who want to hear about bread-butter issues) tuned out.”

CNN’s Jake Tapper retweeted Walter and added in a quote from Steve Bannon, “I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.”

This diagnosis misreads the role racism plays in Trump’s politics. While it’s true that racism has been crucial for allowing Trump to take over the Republican party and remains key to his strength among GOP partisans, there’s little evidence that racism is actually a winning gambit in national elections. A close look at recent elections shows that if Democrats stay united, they can crush Trumpian racism.

The electoral potency of racism has been tested in subsequent elections. Bannon’s comment about wanting the Democrats to talk about racism was made in August of 2017, in the wake of Trump’s notorious “both sides” comment about violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. In that state’s special election in November, where Republican Ed Gillespie ran a Trumpian campaign playing up fear of undocumented immigrants, Gillespie was soundly trounced in the gubernatorial election by Ralph Northam, a not very inspiring candidate who still won 53.9 percent of the vote against Gillespie’s 45 percent. Democrats also swept down ticket races in a state-wide GOP wipeout.

Trump also tried to make the 2018 midterms another referendum setting his racist vision of America against what he claimed was the weakness of the Democrats in protecting the border. The president filled the airwaves with scare stories about migrant caravans and sent the army to man his beloved border wall. The upshot was a nation-wide Democratic wave that made Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House.

Ramping up xenophobia might not help Republicans win elections, but it does serve Trump’s purpose by keeping the GOP in line. Even Republicans who say they don’t like Trump’s overt expressions of prejudice tend to rally behind the president when he’s being attacked by outsiders. According to Reuters, since Trump’s tweets against the Squad his approval rating among Republicans has gone up five percent (to 72 percent) while slipping among independents (from 40 percent to 30 percent) and Democrats. Overall, Trump’s position remains unchanged, but he created a more polarized electorate, with greater passion both for him and against him.

The behavior of both Democratic and Republican politicians supports the contention that racism is energizing the electorate—not necessarily to the advantage of Republicans. 

Democrats have been quick to attack Trump and pushed through a House resolution condemning the tweets. Amid parliamentary chaos that was farcical even for the Trump era (Republicans had already put in place rules against calling a president racist), Democrats united behind the motion and Republicans, with only four members of Congress breaking rank, united in opposition.

Trump’s 2016 election was precarious—a defeat in the popular vote and a fluke win in the electoral college, that rested on fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. While racism was certainly a factor, Trump also ran on a populist economic agenda (one he’s largely abandoned in office) and a smear campaign emphasizing the alleged criminality of his opponent (aided by a last minute intervention of FBI director James Comey). Given the narrowness of the victory, it’s hard to credit any one factor, such as racism, with being decisive.

The electoral potency of racism has been tested in subsequent elections. Bannon’s comment about wanting the Democrats to talk about racism was made in August of 2017, in the wake of Trump’s notorious “both sides” comment about violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. In that state’s special election in November, where Republican Ed Gillespie ran a Trumpian campaign playing up fear of undocumented immigrants, Gillespie was soundly trounced in the gubernatorial election by Ralph Northam, a not very inspiring candidate who still won 53.9 percent of the vote against Gillespie’s 45 percent. 

Democrats also swept down ticket races in a state-wide GOP wipeout.

Trump also tried to make the 2018 midterms another referendum setting his racist vision of America against what he claimed was the weakness of the Democrats in protecting the border. The president filled the airwaves with scare stories about migrant caravans and sent the army to man his beloved border wall. The upshot was a nation-wide Democratic wave that made Nancy Pelosi Speaker of the House.

Ramping up xenophobia might not help Republicans win elections, but it does serve Trump’s purpose by keeping the GOP in line. Even Republicans who say they don’t like Trump’s overt expressions of prejudice tend to rally behind the president when he’s being attacked by outsiders. According to Reuters, since Trump’s tweets against the Squad his approval rating among Republicans has gone up five percent (to 72 percent) while slipping among independents (from 40 percent to 30 percent) and Democrats. Overall, Trump’s position remains unchanged, but he created a more polarized electorate, with greater passion both for him and against him.

The behavior of both Democratic and Republican politicians supports the contention that racism is energizing the electorate—not necessarily to the advantage of Republicans. Democrats have been quick to attack Trump and pushed through a House resolution condemning the tweets. Amid parliamentary chaos that was farcical even for the Trump era (Republicans had already put in place rules against calling a president racist), Democrats united behind the motion and Republicans, with only four members of Congress breaking rank, united in opposition.

While Trump has made racism a litmus-test issue, this will help the Republicans only if the electorate is actually becoming more racist. There’s reason to doubt that it has, both because of demographic change (with every election the electorate becomes less white) and also, perhaps as importantly, because of revulsion against Trump’s policies and governing style.

In fact, Trump’s racism has been pushing popular opinion away from his preferred policy stance. In 2018, for the first time on record, Pew found the number of Americans who wanted the country to take in more immigrants was greater than those who wanted fewer immigrants.

A 2019 paper from Daniel J. Hopkins and Samantha Washington, both at the University of Pennsylvania, conducted polls on racial attitudes and concluded that “white Americans’ expressed anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice declined after the 2016 campaign and election.” They suggest that Trump’s expressions of bigotry provoke parts of the public to go in the opposite direction. Trump is so unpopular, he’s giving racism a bad name.

Trump will almost certainly want to make the 2020 election all about racism. It’s the magic formula that has brought him far in life, and he’s on solid ground in thinking that it’s the best way to unify the Republican party, which is ever more reliant on squeezing out the white vote—and suppressing voters of color. But Democrats can’t duck out of this fight: The lesson from 2016 and subsequent midterms is that Democrats do best when they mobilize their own base, a multiracial coalition that is larger than the GOP base.

The one sure way Democrats could lose is to become divided on race by having the party leadership attack the Squad. That’s the wedge that Trump has been trying to push hard, exploiting the feud between Pelosi and Ocasio-Cortez. But if there’s any saving grace in Trump’s crude bigotry, it’s that he can bring even Democrats together.

Echo opinion published in Texas - students must speak out against bigotry

Racism is not a winning issue for Donald Trump!

This isn’t even about immigration anymore. It’s about dividing all Americans.

This opinion letter was published in the Texas newspaper the San Antonio Express News:

Kids deserve more - they must speak out against bigotry!

First, let me explain that I am white and I grew up with — and continue to benefit from — white privilege, but the bigotry in this country still affects me and this nation.
I am the mother of two Hispanic boys, but I have hundreds of black and brown children in the city. Because, I taught government to high school students. But, I didn’t teach my students that the government only worked for those who are white. I taught them that government is about the rule of law and not the rule of man. I taught them that the First Amendment was for all opinions — especially if you disagreed with them. I taught them that when the Ku Klux Klan marched, the best insult was to not attend. 

But I did not teach them to stay silent. I taught them to speak up, question, criticize and fight. That is their right in this country.

I had students who were citizens and some who weren’t, but I taught them the rights and liberties of our country were for all. 

I did not mean to lie to those students, because I had no idea we would end up with what I consider an illegitimate president Donald Trump, who has systematically ignored everything lawful, decent and right.

When proof is in the form of a video and followers still lie about its content, we are in deep trouble. All the children of this country deserve better examples and better treatment than that demonstrated by this cruel administration.

From Helen Chouinard

MaineWriter P.S. - A warning about the use of bigotry by Donald Trump was published in the Jewish News:

Speak out against bigotry and hatred – and urge our leaders to do the same, The Jewish Voice, RI/MA- published by the anti-defamation league:
- https://newengland.adl.org/news/speak-out-against-bigotry-and-hatred-and-urge-our-leaders-to-do-the-same-the-jewish-voice-rima/

Facing down Donald Trump's cruel and forced deportations

This echo essay was published in the History News Network and in the Chicago Tribune

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY- Amid the Donald Trump administration’s threats to deport thousands of immigrant families, state and local governments and community organizations across the country are voicing support for immigrants and refusing to cooperate with federal law. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has declared that Chicago police “will not cooperate with or facilitate any ICE enforcement actions.” The Illinois legislature, supported by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, banned private immigrant detention centers and barred local law enforcement from cooperating with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Their actions echo responses to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and remind us that the structure of government in the United States allows space for resistance to unjust federal policies. In the weeks after Congress passed the law on Sept. 18, 1850, Chicagoans took measures to ensure that it would not be enforced in the city. 

More than 300 African Americans and white allies gathered in Quinn Chapel, the city’s African Methodist Episcopal (AME) church, to discuss how to protect each other and what next steps to take. Black Chicagoans organized a police force to patrol the streets, looking for would-be slave catchers.

In mid-October that year, a slave catcher from Missouri came to town with an enslaved man as his assistant, distributing handbills that described three people who had escaped from slavery. Several “respectable citizens” of Chicago informed the slave catcher that he was putting his personal safety in danger; he heard he would be tarred and feathered. Meanwhile, his slave boarded a steamer bound for Canada. The slave catcher applied to a Chicago judge for protection, but the judge said there was nothing he could do. Frustrated, the Missouri man left the city.

The next day, the three people he’d been looking for came out of hiding and boarded a boat bound for points east. As a sympathetic news reporter concluded, “Our colored population are fully prepared for any emergency. While they do not propose to commit any violence unless driven to the wall, they will not suffer the new law to be executed upon their persons. In resisting this even to death, they will be sustained by the omnipotent sentiment of the city of Chicago.”

Days later, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution declaring that the law was unconstitutional and that the city and its officers would not enforce it. The law was “cruel and unjust,” the council said, and “ought not to be respected by an intelligent community.”

The federal Fugitive Slave Law was designed to empower the U.S. government to capture runaway slaves who escaped into free states. Pro-slavery politicians in Congress demanded the law in large part because Northern state governments and local officials were increasingly refusing to help slaveholders and their agents get their slaves back.

Slaveholders in Congress often argued against expanding and empowering the federal government. In this case, however, they wanted the U.S. government to ignore the expressed wishes of the people of many free states; their law empowered federal officials to enforce the repressive statute and demanded cooperation from local officials and private citizens.

Resistance in Chicago was dramatic, but it was not unique. Across the North, Americans resisted the new law. Among the most famous examples occurred in Boston, where in 1854 abolitionists struggled to protect Anthony Burns, who had escaped from slavery in Virginia.

President Franklin Pierce, intent on enforcing the law, authorized federal officials in Boston to “incur any expense deemed necessary” to send Burns back to slavery. The U.S. attorney and his allies mobilized tremendous force, including state militia, U.S. soldiers and Marines, to overpower Bostonians’ resistance and force Burns back to slavery. It was a pivotal moment for many Northerners who hadn’t previously been involved in the anti-slavery movement but now saw the cruelty and excess of the law and resolved that there must be another way.

Boston’s black abolitionists did not forget Burns. They raised money to purchase his freedom, and Burns went on to study theology at Oberlin College and become a Baptist pastor. His life was cut short by tuberculosis. When he died in Canada in 1862, he was just 28 years old.

To be sure, the decision to resist was not to be taken lightly. 

In Boston, resistance to Burns’ rendition led to the death of an assistant to the U.S. marshal. Powerful, well-respected Americans stood up for the Fugitive Slave Act. Stephen Douglas, the nationally prominent Illinois senator, rejected the council’s resolutions. Chicagoans must not nullify federal law, he told a great crowd. “We have no right to interpose our individual opinions and scruples as excuses for violating the supreme law of the land."

Almost 170 years later, the Fugitive Slave Act is viewed as one of the most repressive federal laws in all of American history. It’s clear to us that people who managed to escape from slavery were asserting a fundamental human right — the right to personal freedom. It’s also clear that resistance was effective. It drew popular attention to the law’s brutality, helped shape popular opinion, and made enforcement more costly for the government, both financially and reputationally.

Those who today rally on the side of immigrants and who look for ways to resist policies they deem cruel and inhumane are acting in a long American tradition. We can take inspiration from the bravery of people in the past, who dared to stand up for human rights in face of a government that had taken a wrong turn and lost sight of its highest ideals.

Kate Masur is an associate professor of history at Northwestern University.

Donald Trump motivates his cult by fear - echo from Illinois

To the Editor of the Northwest Herald, an Illinois newspaper:

Donald Trump ran for president to bolster his business interests.

He never intended to win and actually be president. Once elected, Trump never intended to help people or promote democracy, as all of our previous presidents did. His only intention is to flatter his base into reelecting him. Tactically, that requires him to suck up headlines so that his base is not exposed to contradictory ideas or approaches.

He is so lacking in original ideas that his most recent tactic is to announce outlandish, fear-based actions, then back down before returning to the outlandish position. That way, he can consume an exponentially higher amount of air time over a longer period with only one issue.

Most importantly, he knows his supporters are motivated by fear. All of his propositions are based on fear, which necessitates misinformation and lies. His supporters do not know or seem unconcerned that their options for health care are disappearing (both in facilities and affordability); that consumer and employee rights are evaporating; that he is destroying the viability of family farms; that government benefits are decreasing; or that regulations concerning safe food, air, water and drugs are disappearing.

Unfortunately, the main job of the media has changed. It no longer can rely on reporting the daily happenings.

The electorate desperately needs the media to report what is not announced – the changes being made to the social safety net; environmental safety; workplace and worker safety; drug and food safety; and the fact that his new United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement forever bans consumer or government interference with drug prices, to name a few.

Cece Drazek in Marengo, IL

Donald Trump and racism: An Arizona point of view

Echo letter to the editor published in the Arizona newspaper the Tucson Daily Star (Tucson.com)

Trump reopens old wounds, turns a profit

Over 150 years ago, this nation’s bloodiest war ended slavery. Almost 75 years ago, we defeated the Nazis in a world war. Fifty years ago, the decades-old Civil Rights movement was finally changing systemic and legally sanctioned racism and bigotry and focused the nation’s attention on the injustices and horrors of segregation.

But here we are in the 21st century with a president whose blatant bigotry and racism earned him the enthusiastic support of neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. He even claims that these evil hate groups include “nice people.”

He has reopened all the wounds for his personal and political gain (the two cannot be separated in his case). He has figured out a way to turn back time. Will this ever end? If it doesn’t, then the notion of “American exceptionalism” is gone.

From Vance Holliday, Foothills Arizona

Donald Trump - unstable and racist: inescapable evidence

Echo opinion by Jelani Cobb published in The New Yorker

"No going back...." 

We have known since the earliest moments of Donald Trump’s political life that the epidermal lottery into which we are all cast is, to him, more than happenstance. Pigment is something foundational—a navigational star in the night sky of his world view. When a man introduces himself to the American electorate by lying about the origins of the first black President, and then proceeds to baselessly refer to Mexicans in the United States as rapists, nothing he does after that can be considered surprising.

In that regard, Trump’s eruption last week, in which he attacked (but did not name) Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Representative Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib, tweeting that they should “go back” to where they came from, and later accused them of hating America, could not be called unexpected. It was alarming, though, and it raised the question, once again, of whether Trump had finally gone too far. For the past two years, observers have been divided about whether Trump’s tweets are calculated trolling, designed to keep his opponents off balance, or the sincere expressions of an unbalanced psyche. 

The current outburst indicates that the answer is both.

Before Trump intervened, the story in the media was about the roiling conflict between the congresswomen—the so-called Squad—and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, this time over border policy. Trump, in suggesting that the four U.S. citizens self-deport, prompted the Speaker to stop sniping at them and to fire back at him. Trump’s real agenda, she said, is about “making America white again.” Last Tuesday, Republicans in the House of Representatives were forced to go on the record about the incident, when that chamber voted on a resolution condemning the tweets, which Pelosi termed “racist.” Her comment was, technically, a violation of House rules and it was “taken down,” but she did not apologize. Only four Republicans supported the resolution.

Most likely, Trump never considered what consequences his attack would have on Capitol Hill. He seems to think that his outré rage at the four women—They are not white, they are radicals, and only I can save you from what they will bring—will play well to his base, and that’s all that matters. He revealed as much when he told reporters that he is “enjoying” the fight and thinks that he is “winning it by a lot.” A majority of people polled found Trump’s tweets offensive and “un-American,” but his approval ratings rose among Republicans.

With his habitual grandiosity, Trump has previously declared himself “the least racist person anybody is going to meet.” (Last Tuesday, he tweeted, “I don’t have a Racist bone in my body!”) By way of evidence, he repeatedly commits the defensive racist’s primary tell: listing the names of all the black people he knows, like a roster of character witnesses in a criminal trial. This most recent incident highlights a theme of Trump’s pronouncements as they pertain to people of color. He presents the citizenship of black and brown Americans as a kind of probation that can be revoked for the most minor infractions of protocol.

Ilhan Omar is a Somali-born refugee who became a naturalized U.S. citizen at the age of seventeen. She is American enough to serve in Congress but not enough for Trump, who has shown an increasing disregard for the very principle of asylum. 

Rashida Tlaib was born in Detroit, to immigrant parents. Ayanna Pressley was born, to African-American parents, in Cincinnati. Her family has been here longer than Trump’s, and, as African-Americans, they are part of a population that was forcibly brought to this country to do its labor. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was born in the Bronx, to parents of Puerto Rican descent, which means that, even if she did go back to where her ancestors came from, she would still be in America.

The idea of selective citizenship is not uncommon in American history. The nation’s first immigration law, passed in 1790, allowed for the naturalization of white immigrants only. It took the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which was ratified in 1868, to establish that birthright citizenship also applies to blacks. As Jill Lepore notes, in her book “This America,” another thirty years passed before the Supreme Court found, in United States v. Wong Kim Ark, that birthright citizenship applies to a person of Asian descent, and it was another quarter century before the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 declared that all indigenous people born in the United States are citizens. Trump isn’t just attacking four women of color; he is reanimating ideas whose prevalence wreaked havoc in the nation’s past.

We were reminded, last week, of something that we have known all along about the President: he will say anything that he thinks will serve his ends, regardless of the risk it may pose to his fellow-Americans. According to the F.B.I., hate crimes rose by seventeen per cent during his first year in office.

Last year, a man who described his attachment to Trump’s rallies as a kind of addiction, mailed explosive devices (which did not detonate) to various media outlets and politicians whom he considered to be the Donald Trump's enemies.

The worry is that Trump’s most recent fulminations will find their way to other vulnerable and dangerous observers.
His behavior carries another significant implication. The conflict between Pelosi and the Squad centered on votes for a border-funding bill, but it has at its root a more fundamental conflict: progressive legislators want to launch an impeachment inquiry, while Pelosi fears that it would only help Trump win reëlection. After the Mueller report was released, Tlaib recirculated a resolution, which she had previously introduced, to launch such an inquiry; the other members of the Squad signed on to it. More than eighty House Democrats have now called for an inquiry. Last Wednesday, the House voted to table the latest impeachment resolution from Representative Al Green (his third), but ninety-five Democrats voted to keep it on the floor. Pelosi reportedly told senior House Democrats last month that she would rather see Trump in prison than impeached. His ineptitude may yet spur the two factions toward a productive rapprochement. 

Robert Mueller’s testimony before two House committees will clarify the resolution. Robert Mueller told Rep. Nadler - The Special Counsel report did not exonerate Donald Trump. 

"Rep. Nadler: In fact, you are actually unable to conclude the President did not commit obstruction of justice, is that correct?" 

Has Trump finally gone too far? A few hours after the House vote, he addressed a campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina, in which he renewed his attacks on the congresswomen, and said that Democrats were set on “the destruction of our country,” as his followers chanted, “Send her back!” The next day, he claimed that he was “not happy” with the chants, and tried to stop them, but he did not. The evidence of Trump’s unfitness for the Presidency—whether it is calculated or simply deranged—is inescapable. ♦