<At the Transportation Department, enforcement of pipeline safety rules has plunged to unprecedented lows since President Donald Trump’s inauguration.

Trump recently ordered Energy Department staff to stop enforcing water conservation standards for showerheads and other household appliances. And at one Labor Department division, his appointees have instructed employees to halt most work related to antidiscrimination laws.

Across the government, the Trump administration is trying a new tactic for gutting federal rules and policies that the president dislikes: simply stop enforcing them.

“The conscious effort to slow down enforcement on such a broad scale is something we have never seen in previous administrations,” said Donald Kettl, a professor emeritus at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Policy. “It amounts to a dramatic assertion of presidential power and authority.”

This account of the Trump administration’s efforts to scale back application of many laws is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal employees across seven agencies, as well as a review of internal documents and federal data. The employees spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

Trump officials say these efforts will allow the president to swiftly scrap regulations that are burdening a variety of businesses and industries.

“When you have a new regulation, it’s really, really hard on business,” Kevin Hassett, who directs Trump’s National Economic Council, told CNBC on Monday.

“They’ve got to hire all these engineers and lawyers to figure out, ‘What are we going to do with this new regulation?’” Hassett added. “And so by pausing that, already, we’re having a big, massive, positive effect.”

Critics say the administration is breaking the law and sidestepping the rulemaking process that presidents of both parties have routinely followed.

“They’re making across-the-board decisions not to enforce whole categories of standards, and it is of very dubious legality,” said Richard Revesz, who led the White House regulatory affairs office under President Joe Biden and is now the faculty director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law.

At the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, a division of the Transportation Department that enforces pipeline safety regulations, officials have opened five cases against potential violators of those rules since Trump’s inauguration, federal data shows. That marks a 95 percent drop from the 91 cases that PHMSA officials opened in the same period under Biden, as well as a 93 percent drop from the 68 cases in the same period in Trump’s first term and a 90 percent drop from the 52 cases opened in that period under President Barack Obama.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration’s mass firings have reduced enforcement staff at PHMSA and other safety agencies. But the decline in pipeline cases comes as the Transportation Department overhauls its approach to compliance, empowering challenges to enforcement actions and heightening scrutiny of those who carry them out.

On Thursday, the agency issued a proposal that would enable Transportation Department lawyers to recommend discipline against enforcement employees suspected of breaking agency rules. The blueprint also outlines a system for the targets of investigations to complain to the transportation secretary’s office, and seek to have evidence thrown out or a do-over of the investigation.

The proposal says it is designed to ensure that the department’s actions are “fair and free of bias.” But three department employees said that the disciplinary provision and other measures in the blueprint would probably have a chilling effect on enforcement.

“If we lived in a world where there existed a bunch of malicious DOT employees whose mission it was to screw over innocent pipeline owners or car manufacturers, I’d understand the purpose of imposing these guidelines,” one of the employees said. “But the people I know, and have worked with for years, are just trying to make sure everyone follows the rules.”

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Washington) criticized the proposal in a letter Thursday to PHMSA, saying it creates an avenue for political appointees to retaliate against civil servants.

“Inspectors and investigators will fear that they could be fired just for doing their job — ensuring the safety of the American public,” wrote Cantwell, the top Democrat on the Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Transportation Department said in a statement that “the last administration carried out enforcements without sufficient due process, consistency and fairness.”....>

<....“We see it differently,” the spokesperson said, adding that the department would focus trucking enforcement efforts on issues such as cargo theft, fraud by brokers and visa issues.

In some cases, Trump has personally ordered a halt to enforcement. The president on May 9 signed a memorandum directing the Energy Department “not to enforce” what he called “useless” water conservation standards for home appliances including bathtubs, faucets, showerheads and toilets.

Devin Watkins, an attorney at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank that has long fought efficiency standards, praised Trump’s move.

“Federal limits on water and energy use have made appliances slower and less effective, frustrating consumers and limiting their choices,” Watkins said in an email. “President Trump’s new executive order marks a return to consumer choice — allowing Americans to purchase appliances that are faster, more effective and better suited to their needs.”

Andrew deLaski, executive director of the Appliance Standards Awareness Project, a coalition of groups that advocate for energy conservation, said he had never seen such a directive to bypass the standard rulemaking process. He said Trump’s actions may violate the Administrative Procedure Act, which requires agencies to solicit public comments on rules, as well as the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which prohibits the Energy Department from weakening existing efficiency standards.

“It’s patently illegal, so hold your horses,” deLaski said.

At the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs, a little-known branch of the Labor Department charged with rooting out discrimination among government contractors, enforcement of equal employment opportunity (EEO) laws has also sputtered.

On Jan. 24, the acting secretary of labor issued a memo instructing staff to “cease and desist” work required by a 1965 executive order that Trump had repealed on Jan. 21, according to four employees and a copy of the memo obtained by The Washington Post. Since then, the employees said, work at the entire branch has ground to a halt, even though much of it is still mandated by EEO laws from 1973 and 1974 that have not been overturned.

Stalled activities include audits of contractors’ hiring and pay practices to ensure that companies are not discriminating on the basis of race or gender. Complaints have also piled up from veterans and people with disabilities.

And at the Environmental Protection Agency, Trump officials have scaled back enforcement of rules intended to curb air and water pollution from power plants, oil refineries, hazardous waste sites and other industrial facilities.

The EPA’s enforcement office has been initiating 19 fewer cases per month on average than the Biden administration during its last year in office, according to an analysis of federal data conducted by the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog group. The Trump administration filed 92 cases per month on average during its first three full months in office — February, March and April — the analysis found. The Biden administration brought 111 cases per month on average in 2024. During the first three months of Trump’s first term, the EPA opened an average of 116 enforcement cases per month.

“We are deeply concerned about EPA slowing down or walking away from enforcement, particularly for violations at fossil fuel and petrochemical operations,” said Jen Duggan, the executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project.

Overall, EPA enforcement actions have fallen during the past decade because of budget cuts and staffing declines. Under Trump, however, a March 12 memo stated that the agency would no longer take enforcement actions that could “shut down any stage of energy production” unless there’s an “imminent” threat to public health.

This directive could benefit the oil and gas sector and could “violate a fundamental rule of enforcement, which is that there should be no favored or disfavored industries,” said David Uhlmann, who led the EPA’s enforcement office under Biden. “No one gets special treatment.”

Spokespeople for the Energy and Labor departments and the EPA did not respond to requests for comment.

Experts on presidential power said the wide-ranging enforcement slowdown in Trump’s second term has no modern precedent.

Trump is “saying across the board that ‘if I don’t like it, I’m not going to enforce it,’” said Peter Shane, an emeritus law professor at Ohio State University and a scholar in residence at NYU. “To my knowledge, no other president has taken that kind of stance.”....>

<....Shane said presidents in both parties have taken smaller steps to stop enforcing laws they disliked. President Richard M. Nixon refused to enforce Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because he opposed busing children to limit racial segregation in schools. Obama deprioritized the deportation of certain undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, leading to complaints from conservatives that the administration was not enforcing certain immigration laws.

With the downturn in enforcement and a possible recession looming, many big law firms have slowed recruitment and hiring for their practices that defend companies against enforcement actions, legal recruiters said.

“Do we see a slowdown coming in the enforcement landscape? The answer, by and large, is yes,” said Lauren Drake, the comanaging partner in the D.C. office of the legal recruiting firm Macrae.

The trend is especially pronounced, recruiters said, at law firms that specialize in defending clients against actions by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The Trump administration has sought to shutter the CFPB, which was established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to combat unfair, deceptive and abusive financial practices. In March, the administration fired most of the agency’s workforce, a move that a federal judge has temporarily blocked.

While the litigation plays out, political leaders have instructed CFPB employees not to work on most earlier-stage enforcement cases, according to two people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations. Since Trump took power, the CFPB has also dropped at least 21 lawsuits against entities including Walmart and Bank of America, a review of news reports and other public records shows.

“CFPB enforcement work is dormant completely,” said Stephen Springer, a managing partner in the D.C. office of the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa.

“I don’t think anybody expects those enforcement areas to be particularly busy for the next three years,” he said, “unless there’s a dramatic change.”>

<Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) was on the receiving end of a brutal attack from a Democratic colleague who hurled in her face the number of constituents in her own district that President Donald Trump's so-called "Big, Beautiful Bill" stands to be affected by drastic Medicaid and food assistance cuts.

Foxx represents North Carolina’s 5th congressional district and serves as the chair of the powerful House Rules Committee, which on Wednesday debated the Republicans' tax and spending cuts proposal. But Foxx found herself on the receiving end of a searing attack from Rep. Janelle Bynum (D-OR), who hammered the bill and its effects on Americans.

"I want to start off by saying just how laughable it is to be calling this bill 'beautiful,' and I'd like to replace that word with 'trash," she began. "It's a trash bill. And here's why."

Bynum railed that the bill threatens $300 billion in food assistance, puts health care "further out of reach" for about 14 million people, and makes families choose between putting "food on the table" and "filling a prescription."

"Madam Chair I came here today to try and make this trash bill just a little bit better. To try and protect my constituents from its harmful cuts. But I have little faith that the authors of this trash care enough about the American people to do it," she said, taking particular issue with the GOP effort to do so "in the middle of the night."

Later in her fiery takedown, Bynum addressed Foxx directly.

"Madam Chair, I brought the data. Let me tell you what the numbers look like. In your district, 201,000 people will lose health care because of this bill. That's 27% of your constituents," Bynum said, before addressing fellow Rep. Michelle Fischbach (R-MN). "In Rep. Fischbach's district, it's over 165[,000]. Rep. Ralph Norman: 148,000 people will lose health care in his district. Rep. [Chip] Roy, 56,000 people use SNAP to feed their families. "And in Rep. [Erin] Houchin, it's 54,000. Over 83,000 kids get health care through Medicaid in Rep. [Nick] Langworthy's district. And Rep. [Austin] Scott is 124,000 kids. And Rep. [Brian] Jack's it's 88,000 kids, and in Rep. [Morgan] Griffith's it's nearly 107,000."

Bynum concluded by demanding Foxx "get your colleagues focused on serving the American people.">

<The conservative Wall Street Journal scorched House Republicans on Wednesday for their ongoing battle over raising the cap on the state and local tax deduction (SALT), which lets mostly wealthier households offset the cost of what they've paid in certain high-tax states.

Broadly, a number of swing-district Republicans in Democratic-controlled states, particularly New York, are demanding the SALT cap be much higher than GOP leadership's initial offer of increasing it from $10,000 to $30,000. The process is starting to frustrate even President Donald Trump, who told one of the most outspoken SALT rebels, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), to just "drop it."

But the editorial board, which has already panned the GOP's SALT battle in earlier analyses, has a key objection: it will let Democrats raise state taxes even higher.

"Few voters in other states will benefit because the standard deduction (which the House bill increases to $32,600 for couples) is bigger than their itemized deductions. Texans pay no income tax and on average $3,872 in property tax. Why should they subsidize Democratic spendthrifts in Albany?" wrote the board. "Don’t be surprised if Democrats who run high-tax states take advantage of Republican generosity by raising taxes even more. It will also relieve political pressure on Democrats to reduce taxes to prevent high earners from fleeing. Don’t expect Gov. Kathy Hochul to send her thanks to Messrs. LaLota and Lawler."

What makes the whole situation more ironic, the board noted, is that "Republicans are doing a favor for high-tax states that Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi refused when Democrats controlled Congress in 2021 and 2022. Recall how Democratic Reps. Josh Gottheimer, Tom Suozzi, and Mikie Sherrill insisted they wouldn’t vote for a spending bill without more SALT." Schumer ultimately called their bluff, passed the Inflation Reduction Act without changing SALT, and got their votes anyway.

And to cap it all off, the board noted, Schumer is deliberately provoking the divide now by attacking Republicans over insufficient SALT relief, when he himself did not deliver that as Senate leader.

"This underscores the folly of the Republican SALT caucus. Democrats will denounce them and the tax bill they rode in on in any case," the board concluded. "Senate Republicans can cut this SALT extortion down to size in their bill, and the country should hope they do.">

<Just five weeks after pledging that they would not support the Republican Party's budget reconciliation package if it included cuts to Medicaid, six GOP lawmakers ultimately did just that on Thursday morning—and an analysis by government watchdog Accountable.US suggested they voted for the legislation to benefit themselves, despite the suffering it would cause for their constituents.

Along with cutting Medicaid for close to 14 million Americans and slashing nearly $300 billion in food assistance, the bill Republicans voted on in the early morning hours after weeks of deliberation included a tax policy proposal to expand a provision called Section 199A, which was previously introduced during the first Trump administration as part of the GOP's original law providing tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy.

The bill that passed in the House Thursday would raise the percentage of qualifying business income—such as rental income—people can deduct from their taxes from 20% to 23%. The provision is now set to expire at the end of the year.

If it's extended as written in the reconciliation bill, Accountable.US identified six Republican House members who could directly benefit from the expansion of the "pass-through deduction": Reps. Rob Bresnahan of Pennsylvania, Rob Wittman of Virginia, Jen Kiggans of Virginia, Young Kim of California, Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, and Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey.

Those six lawmakers were among the 12 who last month wrote to GOP leaders to say they represent "districts with high rates of constituents who depend on Medicaid" and to "reiterate our strong support for this program that ensures our constituents have reliable healthcare."

"We cannot and will not support a final reconciliation bill that includes any reduction in Medicaid coverage for vulnerable populations," wrote the lawmakers last month. "Cuts to Medicaid also threaten the viability of hospitals, nursing homes, and safety-net providers, nationwide. Many hospitals—particularly in rural and underserved areas—rely heavily on Medicaid funding, with some receiving over half their revenue from the program alone."

"It is the peak of hypocrisy that the loudest and most vocal opponents of Medicaid cuts cowered in a matter of days in favor of a bill that will make the largest cuts to Medicaid in modern history—all to pay for lower taxes for the richest."

With the six Republican members poised to earn thousands more each year from the pass-through income deduction, those concerns appeared to have evaporated on Thursday.

"It is the peak of hypocrisy that the loudest and most vocal opponents of Medicaid cuts cowered in a matter of days in favor of a bill that will make the largest cuts to Medicaid in modern history—all to pay for lower taxes for the richest," said Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.US. "Even worse, those very members stand to financially gain from those tax cuts, while their own constituents lose their healthcare. Their votes aren't just a flip-flop; they are a betrayal to hardworking Americans everywhere who will be worse off because of this bill."

Accountable's Cash in Congress project found that for the 2023 tax filing year, the six members of Congress earned a combined $327,000 in pass-through income, according to financial disclosures.

Bresnahan stands to benefit the most from the extension of Section 199A, The American Prospect reported, as he earned at least $137,000 from rental properties. Out of the six lawmakers, he also represents the most Medicaid beneficiaries: 230,000.

Wittman reported $105,000 or more in pass-through rental income, and represents 125,000 people who receive Medicaid. Kiggans reported $50,000 and represents 130,000 people who use the healthcare program for low-income Americans.

All together, reported The American Prospect, the lawmakers represent 971,000 Medicaid beneficiaries who could be affected by a work requirement amendment that would go into effect at the end of 2026 and other provisions.

"Millions of Americans will see their healthcare, food, and education costs skyrocket, all so House Republicans can hand themselves and their wealthiest donors a huge tax break," said Accountable. "The only 'winners' in this bill are the billionaires that paid for it.">

<Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem shared a notice of the voluntary dismissal of a lawsuit against DHS on the social platform X on Thursday, captioning the post, "Suck it."

The lawsuit Espinoza Escalona v. Noem was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, where a number of immigrants alleged wrongful deportation by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) under Noem’s leadership, claiming violations of due process.

Supported by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and other human rights groups, the lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed in March after defendants removed the plaintiffs from deportation proceedings.

Social media users reacted with surprise to the strong language in Noem's post.

Democratic influencer Harry Sisson quoted her post and wrote: "This is DHS Secretary Kristi Noem saying 'suck it' in celebration over deporting people to El Salvador without due process. She’s celebrating constitutional rights being ignored. How evil and depraved."

The Daily Beast columnist Julia Davis wrote: "Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is keeping it classy."

"Not AI. This is a real tweet from the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security. This is our life now," wrote the account "Republicans against Trump."

"US government officials tweeting 'Suck it' is exactly why nobody takes Kristi, or this administration as a whole, seriously. I can’t believe how far our country has fallen. We used to have decorum, class, and integrity. Now we have this," one X user tweeted.

"I support the Trump Administration and think y’all are doing a good job. But this post? Really? It’s embarrassing," wrote another in response to Noem's post.

On Wednesday, a federal judge told President Donald Trump's administration that its reported attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan clearly violated his court injunction.

U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy's order set the stage for yet another legal clash for the Trump administration, which has been frequently accused of defying the courts.>

As always, Animal Killer proves herself a class act.

<These are challenging days for Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who would have been king. Barely two and a half years since his landslide re-election and anointment as “DeFuture” of the Republican party in a fawning New York Post cover, he stands isolated from the national political stage, feuding with his once blindingly loyal Florida legislature, and limping towards the finish line of his second term with an uncertain pathway beyond.

It has been, in the view of many analysts, a fall of stunning velocity and magnitude. And while few are willing to completely rule out a comeback for a 46-year-old politician who was the darling of the Republican hard right until he dared to challenge Donald Trump for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, it is also clear that everything has changed.

“He’s completely crashed to the ground at this point and is certainly being treated like a more standard, average governor now,” said Aubrey Jewett, professor of political science at the University of Central Florida.

“He’s lost the ability to push things through. He’s lost that luster he had that at one time seemed like he could do no wrong in Republican conservative circles. He’s definitely come back down to earth and some of it is his own doing because if you govern with an autocratic style, that doesn’t usually make you a lot of allies.”

DeSantis’s once vise-like grip on Florida’s lawmakers has weakened, replaced by open dissent, bitter hostility and a hurling of slurs over a number of issues as the two Republican dominated legislative chambers try to reverse six years of passivity and reestablish themselves as a co-equal branch of government.

DeSantis, in the words of Florida’s Republican House speaker, Daniel Perez, has begun to tell “lies and stories that never happened”, and has become increasingly prone to “temper tantrums”.

The governor, meanwhile, hit back at what he sees as a “pathetic” agenda being pursued by the majority. He has also lashed out at their investigation of a charity scandal enveloping his wife, Casey DeSantis, as she mulls whether to run in next year’s election to succeed him when he is termed out of office in January 2027.

Some Republicans, including Perez, want to know how $10m of a $67m legal settlement intended for Florida taxpayers ended up channeled through Hope Florida, a non-profit that Casey DeSantis founded, to political action committees operated by her husband’s allies to help quash ballot amendments last year on abortion and marijuana.

“At one point Casey looked like she was going to be the heir apparent to Ron DeSantis and she was going to run, and he certainly seemed like he was trying to position her to do so,” Jewett said.

“That would extend his legacy and help keep him around for some more years, he can be the first husband and people would say he’s an equal partner or whatever. That would take away some of his lame-duck status.”

It is that drift towards political irrelevance, particularly on the national stage, that stings DeSantis the most, some analysts believe.

If events had transpired differently, he could be sitting in the White House. Instead, the influence of the one-time prince of Maga (Trump’s make America great again movement) is limited to regular guest appearances on Fox News, and “press conferences” he hosts around Florida almost on a daily basis to assail judges whose rulings displease him and expound his hardline positions on immigration enforcement, higher education and drag show performers.

More galling, Jewett says, is that DeSantis has seen himself eclipsed by rising newcomers in Trump’s firmament, notably vice-president JD Vance and Marco Rubio, the former Florida senator and current secretary of state, both named by the president this month as potential successors.

“It’s notable that when Trump was asked who might follow him, he didn’t mention DeSantis at all,” Jewett said. “When DeSantis challenged Trump for the presidential nomination, it ticked Trump off and it ticked off a lot of Trump supporters, who up until then generally liked him.

“It came out while he was running that he doesn’t have the great personality that a traditional politician has. He just didn’t seem well suited for shaking hands, eating hot dogs and kissing babies, the kind of typical American political things. It destroyed his air of invincibility.”

Other observers see the same aloofness and confrontational manner behind DeSantis’s fallings out with Republican erstwhile allies in Florida, and a reason why many are rushing to support Trump-endorsed congressman Byron Donalds for governor even before Casey DeSantis has made a decision to run.....>

<....“I don’t know that they necessarily think Donalds is the greatest thing since sliced bread – I think it’s, ‘Well, we got to block Casey from getting in’,” said Michael Binder, professor of political science and public administration at the University of North Florida.

“The DeSantis-Trump feud appears to have mellowed but there are absolutely people in both camps, on both sides, that have not forgotten and will not forget. DeSantis’s political style in some ways is similar to Trump in that he makes a lot of enemies. The difference is Trump can make amends with enemies when it benefits him – think of Marco Rubio.

“With Ron DeSantis you don’t see that. Once you’re on the outs with DeSantis, you stay on the outs. They burn those bridges.”

DeSantis’s office did not respond to a number of questions submitted by the Guardian about the remainder of his term in office, or plans thereafter.

His predecessor as governor, Rick Scott, successfully challenged Democratic incumbent Bill Nelson for his US Senate seat in 2018 and remains an influential Republican voice in Washington. Such a pathway appears blocked for DeSantis, a former congressman who in January appointed Florida’s former attorney general Ashley Moody to Rubio’s vacant Senate seat for the duration of his term.

DeSantis would need to challenge a close ally who has already filed to defend it in the 2026 election.

Still, Jewett said, the final chapters of DeSantis’s political career are yet to be written.

“It doesn’t look good and his political prospects are definitely more dim than they were, his road seems that much more difficult right now,” he said.

“But you just never know. One big wild card is how people view Trump in another year. It’s a decent assumption the Maga movement will continue and if Trump really falters then maybe DeSantis’s distance from Trump actually ends up being a positive in the longer run.

“Even if he doesn’t get too much more accomplished in the next year and a half, he had a five-year run that was unprecedented in pushing through a very conservative agenda and changing Florida from the most competitive battleground to a heavily Republican state. So yeah, he’ll remind everyone of all the things he did that they liked on the Republican side.">

<MAGA America is about to catch the worst of what President Donald Trump’s tariff are bringing, and Trump knew all along his tariffs would bring it, says The New Republic’s ‘Daily Blast’ podcast host Greg Sargent and Groundwork Collaborative Executive Director Lindsay Owens.

Retail giant Walmart recently warned shoppers it will have to hike store prices due to Trump’s tariffs, despite Trump promising his voters that other nations would pay the costs.

Trump did not appreciate the pushback from Walmart and blasted the retailer on Truth Social, promising that shoppers would react harshly if the company did not “eat” the costs of his self-imposed levies.

“This was a smoking gun that Trump is clear about who pays the price for these tariffs,” Owens said, adding that the Truth Social post amounts to an admission.

Trump’s threat that Walmart shoppers would be watching how the chain reacts may also have been an act of transference because voters will be more likely watching the White House. People know how tariffs work, said Owens.

“The American people are crystal clear on this,” she said. “We know from polling that two thirds of Americans expect tariffs to increase their prices. Eighty percent of Americans are clocking the tariffs. This is something they are aware of. He’s in real trouble here, and now he’s screaming from the bully pulpit that corporations should help him (mitigate) his own policy.”

Unfortunately for Trump, the top issues plaguing Trump’s predecessor are still on the minds of Americans in Trump’s second term, in no small part thanks to the enormous megaphone Trump blasted in the months leading up to the November election last year.

“The No. 1 issue is still high prices,” Owens said. “It was a problem for Biden. Trump is very aware of that. He exploited it … and ran on bringing prices down and one of the first policies he’s implemented is basically a giant price hike on people. And now he’s reeling from the consequences.”

The fact that a massive retail chain like Walmart is publicly acknowledging the impending problem means other, smaller retailers will inevitably have to raise prices even higher, she added.

“If any company had the power to demand importers keep prices down it would be Walmart,” Owens said. “The fact that they can’t negotiate away the tariff’s higher costs means smaller companies will suffer even higher hikes.”

And this, Owens said, means there will be no escaping the reality of what’s coming. Particularly for MAGA America.

“This absolutely is going have a substantial impact. Just based on the geography of the U.S. and Trump’s voters it makes perfect sense why he was reeling so quickly,” Owens said. “He knows exactly who this hurts and who is likely to hear that news and be quite worried.”>

<This week we are in the midst of another spasm of 2024 retrospection, reviving two narratives. The first I’ll call the “if only” narrative. It takes the form of “if only Biden had not insisted on a second term after the midterms,” or “if only Harris had listened to me about.” The second I’ll call the “realignment” narrative, which usually takes the form of, “Democrats are out of step with the median voter” or “Republicans have become the party of multiracial working class.” Crucially, this narrative depends on asserting that Trump would have won an even larger victory if “everyone voted”—because conceding otherwise would (1) undermine the portrayal of Trump’s victory as genuinely “democratic,” (2) cast doubt on the durability of this conservative realignment, and (3) provide encouragement to those advocating greater voter turnout, which realignment proponents fear primarily empowers left-leaning interests.

And so, it seems an ideal time to revisit my analysis in “How Trump “Won,’” which I published in early January, before the inauguration, in response to widespread claims from media and even Democrats that America had shifted decisively to the right. (Remember the “vibe shift”?) I explained that Trump’s victory was historically narrow, and reflected less newfound enthusiasm for MAGA than dissatisfaction with Democrats and with the political system itself. A key to Biden’s 2020 victory had been high turnout from otherwise-infrequent voters who believed they had too much to lose from a second Trump term. But in 2024, that dread dissipated—and with it, the support from the anti-MAGA voters Harris would have needed to win; millions stayed home, and others likely reverted to their previous partisan preference.

Four months into Trump 2.0, I believe that we have compelling new evidence for that case hiding in plain sight. Trump’s dismal polling numbers are a constant topic—but few if any have drawn the most important conclusion about this rapid, dramatic shift. Those numbers don’t show that Trump has squandered some deep reservoir of support, or that he has “overreached.” Those polling numbers show that Trump’s earlier support depended on voters not understanding or believing he would do what he said he would do if elected. On tariffs, deportations, and other issues that are cratering his approval ratings, Trump is now doing almost precisely what he said he would do. And voters hate it—including the “less engaged” voters who were supposedly too hard to reach before November with warnings about it.

Therefore the latest polling tells us less about Trump than it does about the catastrophic failure of not just Democratic campaign professionals, but also civil society and the media, to effectively inform voters of the consequences of the choice they had before them. As I articulated in February 2024, the choice was dire and the duty to inform great:

“The 2024 election is … a de facto constitutional referendum. At first blush, “de facto constitutional referendum” may seem a bit much. But, if implemented, the MAGA agenda as expressed by Trump, and delineated in great detail in documents like the Heritage Foundation’s Mandate for Leadership, could change America as quickly and as fundamentally as the Reconstruction Amendments and the New Deal Order – if not more so.

… Democracy is not a spectator sport. It is up to us whether those who reject a MAGA future vote in greater numbers than those who embrace MAGA. … We are in something of a Niemöller moment. When we depend on the campaign smarts of the Democratic Party to forestall a MAGA future, we abdicate our duties as democratic citizens to do everything we can to keep it from happening.”

The current backlash against Trump is exactly the outcome we’d expect to see if my long-standing argument is true: that America has an anti-MAGA majority, but not necessarily a pro-Democratic one. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the reality of American politics today is not a “realignment,” wherein the views and values of most ordinary Americans have become fundamentally more aligned with the views of MAGA Republicans. Rather it’s been a “dealignment” from both parties. Voters, increasingly distrustful of institutions and clamoring for substantial change that neither party is delivering, have punished incumbent parties in nine of the past ten elections—a D-R-D-R presidential alternation pattern unseen in over a century.

<....This is not a sustainable trajectory for Democrats, or more importantly for what’s left of American democracy. But we’ll never find our way out of this wilderness if we lie to ourselves about where we are now, or if we continue to follow the same leaders and maps that have, at best, led us in circles by responding with little more more than lip-service to the continuous repeal of our hard won freedoms by the Roberts Court or the rise of MAGA fascism that already had an iron grip on half the states in the union before Trump descended the escalator.

Recent events and polling should put to rest the idea that 2024 really heralded the beginning of some great pro-MAGA realignment. Trump is now deeply underwater on favorability, both overall and with the specific demographic groups said to have “realigned” towards him (“non-college voters of color” and “young voters”).

This memo from the Research Collaborative gives a thorough rundown of recent polling showing the backlash against Trump’s agenda and actions. Perhaps most notable is his plunging approval on what were supposed to be his two strongest issues—“immigration” and “the economy”—and that 52% of Americans now agree Trump is “a dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,” and 52% of likely voters and 55% of independents support impeaching Trump.

There is much reason to doubt the “If everyone voted, Trump would have won by more” counterfactual on its own terms (see footnote 1). But the much more relevant and important counterfactual is: If voters had known in November what they know now—which could and should have been possible—Trump would have lost.

As you read the rest of this post, keep these numbers in mind: Trump would have lost the Electoral College if: (a) only about 1 in 70 Trump voters in the Blue Wall switched their vote, or (b) if only about 1 in 25 nonvoters had voted for Harris, or (c) if only about 1 in 100 Trump voters switched AND only about 1 in about 80 nonvoters cast ballots for Harris.7 It would have taken an even smaller and more plausible shift for Trump to have lost the popular vote, given that nearly three-quarters of the difference between Biden and Harris’s vote total were in cities and Blue States.

At his essential Substack, Strength in Numbers, G. Elliott Morris just conducted a “redo” survey that literally poses my counterfactual—asking voters how (and whether) they would vote today if the U.S. was holding a do-over election. That survey found that among Trump voters, about 1 in 20 would now vote for Harris and another 1 in 11 would vote for neither, while among Harris voters, only 1 in 100 would now vote for Trump and 1 in 14 would vote for neither. Significantly, a bit more than half of those who did not vote—the group that critics argue have gone MAGA—now favor Harris 3:2.8

Now, I’m going to put the numbers in the table in context, by illustrating what the election outcome would be if votes were cast along those current preferences. To be clear, I’m not saying that this proves anything; I would never stake my claim on a single survey, and I am sure that Morris did not intend his survey to be used to support exercises like this one. But polling can be useful in a broader suite of evidence, when it’s mostly relied on to corroborate the order of magnitude and directionality of other evidence.9

First, we find that if only those who voted in 2024 voted again, instead of winning by 1.5 points, Trump would have lost by 4.2 points. The first and third numeric columns reflect what actually happened, while the second and fourth columns reflect the survey results.

That result is in line with other data: Trump losing by 4 points is the same result indicated by an earlier YouGov redo survey conducted for The Times (UK), which found that “Kamala Harris leads Trump, 48% to 44%, among those who voted in 2024, in the scenario in which they could ‘go back and cast your ballot again.’” And, of course, that margin isn’t far off from 2020, when Trump lost by 4.5 points.

But, that chart above was just a redo with 2024 voters; we haven’t touched “if everyone voted” yet.10 So, now, applying the Strength in Numbers survey results to all registered voters, we find that if everyone voted (who now wants to), instead of winning by 1.5 points, Trump would lose by even more, 13.7 million votes or 7.9 percent.

That result is in line with Pew’s Research’s gold standard validated voter survey for 2020, which found that had nonvoters voted, Biden would have won by 8.5 points....>

<....Again, I hope no one misunderstands this exercise to mean that I am saying this alone “proves” something—but it does illustrate that the magnitude of the backlash against Trump is consistent with the notion prevalent in 2020, that politics had become “ossified.”12 And that corroborates the view that Trump’s actual agenda is not what many either signed up for or believed would happen when they declined to vote.

There are other surveys that ask respondents if they “regret” their vote.13 As Morris astutely points out in his Substack, however, this frame is a higher bar, as asking someone to say they “regret” their vote is akin to “ask[ing] a man how much he makes, a woman how much she weighs, or if an Italian likes pineapple on pizza”—many people will lie about their real answers, due to “social desirability bias.” Morris’s “redo” frame avoids that problem by asking voters a hypothetical question instead of asking them to divulge their true feelings.

Still, it’s worth noting that a PRRI survey found that while few 2024 voters “regret” their vote, 1 in 13 Trump voters do, compared to only 1 in 20 Harris voters. And, more relevant to the matter at hand, fully 1 in 3 nonvoters said they regret not voting, nearly half of them strongly so. That works out to about 30 million people, or about the same number that the Catalist voter file reports having voted in 2020 but not in 2024. Remember, that survey was taken in March, before Trump’s approval dropped further.

And if there’s any doubt about the reason for said regret, consider that “Among non-voters who regret their decision not to vote, 68% view Trump as a dangerous dictator, compared with 30% who view him as a strong leader.”

It might be easy for critics to wave this away as the normal “thermostatic” reaction, where Trump’s dwindling approval numbers reflect nothing more than the normal—and inevitable—pendulum swing in public opinion. But, as this graph makes clear, Trump is the only president whose 100-day approval ratings trail his popular vote margin—more so in 2024 than in 2020. Other presidents have enjoyed a “honeymoon” of popularity early in their term, but not Trump. There is no reason to think that an “election redo” survey like Morris’s, taken just 100 days in, would have shown a reversal of the results at all for earlier presidents—much less as dramatic a reversal as we see with Trump. We wouldn’t even have seen it in 2000 after Bush v. Gore, since, as you can see, Bush’s April 2000 approval rating was about plus 20.

By comparison, it wasn’t until around the 500 day mark (in June of 2022) that Joe Biden’s net approval sank as low as Trump’s is today. And 2024 was the only year in which Biden’s average net approval was lower than Trump’s is today.

Even before the election, we heard a constant drumbeat of takes claiming that Biden or Harris needed a “low turnout” election to win. Critics of my original analysis have claimed that had turnout been higher, Harris would have lost by even more, because some surveys suggested the historic “realignment” that “less engaged” voters are now further “right” than those who routinely vote. (There is no settled definition for “less engaged voters,” which can make this discourse confusing and slippery.14) This counterfactual—that “if everyone had voted” (or if more nonvoters had decided to turn out) Trump would have won by even more—is now all but conventional wisdom.

In this section, we’ll see that even if that was true then, it is certainly not the case now, as Trump’s approval ratings are consistently worse with those who didn’t vote than with those who did. To do so, we’ll take advantage of several surveys to show how consistently voters are “to the right” of nonvoters, and not the other way around:

Four 100 days job approval surveys conducted by the New York Times/Siena, the Washington Post/ABC, Pew Research, and Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI); The Cooperative Election Survey, which showed Harris winning nonvoters and, more importantly, showed that on a wide variety of values and issues questions, voters were “to the right” of nonvoters;

In the following graph, I compare Trump’s electoral margin (the dotted line) with his net approval among voters and nonvoters today, according to four recent high-quality surveys (Pew, NYT/Siena, Washington Post/ABC and PRRI). Those who cast ballots in the 2024 election (green bars) have soured on Trump. Those who didn’t vote (brown bars) are very sour....>

<....In the rest of this section, we’ll see strong evidence that 2024 nonvoters were less pro-Trump than voters before he took office, too.

Adam Bonica, Jake Grumbach, Rachel Funk Fordham, and Ernesto Tiburcio recently published strong evidence that nonvoters did not favor Trump in November. See their chart below, based on an analysis of the Cooperative Election Survey (CES). They found that in 2024, registered nonvoters (the middle row) leaned very heavily Democratic, and unregistered citizens (the bottom row) were ambivalent.16

Now, let’s dig deeper. A frequent error in political analysis is to impute a suite of “conservative” views to Trump voters with no more substantiation than that they are Trump voters, or that they identify themselves as conservatives. Fortunately, the CES includes many questions that get at those underlying values directly. Rather than looking at self-reported ideology of nonvoters and inferring their hypothetical vote choice (and support for MAGA) from that, we can take questions from the CES that explicitly ask whether people support or oppose policies that are clearly either liberal or MAGA. Because CES asked both voters and non-voters these questions, we can see exactly how MAGA the people are that chose not to vote in 2024.

In the next graph, there are two bubbles. Green and brown again represent voters and nonvoters respectively. For each of the questions, I’ve subtracted the “conservative” answer from the “liberal” answer to get a “net favor the liberal position” value.17 As you can see, in almost every case, (1) nonvoters are more liberal than voters, and (2) nonvoters are much closer to Harris than Trump.18

Now, we’ll look at the same set of questions, but this time I’ve added blue and red bubbles to represent Harris and Trump voters; brown bubbles continue to represent nonvoters. Here you can clearly see that (1) on all but one question, Trump voters supported the Trump position, which was not the case for nonvoters for any of the questions; and (2) on nearly all of the questions, nonvoters were much closer to Harris voters.

Also, consider that while only 12 percent of voters in the CES survey responded “Not Sure” when asked to place Trump on a 7-point ideology scale, 31 percent of those who did not vote could not place him on that scale.19 It’s another marker of the credulity chasm, and a rebuke to the idea that there was nothing new for voters to learn about Trump. Furthermore, 21 percent of those voting for Trump placed him as either “middle of the road,” liberal, or could not rate his ideology.

PRRI’s Democracy at a Crossroads: How Americans View Trump’s First 100 Days in Office is an especially rich source of insights into what Americans believe, with several questions on the survey making it clear that in terms of their values, nonvoters were more anti-MAGA than those who cast ballots.

The following chart shows the net response of voters and nonvoters to some key questions about Trump’s policies (most of which, again, he’d promised to implement during the campaign; see footnote 5) and about basic differences in values between MAGA and anti-MAGA. Since most of the questions are agree/disagree or favor/oppose, I’ve presented the net results as the difference between disagreeing with Trump/MAGA minus agreeing with Trump/MAGA, even if that wasn’t the original structure of the question; conceptually that means I’m just presenting net disapproval as a positive number for clarity of presentation. Exact question wording in this footnote.20

Three things stand out:

In every instance, voters (green bubbles) net disagree/disapprove of MAGA positions by at least a dozen points (diversity in the workplace), and as much as 70 points (prefer overall diversity);

In almost every instance, nonvoters are even more anti-MAGA than voters;

Many of Trump’s “anti-woke” efforts are extremely unpopular with voters and even more unpopular with nonvoters.

(The black bubbles represent Harris’s margin in the election, serving as a reminder of how far those numbers are from Trump’s margin.)

The next graph shows that this holds true for white non-college voters as well; they are generally regarded as the Trumpiest demographic group. Here, the black bubbles on the left margin represent VoteCast’s estimate of Harris’s margin with white non-college voters in the election.21 Once again, we see nearly the identical pattern with respect to voters and nonvoters—in only one instance (barely) were white non-college voters more MAGA than white non-college respondents who didn’t vote. And even white non-college voters disagree with MAGA more than they agree on these questions....>

<....America still has an anti-MAGA majority. Yet Donald Trump is president again, and MAGA Republicans claim congressional majorities.

Let’s widen the aperture to see that this is the case most proximately because:

A Supreme Court majority installed by, and loyal to, a coalition of plutocrats and white Christian nationalists, including three justices he nominated, enabled the candidacy of an otherwise constitutionally disqualified candidate;22

Joe Biden utterly betrayed his central original campaign promise as president to fight for “the soul of the country”—first by doing too little too late to meet the MAGA threats to the country that had only grown, then by doing nothing to thwart the “oligarchic capture” that he acknowledged only after the election, and then by insisting on running for re-election despite his (at a minimum, inferred) commitment to be a “bridge” candidate and his diminishing capacities;23

House and Senate Democrats squandered their trifecta, refusing to create filibuster carve-outs in order to enact legislation to (1) hold Trump accountable, (2) sturdy the electoral system (other than reforming the Electoral Count Act24, (3) strengthen the guardrails against executive and judicial overreach, or (4) reverse Roberts Court ipse dixit decisions like Dobbs; Senate Democrats, who held the majority for the last two years, failed to either pass the necessary legislation just enumerated (which would have at least made clear that the MAGA Republican House majority was the impediment and which would have forced Trump to take a position on the campaign), or—even during the lame duck when we knew there would be an incoming MAGA trifecta—hold high-visibility investigatory hearings to alert Americans of MAGA threats or the role of the corrupt Roberts Court;

Mainstream media kept the alarm level artificially low on what a second Trump term would mean for America—most notably, by (1) maintaining a striking disconnect between its substantive reporting on the horror of Trump’s plans and its routine political reporting that ignored the substance of those plans or treated them as normal; (2) “poll-washing,” wherein public polling about Trump’s plans served to both conceal and perpetuate public ignorance about what those plans were25; and (3) paying demonstrably less attention not just to Trump’s unfitness and authoritarian intentions, but to the entire presidential election, in 2024 than in 2020—even though in 2024 we had substantially more evidence of his intentions, and, more importantly, evidence that the guardrails that had constrained him in his first term would be gone in his second;

The legal establishment failed to consolidate behind the need to hold the January 6th criminals accountable and second guessed those who tried;

The business community became complacent and inexcusably sanguine about the prospect of a second Trump term—despite having publicly recognized in 2020 that Trump posed serious threats to social stability, and despite ample warnings in 2024 that Trump posed those same threats and more, including serious economic harms from tariffs;

Civil society institutions, including law and business as well as academia, philanthropy, and even many pro-democracy NGOs, failed to recognize that communicating the gravity of the stakes in 2024 required an unprecedented mobilization beyond the typical boundaries of partisan politics—that this was not merely a strategic imperative for Democrats, but an existential call to action for anyone who had an interest in maintaining a functioning pluralistic democracy;

and Democratic campaign operatives and centrist opinion leaders failed to meet the moment, and disparaged those who sought to, on a number of fronts>

<As Republicans in Congress struggle to settle on a megabill they can all agree on, they might want to familiarize themselves with the story of Marjorie Margolies. Her political career stands as a warning to GOP lawmakers, especially those thinking of risking their seats to save President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.

Three decades ago, Margolies (then Margolies-Mezvinsky) briefly became the most famous first-term member of the House of Representatives. She was elected in 1992 to represent Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District — a swing district in Philadelphia’s suburbs — by just 1,373 votes.

The following summer, President Bill Clinton was struggling to push his first budget through the Democratic-controlled Congress. Though the budget raised taxes only on the wealthy, Margolies had promised during her campaign that she wouldn’t vote for any tax increases. In the run-up to the crucial vote, Margolies restated her opposition. But in a phone call with Clinton just before the vote, she told him that if her support was absolutely needed, she would stand with her party.

When it became clear that Margolies’ vote was, in fact, absolutely necessary, she walked down the aisle to cast a “yes” ballot. “One Democrat after another hugged her, patted her on the back and touched her as if she were Joan of Arc,” The New York Times reported at the time. “As she finally voted aye, her Democratic colleagues cheered as the Republicans jeered, ‘Goodbye Marjorie.’”

The GOP never let her constituents forget her critical vote, and she lost her re-election bid the next year. But Margolies wasn’t the only Democrat to lose her seat. When the 1994 midterms took place, Clinton’s approval was about where Donald Trump’s is today. He had gone through a bruising two years of legislative battles over his budget, a bill to ban the sale of assault weapons and a failed attempt at health care reform. And while the U.S. economy was growing, the 1990s boom that buoyed Clinton’s popularity was still a few years away.

The average voter was mildly disgruntled; the Republican base was enraged. Democrats ceded control of the House after 40 uninterrupted years in the majority. They lost 54 seats in the chamber and eight in the Senate, as well as 10 governorships. It was the most lopsided midterm defeat for a president’s party in modern U.S. history.

Clinton’s 1993 budget was, in many ways, good policy: It increased the earned income tax credit while raising taxes on the rich. But it was unquestionably bad politics. The bill Republicans are now working to pass, on the other hand, is terrible politics and even worse as a matter of policy. If Democrats can get their act together, they can make its depredations a centerpiece of their 2026 campaign and give themselves the best chance at a blue wave.

It won’t be easy for Democrats to duplicate the sweep of 1994 in 2026. Increased gerrymandering has decreased the number of true swing districts, and the Senate map is highly unfavorable for Democrats. But taking back one or even both houses of Congress isn’t out of reach, especially if, as in 1994, the public is upset and the president’s opposition is mobilized....>

<....In 2024, 15 Republicans in the House won their seats by less than 5 points; 23 won by less than 10. All of them are targets for Democrats and vulnerable in a bad year for the GOP. And Democrats need to net three Republican seats to win back control.

The Senate, with its 53-47 Republican majority, will be a tougher lift — but there, too, a Democratic landslide could deliver the chamber. Republicans will be defending 22 seats to the Democrats’ 13, and while most of those 22 are in safe red states, there are vulnerable GOP incumbents in North Carolina, Maine and possibly Ohio. If scandal-tainted far-right state Attorney General Ken Paxton defeats Sen. John Cornyn in the primary, a seat in Texas could become competitive, and in a real blowout other results could surprise.

In addition, whereas Democrats in 1993 had a large enough majority that dozens could vote against Clinton’s budget, nearly every Republican will have to vote for Trump’s agenda — which means they can all be held responsible for what it does. No component of the bill is likely to get more attention than the brutal cuts to Medicaid that Republicans are planning. In a recent KFF poll, 76% of respondents said they opposed major cuts to Medicaid.

Should the bill pass, the news will most likely be full of stories about millions of people losing their health coverage. The cuts will also almost certainly lead to widespread layoffs among people who work in health care; entire hospitals that rely on Medicaid could be forced to close. That’s in addition to cuts to SNAP benefits and an array of other programs. And the reason for all these cuts is to (partly) offset tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy. Most of these tax cuts were political duds when they were first passed early in Trump’s first term. How will voters react this time, when the price is ripping away Americans’ health insurance?

Swing-district Republicans are increasingly nervous about the budget bill, especially the Medicaid cuts. But Trump and their congressional leadership will do everything they can to strong-arm them into voting for it. If they do, just as Republicans constantly reminded Marjorie Margolies’ constituents of her vote 30 years ago, Democrats need to never let today’s voters forget this bill.

After losing her re-election race, Margolies became a teacher, an advocate for women and even Chelsea Clinton’s mother-in-law. But though she ran for other elected offices several more times, she was never successful. That should be the fate of any Republicans who support this abominable budget, and they should be terrified of what will happen if they vote for it. At the very least they ought to be made to pay a price the next time they come before the voters.>

<The Democratic Party is eyeing ruby red southern states it believes it can take in next year’s midterm elections, according to a report.

Historically way out of reach states including Texas our now being considering in-play for Democratic Party candidates who see an opening with moderates sickened by Trump, Politico reported Tuesday.

And Republicans battling through “eat-their-own primaries” in the same areas are handing their opponents more ammunition, according to the report.

As an example, the report cites Texas’ state Attorney General Ken Paxton and his fight with fellow Republican Sen. John Cornyn. In Georgia, it points to a packed field of Republicans trying to oust Sen. Jon Ossoff.

“A new class of Democratic leaders in the South are pitching voters on their party’s proposals to lower costs and increase wages, while casting blame on Republicans for an unsettled economy under President Donald Trump,” the report stated.

“They say that strategy is key not just for the midterms, but part of solving an existential threat for Democrats if they want to stand a chance in coming years at regaining national power.”

Insiders in the Democratic Party are also warning that failing to put up a strong showing in the midterms could be disastrous for the party after the 2030 Census — population shifts across the South promise extra congressional and Electoral College seats in those states.

“The fix, according to a dozen Democratic leaders in the South, is to refocus the Democratic Party on the economy and border security — two areas of strength historically for the GOP,” Politico reported.

Democrats must “do everything we can to show that when we get out of bed in the morning, we eat glass to fight back and protect the working people of this state,” said Kendall Scudder, the head of the Texas Democratic Party

In Georgia, the party’s head, Charlie Bailey, told Politico, Republicans “ know they’re being screwed. My job as the chair is to make sure they know who to blame.”

“Republicans are claiming the far right, Democrats have an opportunity to claim everything else. Voters may be hungry for change by the time we get to the elections next year,” said Georgia Democratic strategist Amy Morton.>

<Veteran members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) say the Trump administration has moved from offensive to straight racist with its decision to welcome white South Africans as refugees.

Amid continuing controversy over President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration by people of color, one senior Black House Democrat lamented “the most blatant show of white supremacy in America in the history of the world.”

“It is a slap in the face to every African American and every person in this country who believes in the rule of law,” added Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL), ahead of Congress’ Memorial Day recess.

Afrikaners are the descendants of Dutch colonists who underpinned South Africa’s racist apartheid regime until 1994, when the African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison, became his country’s first Black president.

Now, the Trump administration claims Afrikaner farmers are the victims of government-sponsored genocide — claims Trump spewed live on TV last week in a widely decried Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Trump’s conspiratorial claims were rejected by Ramaphosa — and easily debunked.

A picture Trump claimed showed farmers being buried was from the Democratic Republic of Congo. An image Trump claimed showed “burial sites” of “over a thousand of white farmers” showed a memorial to one murdered couple.

One experienced observer, Dorothy Byrnes, a former head of news for the British TV network Channel 4, went viral when she told radio station LBC: “There is no genocide against Afrikaners, that was absolute drivel.”

Byrnes added: “Overwhelmingly, and this is covered, and I have covered it myself, the big problem of violence in South Africa inordinately affects Black people. South Africa has a terrible problem with violent crime, and the chief victims are Black people.”

Regardless, Trump plowed ahead.

“We're deporting thousands of people, and he's bringing in white Afrikaners who he says he's gonna uplift, get health insurance, get found jobs, resettle and housing,” Wilson said.

“I mean, what an insult, right? And also the foundation for his conspiracy theories, saying that there's this genocide happening, that is insane and none of it is true.

“I think that the way that he acted when the president of South Africa came, to try to embarrass … one of our African countries’ heads of state, was just an insult.”

Rep. Emmanuel Cleaver (D-MO), a minister and former CBC chair, called Trump’s meeting with Ramaphosa “embarrassing.”

“He was set up,” Cleaver said of Ramaphosa, who followed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in enduring a White House harangue.

“You know, in some ways we should have known [Trump was] gonna do that when he met with African leaders,” Cleaver said.

“He's divisive in his spirit. And so I guess he can't help himself. I wonder who was orchestrating that stuff. Is it him, or is it Elon Musk?”

Musk, the Tesla and SpaceX mogul, is a Trump donor and adviser and attended the Ramaphosa meeting. A U.S. citizen, Musk was born in South Africa and has advanced claims of genocide against Afrikaners.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) had time for only a short word, as she rushed to a vote.

Trump’s Afrikaner policy was “Elon weirdo stuff,” the progressive phenom told Raw Story.

On the other side of the Capitol, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) told Raw Story Trump’s policy was simply another instance of his “burning our alliances, eroding if not totally compromising trust.”

“As long as he's on top, he’s the bully,” Welch said.

The Afrikaner policy is an example of Trump “changing inherent policies to pick who's going to vote for him,” said Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-NM.) “Rather than looking at policy, fixing the broken immigration policy and then let us all work towards finding these solutions and working together.”

Luján also said “the initial reaction and response that I've heard from constituents and from colleagues is a negative one. It just feels very overt. It's not a surprise coming from this administration but I would argue it's intentional. Stephen Miller probably came up with this.”....>

<....Miller is an immigration ultra-hardliner and one of Trump’s closest advisers.

Earlier this month, Miller told reporters “what's happening in South Africa fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created. This is persecution based on a protected characteristic, in this case, race. This is race-based persecution.”

Miller claimed “a whole series of government policies specifically targets farmers and the white population in South Africa”, including “land expropriation.”

He added: “You even see government leaders chanting racial epithets and espousing racial violence.”

Miller said such policies and threats were “all very well documented.”

Experts disagree.

“The politicians quoted [as espousing racial violence] were not ANC politicians, one of them was a man who’d been specifically thrown out of the ANC and the other was an opponent of the ANC,” said Byrnes, the British expert.

The first 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived in the U.S. in mid-May. Before that, Miller predicted “a much larger-scale relocation effort, and so those numbers are going to increase.

“It takes a little while to set up a system and processes and procedures to begin a new refugee flow,” Miller said. “But we expect that the pace will increase.”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) has emerged as a leading Democratic voice against Trump, notably through a record-breaking Senate speech in April, when he spent 25 hours highlighting Trump’s threat to the Constitution.

Speaking to Raw Story, Booker said the Afrikaner refugee policy was a dereliction of moral duty.

“Why, at a time of ungodly ethnic cleansing, like in places like Darfur and Sudan, are we not allowing in people that are escaping legitimate threats?” Booker asked. “Why are we making it harder for them to get in?

“So this is, to me, unconscionable. It's against the larger ideals of our nation. It's morally unacceptable.”>

<President Donald Trump may have been able to avoid accountability for his attempts to overturn the 2020 election by being elected last November, but many of his attorneys weren't as lucky.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday that many of Trump's attorneys have faced significant consequences for their actions on behalf of their client that include jail time, fines and having their law licenses suspended. And some of them remain criminal defendants in ongoing cases in several states.

One attorney who represented Trump — William McCall Calhoun of Americus, Georgia — ended up serving time behind bars for his participation in the January 6, 2021 siege of the U.S. Capitol building. Even though was released from federal custody in July of 2024 and pardoned by Trump in January of this year, Calhoun still remains without his law license after being convicted of felonies. Despite losing his freedom and being subjected to what he called "widespread media defamation, death threats and harassments," he remains committed to winning back his law license, insisting he was singled out unfairly for his role in the January 6 insurrection because he was an attorney.

Texas-based attorney Sidney Powell also tried to help Trump overturn 2020 election results in Georgia. After she was included in Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' RICO indictment, Powell signed a plea agreement in which she paid several thousand dollars in fines and restitution and penned an apology letter to Georgia voters. However, she said in an October 2023 deposition that she still believed the 2020 election had been unjustly stolen from Trump.

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani also faced significant consequences from his time as Trump's personal attorney in 2020. In addition to being found liable for defamation and ordered to pay more than $148 million to two Georgia poll workers he falsely accused of election fraud, Giuliani is being tried on felony charges in Arizona — and was even served with the charging documents in front of guests at his 80th birthday party.

Lin Wood, who was an Atlanta-based attorney who represented high-profile clients in defamation cases until he gave up his law license in 2023, is also facing significant financial consequences from his 2020 work. The Journal-Constitution reported he owes $16 million in jury verdicts and court orders to three of his former law partners. However, he maintains that despite the impact on his personal life, his support for Trump hasn't changed.

“At all times since 2017, I have been an unwavering public supporter of President Trump and his efforts to save America,” Wood told the paper. “I remain an unwavering supporter of President Trump to this very day.”>

<Lately, words haven’t come easy, my friends.

Because what more is there to say to describe all this hell?

I feel angry and helpless as this terrible torrent of ill will, lawlessness, and lies are rolling over us from the top of Capitol Hill, where a collection of pathetic weaklings have surrendered to an inadequate, America-attacking madman, and his racist cult, who are energized by nothing but hate, and a tasteless zeal to feed the rich, and punish the poor.

Lately, I have wondered what more can possibly be said to highlight a national emergency which only intensifies by the hour, as this collection of anti-Americans exact their revenge on this country’s unmitigated gall to occasionally make progress.

I suppose this is the price of caring, but it is also a lousy excuse from a writer who is paid to help make some sense out of all this madness for brave, engaged readers who deserve at least that much right now.

I mean, the Cabinet of the United States of America is a collection of the worst, most incompetent morons in history, and we are supposed to suffer through it as if it was just another cloudy day.

This throng of environmental terrorists, racists, anti-vaxxers, white supremacists, Russian puppets, and a never-ending list of toxic right-wing propagandists staff these vital positions not because of their qualifications, but for their singular ability to stroke their repulsive cult leader’s ego, to make himself feel better about his sickly condition that most likely started around the time his parents kicked him out of the house because even they couldn’t stand to be around him any longer.

My God, our morbid, puppy-killing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem doesn’t even know what habeas corpus means. Settle on that one for a minute …

And I’ll bet you everything in my dwindling retirement account, which has been plundered by these idiotic tariffs, that fully half the people in that revolting cabinet don’t know the significance of habeas corpus either, including the convicted felon they work for, who could care less about it.

Think too hard about this, and it can shatter you.

Just last week alone, the rust-orange wannabe king hosted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House with the sole intent of verbally assaulting the man with racist lies and venom, as a public nod to his sickly funder, Elon Musk, and his white nationalist base. This was out of the same odious Birther playbook that Trump pulled with Barack Obama starting in 2011, to garner the attention and undivided love of the millions of nauseating Christo-Fascists, who currently lead the Republican Party.

It was a grotesque scene, and an obvious racist dog whistle to the right — though I couldn’t find it covered that directly in any of my likely sources in our broken, corporate media, who have effortlessly normalized bigotry.

Speaking of which … are we EVER going to stop hearing from this sanctimonious sap, Jake Tapper, who is being handed one microphone after another to tout his under-sourced, overhyped book, which is treating Joe Biden’s decision to run for president in 2024, as somehow remotely comparable to Trump’s refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election and his subsequent violent attack on our country and attempt to overthrow the government?

While damn near everything we hold dear is under attack AGAIN, Tapper and the mainstream media have completely lost the thread and are now trying to strangle us with it.

He (they) need to just shut up....>

<....And this: Anybody who buys this book needs to have their head examined, and have officially become part of the problem.

Then there’s the Republican-controlled House led by the mealy-mouthed “Moses” Mike Johnson that just passed a budget that would make Jesus Christ faint. This lurid package of cruelty will steal from the poor so they can reward their rich overlords with handsome tax breaks.

It is gruesome, mean, and if passed by the Senate will also saddle the country with trillions of dollars of debt, because all that crap about “fiscal responsibility” they claim to care so damn much about is just that: CRAP.

So … with all that creeping around my wrecked mind this morning, I was cracking away at the daily newspaper and mainlining my third cup of coffee — I can probably count the number of decent nights' sleep I’ve had since Nov. 8, 2016, on one hand — I actually came across a story that so delighted me, I simply had to share it with you.

With the tsunami of terrible news coming out of D.C., I think all of us patriots should selfishly dine on this story today out of Wisconsin.

You might remember that with control of our Supreme Court on the line here last month, Musk was throwing his money and all his bull---- around like a racist car salesman on a ketamine bender.

He was buying votes, and nonstop touting Republicans’ crooked party line. He was riding high after helping to topple Democrats in our national election, and was doing his damndest to ensure his party’s disease infested Wisconsin for good.

Except he was stopped dead in his tracks when voters in this battleground state, where statewide elections are almost always decided by razor-thin margins, stomped his candidate out by a remarkable, 55%-45% margin.

It wasn’t close, though I’d like to personally thank him for doing his best to stimulate our fading economy by leaving $20 million of his ill-gained money in my state.

Now Musk says he’s going away and surrendering, and will spend less time on elections and more time on his failing businesses.

You can’t believe a word he says, of course, but you also can’t overstate the epic a----kicking we put on his GOP up here in an election Musk himself said, "could determine the fate of Western civilization.”

Well, as fate would have it, we aren’t dead yet, and people like me would be well-served to remember that, as hard as it can be sometimes …

Now, on to the next fight!>