There’s been some guffawing — although not nearly enough — about Donald Trump’s not knowing when the U.S. Civil War ended. But if you listen to what he said, that’s not the only thing he’s ignorant about.
Trump: “If you look at the end of the Civil War — the 1800s, it was a very turbulent time. If you take the end day — was it 1869? Or whatever.” pic.twitter.com/7DaJhePIzD
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 27, 2025
If you listen to this, notice that Trump refers to birthright citizenship as a “case.” Does he think birthright citizenship came about because of a court ruling? He doesn’t know the 14th Amendment, obviously, which doesn’t say bleep about the babies of slaves. And if Joe Biden had said something this stupid, he’d have been locked up in an Old Folks’ Home within an hour. But Trump gets a pass. I’d also like someone to look into his theory that the drug cartels are using birthright citizenship to somehow plant their people among us. I have doubts.
I understand the Senate is working overtime to salvage enough of the One Big Ugly Bill to pass it and get it to the House. Here’s a Politico article about stuff that’s changed over the past several hours. My favorite is that “Whaling boat captains in Alaska will be able to deduct more for whale-hunting-related expenses, up to $50,000 from the current $10,000.” Is this to get Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s vote? Commercial whaling is illegal, btw, but the Inupiat people still hunt whales for food and other resources. But at this point the 900-plus-page bill has got to be such a thrown together mess I doubt anyone knows what’s in it.
TPM reports that the Senate has put some of the stuff the Parliamentarian took out back into the bill, but with revisions. The plan to stop states from taxing Medicaid providers (and then give the taxes back to the states as state benefits, earning more federal dollars) is back in, but implementation is delayed until 2028. So the rural hospitals won’t close until Trump is out of office, I guess.
The fallout from Zohran Mamdani’s first-round win in the Dem NYC mayoral primary continues. Typically, the Dem establishment, which always goes on about unity, is keeping Mamdani and his supporters at arm’s length. As far as I can find out, neither of New York’s senators has endorsed Mamdani. See TPM, The Political World’s Five-Alarm Mamdani Meltdown.
See also Zohran Mamdani’s Win Is the Beginning of the End of the Old Democratic Party by Hamilton Nolan in In These Times. I don’t know if he’s right about the beginning of the end, but I got a kick out of reading it anyway. “The threat of the rich is that they will flee the city,” Nolan writes. “The flaw in their leverage is that almost nobody likes them anyhow.”
New Yorkers are tired of seeing high-rise luxury condo buildings go up all over the city while most working people, including people who make enough money to live comfortably anywhere else, struggle and do without to make rent. Low-income people rent unfurnished basements that flood periodically. And the luxury apartments are often purchased by people who only live there part of the time. It’s somewhere to stay when they’re in New York. So they sit empty. No love lost. But the real-estate people are going to fight like hell to keep Mamdani from becoming mayor.
Hypothetical Trump answer: "Well, once we deport them, with mom and dad, the cartels will tell that beautiful American boy, 'do what we say, or we'll kill your parents.'"
And if he said it, you and I both know he would say it without a hint of irony.
So in other words, if the parents were never deported there would be no problem. Okay.
Oof, the border is (was) porous and the border region is an area of migration from south to north and back again for trade, resource extraction, and employment. Plus, people in the smuggling business have generational ties to people on both sides of the border from before 1848 and 1856 when they put an arbitrary line that designated who would be in Old Mexico and who would be in the good ol' US of A.
So, yes, I suspect that the cartels "plant" babies up here but that is because they already have a long-time family and business support group here and it is as a natural event as anyone moving to Toledo, OH to get a job in the clock and scales industry. The issue here is that the Border Patrol polices non-whiteness and regulates class relations… always has, always will. To me, cartel crime is a red herring and justification by the ownership class to distract from their immense profit in private prisons and border security swindles and, I suspect, their own involvement and profit from drug crime.
That still seems far-fetched to me. The babies can grow up and tell the cartels to get bent.
There is no makeup or plastic surgery that will fix this type of ugly. It craves adulation attention and fame like a miscreant child without any clue as to that which might merit even the shortest pedestal. Only amusement park mirrors offer the kind of distortion revealed in his self-image, only backwards. It takes a distortion mirror to take the ugly away so he can make believe he merits greatness. It is the curse of Narcissus, a love of self from a distorted self-image.
The fear-mongering about people of color has it's roots in a fear of democracy. (Look at how mainstream politicians are responding to Mandami.) We've always lived in a "managed" democracy where our choices are limited by design to candidates blessed by party leaders and/or moneyed interests.
It's hard to overstate how monstrous this is. A few mavericks get by, Sanders and AOC come ti mind. Recently the DMC purged David Hogg for the heresy of supporting the concept of primary elections against incumbents who are (my words) sold out. Once the party has a "reliable" representative in office, you aren't allowed to suggest he's not representing the intersts of the people and can be dumped for a better candidate who will seriously represent citizens.
For the moneyed interests, primary elections are the flaw in democracy which could make them equal to all other citizens. If Hispanic citizens hooked up with Black citizens and put up intelligent, articulate, candidates who *get* the needs of the community, old white racists will not be able to hold back the tide.
The KKK used to "keep the darkies in line" with terrorism. Goons in costumes would conduct raids designed to be horrific, more than deadly. The racists want the cheap labor, but they do not want the subhuman laborers to exert power. IMO, the goal is to change the political equation by reducing tne number of minority voters by deporting to create fear, drive even law-abiding citizens pf color to be as invisable as possible. Registering to vote makes you visable. Going after birthright citizenship takes Trump a huge step closer to declaring ANYONE not a citizen and deporting them.
Trump's ICE purge and the freakout in NY over a Muslim mayor are directly related to the same theme. Will political power be in the hands of representatives of the people or in the hands of representatives of big money?
Exactly. The big money interests are chasing neo-feudalism, and have been for a long time.
Excellent commentary, Doug, which goes to the heart of the issue.
DNC establishment elites will always resist any effort to elect anyone who won't conform to the same corporatist status that they occupy and support.
I believe we can thank Bill Clinton for the final transformation of the Democratic Party from the party of FDR, which worked on behalf of the average worker to improve conditions, into a party that talks a lot about those efforts (especially during elections) but, in the final analysis, defers to the wealthy and corporations that the primarily get their financial support from.
Despite the fact that large majorities of the American public support progressive policies, the DNC (as we observed in 2016) will do anything they can to prevent progressives from being elected – at any level. There's a saying I heard a long, long time ago, that I have observed to be true – "The Democrats would rather lose to a Republican than allow a Progressive to win".
I believe that the few mavericks who get by, do so because of the strength of their constituency – despite the wishes of the DNC – though they then attempt to use those few exceptions as some sort of proof of their dedication to progressive ideology, despite their obvious and continued opposition to that same ideology.
Yes, they fear progressives, especially people of color, who might actually attempt to dismantle their privileged hierarchy and status and replace it with one that would more accurately and forcefully represent the real wishes and needs of the average person.
We live in a Plutocracy, which has been created by the decades of support for it – or the lack of active and effective opposition to it – by the cooperation of the Democrats with the actions of the Republicans. That has resulted in the refusal to prevent effective monopolies in major industries – including the rampant consolidation of media outlets into a few, conservative owned, corporations.
Those media outlets then use their power to misinform the population and malign any progressive attempt to change the system that has created a wealth pump that has transferred huge amounts of wealth from the non-elites to the elites, as Peter Turchin so clearly and eloquently explains in his books. If anyone wants to understand how we got to where we are today (as well as where we are likely headed), they should read “End Times – Elites, Counter-Elites and the Path of Political Disintegration”, published in 2022.
"According to AP News, the center is designed to house up to 5,000 migrants in temporary structures and will rely on nearby swampland, as well as local wildlife like alligators and pythons, as natural barriers. It is expected to become operational by early July and cost around $450 million per year, funded via FEMA’s shelter and services program."
CNN
I ran the numbers. Each "bunk" will cost $90,000 per year. Granted, the plan is to run a lot of individuals through but that bunk in a temporary building will cost about 30% more than we ( a working couple) make in a year, including working ful;-time plus Social Security and my Postal pension. Why isn't CNN asking questions about waste and fraud? Or at least putting the numbers in perspective? They do know how to use a calculator at CNN, don't they?
And how does Ron intend to square the misappropriation of FEMA money, a swindle Florida is complicit in, when hurricane season ramps up in a few months and the residents of FL are told by DC that they have to rely on Tallahassee because FEMA has been gutted.
As I read what you are saying about the too many B bill is a somewhat secret plan to establish a gulag (Russian Style) in Florida. This can be used as Stalin did, to enforce totalitarian levels of power at a federal level. How amusing in a morbid way, promoting the most horrid features of Russian Style Communism while calling the upcoming young Democrat in New York a communist. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
Then if someone would dare to try to deliver some unwanted airmail to people in power, they could deliver some really hard time to them in a way that would really terrorize copycats. In Florida you say, where they can let the heat, humidity, and insects to deliver cruel and unusual punishment at only 90K a pop. What a deal for the purveyors of horror. Use the heat instead of the cold. It is plan B if they can't invade and conquer Greenland. Greenland has a great republican name already, as no one would know it is a land of ice and snow from what they name it. It is perfect. Like using the words truth and social to name a website that promotes lies and hate. Perfect. Perfect horror.
Yes, it sucks but there are reasons to not lose hope.
“Elon may get more subsidies than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social website.
“No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this?” the president wrote.
This is a reaction to Musk promising to fund a third party which he'd open the day after Trump's BBB passes. And the offer to fund primary candidates against any Republican who votes for the bill.
Even before the big borrow of the big bill the US dollar is in free fall against other world currencies as shown in yesterday's NYT graph. Ignorance about money was always a problem for fearless leader. His life is a trail of bankruptcies and failed enterprises, yet he has never learned he is poor at money matters. Another distortion in his self-image and one the country will pay for decades or more. He tends to pay off borrowed money with more borrowed money. Many in this country share that problem too and see him as one of them, unfortunately.
Warren Buffet, a man who has real wealth and money sense, pointed this money problem with fearless leader out some time ago, but to no avail. Even the Oracle of Omaha has no influence on his money pathology.
Professor Roy Madoff author of The Second Estate: How the Tax Code Made American Aristocracy wrote how others of wealth share irrational delusions in a Washington Post op ed.
Nice little facade they have there, and more to come. More make-believe to come to cover their gilded path, while they toss prayers and thoughts to those with added hardships and future liabilities on their way. Those who get fooled all the time are dragging us down with them to gild a bunch of lilies in this age of neo-robber-barons. Let them wallow in their sties of god-awful gawdy as fate is fooled by no facade and fate will eventually prevail.
I think I should flip to the other side of the coin.
“Every member of Congress who campaigned on reducing government spending and then immediately voted for the biggest debt increase in history should hang their head in shame! And they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth,” he wrote.
A few hours later he went further, declaring on X that if the “insane spending bill passes, the America Party will be formed the next day.”
“Our country needs an alternative to the Democrat-Republican uniparty so that the people actually have a VOICE,” he wrote.
Set aside the schadenfreude. Musk has the money to do it. He owns Twitter (I don't care what he calls it.) Trump can probably revoke Musk's citizenship. This sets up an interesting legal question. If Musk has put billions in a PAC when he is a citizen, is the PAC able to function after Musk is NOT a citizen? Musk can use Twitter to amplify anti-Trump media stories. Trump can pull every dime of government contracts with Musk companies. (I expectt his to happen immediately with HALF the government contracts, the other half dangling as the sword of Damocles over Musk's head.) I have been praying for the split of the GOP ASAP. It is inevitable in the power struggle that has to follow in Trump's wake. Musk can blow it open before the midterms.