Adam Kinzinger Says 1 Trump Nominee Is The Most Concerning: ‘A Huge Problem’
Marco Margaritoff – January 7, 2025
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) shared some unvarnished thoughts Monday on the people President-elect Donald Trump has announced he plans to nominate to key positions in his upcoming administration — and said one of them in particular is most concerning for U.S. democracy.
Trump’s picks include MAGA loyalist Kash Patel to run the FBI, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as his secretary of defense and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (Hawaii) — a former Democrat who joined the Republican Party in 2024 — as leader of national intelligence.
When asked on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” whom he has the strongest opinion on, Kinzinger stated bluntly: “I mean, for the country, Kash Patel, because I think once you weaponize Justice or the FBI, that’s a huge problem. … There’s really no oversight.”
Patel served in the first Trump administration and, in his 2023 book “Government Gangsters: The Deep State, the Truth, and the Battle for Our Democracy,” ominously ranked Trump’s “deep state” enemies — and vowed at the time to “come after” them.
Kinzinger told Colbert that Hegseth is the second-most-troubling pick, as the Defense Department “is the largest corporation in the world.” Hegseth, a military veteran turned television pundit, defended the 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol on Fox News at the time.
“There’s people that put their lives on the line,” Kinzinger said Monday about the Defense Department, “and Pete served honorably in the military, but by the way, anywhere in D.C. there’s probably 50,000 people as or better qualified than Pete Hegseth to run the DOD.”
Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic and one of only 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach him over his role in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, shared similar thoughts on Gabbard — who previously criticized Trump as “corrupt” but has since joined the fold.
Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger named (from left) Kash Patel, Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard as his biggest concerns among President-elect Donald Trump’s administration picks. Left: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images; Center: J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press; Right: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
“I knew her,” Kinzinger told Colbert. “And I was friends with her up until the day she visited [Syrian President] Bashar al-Assad who, thank God, is out of power now, and did his dirty work.”
Forces for the recently deposed president were accused of using sarin gas to kill 1,400 people in 2013. Gabbard — who shared “Russian talking points” in support of Assad, Kinzinger noted — previously urged Congress not to endorse potential U.S. regime change operations in the country, alleging the U.S. was covertly “supporting” as much.
Kinzinger had only one word to share about former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), whom Trump had announced as his attorney general pick despite a federal investigation and a congressional ethics probe into allegations he had sexual relations with a minor. Gaetz immediately resigned from his congressional seat in anticipation of the role but later withdrew himself from consideration for the position when it appeared he would not have the support needed for confirmation.
When Colbert noted there was applause in the House chamber Friday as the acting House clerk announced Gaetz wouldn’t be taking his seat in the new Congress, Kinzinger said simply: “Fantastic.”
Democrats dial up pressure on Hegseth as confirmation battle nears
Missy Ryan and Abigail Hauslohner – January 7, 2025
The record of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s choice to lead the Pentagon, should disqualify him for such a pivotal national security role, a Democratic senator told the former Fox News personality in an expansive letter that illustrates the party’s breadth of concern with one of the president-elect’s most controversial Cabinet picks ahead of his confirmation hearing next week.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts), a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, outlined 10 areas of concern in her letter, posing more than 70 questions for Hegseth in what appears to be a preview of Democrats’ approach when they interrogate his qualifications, past conduct and beliefs. The letter highlights allegations of heavy drinking and sexual misconduct, remarks suggesting female military personnel should play a more limited role, his past skepticism about the need for U.S. troops to comply with laws of war, and accusations of financial mismanagement arising from the veterans’ organizations he once led.
Hegseth has vehemently denied claims of wrongdoing.
“I am deeply concerned by the many ways in which your behavior and rhetoric indicates that you are unfit to lead the Department of Defense,” Warren said in the letter. “Your confirmation as Secretary of Defense would be detrimental to our national security and disrespect a diverse array of service members who are willing to sacrifice for our country.”
The Trump transition team declined to comment on Warren’s letter. Hegseth is due to appear before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Jan. 14.
Spanning 33 pages, the missive resurfaces statements and alleged incidents reported by the news media in the weeks following Trump’s selection of the 44-year-old – a former Army National Guard member, Princeton University graduate and longtime Fox News host – to lead the Pentagon. Several news outlets have published reports scrutinizing Hegseth’s background, including revelations that he made derisive comments about Muslims and current military leaders, and an incident in which he was investigated, but not charged, in an alleged sexual assault.
Warren’s letter also coincides with growing concern among Democrats about the incoming Trump administration’s decision to spurn steps traditionally involved in the selection, vetting and approval process for high-level government officials.
Hegseth’s confirmation hearing will provide an early test of how congressional Republicans, in particular, intend to size up their preferences against those of their president. While Hegseth’s record has stirred doubts among some in the GOP, Trump has lobbied forcefully for his confirmation.
And while some Republicans have praised Hegseth – who wasn’t widely seen as a contender for high office until Trump announced his pick days after the election – others, including Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa) and Sen. Susan Collins (Maine), have not publicly declared how they will vote, though both said they had productive meetings with Hegseth last month. Ernst is a member of the Armed Services Committee and a sexual assault survivor. Collins is a prominent moderate within the GOP.
To proceed for a vote on the Senate floor, Hegseth must secure the support of a majority of the Republican-led Armed Services Committee. Committee Democrats are widely expected to oppose him.
If confirmed, Hegseth, who as a Fox News host successfully lobbied Trump for lenient treatment of service members convicted of war crimes, is expected to focus on cultural and personnel issues at the Pentagon, which he has said is insufficiently focused on combat and is dominated by “woke” generals.
In her letter, Warren told Hegseth to be ready to respond to questions, and she asked that he first reply in writing by Jan. 10. Separately, a group of Democratic senators, including Warren, Tim Kaine (Virginia), Tammy Duckworth (Illinois) and Kirsten Gillibrand (New York), sent a letter to Trump’s designated chief of staff last month focused on Hegseth’s record on women.
Critics have assailed Trump for tapping Hegseth before he completed key aspects of the vetting process, which for Senate-confirmed positions usually includes an FBI background check. While the FBI typically delivers the results of a nominee’s classified background check to the relevant oversight committee about a week ahead of a confirmation hearing, that hadn’t happened in Hegseth’s case as of Tuesday, said a Senate aide familiar with the process, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the vetting process.
Upon receiving the results of an FBI background check, the committee chair and ranking minority-party member – in this case, Sens. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) and Jack Reed (D-Rhode Island) – have the discretion to share it with other lawmakers, aides said. Senators in both parties, including some like Collins who do not sit on the committee, have expressed interest in seeing the FBI’s findings. It is unclear if Wicker and Reed will make the FBI report more widely available.
Senate aides also said Hegseth had declined to hold meetings with committee Democrats in the lead-up to next week’s hearing, a development they called a disturbing break with tradition. Reed, the committee’s top Democrat, is expected to meet with Hegseth later this week.
The aides said Hegseth, through intermediaries, offered Democrats opportunities to meet with him only after his confirmation hearing.
“It’s obviously really concerning, and very unusual to not be taking those meetings,” one Senate aide said. “It’s disrespectful to the process.”
A Trump transition official disputed that claim, saying Hegseth and his team reached out to nearly all Democratic committee members well before the end-of-year holidays but received no agreements to meet in December. The aide identified one Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman (Pennsylvania), who had met with Hegseth but is not a member of the Armed Services Committee.
“Despite a poor response rate and multiple communications attacking the nominee before these Senators have even met with him (and going outside standard hearing procedures to make these requests), Mr. Hegseth is doing his level best to meet with as many Democrat Senators as he can before and after his hearing,” the Trump transition official said via email.
So you can imagine my delight when my hero, President-elect Trump, gave a news conference Tuesday and strongly addressed those crucial subjects, along with other things that matter deeply to REAL AMERICANS like me, including shower water pressure and making Canada part of the United States.
I voted for Trump for 1 reason: American invasion of Greenland
President-elect Donald Trump makes remarks at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., on Jan. 7, 2025.
Refusing to rule out using the military to take control of Greenland, Trump, who I voted for because I knew he would keep us out of wars, said: “Well, we need Greenland for national security purposes. … People really don’t even know if Denmark has any legal right to it. But if they do, they should give it up.”
YES! I was predominantly a one-issue voter, and that issue was the exorbitant cost of seal meat. By threatening our ally Denmark and using military force if necessary, the Trump administration can proudly claim Greenland as a U.S. territory, dramatically lowering the cost of seal meat for American consumers like myself. That will allow me and my fellow MAGA supporters to affordably make Suaasat, a Greenlandic soup, AS IS OUR RIGHT AS AMERICANS!
Some voters were concerned about egg prices. TRUE PATRIOTS were concerned about seal-meat prices.
And Trump is on the case.
I am very worried about the name ‘Gulf of Mexico’
The soon-to-be president also announced a change that has been talked about for years in the rural diners I frequent with my fellow forgotten American men and women.
“We’re going to be changing the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America,” Trump said. “Gulf of America – what a beautiful name.”
President-elect Donald Trump announces the Gulf of Mexico will get a new name: the Gulf of America.
SO BEAUTIFUL! And also, so directly impactful on the quality of my day-to-day life.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to miss work because I was feeling down about having to give Mexico credit for that 218,0000-square-mile, semienclosed oceanic basin that I know was BUILT BY AMERICANS.
America for sure owns the Gulf of AMERICA, people!
As Trump said Tuesday: “We’re going to change, because we do most of the work there, and it’s ours.”
Finally, a president who hates windmills as much as I do
The greatest president in history, speaking from his Mar-a-Lago resort, went on to bless us with this: “We’re going to try and have a policy where no windmills are being built.”
Praise the Lord! I know some in the MAGA community are more concerned about the economy, immigration and making life terrible for transgender people, but many of us picked Trump again because we abso-freakin’-lutely despise windmills.
See Don Quixote’s La Mancha
They are distracting and can easily be mistaken for giants, leading innocent Americans to tilt at them like the late, great Don Quixote used to do. (Hopefully, Trump will also soon announce that Don Quixote will be renamed “Don America.”)
MAGA voters wanted a president unafraid of Big Shower
Trump also addressed America’s shower-water-pressure crisis, saying: “When you buy a faucet, no water comes out because they want to preserve, even in areas that have so much water you don’t know what to do, it’s called rain, it comes down from heaven. … No water comes out of the shower. It goes drip, drip, drip.”
Finally, we will have a president with the meteorological knowledge to identify that rain correctly comes from heaven. This is clearly the man best suited to handle America’s nuclear codes.
Sure, Canadians will welcome us taking control of their country
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Biden administration finalizes rule to strike medical debt from credit reports
Rob Wile – January 7, 2025
The Biden administration says people who previously had medical debt on their credit reports could see their credit scores rise by an average of 20 points.
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U.S. consumers will no longer have medical debt appear on their credit reports under a new rule the Biden administration finalized Tuesday.
The change, which administration officials had proposed over the summer and is set to take effect in March, means some $49 billion in medical bills will be struck from the credit reports of about 15 million Americans. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said lenders would also be prohibited from using medical information in their lending decisions.
“People who get sick shouldn’t have their financial future upended,” CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said in a statement. “The CFPB’s final rule will close a special carveout that has allowed debt collectors to abuse the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying medical bills they may not even owe.”
About 1 in 12 adults in the U.S. had medical debt as of 2021, according to an analysis by KFF, a nonprofit group that researches health policy issues. The CFPB determined that a medical bill on a person’s credit report was a poor predictor of whether they would repay a loan yet contributed to thousands of denied mortgage applications.
The agency expects the rule will lead to the approval of some 22,000 additional mortgages every year, and that Americans with medical debt on their credit reports could see their credit scores rise by an average of 20 points.
The three major U.S. credit bureaus already announced in 2023 that previously paid medical debts, or any medical debts under $500, would no longer appear on credit reports.
The move comes as Biden administration officials race to safeguard aspects of their work weeks before President-elect Donald Trump retakes office. The White House on Monday, for example, announced a ban on new offshore oil and gas drilling along most of the U.S. coastline. When it comes to consumer finance, advocates are preparing for an expected rollback of certain safeguards imposed in the last four years by the CFPB, a high-profile target of some GOP lawmakers and Trump allies including Elon Musk.
How removing unpaid medical bills from credit reports could help consumers
Cora Lewis – January 7, 2025
FILE – Medical bills are seen in Temple Hills, Md., on June 26, 2023. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Lenders will no longer be able to consider unpaid medical bills as a credit history factor when they evaluate potential borrowers in the U.S. for mortgages, car loans or business loans, according to a rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized Tuesday.
The three national credit reporting agencies — Experian, Equifax and TransUnion — said last year that they were removing medical collections under $500 from U.S. consumer credit reports. The government agency’s new rule goes further by banning all outstanding medical bills from appearing on credit reports and prohibiting lenders from using the information.
The rule is set to take effect 60 days after publication in the Federal Register, although President-elect Donald Trump has proposed sweeping changes and limits to the CFPB’s regulatory reach.
Here’s what to know:
How many people will this affect?
The CFPB estimates the rule will remove $49 million in medical debt from the credit reports of 15 million Americans. According to the agency, one in five Americans have at least one medical debt collection account on their credit reports, and over half of collection entries on credit reports are for medical debts.
The problem disproportionately affects people of color, the CFPB has found: 28% of Black people and 22% of Latino people in the U.S. carry medical debt versus 17% of white people. While the national credit reporting agencies voluntarily agreed to disregard medical debt below $500, many consumers have amounts much higher than this threshold on their reports.
What will the impact be for consumers?
The CFPB says its action will give millions of consumers increased access to loans and lead to the approval of approximately 22,000 additional mortgages a year. Americans with outstanding medical bills may see their credit scores rise by an average of 20 points, according to the bureau.
The rule was also drafted to increase privacy protections and to help keep debt collectors from using the credit reporting system to coerce people into paying bills they don’t owe. The CFPB has found that consumers frequently receive inaccurate bills or are asked to pay bills that should have been covered by insurance or financial assistance programs.
What’s more, lenders will be barred from using information about medical devices, such as prosthetic limbs, to make them serve as collateral for a loan and subject to repossession, according to the CFPB’s announcement.
How are advocates responding?
Nonprofits in the healthcare space are pleased.
“This decision is great news for everyday Americans,” said Carrie Joy Grimes, founder of personal finance organization WorkMoney. “Medical debt is not a reflection of being bad with money — any one of us can experience illness or injury. With this new rule, Americans will now be able to focus less on the strain of medical debt and more on getting back on their feet.”
Patricia Kelmar, health care campaigns director for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, said the rule would help “many financially responsible families who have accumulated medical debt from unpredictable health issues, high out-of-pocket costs, insurance claim denials and billing errors.”
What should you do after receiving an unexpectedly high medical bill?
First, determine whether you qualify for charity care. Federal law requires nonprofit hospitals to lower or write off bills for individuals depending on household income. To determine if you qualify, do an internet search for the hospital or health care provider along with the phrase “charity care” or “financial assistance policy.” The nonprofit organization Dollar For also provides a simplified online tool for patients.
Next, appeal under the provisions of the No Surprises Act, a federal law that says insurance companies must reasonably cover any out-of-network services related to emergency and some non-emergency medical care. If you’re being charged more than you’re used to or expect when you receive in-network services, that bill may be illegal.
Also: Always ask for an itemized bill. Medical billing is notoriously complicated and rife with errors. An itemized bill includes the billing codes of all care received. If something is off between these codes and the care provided, contesting your bill can yield changes.
Another approach — comparing the bill with insurance companies’ estimates of fair charges for services can also help. If the price you were charged is more than average, you may have your costs lowered. You could even take the provider to small claims court over the discrepancy – or let them know you have a case.
Finally, always compare your insurance company’s “explanation of benefits” to the bill. The hospital’s bill must match the explanation of costs that are covered and not covered. If it does not, you have another reason not to pay and to ask the provider to work with your insurance company further first.
Even after taking these steps, you can always appeal health claims with your insurance company if you believe there is any reason the bills should be covered entirely or more than the company initially decided. You may also contact your state insurance commissioner for support.
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This version has been corrected to show a consumer organization mentioned in the 13th paragraph is the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, not the U.S. Public Interest Resource Group.
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The Associated Press receives support from Charles Schwab Foundation for educational and explanatory reporting to improve financial literacy. The independent foundation is separate from Charles Schwab and Co. Inc. The AP is solely responsible for its journalism.
A Charlotte bankruptcy attorney says although that debt won’t show up on those reports anymore, he believes creditors will find a new way to make sure those debts are paid.
“So it is a really important thing,” explained Ruth Lande, vice president of Provider Relations at Undue Medical Debt. “Most people know that medical debt is not like other debts. It’s not the same kind of a debt of choice. And so to have those kinds of repercussions on a credit report affecting your ability to get housing or get a car or different things, that is really not what the credit system should be about.”
It’s a national nonprofit using donations to buy large bundles of unpaid medical bills to help Americans out of debt. Lande says clients say those debts stress customers — and deter them from seeking medical care.
Charlotte bankruptcy attorney Rashad Blossom.
“Patients want to pay their bills, and studies from Kaiser Family Foundation show that four-in-10 adults have these kinds of debts and that it’s affected their willingness to go and seek care or family members seeking care because they’re afraid of the cost. So, fear and anxiety and depression are really a big issue around medical debt.”
Charlotte bankruptcy attorney Rashad Blossom says more than 50 percent of his clients have unpaid medical debt. But, he says it may be too early to tell how much the new rule will really help.
“On one hand, the concern is, are creditors going to get aggressive in other areas, or will they start suing people?” Blossom said. “Will they start harassing them because that credit reporting debt collected tool has been taken away? So, it could be the case that drives more bankruptcies as creditors get more aggressive in other areas. On the other hand, it’s good for the consumer that this is not being reported because now, that’s one less concern about them being able to buy a home.”
The final rule is set to take effect in March – but that timeline could be delayed by legal challenges.
“So, the bottom line is it is just too early,” Blossom said. “We don’t know yet, but the concerns are there that it could be counterproductive.”
Jamie Dimon says the ‘Buffett Rule’ approach to taxing the wealthy could solve America’s debt problem
Filip De Mott – January 7, 2025
On PBS, Jamie Dimon described the Buffett Rule as a good idea for clamping down on US debt.
It says richer households shouldn’t pay taxes on a smaller share of income than middle-class ones.
He argued that if the US followed this, it could continue spending while still reducing debt.
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has put forth a solution to unrestrained US debt: Tax the rich at the same rate as middle-class people, or at a higher rate.
The bank executive told “PBS News Hour” in August that the country could clamp down on runaway borrowing without eliminating spending. Dimon said he expects that reducing the debt while still investing in the right initiatives is “doable.”
“I would spend the money that helps make it a better country, so some of this is infrastructure, earned-income tax credits, military,” he said. “I would have a competitive national tax system, and then I would maximize growth.”
Dimon added, “And then you’ll have a little bit of a deficit, and you would maybe just raise taxes a little bit — like the Warren Buffett type of rule, I would do that.”
This rule posits that no household making above $1 million a year should pay taxes on a lower share of their income than middle-class earners. It earned its name from the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who famously criticized the fact that his secretary paid a higher tax rate than he did.
Calls for wealthier Americans to pay higher taxes have grown louder in the past year as economists have searched for answers to the federal government’s skyrocketing debt.
Anxiety has grown as the government’s debt pile has ballooned to a record $35 trillion. The Congressional Budget Office has projected that it could make up 6% of US GDP by the end of this year, which would far outpace the 50-year average of 3.7%.
Otherwise, higher borrowing costs mean Washington will have less to spend on social initiatives. A recent report from the Peter G. Peterson Foundation pointed out that the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that by 2054, interest payments on the debt will triple Washington’s historical spending on research and development, infrastructure, and education.
Dimon has been among Wall Street’s most consistent voices to raise the alarm, frequently saying runaway borrowing will amplify inflation and interest-rate pressures through the coming decade.
Not everyone shares Dimon’s optimism that tax hikes alone can solve this problem. Though some commentators have pushed for tax-hike proposals that embrace all income levels, others have urged both Democrats and Republicans to consider spending cuts as well.
However, speaking with PBS, Dimon argued that the US should continue to spend money that helps maintain its economic strength and creates a more equitable income environment.
This article was originally published in August 2024.
Among the senators Kinzinger roasted was Trump ally and staunch defender Lindsey Graham. “Those who made this attack on our government need to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Graham said four years ago on X (formerly Twitter). “Their actions are repugnant to democracy.”
“I unambiguously condemn in the strongest possible terms any and all forms of violent protest,” Johnson said at the time. “Any individual who committed violence today should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
“Thanks @SpeakerJohnson,” Kinzinger said as he shared the four-year-old post.
Three police officers stand in front of the U.S. Capitol Building on Monday in Washington, D.C. ,Monday marks the fourth anniversary since rioters stormed the Capitol (Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
“These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable. While I am safe and sheltering in place, these protests are prohibiting us from doing our constitutional duty.” Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee wrote four years ago on X.
“I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. We are a nation of laws,” Blackburn added, to which Kinzinger reposted and said: “Thanks @MarshaBlackburn.”
He also shared a 2021 post from conservative radio host Erik Erikson that called for the protestors to be “shot” and to “deny [Trump] the ability to run for election again.”
Kinzinger lashed out at his former political allies and accused them of “cowardice.”
“Jan 6th is a reminder to me: cowardice spreads like wildfire,” he said in a follow up post on X. “This country needs leaders who are willing to tell the people the truth, not pander to lies.”
As Trump’s election is certified, Americans should declare war on stupidity
Rex Huppke – January 6, 2025
On the eve of Donald Trump’s election certification, the best thing sensible Americans who oppose him and the MAGA leadership can do is remember that stupidity should be embarrassing.
Trump exists in our political sphere because he persuaded people to forget that simple fact. He somehow turned dunderheads like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and, of course, himself – public figures who routinely utter abject nonsense – into people who get taken seriously.
Following the New Orleans terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, Trump ranted about immigration when the suspect killed in the attack was a U.S. citizen. That was stupid and unhelpful. For a president-elect and elected leaders who protect him, it should be deeply embarrassing.
Trump has made stupidity acceptable. It shouldn’t be.
President-elect Donald Trump arrives on New Year’s Eve at his Mar-A-Lago Club on December 31, 2024 in Palm Beach, Florida.
When Greene hypothesized that Jewish space lasers started California wildfires, that was not a mistake or an “oops” moment. It was stupid, and it should have been the embarrassing end of her political career.
When Kennedy encourages people to drink bacteria-laden raw milk, he should be laughed out of the country. Instead, Trump has picked him to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is utterly stupid and should be profoundly embarrassing for Trump.
Yet here we are, waiting for Trump to return to the White House and install harebrained MAGA acolytes in all positions of power, confidently and without shame.
Bringing back shame may be powerful tool to deal with Trump
It’s that last bit that’s the problem: “without shame.”
We all do dumb things. There have been plenty of times I’ve said or written something stupid, made a dumb factual error or mouthed off about something I didn’t fully understand. And it’ll happen again, to be sure. No matter the room, I’d never claim to be the smartest guy in it.
Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga) yells as President Joe Biden delivers the State of the Union address to Congress at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 7, 2024.
The difference, though, is that in those dumb moments, when I’ve realized my own blunder, I’ve felt embarrassed. When I’ve had to correct a column or admit I got out over my skis on something, I’ve been ashamed of the mistake.
Shame is what keeps us in check, or at least it should. It certainly used to.
If we tolerate stupidity in the public sphere, it will flourish
How else do you explain politicians supporting him – a convicted felon, an inveterate liar, a man found liable of sexual abuse – for a third time? The decision to put someone like Trump back in the most powerful position in America should be embarrassing. It wasn’t.
That’s enough to make people who dislike Trump, whether because of his politics or his personality, feel powerless. I get that.
However, I’d argue the best way to reclaim power in the age of Trumpism is to stop tolerating stupidity.
Stupidity isn’t about book smarts, it’s about choosing ignorance
Before I go further on that, let’s be clear what I mean by “stupidity.” I’m not talking about any level of education.
Heck, most of the people Trump surrounds himself with are highly educated but dumb as fence posts.
Stupidity is speaking authoritatively about things you don’t understand at all. It’s the willingness to say something objectively false and refuse to admit you’re wrong. It’s the lack of curiosity that allows our leaders to accept bologna conspiracy theories over provable facts.
Those, to me, are traits that should be embarrassing.
Stop giving elected officials embracing stupidity a pass
But since Trump’s first presidential win, some people have been afraid to call out such traits.
The argument is, essentially: “Well, he won people over, so we shouldn’t call him dumb lest we insult his voters, who we must do our best to understand.”
Then-Rep. Matt Gaetz, left, supports former President Donald Trump at his hush money trial in New York City on May 16, 2024.
So now, as we await whatever fresh hell a new Trump administration will bring, it’s time to stop pandering to politicians who have embraced a reality disconnected from actual reality.
It’s, “If you can’t accept basic facts, you’re a chucklehead who should be shunned.”
President-elect Donald Trump greets SpaceX CEO Elon Musk at a test flight of the Starship rocket on Nov. 19, 2024, in Brownsville, Texas.
Making people feel embarrassed for believing claptrap or speaking a bald-faced lie isn’t cruel. It’s corrective.
We don’t coddle our kids when they spew nonsense or think the truth is irrelevant. We correct them. And we do that to avoid the kind of chaos Trump has brought and continues to bring.
Do it for America: Make Stupidity Embarrassing Again
So I encourage you, as this year goes along, to make politicians who say stupid things feel uncomfortable. You may not think your voice matters, but the collective force of all our voices reminding people our society looks down on willful ignorance might matter.
Besides, we tried the other way, and things only got worse.
Comforting fools paves a path for more fools to follow. Do America a favor – mock stupidity at every turn.
Trump says he’s going to imprison and then deport millions of brown-skinned immigrants. He’s going after the wrong people.
It seems that ever time a Republican goes on one of the national political TV shows, they make sure to get in the lie that “Joe Biden opened the southern border wide open,” or toss in a reference to “Biden’s open borders.”
It is, of course, a viscious lie — but one that’s almost never called out by the hosts because it’s peripheral or tangential to the topic being discussed. And, as is so often the case, this all started with Reagan (more on that in a moment).
While it’s true that two factors have driven a lot of migration over the past few decades (climate change wiping out farmland, and political dysfunction and gangs caused by the Reagan administration devastating the governments of El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala) the latest main driver of would-be immigrants and refugees is the Republican Party itself.
Lacking any actual, substantive economic issues to run on, the GOP decided after Biden’s election in 2021 to fall back on a familiar ploy: scare white people that brown people are coming for them and/or their jobs. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, I remember well how the GOP pitch to white people was that Black people wanted “our” jobs; now it’s brown people from south of the border.
Trump did this in the most crude, vulgar and racist way possible from his first entrance into the Republican primary through the end of his presidency. It frightened enough white voters that it got him into office once, and the GOP repeated that trick last November.
In doing so, they’re playing with fire. Their daily lies about American policies for the past four years are causing people to put their lives in danger.
The truth is that Joe Biden never “opened” our southern border.
“Open borders” have never been his policy or the Democratic Party’s policy or, indeed, the policy of any elected Democrat or Democratic strategist in modern American history.
Everybody understands and agrees that for a country to function it must regulate immigration, and it’s borders must have a reasonable level of integrity.
Republicans are playing a very dangerous game here. By loudly proclaiming their lie that Biden had “opened” the southern border and was “welcoming” immigrants and refugees “with open arms,” they created the very problem they’re pointing to.
Republican lies like this don’t stay in the United States.
As they get repeated through our media, even when most Americans realize they’re simply wild exaggerations (at the most charitable), the media of other countries are happy to pick up the story and spread it across Mexico and Central America.
This, in turn, encourages the desperate, the poor, and the ambitious to head north or send their teenage children northward in hopes for a better life. Meanwhile, criminal cartels have jumped into the human trafficking business in a big way, exploiting and aggressively repeating the GOP rhetoric to recruit new “customers.”
I lived and worked in Germany for a year, and it took me months to get a work-permit from that government to do so. I worked in Australia, and the process of getting that work-permit took a couple of months.
In both cases, it was my employers who were most worried about my successfully getting the work permits and did most of the work to make it happen. There’s an important reason for that.
The way that most countries prevent undocumented immigrants from disrupting their economies and causing cheap labor competition with their citizens is by putting employers in jail when they hire people who don’t have the right to work in that country.
We used to do this in the United States.
In the 1920s, the US began regulating immigration and similarly put into place laws regulating who could legally work in this country and who couldn’t.
Because there was so much demand for low-wage immigrant labor in the food belt of California during harvest season, President Dwight Eisenhower experimented with a program in the 1950s that granted season-long passes to workers from Mexico. Millions took him up on it, but his Bracero program failed because employers controlled the permits, and far too many used that control to threaten people who objected to having their wages stolen or refused to tolerate physical or sexual abuse.
A similar dynamic is at work today. Employers and even neighbors extract free labor or other favors of all sorts from undocumented immigrants in the United States, using the threat of deportation and the violence of ICE as a cudgel. Undocumented immigrants working here end up afraid to call the police when they’re the victims of, or witnesses to crimes.
Everybody loses except the employers, who have a cheap, pliable, easily-threatened source of labor that is afraid to talk back or report abuses.
It got this way in 1986, when Ronald Reagan decided to stop enforcing the laws against wealthy white employers hiring undocumented people, and directed the government’s enforcement activities instead toward the least powerful and able to defend themselves: brown-skinned immigrants.
The result has been a labor market in the US that’s been distorted by undocumented workers creating a black-market for low-wage labor that many of America’s largest corporations enthusiastically support.
For example, prior to the Reagan administration two of the most heavily unionized industries in America were construction and meatpacking. These were tough jobs, but in both cases provided people who just had a high school education with a solid entry card into the American Dream. They were well-paid jobs that allowed construction and meatpacking workers to buy a home, take vacations, raise their kids and live a good, middle-class life with a pension for retirement.
Reagan and his Republican allies, with healthy campaign donations from both industries, wrote the 1986 Immigration Reform Act to make it harder to prosecute employers who invited undocumented workers into their workplaces.
“[T]he bill’s sponsors ended up watering down the sanctions on employers to attract support from the business community, explains Wayne Cornelius of the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at U.C. San Diego. ‘The end result was that they essentially gutted the employer sanctions,’ he says.”
So Reagan stopped enforcing our labor and immigration laws with respect to wealthy white employers, and the next 20 years saw a collapse of American citizens working in both the meatpacking and construction industries, among others.
Forty-dollar-an-hour American-citizen unionized workers were replaced with seven-dollar-an-hour undocumented workers desperate for a chance at a life in America for themselves and their children.
From the Republican point of view, an added bonus was that levels of unionization in both industries utterly collapsed. Reagan succeeded in transforming the American workplace, and set up decades of potential anti-Latino hysteria that Republicans could use as a political wedge.
Without acknowledging that it was Reagan himself who set up the “crisis,” Republicans today hold serious-sounding conferences and press availabilities about how “illegals” are “trying to steal Americans jobs!” They’re all over rightwing hate radio and in the conservative media on a near-daily basis.
But it’s not poor people coming here in search of safety or a better life who are impacting our labor markets (and, frankly, it’s a small impact): it’s the companies that hire them.
And those same companies then funded Republican politicians who pushed under-the-radar social media ads at African Americans in 2016 and the last election saying that Democrats wanted Hispanic “illegals” to come in to take their jobs.
America, it turns out, doesn’t have an “illegal immigrant” problem: we have an “illegal employer” problem.
“Black lawmakers accused Republicans on Tuesday of trying to ‘manufacture tension’ between African-Americans and immigrants as GOP House members argued in a hearing that more minorities would be working were it not for illegal immigration.”
Tossing even more gasoline on the flame they, themselves, lit, Republicans are now amplifying the warnings and “danger” of undocumented immigrants by pulling out the Bush/Cheney “terrorist” card along with Trump’s “diseased rapist criminals” and “they want to take your job” tropes.
Because the GOP has been playing these kinds of racist, xenophobic games with immigration since the Reagan era, our immigration and refugee systems are a total mess. Trump additionally did everything he could to take an axe to anything that wasn’t a jail or a cage…and turned those jail cells into sweet little profit centers for his private-prison donor corporations.
America needs comprehensive immigration reform and a rational immigration policy that’s grounded in both compassion and enlightened economic self-interest. We need an honest debate around it, stripped of the GOP’s racial dog-whistles. And our media needs to stop taking GOP lies about immigration and the southern border at face value.
Americans — and people who want to become Americans out of hope or desperation — deserve better. And throwing some of these rich white employers in jail instead of terrified immigrants would be a good start.
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