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Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Stops Maryland National Guard From Celebrating Frederick Douglass

16 February 2025 at 21:13

On the last day of January, the Department of Defense—now run by ex-Fox News host and alleged domestic abuser Pete Hegsethdeclared so-called “identity months,” like Black History Month, “dead” at the DoD. On the very same day, President Trump signed a proclamation affirming that February was Black History Month.

“Basically, what the DOD said is, ‘We’re not doing that, he’s Black and this is February so, no.'”

The DoD guidance says both that “the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders, and backgrounds” should be celebrated and that the department “will focus on the character of [military members] service instead of their immutable characteristics.”

The consequences of the memo soon became clear.

In early February, the Maryland National Guard announced that it would not participate in an event to honor the life and legacy of famed slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass, citing the DoD memo. (The White House proclamation mentions Douglass as an example of a pioneering Black America.)

“Since this event is organized as part of a Black History month celebration, the Maryland National Guard cannot support,” says the letter from Maryland National Guard Lt. Col. Meaghan Lazak, which adds that they cannot provide a band, troops, a flyover, or military vehicles for the event.

The letter was posted on Facebook by Tarence Bailey Sr., who identifies himself as a distant relative of Douglass and is one of the organizers of the event. Bailey also told the Washington Post that the Massachusetts National Guard, which participated in the parade last year, bowed out this year, citing the DoD guidance. (He did not immediately respond to a Facebook message on Sunday.)

Bailey told the newspaper that the news prompted the organizers to cancel the parade portion of the event. (It will still include performances, dinner, and awards, according to the website.)

“Basically, what the DOD said is, ‘We’re not doing that, he’s Black and this is February so, no,’” Bailey told the Washington Post. “You’re discrediting everything—all of the work he did for this nation not as a Black man but as an American…They should really be ashamed of themselves.”

Spokespeople for the White House and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

Douglass was born enslaved in Maryland in 1818, taught himself to read, and escaped slavery to the North at 20 years old. He gave speeches against slavery around the country with the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and recounted his years spent in slavery in his autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845. He later helped people on the Underground Railroad; ran his own newspaper, The North Star; published two more autobiographies, titled My Bondage and My Freedom and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; and worked in several high-ranking federal positions under five different presidents. He died in 1895, at 77 years old. (His biography is still available on the National Park Service website.)

The incident offers some of the clearest proof of the absurd impacts of the anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion executive orders Trump issued last month, as my colleague Alex Nguyen covered at the time. And with new reporting from the Washington Post published Saturday showing that internal documents from DOGE suggest Trump plans to expand the anti-DEI directives over the next six months, including by firing workers in offices established to ensure equal rights, expect more impacts to come.

DOGE Worker Says He Was Radicalized by Reading Writer Who Later Denied Holocaust

In a since-deleted Substack post, an engineer working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wrote about his radicalization, noting a key influence was an essay by Ron Unz—an infamous figure who has written about race science; donated money to the white nationalist website VDare, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a hate group; and has been accused by the Anti-Defamation League of “hardcore antisemitism,” including Holocaust denial.

The Substack post, titled “Why I Joined DOGE,” was written by DOGE engineer Gavin Kliger.

Kliger has already been in hot water. He also reportedly reposted white nationalist Nick Fuentes disparaging a Black child on his now-private X account. (On the account, Kliger called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a slur and demanded military tribunals and executions of undocumented migrants who commit crimes, according to Rolling Stone.)

The post was published Friday and was still available online Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. ET. It was deleted on Sunday. In the post, Kliger credits Unz’s “Our American Pravda“—a 2013 essay published in The American Conservative that railed against what Unz claimed were systemic media failures—with beginning the engineer’s “political awakening.”

Unz writes that he “concluded that the Holocaust was largely, perhaps almost entirely a hoax” and “a ridiculous concoction of wartime propaganda.”

“Reading it was like putting on glasses for the first time,” writes Kliger, whose LinkedIn says he is a senior advisor to the Director for Technology and Delivery at the Office of Personnel Management. “The issue wasn’t just bias—it was that entire narratives, the ones we took for granted as truth, were carefully curated illusions.” (Mother Jones saved a copy of Kliger’s Substack post before it was deleted.)

Unz is a writer, former (failed) gubernatorial and Senate candidate from California, and one-time publisher of The American Conservative. He has crusaded against everything from bilingual education (his 2016 Senate campaign slogan was: “Keep English. Vote Ron Unz!”) to media coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The essay that Kliger cited, “Our American Pravda,” was widely discussed on the right in 2013. It was also part of an eventual wider series—”American Pravda,” published on Unz’s website, The Uniz Review—that includes striking comments denying the Holocaust, questioning 9/11, and engaging in anti-Black racism.

In an email to Mother Jones on Sunday, Kliger said he did not read the later “American Pravda” posts from Unz.

“I specifically referred to this 2013 article from The American Conservative, ‘Our American Pravda.’ Note the ‘Our’,” Kliger wrote. “I have neither referenced or read [the other work in the “‘American Pravda” series].” (The DOGE engineer also noted The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf recommended the 2013 Unz essay in a blog.)

Kliger did not respond, as of publication, to a follow-up question about whether he finds it worrying that his radicalization was shaped by Unz given the views the writer later espoused about the Holocaust and Black people.

A recurring part of Unz’s “American Pravda” blogs is antisemitism and what the ADL has described as Holocaust denial. In a more than 17,000-word 2018 post, for example, Unz wrote:

Anyone who reads serious history books knows that Jews have generally enjoyed a reputation for producing many of the world’s greatest swindlers and frauds, hardly surprising given their notorious tendency to lie and dissemble.

In another blog, published last January, Unz doubles down, writing that he “concluded that the Holocaust was largely, perhaps almost entirely a hoax” and “a ridiculous concoction of wartime propaganda.”

Unz has also questioned the 9/11 attacks that killed more than 2,900 people and injured thousands more. He boosted conspiracy theories implying that Israeli Mossad agents were behind the attacks. In a 2018 post, Unz writes:

Based on my very recent readings in this topic, the total number of huge flaws in the official 9/11 story has now grown extremely long, probably numbering in the many dozens. Most of these individual items seem reasonably likely and if we decide that even just two or three of them are correct, we must totally reject the official narrative that so many of us have believed for so long.

As we wrote in 2017, Unz has also been a pathway for the alt-right. He has recruited contributors to The Unz Review to write about so-called human biodiversity, which includes posts blaming Black mothers for facing higher rates of maternal mortality and headlines like “Can nations have IQs?”

One regular contributor, John Derbyshire, was fired from the National Review in 2012 after penning a racist column in Taki magazine that urges his children to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” “stay out of heavily black neighborhoods,” and “before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white,” among other exhortations.

Unz’s characterizations of Black people do not fare much better. In a 2016 article discussing killings by the Ku Klux Klan—in which Unz claims the KKK’s murders are overcovered by media—he paints a picture of the mainstream press as misunderstanding violence in the era of Black Lives Matter. Unz writes:

For example, Trayvon Martin seems to have been a violent young thug and his antagonist, George Zimmerman, a half-Hispanic Dudley-Do-Right, whose main offense was attempting to defend himself while at risk of being beaten to death after he was attacked late at night without provocation in his own community. Similarly, Michael Brown of Ferguson fame was a gigantic, thuggish criminal, who casually committed the strong-arm robbery of a convenience store at night, then suddenly attacked the local police officer who attempted to stop and question him soon afterward.

Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Kliger and Unz.

Kliger’s deleted Substack posts recount a series of events and grievances that he says slowly eroded his faith in government and media: Warped polling that wrongly predicted Clinton would beat Trump in the 2016 election; reportedly violent 2017 protests led by members of antifa at Berkeley, where his LinkedIn says he completed his undergraduate studies in 2020; regulations on firearms; and COVID-era lockdowns and restrictions, including vaccine mandates.

But DOGE, Kliger promises, offers an alternative to the institutions that led to those aforementioned disappointments.

“For the first time in my lifetime, we have a genuine attempt to reform the federal government from within,” he writes of DOGE. “Not another blue-ribbon parade or congressional committee, but a focused effort to streamline bureaucracy, eliminate redundant agencies, and return power to the states.”

Kliger’s post ends with a recruitment attempt: “DOGE needs people with both technical expertise and the backbone to challenge bureaucracy. If you have those skills, don’t sit on the sidelines. Reach out. Apply.”

Correction, Feb. 17: “Pravda” was misspelled in places in an earlier version of this article.

Trump’s Anti-DEI Order Stops Maryland National Guard from Celebrating Frederick Douglass

16 February 2025 at 21:13

On the last day of January, the Department of Defense—now run by ex-Fox News host and alleged domestic abuser Pete Hegsethdeclared so-called “identity months,” like Black History Month, “dead” at the DoD. On the very same day, President Trump signed a proclamation affirming that February was Black History Month.

“Basically, what the DOD said is, ‘We’re not doing that, he’s Black and this is February so, no.'”

The DoD guidance says both that “the valor and success of military heroes of all races, genders, and backgrounds” should be celebrated and that the department “will focus on the character of [military members] service instead of their immutable characteristics.”

The consequences of the memo soon became clear.

In early February, the Maryland National Guard announced that it would not participate in an event to honor the life and legacy of famed slavery abolitionist Frederick Douglass, citing the DoD memo. (The White House proclamation mentions Douglass as an example of a pioneering Black America.)

“Since this event is organized as part of a Black History month celebration, the Maryland National Guard cannot support,” says the letter from Maryland National Guard Lt. Col. Meaghan Lazak, which adds that they cannot provide a band, troops, a flyover, or military vehicles for the event.

The letter was posted on Facebook by Tarence Bailey Sr., who identifies himself as a distant relative of Douglass and is one of the organizers of the event. Bailey also told the Washington Post that the Massachusetts National Guard, which participated in the parade last year, bowed out this year, citing the DoD guidance. (He did not immediately respond to a Facebook message on Sunday.)

Bailey told the newspaper that the news prompted the organizers to cancel the parade portion of the event. (It will still include performances, dinner, and awards, according to the website.)

“Basically, what the DOD said is, ‘We’re not doing that, he’s Black and this is February so, no,’” Bailey told the Washington Post. “You’re discrediting everything—all of the work he did for this nation not as a Black man but as an American…They should really be ashamed of themselves.”

Spokespeople for the White House and the Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

Douglass was born enslaved in Maryland in 1818, taught himself to read, and escaped slavery to the North at 20 years old. He gave speeches against slavery around the country with the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and recounted his years spent in slavery in his autobiography, The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845. He later helped people on the Underground Railroad; ran his own newspaper, The North Star; published two more autobiographies, titled My Bondage and My Freedom and The Life and Times of Frederick Douglass; and worked in several high-ranking federal positions under five different presidents. He died in 1895, at 77 years old. (His biography is still available on the National Park Service website.)

The incident offers some of the clearest proof of the absurd impacts of the anti-diversity, equity, and inclusion executive orders Trump issued last month, as my colleague Alex Nguyen covered at the time. And with new reporting from the Washington Post published Saturday showing that internal documents from DOGE suggest Trump plans to expand the anti-DEI directives over the next six months, including by firing workers in offices established to ensure equal rights, expect more impacts to come.

DOGE Worker Says He Was Radicalized by Reading Writer Who Later Denied Holocaust

In a since-deleted Substack post, an engineer working for Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) wrote about his radicalization, noting a key influence was an essay by Ron Unz—an infamous figure who has written about race science; donated money to the white nationalist website VDare, which according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is a hate group; and has been accused by the Anti-Defamation League of “hardcore antisemitism,” including Holocaust denial.

The Substack post, titled “Why I Joined DOGE,” was written by DOGE engineer Gavin Kliger.

Kliger has already been in hot water. He also reportedly reposted white nationalist Nick Fuentes disparaging a Black child on his now-private X account. (On the account, Kliger called former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton a slur and demanded military tribunals and executions of undocumented migrants who commit crimes, according to Rolling Stone.)

The post was published Friday and was still available online Sunday morning around 9:30 a.m. ET. It was deleted on Sunday. In the post, Kliger credits Unz’s “Our American Pravda“—a 2013 essay published in The American Conservative that railed against what Unz claimed were systemic media failures—with beginning the engineer’s “political awakening.”

Unz writes that he “concluded that the Holocaust was largely, perhaps almost entirely a hoax” and “a ridiculous concoction of wartime propaganda.”

“Reading it was like putting on glasses for the first time,” writes Kliger, whose LinkedIn says he is a senior advisor to the Director for Technology and Delivery at the Office of Personnel Management. “The issue wasn’t just bias—it was that entire narratives, the ones we took for granted as truth, were carefully curated illusions.” (Mother Jones saved a copy of Kliger’s Substack post before it was deleted.)

Unz is a writer, former (failed) gubernatorial and Senate candidate from California, and one-time publisher of The American Conservative. He has crusaded against everything from bilingual education (his 2016 Senate campaign slogan was: “Keep English. Vote Ron Unz!”) to media coverage of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The essay that Kliger cited, “Our American Pravada,” was widely discussed on the right in 2013. It was also part of an eventual wider series—”American Pravada,” published on Unz’s website, The Uniz Review—that includes striking comments denying the Holocaust, questioning 9/11, and engaging in anti-Black racism.

In an email to Mother Jones on Sunday, Kliger said he did not read the later “American Pravada” posts from Unz.

“I specifically referred to this 2013 article from The American Conservative, ‘Our American Pravda.’ Note the ‘Our’,” Kliger wrote. “I have neither referenced or read [the other work in the “‘American Pravada” series].” (The DOGE engineer also noted The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf recommended the 2013 Unz essay in a blog.)

Kliger did not respond, as of publication, to a follow-up question about whether he finds it worrying that his radicalization was shaped by Unz given the views the writer later espoused about the Holocaust and Black people.

A recurring part of Unz’s “American Pravda” blogs is antisemitism and what the ADL has described as Holocaust denial. In a more than 17,000-word 2018 post, for example, Unz wrote:

Anyone who reads serious history books knows that Jews have generally enjoyed a reputation for producing many of the world’s greatest swindlers and frauds, hardly surprising given their notorious tendency to lie and dissemble.

In another blog, published last January, Unz doubles down, writing that he “concluded that the Holocaust was largely, perhaps almost entirely a hoax” and “a ridiculous concoction of wartime propaganda.”

Unz has also questioned the 9/11 attacks that killed more than 2,900 people and injured thousands more. He boosted conspiracy theories implying that Israeli Mossad agents were behind the attacks. In a 2018 post, Unz writes:

Based on my very recent readings in this topic, the total number of huge flaws in the official 9/11 story has now grown extremely long, probably numbering in the many dozens. Most of these individual items seem reasonably likely and if we decide that even just two or three of them are correct, we must totally reject the official narrative that so many of us have believed for so long.

As we wrote in 2017, Unz has also been a pathway for the alt-right. He has recruited contributors to The Unz Review to write about so-called human biodiversity, which includes posts blaming Black mothers for facing higher rates of maternal mortality and headlines like “Can nations have IQs?”

One regular contributor, John Derbyshire, was fired from the National Review in 2012 after penning a racist column in Taki magazine that urges his children to “avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally,” “stay out of heavily black neighborhoods,” and “before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white,” among other exhortations.

Unz’s characterizations of Black people do not fare much better. In a 2016 article discussing killings by the Ku Klux Klan—in which Unz claims the KKK’s murders are overcovered by media—he paints a picture of the mainstream press as misunderstanding violence in the era of Black Lives Matter. Unz writes:

For example, Trayvon Martin seems to have been a violent young thug and his antagonist, George Zimmerman, a half-Hispanic Dudley-Do-Right, whose main offense was attempting to defend himself while at risk of being beaten to death after he was attacked late at night without provocation in his own community. Similarly, Michael Brown of Ferguson fame was a gigantic, thuggish criminal, who casually committed the strong-arm robbery of a convenience store at night, then suddenly attacked the local police officer who attempted to stop and question him soon afterward.

Spokespeople for the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment about Kliger and Unz.

Kliger’s deleted Substack posts recount a series of events and grievances that he says slowly eroded his faith in government and media: Warped polling that wrongly predicted Clinton would beat Trump in the 2016 election; reportedly violent 2017 protests led by members of antifa at Berkeley, where his LinkedIn says he completed his undergraduate studies in 2020; regulations on firearms; and COVID-era lockdowns and restrictions, including vaccine mandates.

But DOGE, Kliger promises, offers an alternative to the institutions that led to those aforementioned disappointments.

“For the first time in my lifetime, we have a genuine attempt to reform the federal government from within,” he writes of DOGE. “Not another blue-ribbon parade or congressional committee, but a focused effort to streamline bureaucracy, eliminate redundant agencies, and return power to the states.”

Kliger’s post ends with a recruitment attempt: “DOGE needs people with both technical expertise and the backbone to challenge bureaucracy. If you have those skills, don’t sit on the sidelines. Reach out. Apply.”

Please Don’t Use Nancy Mace’s So-Called Victim Hotline, Advocates Say

12 February 2025 at 00:17

On the House floor Monday night—in a speech that was jarring, graphic, and nearly an hour long—Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) made disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against four men from her home state, one of whom is her ex-fiancé.

Mace was emotional throughout: She prayed at the start, and paused to take deep breaths a few times. Mace’s former fiancé and another accused man both denied the allegations, and the other men do not appear to have spoken out. The allegations have not been independently corroborated and the men have not been charged. South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the state police agency, said in a statement that it had opened an investigation into Mace’s ex-fiancé in December 2023 after being contacted by Capitol Police about allegations of “assault, harassment, and voyeurism,” and that the investigation remains ongoing and will be sent to a prosecutor for review upon completion.

Mace also alleged in the speech that South Carolina’s Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson—whom she would likely face in a primary for governor, a race she has said she is “seriously considering” entering—failed to properly investigate the allegations after she brought forth evidence, which allegedly included nonconsensual sexual images of her and others. In a lengthy statement, Wilson’s office rejected Mace’s claims that it did not properly respond.

All of this has, unsurprisingly, attracted ample news coverage. But one aspect of the explosive speech has gone unexamined: A so-called hotline that Mace said she set up to encourage victims to come forward—which nobody actually answers, and which leading domestic and sexual violence advocates in Mace’s home state of South Carolina say they don’t want victims to call. Mother Jones is the first to report these details.

Mace began her speech on the House floor standing next to a giant pink poster with a South Carolina phone number advertising a “victim hotline.” The purpose of the number—whether it was for any victims of domestic or sexual violence, or only meant for people to share information related to her allegations—was unclear, and Mace’s spokesperson didn’t clarify when I asked. Nonetheless, Mace has continued to promote the number, sharing it across her social media channels and urging people to call (some of her posts suggest that many of the callers are from her district, and that they’re sharing information related to her case).

Some of Mace’s followers on social media joked about calling the number to report President Trump, who, in 2023, was found liable by a jury in a civil case for sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll (Mace has since defended him); Trump has also famously bragged on tape about committing sexual assault. But others on social media seemed to earnestly praise Mace for setting up the phone line and said they had already used it to report allegations of abuse; one even offered to “field calls” as a volunteer in another state. (I reached out to multiple people who said on social media that they reached out to the hotline, seemingly to report allegations of abuse, but did not hear back.)

But when I called Mace’s hotline three different times—each time at least one hour apart—on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed to essentially be a glorified voicemail. Every time, the line rang repeatedly before ending with an automated message from Mace herself: “Hi, this is Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and you’ve reached our office victim hotline. Please note your information is confidential. Please leave a detailed message and we will contact you as soon as possible. You may also text us at this number.” Beep. (I did not leave a message, instead corresponding with her spokesperson through email.)

My text to the number—”Hi is this Nancy Mace’s victim hotline?”—went unanswered for 45 minutes. When they finally did respond, it was with little effort: “Yes, it is.”

Deborah Freel, executive director of Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S., a sexual assault center in Charleston—part of Mace’s district—that operates its own 24/7 hotline, said her staff spent Tuesday testing out the number only to reach the voicemail whenever they called; they also fielded calls from community members concerned that Mace’s number was going unanswered, she said.

“It isn’t a hotline,” Freel told me. “It’s not connecting a survivor or someone with a concern to the resources that they need in that moment, which is really challenging. If the intention was to get them those resources, then it would be better for them to be directed to either a local or national resource.”

Just before I spoke to Freel by phone late Tuesday afternoon, Freel said she spoke to Mace’s staff by phone and advised them to remove the word “hotline” from the description and to direct people to local and national trauma-informed victim services organizations instead. (Mace’s office did publish some resources, including information about Freel’s organization—two minutes after I reached out via email with details of the local advocates’ allegations, according to the web page’s metadata.) Freel said her impression was that they had received an “enormous” number of calls in the less than 24 hours the number has existed, and that they were overwhelmed.

Laura Hudson, executive director of the nonprofit South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, said she felt that Mace “set us back about 25 years” by not directing survivors of abuse to proper resources—whether it be law enforcement or hotlines with specially-trained, trauma-informed staff. Victim service providers who answer domestic and sexual violence hotlines, whether paid staff or volunteers, go through hours of professional training and often get certified through their states; Hudson’s staff who answer calls, she said, are all certified by a program for victim service providers at the South Carolina attorney general’s office—the same office Mace lambasted in her speech on the House floor.

Hudson—who last year was honored in the state legislature for several years of work in supporting victims and lobbying to pass legislation on their behalf—described Mace’s effort as “giving false hope to a very vulnerable population, instead of publishing national and, most importantly, state resources.” Some of those resources include nearly two dozen hotlines throughout Mace’s state, included on a directory maintained by the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault; the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which can also be reached via text or online chat; and RAINN, the national sexual assault hotline, which is also available via phone or online chat.

Freel’s paid staff are certified by the same program as Hudson’s—the one administered by the attorney general’s office—and her organization’s 25 hotline volunteers have to go through 25 hours of training and a day of in-person training, and spend time shadowing staff, before they can start taking calls, she said.

“If you’re working on our hotline, not only are you receiving calls, but you have to be ready to go to the emergency room at our local hospital and accompany a survivor through sexual assault forensic evidence collection exam,” Freel said. “So you really have to know your stuff and be very experienced.” Last year, she said, the Tri-County S.P.E.AK.S. hotline received 1,400 calls.

Asking people to potentially disclose abuse or private information on a voicemail message, as Mace’s line does, “seems risky,” Hudson said. Mace’s office says that the information people leave on the voicemail would be “confidential,” and a spokesperson told me earlier Tuesday that outreach was monitored by staffers in the office. The spokesperson added that “per federal congressional office policy, we will get consent from constituents to provide their information to law enforcement as needed.”

Despite these assurances, Mace’s office is not bound by the same federal confidentiality requirements the Violence Against Women Act imposes on domestic and sexual violence treatment and prevention organizations that receive federal funding, as Sara Barber, executive director of the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, which oversees the state’s 22 member organizations, pointed out.

Besides the confidentiality concerns, having specially-trained advocates available to answer phones on the spot is important because survivors may not call back again, or may need immediate emotional support, the advocates pointed out. “There is potential harm,” Freel said, “in a survivor calling with an expectation that they will be connected to someone who gets it and who is a trauma-informed individual.”

“When they call and get an answering machine,” she added, “that can immediately be disheartening and hurtful and can create a barrier for them to even want to take another step forward in a process.”

So why did Mace introduce the so-called hotline in the first place? I asked her office and didn’t immediately hear back—on that question, or on the local advocates’ criticisms of the hotline. But it does align with Mace’s attempts to portray herself as a protector of women and girls (though, as she has made clear, that doesn’t include trans women).

Mace’s spokesperson told me earlier Tuesday that the line will stay active “as long as necessary.”

When I asked Hudson whether Mace’s office had reached out to her or the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network to ask for assistance or guidance in setting up the hotline, Hudson replied, “No. But I would be delighted to help her in any way.”

Please Don’t Use Nancy Mace’s So-Called Victim Hotline, Advocates Say

12 February 2025 at 00:17

On the House floor Monday night—in a speech that was jarring, graphic, and nearly an hour long—Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) made disturbing allegations of sexual abuse against four men from her home state, one of whom is her ex-fiancé.

Mace was emotional throughout: She prayed at the start, and paused to take deep breaths a few times. All four accused men reportedly told the Post and Courier they strongly deny the allegations, which have not been independently corroborated. The men have not been charged of crimes. South Carolina’s Law Enforcement Division (SLED), the state police agency, said in a statement that it had opened an investigation into Mace’s ex-fiancé in December 2023 after being contacted by Capitol Police about allegations of “assault, harassment, and voyeurism,” and that the investigation remains ongoing and will be sent to a prosecutor for review upon completion.

Mace also alleged in the speech that South Carolina’s Republican Attorney General Alan Wilson—whom she would likely face in a primary for governor, a race she has said she is “seriously considering” entering—failed to properly investigate the allegations after she brought forth evidence, which allegedly included nonconsensual sexual images of her and others. In a lengthy statement, Wilson’s office rejected Mace’s claims that it did not properly respond, adding that the office had “no role and no knowledge of these allegations until her public statements” and that Mace has never personally reached out to Wilson to discuss her concerns despite having his cell phone number and being at multiple recent events together.

All of this has, unsurprisingly, attracted ample news coverage. But one aspect of the explosive speech has gone unexamined: A so-called hotline that Mace said she set up to encourage victims to come forward—which nobody actually answers, and which leading domestic and sexual violence advocates in Mace’s home state of South Carolina say they don’t want victims to call. Mother Jones is the first to report these details.

Mace began her speech on the House floor standing next to a giant pink poster with a South Carolina phone number advertising a “victim hotline.” The purpose of the number—whether it was for any victims of domestic or sexual violence, or only meant for people to share information related to her allegations—was unclear, and Mace’s spokesperson didn’t clarify when I asked. Nonetheless, Mace has continued to promote the number, sharing it across her social media channels and urging people to call (some of her posts suggest that many of the callers are from her district, and that they’re sharing information related to her case).

Some of Mace’s followers on social media joked about calling the number to report President Trump, who, in 2023, was found liable by a jury in a civil case for sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll (Mace has since defended him); Trump has also famously bragged on tape about committing sexual assault. But others on social media seemed to earnestly praise Mace for setting up the phone line and said they had already used it to report allegations of abuse; one even offered to “field calls” as a volunteer in another state. (I reached out to multiple people who said on social media that they reached out to the hotline, seemingly to report allegations of abuse, but did not hear back.)

But when I called Mace’s hotline three different times—each time at least one hour apart—on Tuesday afternoon, it seemed to essentially be a glorified voicemail. Every time, the line rang repeatedly before ending with an automated message from Mace herself: “Hi, this is Congresswoman Nancy Mace, and you’ve reached our office victim hotline. Please note your information is confidential. Please leave a detailed message and we will contact you as soon as possible. You may also text us at this number.” Beep. (I did not leave a message, instead corresponding with her spokesperson through email.)

My text to the number—”Hi is this Nancy Mace’s victim hotline?”—went unanswered for 45 minutes. When they finally did respond, it was with little effort: “Yes, it is.”

On Wednesday morning, I got a lengthier text from the number, unprompted. It said that the office was “focused on taking the calls from victims of the event Rep. Mace described in her speech on Monday,” and added that, due to an unspecified House ethics rule, they couldn’t help anyone who doesn’t live in their district. But this is not how Mace’s own website describes its purpose—it makes it sound far more general, promising to “listen and support” victims of sexual assault or domestic violence. And the far more limited focus makes clear that it’s not actually a hotline for victims of any crime—yet as of Wednesday morning, Mace’s X and Facebook accounts still had banners advertising the number as a “victim hotline.”

The text message I received directed people who want to report other crimes to their local law enforcement. It did not provide any other resources to victims.

Deborah Freel, executive director of Tri-County S.P.E.A.K.S., a center in Charleston—part of Mace’s district—that operates its own 24/7 hotline to support survivors of sexual assault, said her staff spent Tuesday testing out the number only to reach the voicemail whenever they called; they also fielded calls from community members concerned that Mace’s number was going unanswered, she said.

“It isn’t a hotline,” Freel told me. “It’s not connecting a survivor or someone with a concern to the resources that they need in that moment, which is really challenging. If the intention was to get them those resources, then it would be better for them to be directed to either a local or national resource.”

On Wednesday morning, after hearing that Mace’s office was saying the number was only for a limited set of victims, Freel reacted with despair. “Her address invited everyone who hasn’t gotten justice to call, not just those involved with her case. And they have been,” she said in a text. “How are they handling, or not, those who aren’t [related to her case]?”

Just before I spoke to Freel by phone late Tuesday afternoon, Freel said she spoke to Mace’s staff by phone and advised them to remove the word “hotline” from the description and to direct people to local and national trauma-informed victim services organizations instead. (Mace’s office did publish some resources, including information about Freel’s organization—two minutes after I reached out via email with details of the local advocates’ allegations, according to the web page’s metadata.) Freel said her impression was that they had received an “enormous” number of calls in the less than 24 hours the number has existed, and that they were overwhelmed.

After I reached out to Mace’s office on Wednesday, a spokesperson pointed out that they had uploaded a new webpage specifying the number is intended for people reporting allegations about the same men Mace accused. But the spokesperson did not respond to additional follow-up questions about whether Mace would publicly clarify this or whether they would stop calling it a “hotline” since it does not provide live, direct support.  

Laura Hudson, executive director of the nonprofit South Carolina Victim Assistance Network, said she felt that Mace “set us back about 25 years” by not directing survivors of abuse to proper resources—whether it be law enforcement or hotlines with specially-trained, trauma-informed staff. Victim service providers who answer domestic and sexual violence hotlines, whether paid staff or volunteers, go through hours of professional training and often get certified through their states; Hudson’s staff who answer calls, she said, are all certified by a program for victim service providers at the South Carolina attorney general’s office—the same office Mace lambasted in her speech on the House floor.

Hudson—who last year was honored in the state legislature for several years of work in supporting victims and lobbying to pass legislation on their behalf—described Mace’s effort as “giving false hope to a very vulnerable population, instead of publishing national and, most importantly, state resources.” Some of those resources include nearly two dozen hotlines throughout Mace’s state, included on a directory maintained by the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault; the National Domestic Violence Hotline, which can also be reached via text or online chat; and RAINN, the national sexual assault hotline, which is also available via phone or online chat.

Freel’s paid staff are certified by the same program as Hudson’s—the one administered by the attorney general’s office—and her organization’s 25 hotline volunteers have to go through 25 hours of training and a day of in-person training, and spend time shadowing staff, before they can start taking calls, she said.

“If you’re working on our hotline, not only are you receiving calls, but you have to be ready to go to the emergency room at our local hospital and accompany a survivor through sexual assault forensic evidence collection exam,” Freel said. “So you really have to know your stuff and be very experienced.” Last year, she said, the Tri-County S.P.E.AK.S. hotline received 1,400 calls.

Asking people to potentially disclose abuse or private information on a voicemail message, as Mace’s line does, “seems risky,” Hudson said. Mace’s office says that the information people leave on the voicemail would be “confidential,” and a spokesperson told me earlier Tuesday that outreach was monitored by staffers in the office. The spokesperson added that “per federal congressional office policy, we will get consent from constituents to provide their information to law enforcement as needed.”

Despite these assurances, Mace’s office is not bound by the same federal confidentiality requirements the Violence Against Women Act imposes on domestic and sexual violence treatment and prevention organizations that receive federal funding, as Sara Barber, executive director of the South Carolina Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault, which oversees the state’s 22 member organizations, pointed out.

Besides the confidentiality concerns, having specially-trained advocates available to answer phones on the spot is important because survivors may not call back again, or may need immediate emotional support, the advocates pointed out. “There is potential harm,” Freel said, “in a survivor calling with an expectation that they will be connected to someone who gets it and who is a trauma-informed individual.”

“When they call and get an answering machine,” she added, “that can immediately be disheartening and hurtful and can create a barrier for them to even want to take another step forward in a process.”

So why did Mace introduce the so-called hotline in the first place? I asked her office and didn’t immediately hear back—on that question, or on the local advocates’ criticisms of the hotline. But it does align with Mace’s attempts to portray herself as a protector of women and girls (though, as she has made clear, that doesn’t include trans women).

Mace’s spokesperson told me earlier Tuesday that the line will stay active “as long as necessary.”

When I asked Hudson whether Mace’s office had reached out to her or the South Carolina Victim Assistance Network to ask for assistance or guidance in setting up the hotline, Hudson replied, “No. But I would be delighted to help her in any way.”

Update, Feb. 12: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that all four men named by Rep. Mace have now denied the representative’s allegations, to include further information from Wilson’s response, and to incorporate new reporting based on a text message from Mace’s office Wednesday.

“A Real Estate Development for the Future”: Trump Doubles Down on Plan to Take Over Gaza

10 February 2025 at 19:34

President Donald Trump is doubling down—in strikingly transactional and inhumane terms—on his stated plan to take over Gaza, force out Palestinians, and block them from returning after the devastating war with Israel.

In a new clip previewing a forthcoming interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, Trump described his widely panned plan to “own” and develop the Gaza Strip while forcibly relocating two million Palestinians to Egypt or Jordan.

“I would own this,” he said. “Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land, no big money spent.”

Trump claimed that the eventual goal would be to build “safe communities”—but did not specify who they would be for, where they would be located, or if Palestinians would be welcome there.

“We’ll build beautiful communities for the 1.9 million people. We’ll build beautiful communities, safe communities. Could be five, six. Could be two. But we’ll build safe communities—a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” Trump told Baier, without offering further specifics.

“Would the Palestinians have the right to return?” Baier interrupted to ask.

BAIER: Would the Palestinians have the right to return to Gaza?

TRUMP: No, they wouldn't pic.twitter.com/kL8ZhWXMPa

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 10, 2025

“No, they wouldn’t,” Trump replied bluntly, “because they’re going to have much better—in other words, I’m talking about building a permanent place for them. Because if they have to return now, it’ll be years before you could have a—it’s not habitable. It would be years before it could happen. I’m talking about starting to build. I think I could make a deal with Jordan, I think I could make a deal with Egypt—we give them billions and billions of dollars a year.”

Thousands of displaced Palestinians began returning to northern Gaza last month.Naaman Omar/APA/ZUMA

Trump made similar comments on Air Force One on Sunday, en route to the Super Bowl in New Orleans: “I’m committed to buying and owning Gaza,” he said. “The place is a demolition site. The remainder will be demolished…we’ll make it into a very good site for future development by somebody. We’ll let other countries develop parts of it, it’ll be beautiful. People can come from all over the world and live there. But we’re going to take care of the Palestinians,” he claimed, without elaborating on where they would live. He went on to passively describe Gaza as “the most dangerous site anywhere in the world to live in,” without acknowledging Israel’s role in the war—prompted by the Oct. 7, 2o23 Hamas attack that killed approximately 1,200 Israelis and took 250 hostages—that has reportedly killed more than 62,000 Palestinians, including more than 17,000 children, as my colleague Noah Lanard pointed out last week.

President Trump committed to “buying and owning Gaza” in Air Force One comments#trump #gaza #military pic.twitter.com/2WiC0660QL

— Military Times (@MilitaryTimes) February 10, 2025

The latest comments amount to Trump’s doubling down on a plan that the United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres described as “ethnic cleansing” after Trump first floated it last week at a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during his visit to the White House. Trump’s comments then—that the US would “take over” the Gaza Strip and turn it into “the Riviera of the Middle East”—caused such alarm that administration officials quickly appeared to walk them back. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a subsequent press briefing: “The president has not committed to putting boots on the ground in Gaza” and that the US wouldn’t pay for the rebuilding of Gaza. Eventually, she conceded that Trump’s proposal was “an out-of-the-box idea.”

In northern Gaza, returning Palestinian encountered scenes of rubble and destruction.Habboub Ramez/Abaca/Zuma

Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that if Palestinians were relocated, it would be temporary—but Trump’s latest comments, to Baier, suggest he envisions the Palestinians’ potential expulsion from the land as permanent. (While a reporter asked at last week’s press conference whether or not Trump would support Palestinians returning, he did not answer directly.) Several congressional Republicans, including Trump allies, also raised concerns about the feasibility of the plan—which Hamas, the Palestinian Authority, Egypt, and Jordan have all rejected.

The White House did not immediately respond to questions Monday seeking clarification.

The doubling down on such a controversial plan makes clear that, as Noah wrote last week:

Trump sees the world through the lens of real estate deals, not morality or international law. That was obvious in the press conference. “We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal,” he explained about his Gaza proposal. “And I don’t want to be cute. I don’t want to be a wise guy. But the riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so—this could be so magnificent.” His rhetoric was in line with that of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, who has gushed about how Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable.”

While Trump ponders violating international law, thousands of internally displaced Palestinians have been returning to northern Gaza. Mohammed al-Faran, 40, told the Washington Post last month that he and his wife, three kids, mother, and nephew walked seven hours in a draining journey from Deir al-Balah to Gaza City.

The scene he returned to, he told the newspaper, was “devastating — worse than I had imagined.” Even so, “we were determined to return from the very first day,” al-Farhan said, “unsure of what the future holds.”

Polls Keep Showing Americans Want Elon Musk and DOGE Out of Government

9 February 2025 at 21:55

Yet more evidence shows Elon Musk and his cronies at the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are unpopular with many Americans.

Nearly half of people who responded to a new CBS/YouGov poll out today said they want Musk to have less influence over government spending and operations, including nearly a third who think they should have none at all. The poll found that 18 percent of respondents said that Musk and his DOGE acolytes should have “not much” influence on government operations and spending, while 31 percent said they should have none at all. Predictably, the support differed along partisan lines: Nearly three-quarters of Republicans surveyed said Musk and DOGE should have “a lot” or “some” influence, whereas more than two-thirds of Democrats said they should have “not much” or “none.”

This comes as the latest bit of mounting evidence showing many Americans don’t want Musk running the government: Just this week, a poll from the Economist/YouGov also showed that 51 percent of Americans believe Musk has a lot of influence in the government, while only 13 percent want him to have that much influence; 46 percent, on the other hand, don’t want him to have any influence. Another poll released this week from progressive advocacy groups Groundwork Collaborative and Public Citizen in partnership with Hart Research found 54 percent of voters have an unfavorable opinion of him, with a majority also saying he has too much influence and involvement in the government and that they have less favorable opinions after learning about the lack of oversight regulating potential conflicts of interest with his companies as well as the ability of DOGE to access unclassified information.

Last month, a Quinnipiac University poll found 53 percent of respondents disapprove of Musk’s prominent role in the Trump administration, and another January poll, from the Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center, found that a majority of Americans don’t want Trump relying on billionaires or family members for policy advice and have an unfavorable opinion of Musk.

All in all, this is not surprising, given that, as Mother Jones editor-in-chief Clara Jeffery wrote earlier this week, nobody voted for Musk, an unelected tech billionaire. The latest data offers a clear rebuke to the hurricane of chaos that Musk and his cronies at DOGE and across the federal government have unleashed since President Trump’s inauguration.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, that chaos has included trying to pay federal workers to quit their jobs; attempting to gain access to US Treasury data; threatening to shutter USAID, a federal agency tasked with supporting critical humanitarian and development work around the world; taking over the Education Department, which Musk claimed on X the other day “doesn’t exist”; and threatening reporters who report critically on DOGE. (And given that the department is reportedly staffed by Gen Z fanboys and former staffers of Musk—one of whom, Marko Elez, resigned on Thursday after the Wall Street Journal unearthed openly racist posts on an account linked to him, before Musk promptly rehired him the next day—there has been plenty to cover.)

The CBS/YouGov poll released Sunday showed other Trump policies that are also unpopular: 52 percent of respondents said they oppose building large detention centers to house people awaiting decisions on whether or not they’ll be deported; only 13 percent said the US trying to take over Gaza, as Trump proposed this week, would be a good idea (47 percent called it a bad idea, and 40 percent said they’re unsure); 66 percent said Trump is not focused enough on lowering prices; and large majorities said they oppose new US tariffs on goods from Mexico, Europe, and Canada (economists have said those tariffs will likely raise prices for American consumers).

But in a news release from the White House Sunday, responses to those data points were invisible. “Americans Are Loving the New Golden Age,” the press release claimed, touting Trump’s 53 percent approval rating, the 70 percent of poll respondents who said Trump is doing what he promised on the campaign trail, and the majority approval for his mass deportation plan and his handling of the Israel-Hamas conflict. (Never mind that those assertions would seem to be in conflict with some of the other findings mentioned above—such as the limited support for his floated plan to take over Gaza.)

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt shared the headline from CBS on X: “Trump has positive approval amid ‘energetic’ opening weeks; seen as doing what he promised,” it read. Leavitt’s enthusiastic promotion of it was curious given that, just a few days ago, her boss said in a post on Truth Social that CBS should “lose its license” over a 60 Minutes interview the network did with former Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris. (Trump filed a lawsuit against the network, alleging that the 60 Minutes interview was deceptively edited to make Harris look better; CBS denies those allegations and this week released the raw footage and transcript of the entire interview, which it also provided to the Federal Communications Commission upon request.)

The White House’s promotion of the latest CBS poll—and its refusal to seriously engage with public criticisms of Musk, along with other points of contention—offers a clear example of its hypocrisy regarding its attacks on journalism and truth: What Trump’s acolytes see as favorable to him get labeled as legitimate, whereas anything more critical gets branded “fake news”—or simply ignored.

When it comes to Musk, they’ve continued to defend him—and showed how unseriously they seem to be taking his position in the highest levels of government. At a press briefing this week, Leavitt said that Trump was clear on the campaign trail about the role Musk would play in his administration. Separately, when a CNN reporter asked Leavitt what kind of security clearance Musk has, if he passed a background check, or if the DOGE team members raiding the Treasury Department or USAID had security clearances, she said she didn’t know and would have to check. The White House does not appear to have clarified those points yet.

But if Democrats continue attacking Musk and the role of oligarchy in the Trump administration, as they did this week, the White House may have no choice but to confront the discontent around Musk and DOGE head-on.

Correction, Feb. 9: This story originally misstated the proportion of Democrats in the CBS poll who said Musk and DOGE should have not much or no influence in government.

Report: Elon’s Cybertrucks Are Deadlier Than Infamous Ford Pintos

9 February 2025 at 19:41

Elon Musk’s Cybertrucks may look indestructible: hulking blocks of aluminum and steel that appear to be better suited for a space station than a parking spot on a narrow city street. But a new report suggests that they’re actually deadlier than one of the most infamous—and flawed—American cars ever made: the Ford Pinto.

An analysis published Thursday by the auto news website FuelArc found that, in their one year of existence, the approximately 34,000 Cybertrucks on the roads had five fire fatalities, giving them a fatality rate of 14.5 per 100,000 units. That’s 17 times the fatality rate of the Ford Pintos, whose famously flawed gas tank design on the car’s rear end led to 27 reported fire fatalities in its nine years on the road, resulting in a fatality rate of 0.85 per 100,000 units, according to FuelArc.

The authors of the Cybertruck analysis openly acknowledge caveats in their methodology. First off, Tesla—the car’s manufacturer and one of Musk’s companies—has not confirmed how many Cybertrucks it has sold. FuelArc puts its best guess at 34,438, based on “a variety of means, including piecing together public reporting.” Secondly, the five Cybertruck fatalities include the one that occurred in Las Vegas last month outside Trump International Hotel, when an Army soldier fatally shot himself before the car, packed with fireworks, exploded. Musk claimed in a post on X that the explosion was “unrelated to the vehicle itself.” Thus, the FuelArc analysis acknowledges that this fatality is “controversial” since the driver’s cause of death was reportedly a self-inflicted gunshot wound, and the burns occurred after his death.

Officials investigated the Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas last month.Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department/ZUMA

The other Cybertruck fatalities included in the analysis were the ones that took place in December in Piedmont, California, which killed three college students and left one injured, and in Texas last August, which reportedly—at least initially—left the victim unidentifiable due to severe burns. (The Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately respond to an email Sunday seeking updated information on the victim’s identity.) The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) previously said it was seeking information from Tesla in both incidents; a spokesperson for the agency did not immediately respond to questions on Sunday.

A spokesperson for Tesla also did not immediately respond to questions.

The point of comparison in the analysis, though—the Ford Pinto fatalities—is a strong, and telling, one. In a classic Mother Jones cover story from 1977, reporter Mark Dowie spent six months investigating the deadly Ford Pintos and found that the company rushed to create and distribute the cars to beat the competition—despite the fact that testing showed that the Pinto was unsafe as designed, due to the flawed placement of the gas tank:

Mother Jones has studied hundreds of reports and documents on rear-end collisions involving Pintos. These reports conclusively reveal that if you ran into that Pinto you were following at over 30 miles per hour, the rear end of the car would buckle like an accordion, right up to the back seat. The tube leading to the gas-tank cap would be ripped away from the tank itself, and gas would immediately begin sloshing onto the road around the car. The buckled gas tank would be jammed up against the differential housing (that big bulge in the middle of your rear axle), which contains four sharp, protruding bolts likely to gash holes in the tank and spill still more gas. Now all you need is a spark from a cigarette, ignition, or scraping metal, and both cars would be engulfed in flames. If you gave that Pinto a really good whack—say, at 40 mph—chances are excellent that its doors would jam and you would have to stand by and watch its trapped passengers burn to death.

This scenario is no news to Ford. Internal company documents in our possession show that Ford has crash-tested the Pinto at a top-secret site more than 40 times and that every test made at over 25 mph without special structural alteration of the car has resulted in a ruptured fuel tank. Despite this, Ford officials denied under oath having crash-tested the Pinto.

That Mother Jones report prompted the NHTSA to undertake an investigation. Ford recalled more than 1.5 million of the cars the following year, and stopped producing the cars entirely by 1980. The company was also accused of reckless homicide over the safety concerns, but a jury acquitted them.

Still, all in all, it’s not a favorable comparison for the Cybertruck.

There are other reasons, beyond the latest analysis, to be skeptical of the car’s safety, though: It has reportedly not been crash-tested by the NHTSA or the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, nor has Tesla released its own safety data on the Cybertruck. Experts have also said its sharp stainless steel design could hurt pedestrians and cyclists and increase the potential for damaging other cars on the road.

Musk bragged around the time of its release that it would “be much safer per mile than other trucks.” But his claims of superiority were quickly disproven, given that Tesla recalled the truck seven times last year alone—an astonishingly high amount—including once over a trapped accelerator pedal that could increase the risk of a crash, estimated to affect more than 3,800 units, according to the NHTSA.

Correction, Feb. 9: An earlier version of this story mistakenly characterized the fatality rate of Cybertrucks as a percentage rather than as a rate per 100,000 units.

Trump Just Outlined His Plan to Hand Power to Christian Nationalists

6 February 2025 at 19:13

We always knew that Trump’s return to the White House would bring Christian nationalism to the highest levels of government.

There’s Russell Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist and an author of Project 2025, who is Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget—which leads the implementation of the president’s policies, regulations, and funding decisions across the federal government, as my colleague Isabela Dias has written. And there was the pair of Christian podcasters who, at a rally the night before Trump’s inauguration, thanked God for “choosing President Donald Trump as a vessel for your nation,” as my colleague David Corn covered.

The signs, in other words, have been there for a while.

But at the National Prayer Breakfast—a decades-old, purportedly interfaith annual event—in DC on Thursday, President Trump laid out the steps he will take, now that he’s in office, to make those dreams of Christian nationalist power a reality. “We want to bring religion back—stronger, bigger, better than ever before,” he said. These measures will allegedly include:

  • Creating a so-called Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, which he so eloquently claimed will “be a very big deal”;
  • Signing an executive order ordering newly-confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” inside the federal government and “prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society”;
  • And creating a new Faith Office in the White House, which will be led by the televangelist and Trump acolyte Rev. Paula White—who, as my colleagues Stephanie Mencimer and Kiera Butler have written, is often associated with an evangelical Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders claim that God speaks directly to them and “that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States.”

The White House did not respond to several questions from Mother Jones seeking more details on the proposals Trump outlined—including whether Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency agrees that these efforts would be a good use of taxpayer dollars and what evidence, if any, Trump has that there is a problem of “anti-Christian bias” within the federal government.

Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast announces that he's signing an order directing AG Pam Bondi to head a task force "to eradicate anti-Christian bias" pic.twitter.com/pa8yoGrsnT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 6, 2025

On Thursday night, Trump signed the executive order on “eradicating anti-Christian bias.” It directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to chair a task force including several other Cabinet officials—including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth—tasked with rooting out “any unlawful anti-Christian policies, practices, or conduct” in federal agencies and making recommendations to the president about how to “rectify past improper anti-Christian conduct” and “protect religious liberty.” Within four months, the task force must produce a report to the president of its initial work, and it must produce another report within a year. The executive order says the task force will dissolve in two years unless the president extends it. Plans for the task force were included in the most recent Republican party platform.

Rachel Laser, CEO of the nonprofit advocacy group Americans United For Separation of Church and State, said in a statement that the task force “will misuse religious freedom to justify bigotry, discrimination, and the subversion of our civil rights laws,” adding, “this task force is not a response to Christian persecution; it’s an attempt to make America into an ultra-conservative Christian Nationalist nation.”

The sole example of so-called “anti-Christian bias” Trump cited at the breakfast was the case of Paulette Harlow, one of the nearly two dozen people he pardoned two weeks ago for blocking the entrances to abortion clinics (some of the more serious violations included breaking into the clinics and stealing fetal tissue). Harlow, a 70-something Massachusetts resident, was sentenced to two years in prison last May for being part of a group that broke into a DC abortion clinic in October 2020 and livestreamed their blockading of the entrance; she was found guilty following a bench trial of federal civil rights conspiracy and violating the FACE Act, a federal law that prevents interfering with access to reproductive health clinics, according to Biden’s Department of Justice. (Trump’s DOJ has said they will limit enforcement of the law, which has abortion clinics bracing for potentially violent protests.)

But in Trump’s rewriting of history on Thursday, he falsely claimed that Harlow “was put in jail because she was praying”—which even Harlow’s former attorney has said is not accurate. In fact, according to court documents, Harlow was not a peaceful protester, but instead body-slammed the clinic manager into a waiting room chair. Once law enforcement arrived, she told them she would not cooperate with arrest and that they would have to “use a power-saw to cut the bike lock she affixed to her neck” to attach herself to other protesters as part of the blockade, the court documents state. Harlow denied the allegations against her at trial, despite video evidence proving otherwise. (Allen Orenberg, the lawyer who previously told Reuters that Harlow was not, in fact, jailed for praying, said when reached by email on Thursday that he is no longer representing Harlow and directed questions to her current lawyer, Carmen Hernandez, who said Harlow did not actually serve any prison time due to delays stemming from health issues, and that she was scheduled to report to prison later this month. Hernandez also pointed to a court record that stated that Harlow “passively resisted arrest by going limp,” and then quoted comments from Martin Luther King, Jr. about “passive resistance.” She did not respond to a question about the allegation that Harlow body-slammed the clinic manager.)

Trump also falsely claimed that the FACE Act was “selectively weaponized against Christians by the previous administration”—but Biden’s DOJ also enforced the law against abortion rights protesters who targeted anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. The White House did not immediately respond to my questions Thursday afternoon about whether Trump would issue corrections for those false statements.

“She got lucky that I won that election,” Trump said of Harlow, who was at the event Thursday. He then addressed her directly: “I want to thank you very much for being here, Paulette. Enjoy your life.” The crowd laughed.

The president also went through his greatest hits of baseless and boastful remarks, some of which—one couldn’t help but notice, given the setting—are decidedly blasphemous.

“I like people that make money,” he said at one point. (God doesn’t.)

“We won by a massive majority,” he said at another. (He won 49.8 percent of the popular vote, to Kamala Harris’ 48.3 percent.)

“As I said at my inaugural address two weeks ago, a light is now shining over the world—the entire world—and I’m hearing it from other leaders,” he said of his second term. (The Bible warns against such pridefulness.)

“The opposite side—they oppose religion, they oppose God,” Trump claimed. (Former President Biden is a practicing Catholic who has been open about his faith, and former Vice President Kamala Harris is a practicing Baptist who said one of her first phone calls after Biden dropped out of the race and asked her to step in last summer was to her pastor.)

Trump also, as he has done several times now, teased potentially running for a third term—which would be in violation of the Constitution. That may be a joke—but the arrival of Christian nationalism at the White House is not.

Update, Feb. 6: This post was updated with more details from court documents of Harlow’s actions; information about and from her former and current lawyers; details of the executive order Trump signed Thursday night; and a statement from the nonprofit advocacy group Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

Trump Just Outlined His Plan to Hand Power to Christian Nationalists

6 February 2025 at 19:13

We always knew that Trump’s return to the White House would bring Christian nationalism to the highest levels of government.

There’s Russell Vought, an avowed Christian nationalist and an author of Project 2025, who is Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Management and Budget—which leads the implementation of the president’s policies, regulations, and funding decisions across the federal government, as my colleague Isabela Dias has written. And there was the pair of Christian podcasters who, at a rally the night before Trump’s inauguration, thanked God for “choosing President Donald Trump as a vessel for your nation,” as my colleague David Corn covered.

The signs, in other words, have been there for a while.

But at the National Prayer Breakfast—a decades-old, purportedly interfaith annual event—in DC on Thursday, President Trump laid out the steps he will take, now that he’s in office, to make those dreams of Christian nationalist power a reality. “We want to bring religion back—stronger, bigger, better than ever before,” he said. These measures will allegedly include:

  • Creating a so-called Presidential Commission on Religious Liberty, which he so eloquently claimed will “be a very big deal”;
  • Signing an executive order ordering newly-confirmed Attorney General Pam Bondi to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” inside the federal government and “prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society”;
  • And creating a new Faith Office in the White House, which will be led by the televangelist and Trump acolyte Rev. Paula White—who, as my colleagues Stephanie Mencimer and Kiera Butler have written, is often associated with an evangelical Christian movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, whose leaders claim that God speaks directly to them and “that Christians are called to wage a spiritual battle for control of the United States.”

The White House did not immediately respond to several questions from Mother Jones seeking more details on the proposals Trump outlined—including whether Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency agrees that these efforts would be a good use of taxpayer dollars and what evidence, if any, Trump has that there is a problem of “anti-Christian bias” within the federal government.

Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast announces that he's signing an order directing AG Pam Bondi to head a task force "to eradicate anti-Christian bias" pic.twitter.com/pa8yoGrsnT

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 6, 2025

The sole example Trump cited at the breakfast was the case of Paulette Harlow, one of the nearly two dozen people he pardoned two weeks ago for blocking the entrances to abortion clinics (some of the more serious violations included breaking into the clinics and stealing fetal tissue). Harlow, a 70-something Massachusetts resident, was sentenced to two years in prison last May for being part of a group that broke into a DC abortion clinic in October 2020 and livestreamed their blockading of the entrance; she was found guilty following a bench trial of federal civil rights conspiracy and violating the FACE Act, a federal law that prevents interfering with access to reproductive health clinics, according to Biden’s Department of Justice. (Trump’s DOJ has said they will limit enforcement of the law, which has abortion clinics bracing for potentially violent protests.)

But in Trump’s rewriting of history on Thursday, he falsely claimed that Harlow “was put in jail because she was praying”—which even Harlow’s former attorney has said is not accurate. (That lawyer, Allen Orenberg, said when reached by email on Thursday that he is no longer representing Harlow and directed questions to her current lawyer, Carmen Hernandez, who did not immediately respond.) In fact, according to court documents, Harlow was not a peaceful protester, but instead body-slammed the clinic manager into a waiting room chair. Once law enforcement arrived, she told them she would not cooperate with arrest and that they would have to “use a power-saw to cut the bike lock she affixed to her neck” to attach herself to other protesters as part of the blockade, the court documents state. (Harlow denied the allegations against her at trial, despite video evidence proving otherwise.)

Trump also falsely claimed that the FACE Act was “selectively weaponized against Christians by the previous administration”—but Biden’s DOJ also enforced the law against abortion rights protesters who targeted anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. The White House did not immediately respond to my questions Thursday afternoon about whether Trump would issue corrections for those false statements.

“She got lucky that I won that election,” Trump said of Harlow, who was at the event Thursday. He then addressed her directly: “I want to thank you very much for being here, Paulette. Enjoy your life.” The crowd laughed.

The president also went through his greatest hits of baseless and boastful remarks, some of which—one couldn’t help but notice, given the setting—are decidedly blasphemous.

“I like people that make money,” he said at one point. (God doesn’t.)

“We won by a massive majority,” he said at another. (He won 49.8 percent of the popular vote, to Kamala Harris’ 48.3 percent.)

“As I said at my inaugural address two weeks ago, a light is now shining over the world—the entire world—and I’m hearing it from other leaders,” he said of his second term. (The Bible warns against such pridefulness.)

“The opposite side—they oppose religion, they oppose God,” Trump claimed. (Former President Biden is a practicing Catholic who has been open about his faith, and former Vice President Kamala Harris is a practicing Baptist who said one of her first phone calls after Biden dropped out of the race and asked her to step in last summer was to her pastor.)

Trump also, as he has done several times now, teased potentially running for a third term—which would be in violation of the Constitution. That may be a joke—but the arrival of Christian nationalism at the White House is not.

Update, Feb. 6: This post was updated with more details from court documents of Harlow’s actions as well as information about her former and current lawyers.

Fox News Hires a Trump Family Member to Host a Saturday Night Show

5 February 2025 at 22:31

A new pro-Trump mouthpiece is set to join Fox News as a host later this month: His son Eric’s wife and former Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump.

The network announced Wednesday that beginning February 22, she will host a new Saturday night show called “My View with Lara Trump,” airing from 9 to 10 p.m. EST. The news release announcing the new hire makes clear that—as my colleague Mark Follman put it—the network is essentially state media at this point. The release states, “‘My View with Lara Trump’ will focus on the return of common sense to all corners of American life as the country ushers in a new era of practicality.”

“Common sense” has also been the go-to term used by the Trump White House to describe everything from erasing LGBTQ and people of color from public life and American history, to letting an unelected billionaire overhaul government, to contextualizing his racist explanation for the catastrophic American Airlines collision with an Army helicopter that left 67 dead. Fox promises the new show will bring “big picture analysis and interviews with thought leaders” to the air each week.

“As I cover the success of The Golden Age of America,” a statement from Lara Trump said, using another baseless Trump White House term, “I look forward to where this time will lead our country and where this opportunity will lead me in the future.”

Lara Trump, however, is not without television experience. As the Fox announcement points out, Lara Trump started her career as a producer for “Inside Edition” on CBS. (Though, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer noted in a profile of her last year, she seemed to have little qualifications for the job at the time—which, despite her obsession with “meritocracy,” seems to be a common theme in her meteoric ascent from cake baker to RNC co-chair.) From 2021 to 2022, Lara Trump also was a contributor to Fox, the network says. As the RNC co-chair, throughout the most recent election cycle, she appeared frequently on right-wing television to campaign for her father-in-law.

All of which explains why her hiring undermines whatever journalistic bona fides Fox may still claim to have, especially after its stunning settlement in the $1.6 billion defamation case that Dominion Voting Systems brought against the network (Fox ultimately paid about half that amount). That case revealed that the network’s hosts played a major role in boosting President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election being stolen, even as some reporters were aware that it was bogus, as my colleague David Corn reported at the time.

“Rupert Murdoch finds a way to put money directly into the pockets of the sitting president’s relative.”

“You really can’t think of the network as independent from the White House in any way right now,” Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at the nonprofit progressive research center Media Matters, wrote in a post on X on Wednesday following the announcement about Lara Trump. “Rupert Murdoch finds a way to put money directly into the pockets of the sitting president’s relative,” Gertz added.

Spokespeople for Fox didn’t immediately respond to questions about how, if at all, the network would maintain editorial independence from the White House in light of the hire and whether there was any expectation that Lara Trump would be able to maintain any critical distance from the Trump administration.

Following Trump’s victory, there were some questions about Lara Trump’s future role after the RNC—even speculation that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) might name her to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate as he joined the administration as secretary of state. In December, she announced that she was taking herself out of the running from consideration to succeed Rubio; her Fox gig was presumably the reason she bowed out. (DeSantis wound up picking state Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the seat last month.) But Lara Trump’s new job doesn’t mean that a future high-level political appointment is off the table. After all, being a Fox host was apparently adequate qualification for weekend news anchor Pete Hegseth to run the Defense Department.

Fox News Hires a Trump Family Member to Host a Saturday Night Show

5 February 2025 at 22:31

A new pro-Trump mouthpiece is set to join Fox News as a host later this month: His son Eric’s wife and former Republican National Committee co-chair, Lara Trump.

The network announced Wednesday that beginning February 22, she will host a new Saturday night show called “My View with Lara Trump,” airing from 9 to 10 p.m. EST. The news release announcing the new hire makes clear that—as my colleague Mark Follman put it—the network is essentially state media at this point. The release states, “‘My View with Lara Trump’ will focus on the return of common sense to all corners of American life as the country ushers in a new era of practicality.”

“Common sense” has also been the go-to term used by the Trump White House to describe everything from erasing LGBTQ and people of color from public life and American history, to letting an unelected billionaire overhaul government, to contextualizing his racist explanation for the catastrophic American Airlines collision with an Army helicopter that left 67 dead. Fox promises the new show will bring “big picture analysis and interviews with thought leaders” to the air each week.

“As I cover the success of The Golden Age of America,” a statement from Lara Trump said, using another baseless Trump White House term, “I look forward to where this time will lead our country and where this opportunity will lead me in the future.”

Lara Trump, however, is not without television experience. As the Fox announcement points out, Lara Trump started her career as a producer for “Inside Edition” on CBS. (Though, as my colleague Stephanie Mencimer noted in a profile of her last year, she seemed to have little qualifications for the job at the time—which, despite her obsession with “meritocracy,” seems to be a common theme in her meteoric ascent from cake baker to RNC co-chair.) From 2021 to 2022, Lara Trump also was a contributor to Fox, the network says. As the RNC co-chair, throughout the most recent election cycle, she appeared frequently on right-wing television to campaign for her father-in-law.

All of which explains why her hiring undermines whatever journalistic bona fides Fox may still claim to have, especially after its stunning settlement in the $1.6 billion defamation case that Dominion Voting Systems brought against the network (Fox ultimately paid about half that amount). That case revealed that the network’s hosts played a major role in boosting President Trump’s lie about the 2020 election being stolen, even as some reporters were aware that it was bogus, as my colleague David Corn reported at the time.

“Rupert Murdoch finds a way to put money directly into the pockets of the sitting president’s relative.”

“You really can’t think of the network as independent from the White House in any way right now,” Matthew Gertz, a senior fellow at the nonprofit progressive research center Media Matters, wrote in a post on X on Wednesday following the announcement about Lara Trump. “Rupert Murdoch finds a way to put money directly into the pockets of the sitting president’s relative,” Gertz added.

Spokespeople for Fox didn’t immediately respond to questions about how, if at all, the network would maintain editorial independence from the White House in light of the hire and whether there was any expectation that Lara Trump would be able to maintain any critical distance from the Trump administration.

Following Trump’s victory, there were some questions about Lara Trump’s future role after the RNC—even speculation that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) might name her to replace Marco Rubio in the Senate as he joined the administration as secretary of state. In December, she announced that she was taking herself out of the running from consideration to succeed Rubio; her Fox gig was presumably the reason she bowed out. (DeSantis wound up picking state Attorney General Ashley Moody to fill the seat last month.) But Lara Trump’s new job doesn’t mean that a future high-level political appointment is off the table. After all, being a Fox host was apparently adequate qualification for weekend news anchor Pete Hegseth to run the Defense Department.

A Bill Supporting Critical Services for Victims of Abuse Gets Another Chance in Congress

5 February 2025 at 16:47

A bill that would help fund critical services for millions of victims of domestic and sexual violence, including children, is getting a second chance in Congress.

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers is reintroducing the Crime Victims Fund Stabilization Act, the office of Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-Mich.), one of the bill’s co-sponsors, announced on Wednesday. The legislation aims to help shore up the Crime Victims Fund (CVF)—a pot of federal money established by the 1984 Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) that supports domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, and child advocacy centers nationwide—by temporarily diverting funds collected through the False Claims Act, which penalizes defrauding of the government, into the CVF through 2029.

The news, which Mother Jones is the first to report, follows widespread support for the bill during the last session, with 210 co-sponsors in the House and five in the Senate. But it failed to make it out of committee in both chambers, or into the end-of-year spending bill. This time, advocates are hoping for more success. The reintroduction of the legislation comes as survivors of abuse are in desperate need of support: Rates of domestic violence have soared since the pandemic; a housing crisis—and the Supreme Court decision criminalizing homelessness—has made it even harder for survivors to flee abusers; and the overturning of Roe v. Wade has given abusers another way to threaten pregnant survivors.

“This legislation will prevent the devastating impact of depleting deposits into the fund, enabling victim services organizations to continue helping those who depend on them to heal and move forward,” Dingell said in a statement Wednesday. “Congress must ensure that the CVF receives robust, stable funding that equips victim services with adequate staffing and capacity.” Many organizations that rely on VOCA funding “have been forced to triage their services, and some have had to close their doors entirely,” Rep. Ann Wagner (R-Mo.), the lead Republican sponsor, said in a statement. “They need our help now.”

As I have reported for Mother Jones, the CVF, which is supported by financial penalties levied in corporate criminal cases, has been declining for years as federal prosecutors have pursued more deferred and non-prosecution agreements, which allow defendants more time to pay up or avoid charges entirely if they cooperate with the government; the fund’s balance shrunk by more than 60 percent, from $13 billion in fiscal year 2017 to $4.25 billion by the end of last year. (Because of caps set by Congress since 2000 to manage fluctuations in the fund, the amount of money disbursed has been even lower.) The money is distributed to states based on their population size, and then finally to eligible programs.

It’s these programs—the shelters and centers where abused women and children seek support—and the people they serve that have been most severely and directly impacted. As I chronicled in a story I spent months reporting for Mother Jones published back in October, the dwindling money has put multiple statewide hotlines catering to domestic violence survivors at risk of closing and has imperiled legal advocacy services for survivors across the country. Judge Shelley Santry, a family court judge in Louisville, Kentucky who lost domestic violence advocates who helped survivors in her courtroom understand the limits of restraining orders and formulate safety plans, painted a bleak picture of the VOCA funding crisis: “The consequence [of losing those services],” she told me, “may be death.”

As I reported back in December, the funding declines have also devastated child advocacy centers, where children go to testify about abuse they sustained to specially-trained, trauma-informed forensic interviewers and receive mental and physical support: One center in rural northern Wisconsin that served about 50 kids annually for free closed its doors in October due to the funding cuts, and advocates in four other states told me the funding declines forced them to cut personnel or left them unable to fill vacant positions, leading to longer wait times for children and burnout for existing staff.

Advocates greeted the news of the bill’s reintroduction with celebration: “It’s very, very exciting,” Jaime Yahner, executive director of the National Association of VOCA Assistance Administrators, told me Wednesday morning. Stefan Turkheimer, vice president for Public Policy at the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, said in a statement that the bill’s passage could “provide a lifeline to survivors and help safeguard their access to the most essential services.” And Stephanie Love-Patterson, president and CEO of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, said the bill could “give victim assistance programs the support necessary to keep their doors open.” As Love-Patterson also noted, the funds that it would divert into the CVF via the False Claims Act are non-taxpayer dollars, which may make it more appealing to GOP members. A Department of Justice spokesperson previously told me that since fiscal year 2017, $1.7 billion from the False Claims Act has gone into the General Fund of the Treasury—money that, under the new bill, would go into the CVF instead.

But whether the bill actually has a shot at passing remains to be seen. Spokespeople for the White House, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.), and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) did not immediately respond to requests for comment about whether or not they support the bill. And it’s unclear if the Senate companion bill will be reintroduced this term. Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) introduced the Senate version of the bill in the last session, but their spokespeople did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday morning.

Even if the bill does get some movement among lawmakers, it’s all but certain to face other barriers outside of Congress. Whistleblowers have alleged that by diverting money from the False Claims Act, the legislation would siphon funds from people who report government fraud; advocates of the bill say it would preserve payments for them. And if it ultimately passed, it would not be enough to solve the CVF funding crisis once and for all, given that the diversion of funds from the False Claims Act would end in 2029.

“This stabilization bill is just a band-aid,” Emily Perry, who runs a child advocacy center in Indiana, told me in December. “If there isn’t more of a steady, consistent flow of funds into the Crime Victims Fund, then we’re just going to be revisiting this time and time again.”

Congressional Democrats Step Up Fight Against Elon’s Shadow Presidency

3 February 2025 at 22:04

Gathered outside the headquarters of the US Agency for International Development in downtown Washington, DC, on Monday, a fiery group of congressional Democrats debuted what felt like a new—and potent—message: Elon Musk is acting as an unqualified shadow president, and he’s breaking the law along the way.

The unelected South African tech billionaire announced Monday that he and Trump were shutting down USAID, which distributes billions of dollars annually in international humanitarian aid to approximately 130 countries—the top recipient in fiscal year 2023 was Ukraine—and employs more than 10,0o0 people, according to the Congressional Research Service (CRS). Established by an executive order signed by President John F. Kennedy in 1961, the agency “provides assistance to strategically important countries and countries in conflict; leads U.S. efforts to alleviate poverty, disease, and humanitarian need; and assists U.S. commercial interests by supporting developing countries’ economic growth and building countries’ capacity to participate in world trade,” the CRS states. To Musk, though, it’s a “criminal organization” and “radical-left political psy op.

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk posted on X early Monday. “Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”

Hundreds of USAID staffers were reportedly laid off last week following Trump’s executive order, issued on Inauguration Day, ordering a 90-day freeze on foreign aid. Over the weekend, two top USAID security leaders were reportedly put on administrative leave after trying to stop DOGE staffers from accessing the agency’s secure systems. Ten Democratic senators from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee wrote in a letter Sunday to newly confirmed Secretary of State Marco Rubio that “security guards present at the facility were threatened when they raised questions” about DOGE staffers trying to gain entry.

Three US officials told CBS News earlier that USAID will be merged into the State Department and will sustain significant cuts to the workforce, but that it will maintain a humanitarian function. ABC News first reported that Rubio is now its acting administrator. In the Oval Office, President Trump claimed of the agency and its workforce: “I love the concept, but they turned out to be radical left lunatics.” Staffers at the agency were reportedly instructed to stay home on Monday, and its website is down.

In response to all this, high-ranking congressional Democrats staged a last-minute news conference to draw attention to the agency’s critical work and what they called Musk’s “crime” in trying to dismantle it. Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) summed up the utter mess of the past several days in his opening remarks: “Musk and his band of unelected acolytes at DOGE have locked out USAID employees from their offices, improperly accessed highly classified information, purged the agency of its nonpartisan leadership and thrown the agency into chaos through a concerted campaign of harassment and intimidation of its employees.” Beyer alleged that Musk and his acolytes’ actions “severely harm our national security”; “put thousands of children around the world at immediate risk of starvation, disease, and death”; and sideline “some of our finest civil servants who work tirelessly every day to make the world a better place.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) called closing the agency “an absolute gift to our adversaries—to Russia, to China, to Iran, and others, because AID is an essential instrument of US foreign policy and US national security policy.” He pointed to a post on X from former Russian president and “Putin stooge” Dmitry Medvedev, who called the decision to shutter USAID a “smart move by @elonmusk.”

“Elon Musk may get to be dictator of Tesla, and he may try to play dictator here in Washington, D.C., but he doesn’t get to shut down [USAID],” Van Hollen said, adding that the attempt to shutter the agency was “plain illegal” and that doing so would take an act of Congress.

Sen. @ChrisVanHollen: "Trying to shut down the Agency for International Development by executive order is plain illegal." pic.twitter.com/aXbkrFIGhF

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 3, 2025

“We don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk,” shouted Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), to cheers, “and that’s going to become real clear.”

On the heels of a New York Times report published Sunday that was based on interviews with more than 50 Democratic leaders and alleged that the party was struggling to land on a coherent message, Monday’s news conference seemed remarkably unified in its focus around the dangers of Musk as shadow president and Trump’s isolationist, “America First” ethos. And given that a Quinnipiac University poll released last week showed that most registered voters—53 percent—disapprove of Musk’s role in the Trump administration, and a January Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center poll found that a majority of Americans don’t want Trump relying on billionaires or family members for policy advice, congressional Democrats may be onto something in making Musk a top target.

The lawmakers also made sure to point out the litany of illegal activities Trump and Musk have undertaken in only—checks notes—two weeks in office. (See also: Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship, which a federal judge temporarily blocked, as my colleague Isabela Dias reported, as well as his effort to freeze billions of dollars in federal funding, which two other federal judges also temporarily blocked. And if Musk uses the access his team at DOGE was reportedly recently granted to the Treasury’s payments system to control government spending, that would also be illegal, as my colleague Pema Levy covered Sunday.)

The Monday press conference was not the only resistance Democratic lawmakers mounted to Musk’s latest moves. They also tried to enter the USAID headquarters on Monday, only to have federal law enforcement officials block their entry.

.@SenatorAndyKim at USAID: "I talked to the security guard just in there. He said he has been given specific orders to prevent employees of USAID from entering the building today. I just find that to be absolutely ridiculous. This is no way to govern." pic.twitter.com/ixdFDLqGps

— CSPAN (@cspan) February 3, 2025

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also said to the Wall Street Journal that he would put a “blanket hold” on all of Trump’s Cabinet nominees until the agency is back up and running. “I will do maximal delays until this is resolved,” Schatz told the newspaper.

How Trump Makes Tragedies Worse, A History

30 January 2025 at 22:43

President Trump’s baseless claims that diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are responsible for the tragic, late-night plane collision in Washington, DC are not the first time he’s peddled conspiracy theories as the nation reels from a crisis.

In the past, Trump has also boosted false and disproven claims in the aftermath of terrorist attacks, a national pandemic, police brutality, natural disasters and more. We took a disturbing and conspiratorial trip down memory lane so you don’t have to.

9/11

Trump has promoted a lot of falsehoods and unfounded claims about the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that killed more than 2,900 people and injured thousands more: He claimed in 2015 that he saw “thousands and thousands” of Arab people in New Jersey celebrating the attacks, a claim for which there is no evidence; he also claimed that from his apartment in Trump Tower—located four miles from the World Trade Center—he watched people jump from the burning towers.

He also said he “helped clear the rubble” at Ground Zero and that he lost “hundreds of friends” in the attacks—but there is no evidence to support either statement.

Trump claims he helped clear rubble and search for survivors on 9/11: pic.twitter.com/G3yodnBMK2

— Angelo Carusone (@GoAngelo) April 19, 2016

In 2022, he claimed, “Nobody’s gotten to the bottom of 9/11, unfortunately”—despite the fact that the FBI characterizes its investigation into 9/11 as its most ambitious ever, and says that it involved more than 4,000 special agents and 3,000 professional employees.

And, of course, last September, he brought Laura Loomer—an avowed 9/11 conspiracy theorist—to a somber memorial to commemorate the tragedy, as my colleague Abby Vesoulis reported at the time.

Central Park Five case

After the brutal rape and assault of a 28-year-old female jogger in Central Park in 1989 that made headlines across the country, Trump took out a full-page ad in four major New York newspapers suggesting that the five Black and Latino teenagers who were accused of the crime should face the death penalty. The wrongly accused men spent between 6 and 13 years in prison.

A convicted murderer and rapist eventually admitted, in 2002, to being responsible for the attack—and DNA evidence corroborated the confession. But that didn’t stop Trump from doubling down on his beliefs that the Central Park Five, as the wrongly accused men came to be known, were guilty during his 2016 presidential campaign. Around the same time, Yusef Salaam, one of the exonerees who has since been elected to the New York City Council, told Mother Jones that he believed Trump played a role in their conviction, adding that his newspaper ad facilitated “the conviction that was going to happen in the public arena prior to us even getting into the courthouse.”

Hillary Clinton and the Benghazi attack

During the 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly claimed that after the September 2012 attacks by an Islamic militant group on US government facilities in Benghazi, Libya—which killed four Americans, including the US Ambassador—then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton went to sleep rather than help lead the American response.

But Clinton testified before a House Select Committee in 2015 that she “did not sleep all night”—and as the nonpartisan FactCheck.org points out, evidence shows she was fully engaged in the immediate response.

Hurricane Sandy and birtherism

After Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern seaboard in October 2012, devastating New York and New Jersey and killing at least 147 people, Trump claimed that it was “good luck” for then-President Obama, who was running for reelection: “He will buy the election by handing out billions of dollars,” Trump wrote on X, presumably referring to disaster aid.

Not only that, Trump also used it as an opportunity to again promote the racist birther conspiracy theory he originally pioneered, falsely claiming that Obama was not born in the US. Just a week earlier, Trump had claimed he would make a $5 million donation to a charity of Obama’s choice if the president released his “college records and applications…and passport applications and records” by Oct. 31—even though Obama had released his longform birth certificate the year before, which showed he was born in Hawaii. After Hurricane Sandy hit, on Oct. 30, Trump posted on X, “Because of the hurricane, I am extending my 5 million dollar offer for President Obama’s favorite charity.” Obama does not appear to have responded.

In September 2016, while running for president, Trump finally admitted Obama was born in the US—then promptly, and falsely, claimed it was his then-opponent, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who started the conspiracy theory.

Death tolls in Hurricanes Irma and Maria

A year after Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, leading to more than 3,000 deaths, Trump rejected the death toll and said that it was “done by the Democrats in order to make me look as bad as possible.” The nonpartisan fact-checking website Politifact states that researchers warned the preliminary estimates of death tolls from the Puerto Rican government—ranging from 16 to 64 people dead—were undercounts, and that the higher numbers came from indirect deaths, caused by something like the loss of electricity for someone who relies on medical devices, for example.

COVID-19 and…a lot

Who could forget Trump’s litany of unhinged and disproven theories about COVID-19? He initially downplayed the danger of it, claiming in February 2020 that it was “very much under control in the USA.” But just a few months later, he was wondering aloud at a press briefing if people could cure themselves of the coronavirus by injecting themselves with disinfectant or exposing the insides of their bodies to ultraviolet light, as my colleague Madison Pauly covered. (The next day, following an outcry, the White House walked back Trump’s claims, saying Americans should consult with their doctors to treat COVID-19; Trump also claimed the comments were “sarcastic.”)

…WHAT pic.twitter.com/CCOYIsfSm7

— Pod Save America (@PodSaveAmerica) April 23, 2020

Trump also promoted the drug hydroxychloroquine as a potential COVID-19 treatment—though leading medical organizations, including the World Health Organization and the Mayo Clinic, recommend against using it as a treatment for, or form of prevention against, COVID-19. (That didn’t stop Trump from taking it—though he still got the virus months after doing so.)

I have no words that can prepare you for what you're about to watch. pic.twitter.com/aov2F8DpRs

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) May 18, 2020

Trump also reposted false claims from other accounts on X stating that the COVID-19 death toll was vastly overblown, which Anthony Fauci promptly shut down. Trump and his son, Eric, also claimed that Democratic officials were prolonging lockdowns to prevent him from being able to hold in-person campaign rallies.

All this makes it no surprise that, as my colleague David Corn reported back in 2020, a Cornell University study analyzing 38 million English-language articles about the coronavirus concluded that Trump was the largest driver of the so-called “infodemic,” or COVID-19-related misinformation. “The biggest surprise,” Sarah Evanega, the study’s lead author, told the New York Times, “was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid.”

Protests in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder by police

After George Floyd‘s murder by Minneapolis police in May 2020 sparked nationwide protests against anti-Black racism and police brutality, Trump promoted a variety of baseless claims about the protesters, calling them “thugs” who were being funded by Democrats and billionaire George Soros, and threatening them. “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” he said at the time.

In just one example, Trump claimed a 75-year-old Buffalo man who was hospitalized after police shoved him to the ground “could be an ANTIFA provocateur” and alleged it “could be a setup”—despite there being no evidence for these claims. The man, Martin Gugino, reportedly spent about a month in the hospital for his injuries; the police officers involved were suspended without pay and then arrested, but the charges were dropped after a grand jury declined to indict them in 2021.

LA wildfires

After devastating wildfires broke out in Los Angeles earlier this month, killing at least 29 people and destroying thousands of structures, Trump boosted a variety of baseless claimsincluding that Gov. Newsom (D-Calif.) was to blame for a water shortage, though state officials have shut that down. More recently, Trump tried to fashion himself as a savior again, claiming that under his direction the US military “turned on the water” supply from the Pacific Northwest; in an epic clap back, the California Department of Water Resources said that never happened. “The military did not enter California,” the agency posted on X. “The federal government restarted federal water pumps after they were offline for maintenance for three days. State water supplies in Southern California remain plentiful.”

An Unqualified “Predator”: Caroline Kennedy Urges Senate Not to Confirm Her Cousin RFK Jr.

28 January 2025 at 22:40

In a scathing letter to the Senate ahead of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Biden administration ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has described her cousin as a hypocritical “predator” who is unqualified for the job and “addicted to attention and power.”

In a video her son, Jack Schlossberg, posted on X of her reading the letter that she sent to Senate lawmakers—which was first reported by the Washington Post—Caroline Kennedy says that she did not raise her concerns over her cousin’s fitness for federal office earlier because she was serving in a government role and “never wanted to speak publicly about my family members and their challenges.” But ahead of RFK Jr.’s hearings before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, she said she felt compelled to speak out. (In November, after Trump won and announced RFK Jr. would be his HHS nominee, Caroline Kennedy called her cousin’s views on vaccines “dangerous.”)

In the video posted Tuesday, she said, “Overseeing the FDA, the [National Institutes of Health], the CDC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—agencies that are charged with protecting the most vulnerable among us—is an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill. He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience.”

Indeed, RFK Jr. is best known for peddling conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims about vaccines, HIV and AIDS, fluoride, and 5G technology, among others, as my colleague Anna Merlan has reported. As Anna wrote of his background:

Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.


Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.

Those are among the reasons that public health experts, physicians and caregivers have warned of RFK’s potential to destroy American public health, given the power of the position Trump has appointed him to: HHS employs more than 80,000 people and oversees 13 federal agencies. (As I’ve reported, he could also further decimate abortion rights in that role.)

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary

This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp

— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025

Caroline Kennedy called her cousin’s views on vaccines “dangerous and willfully misinformed,” claiming that he has vaccinated his own six children “while building a following hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.” She said the “conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines,” including those focused on the measles outbreak in Samoa, “have cost lives.” And she pointed to a recent New York Times report claiming that RFK would maintain his financial stake in litigation against Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, as evidence that he’s “willing to profit and enrich himself by denying access” to a critical vaccine.

Kennedy alleged that in addition to his anti-science beliefs and lack of qualification for the role, her cousin has a litany of “personal qualities” that “pose even greater concern”: she claimed that he led “his younger brothers and cousins …down the path of drug addiction,” adding that some “suffered addiction, illness and death.” (His brother David died in 1984, at 28 years old, of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his system.) She also recounted a bizarre—and disturbing—anecdote, alleging that he used to kill baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed his pet hawks, which she described as “a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

She claimed that her father, former President John F. Kennedy, and her uncles Robert F. Kennedy, former senator and attorney general (and RFK Jr.’s father), and former senator Ted Kennedy, would be “disgusted” with her cousin.

“The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world. Its doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know,” Caroline Kennedy said.

“They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us,” she concluded. “I urge the Senate to reject his nomination.”

RFK did not respond to an email sent Tuesday afternoon seeking comment and ignored questions about the letter from an NBC News reporter.

RFK Jr. ignores questions about the letter released by his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, in which she calls him a “predator” + his upcoming confirmation hearings. pic.twitter.com/zXzqAVXuE4

— Brennan Leach (@brennanleach) January 28, 2025

Spokespeople for White House and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

An Unqualified “Predator”: Caroline Kennedy Urges Senate Not to Confirm Her Cousin RFK Jr.

28 January 2025 at 22:40

In a scathing letter to the Senate ahead of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s confirmation hearings to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Biden administration ambassador to Australia Caroline Kennedy has described her cousin as a hypocritical “predator” who is unqualified for the job and “addicted to attention and power.”

In a video her son, Jack Schlossberg, posted on X of her reading the letter that she sent to Senate lawmakers—which was first reported by the Washington Post—Caroline Kennedy says that she did not raise her concerns over her cousin’s fitness for federal office earlier because she was serving in a government role and “never wanted to speak publicly about my family members and their challenges.” But ahead of RFK Jr.’s hearings before the Senate Finance Committee on Wednesday, and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee on Thursday, she said she felt compelled to speak out. (In November, after Trump won and announced RFK Jr. would be his HHS nominee, Caroline Kennedy called her cousin’s views on vaccines “dangerous.”)

In the video posted Tuesday, she said, “Overseeing the FDA, the [National Institutes of Health], the CDC and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—agencies that are charged with protecting the most vulnerable among us—is an enormous responsibility, and one that Bobby is unqualified to fill. He lacks any relevant government, financial, management, or medical experience.”

Indeed, RFK Jr. is best known for peddling conspiracy theories and pseudoscientific claims about vaccines, HIV and AIDS, fluoride, and 5G technology, among others, as my colleague Anna Merlan has reported. As Anna wrote of his background:

Kennedy, an environmental attorney by training with no background or credentials in medical or public health, is the founder of the anti-vaccine organization Children’s Health Defense. He became one of the loudest voices in the anti-vaccine movement when he began falsely claiming nearly 20 years ago that the shots are tied to autism.


Kennedy’s nomination didn’t come as a surprise. After Kennedy abandoned his own independent presidential campaign, he promptly endorsed Trump’s. As they campaigned together, Trump pledged to let him “go wild on health” in a new administration, as he phrased it, as part of Kennedy’s so-called “Make America Healthy Again” agenda—proposals that amount to dismantling and defunding the government health agencies Kennedy has long railed against.

Those are among the reasons that public health experts, physicians and caregivers have warned of RFK’s potential to destroy American public health, given the power of the position Trump has appointed him to: HHS employs more than 80,000 people and oversees 13 federal agencies. (As I’ve reported, he could also further decimate abortion rights in that role.)

Ambassador Caroline Kennedy’s statement to the US Senate on RFKJr’s nomination for HHS Secretary

This is a reading of a letter she just sent to Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions

I’m so proud of my courageous mother, who’s lived a life of dignity,… pic.twitter.com/feysNA0Wwp

— Jack Schlossberg (@JBKSchlossberg) January 28, 2025

Caroline Kennedy called her cousin’s views on vaccines “dangerous and willfully misinformed,” claiming that he has vaccinated his own six children “while building a following hypocritically discouraging other parents from vaccinating theirs.” She said the “conspiratorial half-truths he’s told about vaccines,” including those focused on the measles outbreak in Samoa, “have cost lives.” And she pointed to a recent New York Times report claiming that RFK would maintain his financial stake in litigation against Merck, the maker of the HPV vaccine to prevent cervical cancer, as evidence that he’s “willing to profit and enrich himself by denying access” to a critical vaccine.

Kennedy alleged that in addition to his anti-science beliefs and lack of qualification for the role, her cousin has a litany of “personal qualities” that “pose even greater concern”: she claimed that he led “his younger brothers and cousins …down the path of drug addiction,” adding that some “suffered addiction, illness and death.” (His brother David died in 1984, at 28 years old, of “multiple ingestion” of three drugs found in his system.) She also recounted a bizarre—and disturbing—anecdote, alleging that he used to kill baby chickens and mice in a blender to feed his pet hawks, which she described as “a perverse scene of despair and violence.”

She claimed that her father, former President John F. Kennedy, and her uncles Robert F. Kennedy, former senator and attorney general (and RFK Jr.’s father), and former senator Ted Kennedy, would be “disgusted” with her cousin.

“The American health care system, for all its flaws, is the envy of the world. Its doctors and nurses, researchers, scientists and caregivers are the most dedicated people I know,” Caroline Kennedy said.

“They deserve better than Bobby Kennedy, and so do the rest of us,” she concluded. “I urge the Senate to reject his nomination.”

RFK did not respond to an email sent Tuesday afternoon seeking comment and ignored questions about the letter from an NBC News reporter.

RFK Jr. ignores questions about the letter released by his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, in which she calls him a “predator” + his upcoming confirmation hearings. pic.twitter.com/zXzqAVXuE4

— Brennan Leach (@brennanleach) January 28, 2025

Spokespeople for White House and the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, which is chaired by Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), a physician, also did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump Tax Cuts Not Just Good For Billionaires, Say Billionaires

27 January 2025 at 23:30

A group founded by the billionaire Koch brothers is on a mission: to extend the massive tax cuts Trump instituted in his first term, and to convince working-class Americans that those cuts benefit them, too—despite ample evidence to the contrary.

According to an eight-page memo obtained by the Guardian, Americans for Prosperity (AFP)—a dark-money group founded in 2004 by Charles Koch and his brother David, who died in 2019—is trying to preserve and expand the $1.5 trillion Republican tax cuts from 2017, many of which are supposed to expire at the end of this year. “We will be seeking a further reduction in corporate taxes,” the AFP memo to donors states, noting that domestic corporate revenue increased 41 percent, to $420 billion, from 2017 to 2023.

The group is also trying to pressure members of Congress to use the Congressional Review Act—which gives Congress 60 days to overturn agencies’ proposed new rules—to undo regulations implemented at the end of Biden’s term focused on the technology and energy sectors (the memo does not offer further details on the specific regulations they’re targeting).

The memo does not state the total estimated cost of AFP’s lobbying efforts, but the Guardian reports a figure of $20 million.

Its aims are audacious, considering that there is already evidence that the 2017 tax cuts did not benefit working-class Americans, but the ultra-wealthy. As my colleague Hannah Levintova wrote in 2018:

In the year since the GOP Congress helped Trump push through his $1.5 trillion in cuts in less than two months, businesses have not, as promised, overwhelmingly given their extra profits back to the people. Instead, they’ve saved billions in taxes, using the money for stock buybacks aimed at further enriching the company’s executives and shareholders, driven the federal debt to a level unseen since the years immediately after the Great Recession, and overwhelmingly kept any plans for spending their massive tax savings a secret.

And as my colleague Michael Mechanic noted back in October, the nonpartisan Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released an analysis of whom Trump’s most recent tax proposals would benefit. Their findings? The proposals would lead to tax increases for all but the richest 5 percent of Americans, with the poorest Americans seeing the largest increase. Another analysis conducted in May 2023 by the same group found that making the provisions permanent (through a bill proposed by Republicans that year) would cost $288.5 billion next year alone—two-thirds of which would go to the richest Americans, with the poorest fifth receiving only 1 percent of the spoils.

But AFP seems undeterred by existing evidence—and, instead, is committed to producing its own.

The memo reported by the Guardian says the group will rely on a three-pronged strategy to achieve its goals: Spending at least $10 million to build a “national narrative” focused on “telling the success story of tax cuts” and countering what it calls “inevitable class-warfare arguments” against them; carrying out a lobbying campaign in Washington; and “lighting a grassroots fire back home” to persuade lawmakers in the House and Senate to act.

Some of these efforts will specifically target Latino voters, given the gains Trump made with them in the November election, according to the memo—which adds that a self-described center-right New Mexico nonprofit called the LIBRE Initiative, part of the wider Koch network, is launching a “national grassroots program to rally Latino Americans to support the extension of the tax cuts along with the repeal of recent costly Biden Administration.” That effort already appears to be underway: The group has shared infographics praising the 2017 legislation to its tens of thousands of social media followers and launched a website directing people to send letters to their members of Congress demanding that they expand the tax cuts.

Another key player in the strategy will apparently be Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which the memo describes as “as a real opportunity to cut over-regulation and waste.” (As Michael Mechanic outlined last month, while the DOGE proposals include eliminating the National Institutes of Health, veterans’ health benefits, and Pell Grants, there are a variety of tax breaks the government could roll back if it were actually concerned with cutting wasteful spending.)

The AFP group points to its success getting the 2017 bill passed, and their “door-to-door, phone, and digital lobbying efforts” to get Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—confirmed to the bench as proof of their ability to rally support. “At a time when many Senators were under intense pressure from progressives to cave,” they write, “AFP activists were the critical counterweights to outside progressive influences.”

One person who definitely will benefit if the tax cuts are extended? Charles Koch. In 2018, the liberal group Americans for Tax Fairness estimated that the tax cuts would save the Koch brothers an estimated $1 billion a year in income taxes.

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