Injustice Anywhere is a Threat to Justice Everywhere, MLK jr – Page 116

How right-wing news powers the ‘gold IRA’ industry

The Washington Post

How right-wing news powers the ‘gold IRA’ industry

Jeremy B. Merrill and Hanna Kozlowska – July 25, 2023

Dedicated viewers of Fox News are likely familiar with Lear Capital, a Los Angeles company that sells gold and silver coins. In recent years, the company’s ads have been a constant presence on Fox airwaves, warning viewers to protect their retirement savings from a looming “pension crisis” and “dollar collapse.”

One such ad caught the attention of Terry White, a disabled retiree from New York. In 2018, White invested $174,000 in the coins, according to a lawsuit by the New York attorney general – only to later learn that Lear charged a 33 percent commission.

Over several transactions, White, 70, lost nearly $80,000, putting an “enormous strain” on his finances, said his wife, Jeanne, who blames Fox for their predicament: “They’re negligent,” she said. A regretful White said he thought Fox “wouldn’t take a commercial like that unless it was legitimate.”

While the legitimacy of the gold retirement investment industry is the subject of numerous lawsuits – including allegations of fraud by federal and state regulators against Lear and other companies – its advertising has become a mainstay of right-wing media. The industry spends millions of dollars a year to reach viewers of Fox, Newsmax and other conservative outlets, according to a Washington Post analysis of ad data and financial records, as well as interviews with industry insiders. Former Fox News host Bill O’Reilly and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani have promoted the coins, while ads for Lear’s competitors have appeared on a podcast hosted by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and Newsmax broadcasts of former president Donald Trump’s political rallies.

An analysis by The Post of political newsletters, social media, podcasts and a national database of television ads collected by the company AdImpact found that pitches to invest in gold coins are a daily presence in media that caters to a right-wing audience and often echo conservative talking points about looming economic and societal collapse. The Post found no similar ads for gold retirement investments in mainstream or left-wing media sources in the databases.

These so-called “gold IRA” companies are not publicly traded, so their revenue, profits and ad budgets largely cannot be determined. Court documents filed by Lear say the company has about $200 million in annual revenue; Dale Whitaker, the former chief financial officer at another company, Augusta Precious Metals, said overall industry revenue likely approaches $1 billion a year.

Over the past decade, more than 30 customers in 20 states have sued a dozen gold IRA companies, including Lear. Federal regulators have sued four companies – two in the past year alone – claiming investors were systematically charged as much as triple the coins’ value.

None of the cases have gone to trial; some are still pending. Of those that have been resolved, most have settled or been sent to arbitration, where outcomes are not made public. The companies have not admitted wrongdoing in any of the cases and say their customers have been adequately informed of the details of their purchases.

Joe Rotunda, enforcement director at the Texas State Securities Board, said the industry is extraordinarily difficult to police because selling gold, even as a retirement investment, is “extremely thinly regulated.”

Experts on commercial speech say Fox and other media outlets have no obligation to spurn advertising from gold IRA companies, despite the allegations. “Courts are very hesitant to impose liability on publishers,” said Harvard law professor Rebecca Tushnet, an expert in First Amendment and advertising law, who said the law is designed primarily to compel truthfulness by advertisers.

Tushnet added that “it might be reasonable, if you found out about the lawsuits, [to] contact the advertiser” and ask questions about the claims before running the ads. But if an advertiser blames their legal troubles on “the woke mob,” she said, “you’re often allowed to believe them.”

Fox News declined to comment. In a statement, Newsmax spokesman Bill Daddi said the network does not see allegations against the gold IRA companies as “a cause to block them from advertising.” Daddi compared them to some major financial firms that have been sued by customers or regulators, and whose ads continue to be accepted by mainstream outlets. For example, Wells Fargo paid $3 billion in 2020 to settle potential charges related to opening fake accounts in customers’ names.

In a statement, Lear Capital spokesperson Tracy Williams defended the company’s operations, saying most of Lear’s customers would have made a profit if they had sold at a recent market high. Williams said that White, the New York retiree, had acknowledged the company’s fee in a recorded call.

Last year, Lear settled New York’s 2021 lawsuit involving White without admitting wrongdoing. However, the company agreed to repay some customers and to disclose its fees more clearly. Lear now gives customers 24 hours to pull out of purchases, Williams said, putting the company at the “vanguard of disclosure … within its industry.”

Lear declined to say how much it spends to advertise on Fox News, but Williams said the network is not Lear’s primary source of customers. Nor is Lear likely to make up a significant share of Fox’s total ad revenue, which exceeds $1 billion a year, according to securities filings.

Fox is a logical place for Lear to advertise because “purchasing physical assets appeals to persons who have concerns regarding … topics often discussed on that platform,” Williams said. She added: “U.S. monetary policy is inseparable from U.S. political dynamics and themes.”

For years, gold IRA industry advertising has echoed accusations against Democratic politicians commonly found in news segments on conservative outlets. The ads tout the coins as a safe haven from economic uncertainty and social upheaval.

Most of the coins are manufactured by the Royal Canadian Mint, which says they’re bullion, a kind of coin whose value is determined by the underlying metal. As such, they meet IRS rules for retirement investments.

Unlike most bullion coins, however, the gold IRA industry’s coins are typically exclusive to the companies who sell them, usually with markups far higher than those charged by mainstream coin retailers, regulators and coin experts say. Alex Reeves, a spokesman for the Royal Canadian Mint, said the mint has no control “over sales practices further down the chain of distribution.”

“They are priced like collectibles, but collectible coins aren’t typically sold in bulk,” said Everett Millman, a precious metals specialist at coin dealer Gainesville Coins. “If a customer spent the same amount of money on products that are more standard, like [Canadian] Silver Maple Leafs, they would end up with a lot more ounces per dollar.”

With the exclusive coins, Millman said, “They’re simply torching money.”

“No one in their right mind would pay the premiums that these guys are charging,” added Ken Lewis, CEO of online coin dealer Apmex, who reviewed several customer invoices at The Post’s request.

The ads explain none of that. Instead, they focus on news events, such as a spate of recent bank failures and “everything that’s happening in the economy right now … with all the talk of inflation,” Rotunda said.

For example, an email ad for Augusta, sent to a Newsmax mailing list last July, warned that “The Biden administration’s economic policies are ‘declaring war’ on retirement savers.” In December, American Hartford Gold Group sent an email ad with the subject line: “Bill O’Reilly Warns: Retirement Funds at Risk From a Biden Recession.” The email is signed by O’Reilly, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Another ad for Hartford sent to the Newsmax mailing list in March warned of “Biden and Yellen’s Secret Plan to Steal your Hard-Earned Money and Bail Out Their Wall Street Buddies.”

Trump rallies are particularly big events for Hartford. On July 1, Newsmax aired a live broadcast of a Trump speech in Pickens, S.C., on a split screen with an ad for Hartford, which also sends “Trump Rally Special” email ads via Newsmax.

Since October 2020, email newsletters distributed by Newsmax have included more than 1,100 ads for gold IRA companies – nearly a quarter of all Newsmax email ads reviewed by The Post. At $1,000 to $5,000 each, according to Augusta financial records from 2016 reviewed by The Post, the ads likely generate more than $1 million a year in revenue.

Daddi, the Newsmax spokesman, said gold IRA companies represent “a small percentage of the total advertisers on Newsmax across all platforms.”

Some conservative figures offer explicit endorsements. Giuliani has called Hartford “the experts I trust most” on his podcast “Common Sense.” The “Verdict with Ted Cruz” podcast has featured ads for Hartford for at least a year, and a recent segment touted Augusta, urging listeners “to protect your dollars … with a gold IRA.” Neither Giuliani nor Cruz responded to requests for comment.

Two media dealmakers who have been involved in negotiations between conservative media figures and the gold IRA industry said revenue from the companies can amount to as much as 10 percent of total earnings for some personalities. The dealmakers spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their business relationships; one said the biggest personalities stand to earn millions of dollars a year.

Hartford spokesman Steven Goldberg said it runs ads “where we believe it will create the most value.” Among the company’s chosen venues: a “prophetic” evangelical Christian email newsletter, two right-wing TV channels, and more than a dozen conservative radio shows and podcasts, including Giuliani’s and Cruz’s.

One of Hartford’s ads caught the attention of Ed DeSanto, 65, a semiretired Florida medical coder and an avid right-wing radio fan. He invested a $100,000 lump-sum payout from his pension in a Hartford IRA in 2019.

DeSanto said he doesn’t remember exactly where he heard the Hartford ad, but “if you listen to those radio shows, they play those commercials all the time.” He said he believed he was being careful: He picked Hartford because it scored well in a ranking of gold IRA companies he found online. (Such rankings often include disclosures noting that the authors are paid by the gold IRA companies.)

DeSanto’s $100,000 investment netted him just $53,000 worth of gold and silver, according to a Post analysis of his invoices – meaning the coins had been marked up 92 percent over the value of the metal. DeSanto blames himself.

“I did a little bit of research, but evidently not enough,” DeSanto said. “When I found the invoice, it was a big shock.”

In 2018 and 2019, another retiree, John Mathys of Illinois, claimed a Hartford salesman persuaded him to invest his $569,000 retirement savings by “bombarding him” with calls and emails for months, according to a federal lawsuit Mathys filed against Hartford in 2020. The lawsuit was sent to arbitration. Neither Mathys nor his lawyer responded to requests for comment.

Mathys, who was 83 at the time of the lawsuit, is one of three customers who sued Hartford in the past six years accusing the company of fraud. The other two lawsuits settled.

Hartford declined to comment on any of the cases. “We are fully transparent with our clients about the pricing of the products they purchase and the potential range of markup for those products,” Goldberg said in a statement, adding that the company operates “with a steadfast commitment to doing business legally and ethically.”

“We deny the allegation that we’ve misled or otherwise acted improperly,” Goldberg said.

In February and April, DeSanto sold back some of his gold coins to Hartford. Although gold prices had climbed an average of 32 percent since his 2019 purchase, he lost money on the sales, according to a Post analysis of his invoices.

The gold IRA industry’s ties to right-wing media date to the Great Recession, when the price of gold was rising rapidly and Fox commentator Glenn Beck was one of the most popular hosts on TV. Beck recorded ads for Goldline, a gold dealer that also offered IRAs, and interviewed its CEO on his show.

“We could be facing recession, depression or collapse. Nothing left!” Beck told viewers in 2009, urging them to rely on “God, Gold and Guns.” After segments promoting gold investments, Beck’s show would sometimes cut to commercials featuring gold sellers like Goldline, according to a 2010 congressional report.

The gold companies were loyal advertisers: After Beck claimed in 2009 that President Barack Obama was “racist” and had “a deep-seated hatred for White people or the White culture,” many big advertisers dropped his show. Gold sellers were among the few who stayed on, according to reporting at the time.

Goldline soon came under scrutiny, first in congressional hearings, then by Santa Monica, Calif., prosecutors, who charged the company with misdemeanor grand theft, elder theft and conspiracy in 2011. Though Goldline defended its business practices as fully transparent and never admitted wrongdoing, the company later agreed to pay up to $4.5 million to settle the charges.

Beck faded from prominence after departing Fox News in 2011 to start his own channel. He still endorses Goldline on the company’s website. Neither Beck nor Goldline executives responded to requests for comment.

The controversy sent Goldline employees scrambling for safer harbors. Some got jobs at Merit Financial, according to interviews and public records. Merit, whose offices were just a few blocks from Goldline’s in Santa Monica, also sold coins by phone and ran ads on Fox. (Merit’s former owner declined to comment publicly.)

In 2014, Santa Monica prosecutors accused Merit of “an aggressive, nationwide fraud scheme.” The company denied the allegations but went out of business and settled as the case approached trial.

Several Goldline and Merit salesmen then struck out on their own, founding many of the companies that exist today, according to staff lists and interviews with 21 current and former industry employees.

A former Merit salesman founded Augusta Precious Metals, which has been accused of defrauding its customers by Whitaker, its former CFO. Whitaker filed a whistleblower complaint to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which has not taken public action. Augusta has denied the allegations, and CEO Isaac Nuriani said in a statement that Whitaker “never had any visibility into Augusta’s business operations.”

Other former Goldline and Merit employees founded Metals.com, the founders said in depositions. That company recruited customers on Facebook, where it faked an endorsement from Fox News host Sean Hannity, a court filing by Georgia securities regulators alleged.

Facebook data reviewed by The Post shows that many Metals.com ads targeted people 59 or older. One 87-year-old customer received daily phone calls from a Metals.com broker who eventually flew to Alabama for a weekend to meet her, regulators alleged. She ultimately invested nearly $90,000, they said – most of which was lost.

The FBI raided Metals.com in 2020. A judge ordered the company shut down after 31 states and the CFTC filed suit, alleging a $185 million commodities fraud, as well as violations of rules about investment advice. Company founders have denied the allegations, saying their company “strived for transparency” and disclosed that it charged a premium. They have also said in court filings that they are under criminal investigation. Company executives did not respond to requests for comment submitted to their lawyer.

After Metals.com closed, some salesmen went to work at Safeguard Metals, according to one of the salesmen, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. In February 2022, the Securities and Exchange Commission, CFTC and 27 states sued that company, too. Safeguard recently settled the SEC’s case without admitting liability; the CFTC’s suit is still pending. Safeguard’s lawyers did not respond to a request for comment.

Lear Capital also hired several salesmen from Goldline’s ranks and bought Merit’s database of customers, according to court records and staff lists submitted to California regulators and obtained by The Post through public records requests. Williams, the Lear spokesperson, said “Merit’s liquidation was an opportunity to acquire a customer and prospect base to service and market to in the future” and that Lear performed background checks on everyone it hired.

Lear recently exited bankruptcy reorganization after resolving investigations from dozens of states. It remains in business.

Hartford’s CEO also worked at both Goldline and Merit before starting that company. Goldberg, the Hartford spokesman, declined to comment when asked whether the company was under investigation by state or federal regulators.

DeSanto said he has complained to both the Florida attorney general and the CFTC about his experience with Hartford. He said he spoke twice with CFTC investigators in 2020, but the agency has not taken public action.

In February, DeSanto also called Hartford to try to sell back his coins. He said he was flabbergasted to learn that the salesman who handled his purchase was still employed there. And he was shocked to find O’Reilly’s photo still featured on the company’s website.

“Everything is the same there,” DeSanto marveled. Of O’Reilly, he added: “I would think, for his reputation, he’d want to get away from a company like them.”

Kozlowska is a freelance writer based in New York. The Washington Post’s Sarah Ellison and Dan Morse contributed reporting. Raz Nakhlawi contributed research.

Florida’s insurance crisis isn’t about ‘woke.’ It’s about state leaders in a stupor

The Miami Herald – Opinion

Florida’s insurance crisis isn’t about ‘woke.’ It’s about state leaders in a stupor | Opinion

The Miami Herald Editorial Board – July 24, 2023

Upon Farmers Insurance’s announcement that it was pulling out of Florida, Jimmy Patronis, the state’s chief financial officer went right to the heart of the state’s continuing insurance crisis: “The more we learn about Farmers Insurance, the more it’s clear its leadership doesn’t know what they’re doing. While they’re bad at helping people, they’re good at virtue signaling.”

As reported in the Herald, Patronis criticized what he called Farmers’ “ ‘sustainable insurance’ and aligning investments with its social values, like avoiding investing in polluters or companies that sexually or racially discriminate against employees.” The concept is called environmental, social and governance investing — ESG, for short — a political target for Republicans lately.

Basically, Patronis blames Farmers for doing business while incorporating a “woke” ideology, the go-to scapegoat these days, the convenient and facile argument in Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Florida.

We beg to differ.

Whether Farmers Insurance rightly values the principles of ESG is irrelevant here. What’s important is that 100,000 policies in Florida — auto, property — are going belly up.

The wrong excuse

It’s not that the company might be woke; it’s that state lawmakers and the governor were asleep at the wheel as other insurance companies fled Florida long before Farmers.

It’s that lawmakers have been in a stupor as Floridians cried out for relief from soaring property insurance rates.

It’s that those same elected leaders were single-minded zombies who protected insurance companies, not homeowners, during two special sessions.

And yet these are the same legislators who were filled with boundless energy when it came to carrying out Gov. DeSantis’ culture wars in his now-lackluster drive toward to the White House.

Now Patronis, not to be left out, is skirmishing with Farmers. When the Editorial Board asked his office what specifically the insurance company had done in the offending area of ESG, Deputy Chief Financial Officer Frank Collins III doubled down: “While Farmers Insurance is keeping their commitment to the United Nations, they’re dumping 100,000 Florida policyholders; too bad their affection for ESG standards couldn’t stop these Floridians from being dropped.”

Know what else is too bad? That this is Patronis’ politically lame attempt to distract Floridians from the fact that 13 companies have gone insolvent in Florida. Others have stopped writing policies in the state, sending property owners’ premiums soaring into the stratosphere and leaving Citizens as the insurer of last resort for so many property owners. Tim Cerio, Citizens president and CEO, has predicted that the number of policies to reach 1.5 million by the end of the year.

Launch a probe?

And while he was denigrating Farmers, Patronis added he planned to look into complaints against the company, which could trigger a market investigation and — perhaps — fines and fees. This, of course, sounds like a retaliatory move in the same vein as our thin-skinned governor’s costly fight against Disney.

If there truly is something for Patronis to investigate, why did he wait until now to actually do his job? As CFO, the state’s so-called “business manager,” he oversees insurance and consumer services, responding to Floridians on finance-related queries, especially complaints about insurance fraud and related matters.

Interestingly, he found the time this month to tout the launch a new online site: “This morning, we deployed the Florida IRS Transparency Portal where Floridians can submit complaints about individual IRS agents,” Patronis announced on July 13. “We will take this information to look for patterns on how the IRS is targeting Floridians, which will help us craft laws to protect our businesses. We also want to provide the public with a tool where they can report harassment by the IRS.”

His curious use of the militaristic word “deploy” aside, we, too, don’t believe individuals and entities should be targeted by the IRS, especially for their political beliefs, and hope that Floridians across the political spectrum will have equal access to his concern.

But while Patronis is protecting Floridians from the tax collector, he’s among the many state leaders who have left us exposed and vulnerable to the state’s insurance crisis.

“Woke” isn’t the problem; willful neglect is.

No stupid history, no crime scene kitties

Chicago Suntimes

No stupid history, no crime scene kitties

Resisting the urge to find small positives in the generally horrible.

By Neil Steinberg – July 23, 2023

A cat sits on the sidewalk and watches as Chicago Police investigate inside an apartment in the 7700 block of South Carpenter Street after an officer shot and killed a man while answering a call of a domestic disturbance in the Gresham building on the South Side, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021. — A cat watches as Chicago police investigate inside an apartment in the 7700 block of South Carpenter Street after an officer shot and killed a man while answering a call of a domestic disturbance in the Gresham building on the South Side, Monday, Oct. 4, 2021.

What is it about stupid people anyway?

You can believe the most god-awful nonsense — factually incorrect, self-flattering, steaming kettles of BS — and parade that stupidity around to the delight of your fellow idiots, cheering and high-fiving one another at big rallies, celebrations of toxic dumbness.

Yet let somebody point it out, let them cough into their fist and mutter, “You’re stupid,” and suddenly the stupid fall to the ground, clutching themselves, declaring their injury to heaven.

It’s so … for want of a better word … stupid. How can some people get upset if you call themstupid when they’re perfectly happy being stupid? It’s a mystery.

Say your house were on fire — a situation even more dire than being stupid. And I say, “Your house is on fire,” causing you to collapse in a heap and declare yourself insulted, insisting that your house — obviously ablaze before us, thick black smoke pulsing out of the windows — is fine and how dare I suggest otherwise? Rude!

Who does that? Stupid people, I suppose.

I haven’t written much about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, honestly, because I still suspect he’s some kind of a sham — a performance art piece perhaps — designed to make Donald Trump look good, between his daft war on Disney and his imbecilic assault on history.

Maybe you haven’t heard. In its constant quest to make white people feel better, the state of Florida’s No. 1 priority, apparently, is downplaying race when teaching American history.

Florida’s new curriculum, unsatisfied with presenting racism as a dusty relic of the 19th century, is taking the next step and redefining America’s original sin, slavery, as something akin to high school shop class.

“Slaves developed skills, which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit,” the curriculum notes.

Now, it is one thing to suggest that historic wrongs can have positive consequences. Polish anti-Semitism a hundred years ago was bad, but it drove my grandfather to Cleveland before the real butchery began. Which was good. For him.

But to focus on that scrap of positivity while denying the bulk of the horror is just … stupid. It’s like celebrating that Anne Frank got a best-selling book out of hiding from the Nazis while ignoring that she died in Bergen-Belsen.

Yet there was DeSantis on Friday, doubling down — the go-to move for the stupid since they can’t reevaluate — and supporting the new curriculum.

“They’re probably going to show that some of the folks that eventually parlayed, you know, being a blacksmith into doing things later in life,” DeSantis said.

And they give out free pudding in the Burn Center at Loyola. But were I to tuck a line in a burn story — “Burn patients enjoy free pudding, to their personal benefit, since pudding is delicious” — my editor would ask me to rethink that.

Then again, I’m a professional communicator and snug among — I hope — the non-stupid. We consider our audience.

Let me end with a true story. A photographer mentioned what she calls “crime scene kitties.” Her job takes her to crime scenes, where cats often appear. We got into a discussion of why the kitties are there — drawn by commotion? The cats I know would flee instead. Maybe cats are everywhere but, when standing around crime scenes for hours, she notices them.

“That could be a story!” I said.

Then I did a trick the stupid seldom attempt: I thought about it. I don’t write a lot of crime stories. To swoop into a tragic problem plaguing Chicago — people being murdered — and focus on the cats that wander over, there’s something grotesque about that. Something trivial. Something insulting, to victims and families. I did that empathy thing liberals are so good at, considering people other than myself, and reluctantly concluded: no crime scene kitties story.

That’s why Ron DeSantis should never be president. Because his campaign strategy — appeal to people threatened by anyone not exactly like themselves, people who can’t recognize the racism both in America’s past and in their own hearts right this flippin’ second — is stupid, if effective. We don’t want that guy. As if to underscore the difference, on Saturday the White House announced the creation of national monuments to Emmett Till. Till’s story is jarring and terrible — that photo of him in the casket. And essential and true and American. How could you ponder a history that didn’t include it?

Stupid.

Trump’s GOP rivals open door to cutting Social Security for younger people

The Washington Post

Trump’s GOP rivals open door to cutting Social Security for younger people

Jeff Stein, The Washington Post – July 22, 2023

Vice President Mike Pence, right, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis take questions during a Florida Coronavirus Response Meeting, at the West Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Feb. 28, 2020, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Terry Renna) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Three of Donald Trump’s rivals for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination are pushing for cuts to Social Security benefits that would only affect younger Americans, as the party’s leaders grapple with the explosive politics of the retirement program.

In comments on Sunday as well as in interviews earlier this year, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Social Security will need to be revamped – but not for people who are near or in retirement.

Former vice president Mike Pence and former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley have taken similar positions since launching their presidential campaigns. From the earliest days of his 2016 run, Trump has vowed not to touch either Social Security or Medicare – a break from GOP orthodoxy that has shifted the party’s views – and has more recently hammered DeSantis for wanting to cut the program.

“When people say that we’re going to somehow cut seniors, that is totally not true,” DeSantis said on Fox News. “Talking about making changes for people in their 30s and their 40s so the program’s viable – that’s a much different thing, and something I think there’s going to need to be discussion on.”

On Monday, Pence told Fox Business: “I’m glad to see another candidate in this primary has been willing to step up and talk about that.”

The positions the three Trump rivals are taking suggest that even the fiscally conservative candidates in the GOP presidential primary are reluctant to endorse cutting Social Security for seniors, highlighting just how much the party has shifted on the issue. Former House speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the party’s 2012 vice-presidential candidate, had led the party in championing budget blueprints that would have entailed significant cuts to both Social Security and Medicare.

As the Republican Party becomes increasingly reliant on older voters for support and as Trump continues to exert heavy influence over the party’s beliefs, GOP policymakers have followed the former president’s lead in steering clear of proposals to cut the program, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) ruling that out in debt ceiling negotiations earlier this year with the White House.

But concentrating potential cuts on the young, as the Trump challengers have proposed, has its downsides as well. The candidates’ posture risks alienating young voters who have already become increasingly alienated from the Republican Party. And cutting benefits for younger people leaves the bulk of the problem unresolved, experts say, given that the Social Security funding crisis is projected to arrive decades before millennials receive their first checks.

“It clearly would not address the shortfall, or the short- to medium-term problem we’re going to have in 10 years or less,” said Howard Gleckman, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

Economists of both parties agree that Social Security and Medicare, the health insurance program for the elderly, face funding crises if Congress does not act to shore up their finances somehow, either by reducing benefits or raising taxes. If no reforms are enacted, Social Security benefits for an estimated 60 million people will be cut by 20 percent starting in 2033, according to the most recent report of the Boards of Trustees of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. Medicare also faces automatic benefit cuts as soon as 2031, the report says.

President Biden has proposed increasing taxes on the rich and businesses to prevent Medicare from running out of funds. But the latest White House budget does not propose a solution for extending Social Security. Numerous congressional Democrats have called for trillions in new taxes to avoid the Social Security shortfall, as well.

Policy experts have long said it will probably take a mixture of reduced spending and higher taxes to address the looming funding shortage facing Social Security and Medicare. Social Security’s old age and survivors insurance trust fund is expected to only be able to pay 77 percent of benefits in 2033, which would probably lead to automatic reductions in payments. People in their forties are still more than two decades away from receiving Social Security benefits.

The comments from DeSantis and Pence suggest that some Republicans have “not updated their talking points from the 1990s,” said Brian Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a libertarian-leaning think tank. Thirty years ago, Riedl said, it would have been possible to argue for resolving the funding shortfall only by limiting benefits for future recipients. But given that the enormous baby boomer generation is now at retirement age, exempting them from cuts would still leave the program in crisis.

“I get the politics of not wanting to lead with, ‘We will cut seniors,'” Riedl said. “But it might be better to say nothing than to offer an unpopular approach that doesn’t even avoid a debt crisis because it would be implemented far too late.”

DeSantis’s message will probably soon be tested. Trump has released video messages tying DeSantis to House Republicans who wanted to cut Social Security and for pushing to raise the retirement age when the Florida governor served in Congress, although Trump has also expressed support in the past for raising the retirement age.

“Donald Trump ruled Social Security and other benefits out of bounds politically” for Republican politicians, said Bill Galston, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank. “But there are still Republicans, including some leading Republicans, who understand we won’t make serious progress on our fiscal problems until everything’s on the table. They’re trying to open that discussion, without it immediately being shut down.”

Poll: Trump voters say racism against white Americans is a bigger problem than racism against Black Americans

Yahoo! News

Poll: Trump voters say racism against white Americans is a bigger problem than racism against Black Americans

The polling follows the dismissal of a lawsuit put forth by the survivors of the Tulsa Race Massacre, which many saw as a potential blueprint for reparation efforts.

Marquise Francis and Andrew Romano – July 21, 2023

Supporters of former President Donald Trump — Trump supporters at a campaign event in Pickens, S.C., July 1. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

As public support for reparations for African Americans remains stubbornly low, a new Yahoo News/YouGov poll reveals one major roadblock: Donald Trump voters believe that racism against white Americans has become a bigger problem than racism against Black Americans.

The survey of 1,638 U.S. adults, which was conducted from July 13-17, shows that among 2020 Trump voters, 62% say that racism against Black Americans is a problem today — while 73% say that racism against white Americans is a problem.

Asked how much of a problem racism currently is, just 19% of Trump voters describe racism against Black Americans as a “big problem.” Twice as many (37%) say racism against white Americans is a big problem.

Trump voters and self-identified Republicans — overlapping but not identical cohorts — are the only demographic groups identified by Yahoo News and YouGov who are more likely to say racism against white Americans is a problem than to say the same about racism against Black Americans. A majority (51%) of white Americans, for instance, think racism against people who look like them is a problem — but overall, far more white Americans (72%) say racism against Black Americans is a problem.

A protest from earlier this year in Oakland, Calif., against the killing of Tyre Nichols by police in Memphis, Tenn. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

Politics, in other words, is the dividing line here — and political dynamics go a long way toward explaining why reparations for Black Americans continue to be so unpopular in the U.S.

The new Yahoo News/YouGov poll follows the dismissal earlier this month of a lawsuit put forth by the three remaining survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre seeking reparations for ongoing harm caused by the racist rampage that destroyed their once-thriving majority-Black community a century ago. The trio of survivors had sued under Oklahoma’s public nuisance law, claiming that the ripple effects of the massacre continue to affect the Greenwood community today.

Many supporters saw the Oklahoma suit as a potential blueprint for reparation efforts around the country. But the latest ruling, which dismissed the case with prejudice — meaning it cannot be filed again — is seen as a stinging setback. The survivors and their attorneys have promised to appeal.

Yet the reality is that even with qualifications, most U.S. adults oppose reparations for Black Americans. According to the Yahoo News/YouGov poll, just a quarter of them (24%) say Black Americans should receive “restitution or reparations from the government — not necessarily direct cash payments — as a result of inequities caused by racism and slavery,” while 56% say they should not.

Support is only marginally higher (29%) when respondents are asked specifically about reparations for “descendants of enslaved Black Americans” rather than all “Black Americans.” And even when questioned about reparations for the “three remaining survivors of the Tulsa race massacre” — that is, living people who were directly harmed by racial violence — less than half of Americans are in favor (45%). Most are either opposed (33%) or unsure (22%).

What happened in Tulsa?

The massacre at the center of the court case took place on May 31, 1921, when an angry white mob beat and killed hundreds of Black residents in Greenwood, which had earned the nickname “Black Wall Street” because of the success of its Black residents. Earlier that day, the Tulsa Tribune reported that a Black man had raped a white woman, although there were varying accounts of the incident. Confrontations between Black and white people broke out near the courthouse as the case was being heard.

Over the next two days, 35 city blocks went up in flames. There were widespread reports of looting and more than 1,250 homes burned; 300 people were killed and 800 others were injured as the white mobs outnumbered Black residents who were forced to retreat into the Greenwood district. Generations of Black progress were wiped out in less than 48 hours.

The aftermath of the Tulsa Race Massacre, during which mobs of white residents attacked Black residents and businesses of the Greenwood District in Tulsa, Okla., June 1921. (Bettmann Archive/Getty Images)

Property claims documenting $1.8 million worth of damage, the equivalent of about $27 million today, were deemed obsolete, according to a 2001 state commission report. With most insurance paperwork and bank documents lost in the riot, almost all Greenwood residents had no restitution for their homes or businesses, and couldn’t retrieve their funds from the banks.

The chief motive for the attack, experts say, was white resentment over Black advancement. But it’s translated into little restitution for what was lost.

The big political hurdle

To be clear, reparations for Black Americans are not particularly popular across the political spectrum. Republicans are opposed 84% to 8%; Independents are opposed 62% to 8%. Democrats favor reparations by a 21-point margin (49% to 28%) — but even that’s not majority support, and much of it is attributable to overwhelmingly pro-reparations sentiment (69% to 11%) among Black Americans themselves, who tend to identify as Democrats.

Among white Americans, meanwhile, just 17% say yes to reparations; 66% say no.

Still, the major outliers when it comes to race are on the right-wing. When asked how big a problem racism against Black Americans was in the past, Biden and Trump voters basically agree, with 93% of the former and 85% of the latter agreeing that it was a problem.

Former President Donald Trump at a rally in Carson City, Nev. — Trump at a rally in Carson City, Nev., on Oct. 18, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

The disagreement is over whether it’s still a problem today — or rather, as Trump voters seem to believe, whether it’s less of a problem than racism against white Americans, which reparations, in their view, would only exacerbate. When Trump voters are asked why Black Americans shouldn’t receive reparations, the top answer isn’t that “racism never held Black Americans back” (13%); it’s that “racism is no longer holding Black Americans back” (62%). Reparations, they say, would only “increase racial divisions” (57%) because “other Americans have [also] faced inequities because of racism” (60%).

Similarly, Trump voters are the only group (other than Republicans at large) who are more likely than not to say there isn’t any “problem with systemic racism in America” (61%) and to disagree with the idea that “racism is not merely the product of individual bias or prejudice, but also something embedded in legal systems and policies” (55%) — issues that reparations are intended to ameliorate.

A pathway for reparations

Tatishe Nteta, a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and director of the UMass Poll, who’s been surveying how Americans feel about reparations for two years, acknowledges the low popularity of reparations, but notes it’s bigger than public opinion.

“Reparations policy is not necessarily about public opinion,” Nteta told Yahoo News. “It’s about the recognition by a private institution, individuals or governments. It’s about atoning for the mistreatment directed at a particular group.”

Vernon AME Church pastor Robert Turner — Pastor Robert Turner after leading a protest on reparations in Tulsa, Nov. 18, 2020. (Joshua Lott/Washington Post via Getty Images)

Pointing to success at the local level in passing reparations initiatives and programs in progressive cities and towns like Evanston, Ill., Amherst, Mass. and Detroit, Nteta says that any racial and economic redress in those cities could create a domino effect, which could convince other more moderate cities and states to consider.

“If reparations achieves the goal of creating some level of racial equality, and the recipients of reparations are also happy with the atonement by whatever the institution is, then you could use this as a model going forward. You could find more moderate cities or moderate states passing reparations programs once you’ve seen the success in these smaller localities.”

____________

The Yahoo News survey was conducted by YouGov using a nationally representative sample of 1,638 U.S. adults interviewed online from July 13-17, 2023. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification and current voter registration status. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given prior to March 15, 2022, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (32% Democratic, 27% Republican). Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of all U.S. adults. The margin of error is approximately 2.7%.

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill Goes Scorched Earth On ‘Little, Lily-Livered’ Republicans

HuffPost

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill Goes Scorched Earth On ‘Little, Lily-Livered’ Republicans

Lee Moran – July 21, 2023

Former Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) on Thursday ripped the Republican Party for what it’s become in the Donald Trump era.

McCaskill, now a political analyst for MSNBC, recalled on the “Morning Joe” show how GOP leaders in 2012 “rejected” her then-Republican challenger, the late Rep. Todd Akin (R-Mo.), for his comments on “legitimate rape.”

But 11 years later, with the party in thrall to Trump, McCaskill explained how it’s a different story, as even top Republicans continue to defend the former president amid his mounting legal woes and reported imminent indictment in the special counsel probe into the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“The main difference here is not the conduct of the candidate, it is the reaction of the leaders of his party,” McCaskill said, noting how Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) all condemned Trump in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection.

“But then they got scared,” she said. “They just became little, lily-livered cowards and were too afraid that, somehow, they couldn’t hold on to their precious office or their precious power if they stated the obvious.”

“So, it is not so much what Donald Trump has done,” McCaskill added. “It’s the rest of the Republican Party who has elevated him and kept him elevated that has brought this upon America.

DeSantis would have been a slaveholder? Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People

Daily Beast

Florida Schools Will Teach How Slavery Brought ‘Personal Benefit’ to Black People

Allison Quinn – July 20, 2023

Orlando Sentinel/Tribune News Service via Getty

Middle school students in Florida will soon be taught that slavery gave Black people a “personal benefit” because they “developed skills.”

After the Florida Board of Education approved new standards for African American history on Wednesday, high school students will be taught an equally distorted message: that a deadly white mob attack against Black residents of Ocoee, Florida, in 1920 included “acts of violence perpetrated against and by African Americans.”

Dozens of Black residents were killed in the massacre, which was perpetrated to stop them from voting.

According to members of the board, that distorted portrayal of the racist massacre is factually accurate. MaryLynn Magar, a member of the board appointed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, said at the board’s meeting in Orlando on Wednesday that “everything is there” in the new history standards and “the darkest parts of our history are addressed,” the Tallahassee Democrat reported.

The majority of the speakers who provided public testimony on the planned curriculum were vehemently opposed to it, warning that crucial context is omitted, atrocities are glossed over, and in some cases students will be taught to “blame the victim.”

Ron DeSantis Takes Aim at Department of Education in New Lawsuit

“I am very concerned by these standards, especially some of the notion that enslaved people benefited from being enslaved,” state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando) said, per Action News Jax.

“When I see the standards, I’m very concerned,” state Sen. Geraldine Thompson said at the board meeting. “If I were still a professor, I would do what I did very infrequently; I’d have to give this a grade of ‘I’ for incomplete. It recognizes that we have made an effort, we’ve taken a step. However, this history needs to be comprehensive. It needs to be authentic, and it needs additional work.”

“When you look at the history currently, it suggests that the [Ocoee] massacre was sparked by violence from African Americans. That’s blaming the victim,” the Democrat warned.

“Please table this rule and revise it to make sure that my history, our history, is being told factually and completely, and please do not, for the love of God, tell kids that slavery was beneficial because I guarantee you it most certainly was not,” community member Kevin Parker said.

Approval of the new standards is a win for the DeSantis administration, which has effectively sought to create a new educational agenda that shields white students from feeling any sense of guilt for wrongs perpetrated against people of color. The Florida governor signed the “Stop WOKE Act” last year to do just that, restricting how issues of race are taught in public schools and workplaces.

In keeping with the administration’s crusade against “wokeness,” Education Commissioner Manny Diaz defended the new standards against criticism, saying, “This is an in-depth, deep dive into African American history, which is clearly American history as Governor DeSantis has said, and what Florida has done is expand it,” Action News Jax reported.

Paul Burns, the Florida Department of Education’s chancellor of K-12 public schools, also insisted the new standards provide an exhaustive representation of African American history.

“Our standards are factual, objective standards that really teach the good, the bad and the ugly,” he was quoted as saying Wednesday by Florida Phoenix. He denied the new standards portray slavery as beneficial.

Although education officials say teachers are meant to expand upon the new curriculum in the classroom, critics say teachers are unlikely to do that for fear of being singled out and possibly punished for being too “woke.”

The Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union, called the new standards “a big step backward for a state that has required teaching African American history since 1994” in a statement after Wednesday’s vote.

Derrick Johnson, president and CEO of the NAACP, also condemned the new curriculum, saying in a statement: “Our children deserve nothing less than truth, justice, and the equity our ancestors shed blood, sweat, and tears for.”

“Today’s actions by the Florida state government are an attempt to bring our country back to a 19th century America where Black life was not valued, nor our rights protected. It is imperative that we understand that the horrors of slavery and Jim Crow were a violation of human rights and represent the darkest period in American history. We refuse to go back,” he said.

Texas’ Harsh New Border Tactics Are Injuring Migrants

The New York Times

Texas’ Harsh New Border Tactics Are Injuring Migrants

Edgar Sandoval, Jay Root and J. David Goodman – July 20, 2023

Texas law enforcement officers stand near concertina wire on the bank of the Rio Grande river in Eagle Pass, Texas on July 19, 2023. (Go Nakamura/The New York Times)

For more than two years, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas has pursued an increasingly aggressive approach to the border, sending thousands of National Guard troops and police officers to patrol the Rio Grande and testing the legal limits of state action on immigration.

But in recent weeks, Texas law enforcement officials have taken those tactics much further, embarking on what the state has called a “hold-the-line” operation, according to interviews with state officials and documents reviewed by The New York Times. They have fortified the riverbanks with additional concertina wire, denied water to some migrants, shouted at others to return to Mexico and, in some cases, deliberately failed to alert federal Border Patrol agents who might assist arriving groups in coming ashore and making asylum claims, the review found.

The increasingly brutal, go-it-alone approach has alarmed people inside the U.S. Border Patrol and the Texas Department of Public Safety, the agency chiefly responsible for pursuing the governor’s border policies. Several Texas officers have lodged internal complaints and voiced opposition.

The reality of those tactics in one area of the border, around the small city of Eagle Pass, was detailed in an email by one state police medic, who described exhausted migrants being cut up by razor wire, a teenager breaking his leg to escape the barriers and officers being directed to withhold water from migrants struggling in the perilous heat. The actions described in the email drew broad condemnation from Texas Democrats in Congress and from the White House after the email was reported by the Houston Chronicle.

“If they are true, it is abhorrent. It is despicable. It is dangerous,” said White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, referring to the reports. “We’re talking about the bedrock values of who we are as a country.” The Justice Department said Wednesday that it was assessing the situation.

But the objections within the Texas Department of Public Safety extended far beyond a single medic: At least three other officers working around Eagle Pass, a main arrival point for migrants who are crossing illegally, have expressed their outrage and misgivings to higher-ups about the actions they have seen, according to internal correspondence and interviews with state officials briefed on the border response.

And it was not only officers describing the harshness of the new tactics. In several interviews with the Times in Eagle Pass, about two hours southwest of San Antonio, migrants nursing wounds said they had encountered phalanxes of law enforcement officers along banks of the United States that were newly bristling with barbed wire, some of it underwater.

“They kept yelling at us, ‘Go back, go back!’” said Reyna Gloria Dominguez, 42, who arrived in Eagle Pass from Honduras in a wheelchair. “We said, ‘We can’t.’ My son told them, ‘She needs help. She’s hurt.’”

Similar scenes have been playing out elsewhere along the border, including in the Texas city of Brownsville, near the mouth of the Rio Grande, where state police officers have been standing guard at crossing points behind two layers of concertina wire.

The increasing aggressiveness has created international tension with Mexico because, in addition to placing concertina wire, Texas also deployed a 1,000-foot floating barrier of buoys into the Rio Grande in Eagle Pass this month. Mexican officials have said the barrier may have violated international treaties and could encroach on Mexican territory.

Texas officials have blamed the Biden administration for allowing a chaotic situation on the border. They said the buoy barrier and concertina wire were designed to deter people from risking a dangerous swim across the Rio Grande and direct them to safe, official border-crossing stations.

“No orders or directions have been given under Operation Lone Star that would compromise the lives of those attempting to cross the border illegally,” Abbott said in a joint statement with top officials from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department, using the name of the state operation.

The new Texas tactics have frayed relations between state and federal law enforcement agencies that have long worked together to monitor the border.

In a memo to the Texas DPS last month, Border Patrol officials in the Eagle Pass area raised concern that the concertina wire placed along the water by Texas officials was creating new hazards for migrants as well as for federal border agents.

At the same time, state police supervisors have been directed by their own superiors not to alert Border Patrol when encountering groups of migrants, but rather to handle the situation themselves, according to a departmental text message addressed to sergeants, obtained by the Times.

“Can you please push out a message to your troopers,” the text read, referring to those stationed in a city-owned park by the international bridge in Eagle Pass. “They are NOT to call BP when they see a group approaching or already on the bank.” Officers were instead directed to make arrests for criminal trespassing, an element of Operation Lone Star.

The text message, which was sent last week and has not been previously reported, also directed officers to tell migrants to “go back to Mexico” and to cross the border at one of the international bridges.

Many of the migrants who arrived in Eagle Pass after passing through the treacherous new gantlet were left shaken, and some were injured.

Gleyders Durant, 27, a migrant from Venezuela, peeled off bandages on his right foot to reveal several wounds. He said that as he crossed the river on Friday and stepped onto U.S. soil — his 3-year-old son on his shoulders and his wife following them — he felt a sharp pain. Blood gushed through one of his tennis shoes.

“That’s when I realized that I had stepped on a stretch of wire hidden under dark waters,” he said. Panicked, he extended his arms and carried his wife over it. “It was hidden, under the water.”

Nearby, in a respite center in Eagle Pass, another migrant from Venezuela, Marjorie Escobar, 32, described a harrowing encounter Saturday between her group of about 20 people, including children as young as 4, and several law enforcement agents in Texas.

As some in her group threw inflatables and blankets over the concertina wire to avoid injury, she said, the agents began yelling, “Go back to Mexico!” and “If you cross, we are going to arrest and charge you.”

Then, she said, an agent wearing a brown uniform and a cowboy hat who appeared to be a Texas state trooper roughly pulled a blanket off the barrier as people were climbing over it. The abrupt maneuver caused a young woman to hit her face on a spike, leaving a gash on her forehead, Escobar recalled. She said several of the agents stood still for several minutes, until an officer wearing what looked like a soldier’s uniform offered help to the wounded woman.

State officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the incident.

“I was still in the river, about to jump over, when I saw what that agent did and was horrified,” she said of the officer in the cowboy hat. “She was crying, saying, ‘Help me, help me.’”

Because of the increased number of migrants being taken to the lone hospital in Eagle Pass, residents have often been waiting up to eight hours to receive medical care, said Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr. “I support legal migration and orderly law enforcement,” he said in an interview Wednesday. “What I am against is the use of tactics that hurt people.”

The tactics by Texas appear to have intensified in the lead-up to the lifting in late May of Title 42, a public health policy imposed during the coronavirus pandemic that allowed federal agents to rapidly expel most arriving migrants.

The Department of Public Safety has defended its approach and said officers were providing assistance to migrants in medical distress. “There is not a directive or policy that instructs troopers to withhold water from migrants or push them back into the river,” an agency spokesperson, Travis Considine, said.

At the same time, Considine said, officers, who have been directed to keep migrants from entering and to instruct them to return to Mexico, are given some discretion in how they carry out those orders.

“If there are women and children who are asking for water, they’re getting water,” he said. “A group of 30 adult males comes, and they’re begging for water. I’m not going to say there are not troopers saying, ‘We’re not going to give you water.’” He said that if the migrants did not seem to be in distress, troopers might tell them to go get water in Mexico.

The four officers who raised concerns said there were explicit orders to deny water to migrants and to tell them to go back to Mexico. Three said they had been told by supervisors that troopers were not to inform the Border Patrol when migrants were in the water or at the Texas riverbank.

One of the officers, Trooper Nicholas Wingate, was a medic. In an email to supervisors July 3, he said numerous migrants, including a pregnant woman, had gotten tangled in the razor wire. He said the woman, 19, was “doubled over” and “in obvious pain, stuck in the casualty wire.” A 4-year-old girl who attempted to cross was “pressed back by Texas Guard soldiers due to orders given to them,” he wrote in the email.

With temperatures soaring past 100 degrees that day, the girl passed out and became “unresponsive,” Wingate wrote. She was taken away by emergency medical workers.

Wingate also described seeing a father with lacerations on his leg after extricating his child from what he called a “barrel trap,” a plastic barrel floating in the water with concertina wire surrounding it. “I believe we have stepped over the line into the inhumane,” he wrote.

Considine said the agency did not deploy “barrel traps.” But he said it was possible that a barrel that had been wrapped in concertina wire in one part of the river to hold it in place had floated away in rising waters, though he said that the agency had not confirmed that was the case.

On the question of coordinating with Border Patrol, Considine said officers did not alert Border Patrol when arresting migrants for criminal trespassing. He said the number of such arrests had increased recently in and around Eagle Pass.

But federal law entitles people who enter the United States, even unlawfully, to claim asylum by stating that they faced persecution in their home country.

It is not clear how many migrants have died while crossing the border in recent weeks.

The river is always treacherous, and four people, including an infant, drowned this month in the span of a few days. According to the sheriff’s office in Maverick County, which includes Eagle Pass, 26 migrants have drowned so far in 2023. There were 77 migrant drownings in the county in all of last year.

For some local officials, the hardened border was sending the wrong message.

“Seeing barbed wire on the bank of the river, it doesn’t look good for the USA,” said Sheriff Tom Schmerber of Maverick County. “We’re used to seeing all that in communist countries. Now we have them here in Texas.”

“It’s kind of like a black eye. And it’s not working anyway,” he added. “It’s not stopping the immigrants.”

Is America on the brink of tyranny? Trump’s plan if elected in 2024 should frighten us all.

USA Today – Opinion

Is America on the brink of tyranny? Trump’s plan if elected in 2024 should frighten us all.

Austin Sarat and Dennis Aftergut – July 20, 2023

The New York Times published an article Monday that’s bone-chilling for anyone who cherishes our freedom, democracy and constitutional governance. The story recounted, with full cooperation of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his plans to eliminate executive branch constraints on his power if he is elected president in 2024.

The obstacles to be eliminated include an independent Justice Department, independent leadership in administrative agencies and an independent civil service. Richard Neustadt, one of the country’s best known students of the American presidency, has said that in a constitutional democracy the chief executive “does not obtain results by giving orders – or not. … He does not get action without argument. Presidential power is the power to persuade.”

Trump’s plan would substitute loyalty to him for loyalty to the Constitution. This vision is simultaneously frightening and unsurprising. In 2019, he said, “I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.” And in December, Trump called for the “termination of … the Constitution.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks to campaign volunteers in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on July 18, 2023.

In effect, he attempted to do exactly that in the run-up to the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, by pressuring state officials to reverse President Joe Biden’s electoral victory, attempting to weaponize the Justice Department and bullying Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election.

Trump now may face federal charges for his role in fomenting the riot.

And while he was president, in addition to appointing subservient heads of executive departments, he took steps to increase his control over the regulatory authority of administrative agencies. To cite one example, in 2019, Trump forced climate change researchers in the Department of Agriculture to move from Washington, D.C., to Kansas City, Missouri, producing a huge exodus from federal employment.

In 2020, he attempted to undermine the independence of the civil service by issuing an executive order adopting “Schedule F.” It purported to vastly augment a president’s power to hire and fire federal officials by expanding the number of “political appointees” throughout government employment who were outside civil service protections.

Trump’s plan is to centralize power in Oval Office

The Times story outlined his 2025 road map to implement this command-and-control model of executive authority and centralization of power if he’s returned to the Oval Office. In effect, the article described how his team would replace our constitutional republic with an authoritarian state.

Such a state seeks to eliminate the independence of civil servants. Saying good things about bureaucracy may be unpopular, but federal employees’ competence, expert judgment and commitment to governance by law is essential to democratic government.

Will heat wave impact politics? Climate change isn’t a top issue for Democrats or Republicans. Record heat should change that.

One definition of an authoritarian state is that it is characterized by the consolidation of power in a single leader, “a controlling regime that justifies itself as a ‘necessary evil.'” That kind of control necessarily features “strict government-imposed constraints on social freedoms such as suppression of political opponents and anti-regime activity.”

Those characteristics describe the contours of the 2025 blueprint that the Trump campaign wanted the public to see via the Times’ report. As the story notes, they are setting the stage, if Trump is elected, “to claim a mandate” for the goal of centralizing power in him.

The Times quoted John McEntee, Trump’s 2020 White House director of personnel, defending the rejection of checks and balances on a president: “Our current executive branch was conceived of by liberals for the purpose of promulgating liberal policies. … What’s necessary is a complete system overhaul.”

Founders warned about danger of too much presidential power

In fact, the executive branch, like the two other branches, was devised by the framers of our Constitution, to limit power by dividing it. Even Alexander Hamilton, who defended energy in the executive branch, suggested that the path to tyranny was marked when government officials are “obliged to take refuge in the absolute power of a single man.”

James Madison joined Hamilton in warning in The Federalist 48 that “power is of an encroaching nature.” For that reason, The Federalist 51 states, “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

It described the paradox facing the framers as this: One must “enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

Trump’s 2025 blueprint would end governmental control on a president so he can dominate and control the governed.

The threat is real: Our nuclear weapons are much more powerful than Oppenheimer’s atomic bomb

Along with divided power, the central constraint that our founding documents create is the overarching legal institution known as the rule of law. That is why Trump’s plan for a radical reorganization of the executive branch starts with ending “the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence from White House political control.”

Controlling the prosecutorial power allows a president to use it to favor friends, destroy enemies and intimidate ordinary citizens tempted to speak out.

That would sound the death knell of American freedom. As John Locke, the 17th century political philosopher who inspired the authors of the Declaration of Independence, wrote, “Wherever law ends, tyranny begins.” Or as Blake Smith put it in an article in Foreign Policy last year, “The bureaucratic ethos is essential to the functioning of the state and the preservation of private life as a separate, unpolitical domain of tolerated freedom.”

At the close of America’s first decade as a constitutional republic, George Washington voluntarily chose not to seek a third term as president to avoid setting the country on the road to the tyranny of lifetime rule by a president. He understood from the revolution against a king that retaining the personal power of one person is the central goal of authoritarianism.

If voters elect Trump president in 2024, he will implement the plan his campaign has purposefully leaked. The outcome is easy to foretell. A bureaucracy purged of those loyal to the Constitution rather than to Trump will send free and fair elections to history’s landfill, along with the Bill of Rights and the freedoms they were designed to protect.

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell professor of jurisprudence and political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Dennis Aftergut, a former federal prosecutor, is counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.

Authoritarianism Expert Warns Why It’s Critical To Listen To Trump’s Words Right Now

HuffPost

Authoritarianism Expert Warns Why It’s Critical To Listen To Trump’s Words Right Now

Lee Moran – July 20, 2023

Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat warned on Wednesday that when Donald Trump talks about obliterating and then politicizing the civil service, and seizing control of every aspect of government if he wins the White House in 2024, he really means it.

“Nobody is ever prepared” for an authoritarian takeover of their country, Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University and author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” told MSNBC’s Ali Velshi.

“They think they are going to be the exception. They don’t listen to the warning signs until it’s too late,” she continued.

But Trump is actually “being very clear” with what he is saying, said Ben-Ghiat.

Last week, a New York Times article said Trump would seek to expand presidential authority “over every part of the federal government that now operates, by either law or tradition, with any measure of independence from political interference by the White House.”

Ben-Ghiat cautioned: “Authoritarians always tell you what they are going to do as a kind of challenge and as a warning, and people don’t listen until it’s too late.”

If Trump wins election again, he will “be finishing the job that he started, and by the way that’s not just destroying democracy internally,” she added. His other main aim was “to take America out of the realm of democratic internationalism and align it with autocracies. That will happen as well.”

Watch the interview here: