Musk, GOP's Newest Scam, Payouts to Trump's Loyalists, ICE, Citizen's United Alert, Bob Kennedy

 

— Forty-five years of Reaganomics finally rolled off the assembly line this week with its crowning achievement: the world’s first trillionaire. When SpaceX shares hit the public markets in the largest IPO in human history, Elon Musk’s net worth sailed past one thousand billion dollars, a figure with so many zeroes you need a calculator to count them and a heart of solid granite to defend them. Back in 1981, Reagan promised that if we just showered the wealthy with tax cuts and stopped enforcing antitrust laws, the blessings would trickle down onto the rest of us. 

Forty-five years later, the trickle has arrived: one man now commands more money than most countries while the people who actually build his rockets and bolt together his cars are still scrapping for a living wage and desperately begging for a union. Within hours, calls went up for an aggressive wealth tax, with one campaigner noting that a fortune this size “requires human exploitation, wage theft, wage suppression” as well as a tax code lovingly written by and for the man it enriches. The critics are right that trillionaires shouldn’t exist, and not out of envy: no human being earns a trillion dollars, they extract it, a dime at a time, from everyone standing below them. Musk didn’t break the system to get here. The system performed flawlessly, exactly as Reagan and the GOP’s billionaires designed it. The only question left is whether we keep calling this capitalism or finally admit it’s a just the 21st century version of a feudal estate with modern branding.

— The Trump administration has a bold new idea for Americans who can’t afford their medical bills: borrow the money from the very insurance company that’s already refusing to pay them. Under a White House proposal floated this week, cash-strapped patients would take out loans from their health insurers to cover the bills those same insurers helped inflate. It’s a scheme one Democratic congresswoman warned could “ruin people’s finances” while handing insurers a shiny new incentive to deny your care and then collect a fortune in interest on your desperation. I suppose we should admire the elegance of the GOP’s newest scam: the massive Republican donors win when you get sick, win again when you borrow, and win a third time when you default and they get a court to take away your house to repay your loan. That’s not a healthcare system that any other country in the world would recognize; it’s a payday-loan window with a stethoscope hanging in it. 

And before anyone wrings their hands about how we “simply can’t afford” something humane like Medicare for All, note that the Republican increase in Pentagon spending this year alone dwarfs the entire projected Social Security shortfall for 2034, which is the very “crisis” they keep invoking to justify gutting your retirement. We have bottomless money for missiles and putting Trump‘s name on everything, but not a nickel for Grandma’s knee replacement, and somehow the corporate media never quite finds the column inches to mention it. Forty-five years after Reagan taught us that government was the problem, we’ve finally built a GOP-run government that fulfills his claim.

— It turns out the “Advantage” in Medicare Advantage belongs entirely to the insurance companies. A pair of reports from the HHS inspector general released this week found that the nation’s largest Medicare Advantage plans — UnitedHealthcare, CVS Health, and Humana — rejected prior-authorization requests for long-term and rehabilitative care at rates that, in some cases, sailed past 70 percent. Across the industry, denial rates for long-term care ran anywhere from 8 percent up to a jaw-dropping 80 percent, a spread the inspector general’s office found genuinely alarming, and one University of Pittsburgh health-policy professor called “quite staggering.” Here’s the detail that most clearly shows what a scam this is: when patients actually appealed, the plans reversed their own denials a remarkable 95 percent of the time, meaning that first “no” was wrong almost every single time anyone bothered to take the (considerable) time and effort necessary to challenge it. 

Medicare Advantage plans collect a flat fee per patient from our government and then pocket whatever they don’t spend on your stroke recovery or your shattered hip, which means saying “no” to your care is, quite literally, how they enrich their shareholders and pay their senior executives with their multi-million-dollar-a-year salaries. Nearly 20 million Americans are enrolled with just these three companies, most blissfully unaware that their “coverage” is engineered to refuse first and pay later, if ever. For-profit insurers, the report found, deny more than nonprofits, because of course they do. And all of them deny more than real Medicare, which doesn’t even do pre-clearance so it never denies anybody. This is what you get when you hand Wall Street the keys to Grandma’s hospital room: the corporation always wins, and the patient always loses.

— A federal judge just slammed the brakes — again — on Trump’s $1.8 billion taxpayer-funded slush fund for his violent, murderous cult members. This week, U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema extended her block on the grandly titled “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” a $1.8 billion pile of your money that Trump’s Justice Department invented to compensate “victims of weaponization,” a category that conveniently sweeps in the people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, smeared shit on the walls, and killed four cops while trying to “hang Mike Pence.” 

The whole thing sprang from Trump’s preposterous $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS over the leak of his own tax returns (total tax bill $750), and even congressional Republicans gagged hard enough to force acting Attorney General (and Trump criminal defense lawyer) Todd Blanche to declare “we’re not moving forward with the fund, period.” But hold the champagne. As Reuters reports, Trump’s allies already have a Plan B teed up: funneling payouts to loyalists through the 1946 Federal Tort Claims Act, which lets aggrieved insurrectionists file claims and lawsuits against the government and quietly settle out of court. “At my level, the fund is dead,” shrugged one senior DOJ official, all while leaving the back door propped wide open for the same money to stroll out a different exit. Hundreds of January 6th defendants have already filed their claims. With the Trump Crime Family and their shock troops, the grift doesn’t die; it just files an amended complaint.

— Nothing says “law and order” quite like masked federal agents tackling a man to the pavement at his kid’s preschool graduation while toddlers' scream. That is precisely what unfolded in Baltimore this week, where ICE agents arrested two parents in the parking lot of Commodore John Rodgers Elementary School during a graduation ceremony as witnesses filmed and children wailed. The parents had their kids in the back seat when they were “ripped from the car,” according to Maryland Senate President Bill Ferguson, and teachers rushed the children indoors to spare them the spectacle. 

A parent recording the scene can be heard shouting that the agents were on school property, a fact that registered not at all with these masked, murderous thugs who increasingly treat the Constitution as if it were merely a polite suggestion. Baltimore had passed an emergency ordinance barely a month ago barring federal agents from arrests at “sensitive locations” like schools; doing their best imitation of Putin’s secret police, ICE shredded it like confetti while spitting on the graves of the authors of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. Mayor Brandon Scott condemned the raid as a “disturbing incident” and made plain this kind of enforcement isn’t welcome in his city, while Governor Wes Moore noted that terrorizing children at their own schools makes precisely no one safer. But safety was never the point for these fascists. The point is the fear: the theater of masked, unidentified, armed, uniformed men snatching parents in front of weeping four-year-olds and broadcasting it as a warning to every family in America. This is what a fascist secret police force looks like in its toddler-traumatizing phase.

— Citizens United Alert! Maine’s Susan Collins — the senator who has elevated the furrowed brow of “deep concern” into performance art all while reliably voting however her biggest donors prefer — is mounting her reelection bid with the backing of nearly 100 billionaires. Her campaign has become an oligarchs’ support group project! Her opponent, Graham Platner, points out that his own operation runs on an average donation of $26 from actual human beings, even as corporate dark money floods into Maine to keep Collins right where the donor class wants her. 

This is the exact world five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court conjured when they ruled 5:4 in Citizens United that money is speech and corporations are people: sixteen years on, a hundred billionaires can simply buy a senator and call the receipt “democracy.” Concerned yet, Susan?

— Strange Alert! Our nation’s heroin addict health secretary, Bob Kennedy, is now actively cheering on clinics that inject autistic children — some as young as 18 months — with umbilical-cord stem cells in unapproved, unproven “treatments” that can run $20,000 a pop, occasionally after sedating the toddler with ketamine first. Desperate parents are promised near-miracles; what the FDA actually documented back in 2021 were reports of “blindness, tumor formation, infections” and worse. 

In sixteen months on the job, Kennedy has fired thousands of health officials, defunded $31 million in autism research, and waged open war on childhood vaccines, all while rolling out the welcome mat for the snake-oil salesmen he apparently regards as colleagues. The quack is coming from inside the house.

The Hartmann Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

 

A.I.’s Effects on Creativity in Education

 

I am a big fan of technology. I’ve blissfully given over my spatial reasoning to Google Maps. I use artificial intelligence to chase down articles, do research, fix my grammar mistakes and whip up last-minute school-night recipes.

But I’ve recently drawn a sharp line in the sand: no A.I. for writing. I’m not talking about expense reports or routine emails. I mean actual writing, and the creative brainstorming that precedes it to explore different perspectives or develop novel insights. Increasingly, many people I talk to — from students to teachers to peers — tell me that they think it’s OK to use A.I. chatbots for brainstorming as long as they do the “real work” of writing.

But this misunderstands something critical: Brainstorming is the work that’s fundamental to writing. As a researcher studying A.I.’s effects on education, I have concluded that these tools only superficially improve writing. The bigger and more alarming impact they have is to constrict our full range of thoughts and our ability to generate original and useful ideas — what we call creative thinking.

This seems to be especially true for students. A.I.’s smooth sentences, elegant transitions and rich vocabulary give the illusion of expansive creativity and individuality. But the underlying ideas often converge into a few homogenized categories.

The erosion of creative thinking means young people will struggle to navigate uncertainty. Workers will strain to adapt to a shifting labor market. And society will miss out on the new ideas that can solve complex problems and enhance lives.

For the past eight years, the Georgetown University neuroscientist Adam Green has been leading a national research team tracking the range of novel ideas that college-bound high school students present in their application essays, before and after the introduction of ChatGPT.

In one study, he and his team examined personal statements from more than 370,000 students, and found that after ChatGPT became available, their essays suddenly used diverse and colorful language, but lacked truly creative ideas. And the linguistic coverup worked; post-ChatGPT essays were rated as more “creative” by human judges, even if the substance of the essays trod familiar territory.

In a separate study, the team found that human-written essays offered up to eight times more new ideas than those produced by A.I.

Another experiment run by a different research team compared short stories written by humans to those written with A.I. assistance. As with the student essays in Dr. Green’s study, A.I.-assisted works had more interesting vocabulary and were rated more enjoyable to read, but the underlying story lines were more homogeneous. Distinctive and offbeat ideas — with surprising characters or unusual settings — are often shunted to the side when A.I. is involved.

For the first time in human history, we have a technology that can generate words separately from the thoughts they represent. When a chatbot writes, it is predicting the next word that is most likely to make a “good” sentence or essay, based on the text it’s been trained on. It can identify sophisticated and creative word patterns independently of whether the underlying ideas represent something new.

When teenagers write their own essays, the work reflects their thoughts and personalities, their attempts to make meaning of their experiences. When we search for words, we are sifting through the same brain networks that form connections between ideas. A student who writes, “I’ll always think of learning to swim when I see a kite flying,” is connecting unique personal experiences in her life, which until recently was a clear signal of truly creative thinking.

Another way A.I. interaction can narrow ideas is through the power of suggestion. Once a chatbot suggests a direction, humans tend to lock in on it. The conversational nature of A.I. can make it difficult to distinguish where the user’s thinking ends and the bot’s begins, making it effortless for people to adopt A.I.-generated perspectives as their own.

It’s easy to see how an impressionable teenager could forgo writing the unconventional essay — about, say, what it feels like to play jazz or cook with your grandmother — in favor of whatever A.I. suggests.

Even more problematic, Dr. Green’s research shows that A.I. has the largest homogenizing impact on students who are farthest from the mean and have unique perspectives, including neurodivergent students and those from racial and linguistic minorities.

This is not to say that A.I. can never support human creativity. Workers with deep knowledge of their craft can use A.I. to streamline technical or administrative tasks in order to focus on the parts of their jobs where originality lives — including teachers having more time to devise engaging lessons and illustrators devoting more attention to developing visual concepts. A.I. gives specialists the time they need to do what humans do best: brainstorming ideas to creatively solve problems.

Our species’ ability to come up with unexpected and original ideas is something to protect and nurture. That’s especially true for today’s adolescents. A world where creative thinking flourishes is a world that has a better chance to weather the changes that A.I. will bring.

Rebecca Winthrop is the director of the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution and led its global task force on A.I. and education.

NY Times

 

Boomers

 

We are often called “the elderly,” but that quiet label hides a truth most people rarely pause to consider we are the last living witnesses of a world that no longer exists.

If you look closely, you might notice gray hair, slower steps, or the quiet patience that time alone can teach. But if you truly listen to our stories, you will discover something far more extraordinary. We are not simply older people moving through the final chapters of life.

We are the survivors of one of the most breathtaking transformations in human history — a generation that walked from the slow, deliberate rhythm of an analog world into the dazzling speed of a digital one without ever losing our sense of humanity along the way. Our journey began in a very different place.

Many of us were born in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when the scars of World War II were still fresh across Europe and Asia and the world was slowly learning how to hope again. Cities rose from rubble. Families rebuilt lives after years of uncertainty. Childhood unfolded in ways that would feel almost unrecognizable to younger generations today.

Our [games and] toys were simple: marbles played in dusty yards, [baseball played on city streets, pitching pennies on sidewalks, playing tag and ringolevio], hopscotch drawn on cracked sidewalks, checkers and cards gathered around kitchen tables while the smell of dinner filled the house. When the streetlights flickered on in the evening, it was the universal signal that childhood adventures were over for the day, and it was time to go home.

There were no smartphones, no streaming videos, no endless scroll of digital distractions. Instead, we built our memories in the real world — with scraped knees, laughter echoing down neighborhood streets, and friendships that formed face to face, without the mediation of screens.

Music became one of the defining soundtracks of our youth. The 1960s and 1970s arrived like a wave of color and rebellion. We watched culture shift around us: [carried by folk music written by Dylan, Simon, Prine and Mitchell...] and by electric guitars and voices that dared to question the world.

For many of us, gatherings like the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969 symbolized something powerful: the belief that peace, music, and community could reshape the future. Hundreds of thousands of young people stood together in muddy fields listening to artists who poured raw emotion into towering speakers known as the Wall of Sound. Those concerts were not merely entertainment; they were moments when strangers felt like a single generation singing the same hope under an open sky. [Something even more powerful, hundreds of thousands of people also protested the U.S. government's war in Vietnam].  

Education looked different then, too. Our notebooks were filled with handwritten notes carefully copied from chalkboards. Research required patience, long hours in libraries, and stacks of heavy books rather than a quick internet search. We learned to slow down and think through ideas because information did not arrive instantly. Mistakes were corrected with erasers and ink, not with the click of a delete button.

Love carried a different rhythm as well. We fell in love while vinyl records spun on turntables, [8-track tapes], and cassette tapes clicked softly inside plastic players. Music became the background to first dances, long conversations, and dreams about the future. Those relationships grew into marriages, families, and lives built step by step through the 1980s and 1990s — decades that saw technology begin to reshape the world around us.

Yet nothing compares to the bridge our generation has crossed. We are the only generation to have experienced an entirely analog childhood and a fully digital adulthood.

We remember waiting days — or sometimes weeks — for handwritten letters to arrive in the mail. We remember rotary telephones and party lines where neighbors could accidentally overhear conversations. Communication required patience and anticipation. Today, we can see the face of a loved one across the ocean instantly on a screen small enough to fit in a pocket.

The world changed in ways few could have imagined. We watched humanity land on the Moon in 1969, a moment when millions of people sat in living rooms staring at black-and-white televisions as Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first steps on another world.

We saw the rise of personal computers, the birth of the internet, and eventually the arrival of smartphones that placed entire libraries of knowledge in our hands. Machines that once filled entire rooms now exist on devices lighter than a paperback book. We moved from punch cards and mechanical tools to artificial intelligence and global networks connecting billions of people instantly. And through every shift, we adapted.

Our bodies carry the marks of the times we lived through as well. We grew up during fears of polio and tuberculosis, illnesses that once terrified entire communities before vaccines helped bring them under control. We witnessed the global challenges of pandemics and health crises across decades, including the recent silence and uncertainty of COVID-19, which reminded the world that resilience is still required in every generation.

Science itself transformed before our eyes. We saw the discovery of the structure of DNA in 1953, the decoding of the human genome at the turn of the century, and the early steps into gene therapy and advanced medicine. Transportation evolved from simple bicycles and steam engines to hybrid vehicles and electric cars gliding almost silently through city streets.

Few generations have witnessed such sweeping change. And yet, despite everything that evolved around us, certain things remain unchanged. We still understand the joy of a cold glass bottle of lemonade on a hot afternoon. We still remember the taste of vegetables picked straight from a garden. We still know the value of a long conversation that unfolds slowly without a keyboard or screen interrupting it.

Our memories stretch across decades. We have celebrated births, mourned losses, watched friends depart, and carried their stories forward. Those of us who remain share something rare: the experience of standing at the crossroads of history, holding memories from a world that younger generations know only through photographs and stories.

But we are not relics. We are living bridges. Our perspective reminds the modern world that progress does not have to erase wisdom. The speed of technology does not have to replace patience, kindness, or reflection. We remember what life felt like before everything moved so fast — and that memory carries quiet lessons worth sharing.

So, when someone calls us “elderly,” we can smile. Because behind that word lies something extraordinary. We are the generation that crossed two centuries, witnessed eight decades of transformation, and walked from the age of handwritten letters to the era of artificial intelligence.

What a life we have lived. What a remarkable story we continue to carry. And if you belong to this generation, take a moment today to look in the mirror and recognize something powerful.

You are not simply growing older. You are living history. You are part of a generation that will always remain one of a kind. And perhaps, in the quietest and most meaningful way, you are becoming legendary."

-David Wyles

A Message to All Republicans

He pardoned 1,600 violent criminals. You said nothing. He bulldozed the East Wing. You said nothing. He interfered with the release of the Epstein files. You said nothing. He took over the Kennedy Center and renamed it after himself. You said nothing. He accepted a $400 million airplane as a personal gift. You said nothing. He threatened Canada, Cuba, Denmark, Greenland, Venezuela, Colombia, and Brazil. You said nothing. He tariffed just about everyone but Russia, causing inflation and instability worldwide. You said nothing. He attacked a nation during mediated negotiations. You said nothing. His ill-conceived war killed 175 children on day one. You said nothing. He alienated and insulted our allies. You said nothing. His ICE Army terrorized and murdered U.S. citizens. You said nothing. He committed murder on the high seas. You said nothing. He co-opted the Justice Department and directed it to prosecute his political enemies. You said nothing. It's time to [take action]!   -Author Unknown

Let us all continue to rebel against his autocratic abuse of presidential power, his felonious behavior, his constitutional ignorance, his obstruction of justice and concealment, his lawless demagoguery, his pathological narcissism, his grandiose delusions, his anti-social personality disorder, his malignant arrogance, his moral relativism, his white nationalism, his perfidious nationalism, his hateful racism, his infectious nihilism, his outrageous iconoclasm, his ruthless competition, his puerile dereliction, his embarrassing stupidity, his provocative transgressions, his mocking disrespect, his impetuous vulgarity, his sexual predation; his belligerent intimidation, his incessant lying, his conspiratorial gaslighting, his obsessive vindictiveness, his hypocritical cowardice, his compulsive xenophobia, his callous misogyny, his insufferable bigotry, his disgusting buffoonery, his histrionic rallying, his sociopathic bullying, seditious behavior and dangerous fascism... -Glen Brown

 

"Implement the 25th Amendment"

 

We should not be surprised that Donald Trump is mentally and emotionally imploding under the cumulative effect of plunging poll numbers, his disastrous Iran war (which constantly humiliates him as both Iran and Israel repeatedly defy his desperate attempts to control them and his phony prognostications of progress in peace talks), and an increasingly irritable Senate Republican caucus.

Trump recently suffered from supporters’ unraveling and/or disaffection (e.g. Trump’s Paramount/CBS allies’ embarrassing implosion, the defection of white working-class and male voters, another insult to faith groups reminded of white Christian nationalists’ religious bigotry), repeated legal defeats, and multiple legislative losses unprecedented for a president with majorities in both houses (e.g. a House vote to fund Ukraine, passage of the War Powers Act resolution, opposition to Trump’s sleazy slush fund, collapse of FISA Section 702 reauthorization because of outrage over the appointment of Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence).

When you throw in the indignity of seeing his name physically scraped off the Kennedy Center building, the cancellation of musical has-beens from his cheesy, self-referential 250 Freedom bash, and the entirely expected torrent of boos from Knicks fans, you have the pathological narcissist’s worst nightmare: public humiliation. (Historian and fascism expert Ruth Ben Ghiat has explained that when their autocracies unravel, strongmen’s overwhelming fear of humiliation and loss of power compels them to lash out, grab more tightly to power, and make increasingly rash decisions in the vain hope of fending off decline.)

Certainly, Trump’s mental and physical disintegration has been on display for many years. However, it is easy to lose track of the velocity of Trump’s decompensation.

As a group of 36 mental health professionals recently explained in a stinging written statement, Trump’s outbursts are not “momentary lapses nor political theater”; they instead “reflect a rapidly worsening, reality-untethered, increasingly dangerous decline.” And this was before Trump’s explosion on Meet the Press, among the most cringeworthy presidential media appearances ever.

However, you do not have to be a medical professional to conclude Trump is getting much worse much more quickly. We should not avert our eyes from the indisputable evidence that Trump cannot cope with reality. When confronted with indisputable facts, he lashes out and retreats into denial. (As the New York Times reported, “President Trump, who campaigned on a central promise to keep the United States out of overseas wars, denied in an interview aired on Sunday that he’d ever made the pledge.”)

The “big blubbery baby man, enraged at his ebbing power” provided a disturbing image in his MTP interview, Democratic pollster and analyst Simon Rosenberg aptly noted, of an “an old, addled man clearly in profound decline.” 

His bloated, rage-filled, disheveled appearance and inability to engage rationally with anyone outside his cult tempt one to look away. Denial is natural when you fear nothing can be done to stave off an impending disaster.

But now is precisely the time to demand a robust debate in public, in Congress, and on the midterm campaign trail about the gravity of leaving a patently unfit, raving lunatic in the Oval Office. In light of the grave danger Trump poses, pro-democracy forces must educate the public, compel legacy media to cover his breakdown as vigorously and consistently as they did Joe Biden’s health after his 2024 debate, and pressure Republicans to remove or at least restrain him.

Democrats do not control Congress, although they do occasionally take charge of the House through discharge petitions. Nevertheless, they have successfully used so-called shadow hearings to expose urgent issues (e.g., ICE brutality). A serious, sober subcommittee (perhaps drawn from both the House Judiciary Committee and House Oversight Committee) with professional staff should conduct methodical public hearings and assemble a comprehensive report documenting Trump’s deterioration. 

In the laying out the circumstances and frequency of his mental/emotional breakdowns, the public should receive ample evidence that Trump’s increasingly severe meltdowns are not a function of simple aging or odd personality quirks (an absurd if not delusional interpretation of his conduct) but of dangerous mental and emotional dysfunction.

At the end of the process, Democrats (and any patriotic Republicans inclined to prevent grave harm to the country) should present a series of specific, feasible recommendations, including legislation to compel the release of all presidential medical records and to require independent medical evaluation of presidents and vice presidents. 

They should spell out rules to implement the 25^th Amendment. They also should make clear that once they have subpoena power after the midterms, they will supplement findings by calling witnesses to testify under oath as to his observable behavior. If Republicans defend his indefensible conduct and block common-sense measures, they will take on full responsibility for the wreckage that ensues from sheltering an unhinged, unwell president.

Next, Democrats must undertake a focused and robust push to present their findings to the press and the voters. If the president’s emotional and mental competency is not the most compelling issue of the moment, it is hard to imagine what would be. Republican House and Senate candidates need to be put on the spot in every public encounter: Do they think the president is of sound mind? What do they intend to do to, for example, protect nuclear codes? Why shouldn’t the public have full visibility into the health of a president whose conduct has been so obviously aberrant? 

Democrats should pound away at the issue in floor speeches, media spots, op-eds, and public forums. If it were not obvious before, leaving Trump in power surrounded by spineless yes men unwilling to challenge him and a MAGA Congress that abets his increasingly erratic conduct and flights from reality is a recipe for disaster — and the most persuasive reason to elect substantial Democratic majorities in both houses. 

Nothing is more urgent to the survival of our democracy, national security, and collective well-being than to begin now to convince voters that stringent guardrails (if not, removal by 25^th Amendment or impeachment) are required to shield the United States from further harm. Given the public’s rising disgust with Trump and his propensity to humiliate himself on a near daily basis, voters might well become convinced that extraordinary action is required to defuse the ticking time bomb in the White House.

 -Jennifer Rubin, Contrarian

Donald Trump and Meet the Press’s Kristen Welker in Wisconsin. (White House photo)

glen brown: Why Donald J. Trump Is a Threat to Our Democracy and Unfit to be President of the United States of America by Glen Brown

"The worst is watching the children"

NEWARK, N.J. — The worst is not the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and private contractors, wielding baseball bats and batons, who flood the parking lot at the end of their shifts and unleash on protesters outside the gates the sadism practiced on those incarcerated inside Delaney Hall.

The worst is not the tear gas, the tasers, the pepper spray or the dozens of arrests.

The worst is not the beatings and the riot shields, raised above the heads of New Jersey State Police and Newark police and brought down swiftly on bodies, leaving severe lacerations.

The worst is watching the children.

The ones heaving and sobbing as they leave Delaney Hall, saying goodbye to their mothers, fathers, sisters or brothers who took them to school, who cheered them on at their soccer games, who told them they are beautiful and talented, who woke up before dawn to work menial jobs so they could have a future, who love them in a world where love is a diminishing commodity.

I am seated against a cyclone fence a block from Delaney Hall, New Jersey’s largest ICE jail, with a protester who goes by the name of Basher. He is 41. He has a thick black beard. His nails are dirty. His hands are scarred from clashing with police. His head is wrapped in a green keffiyeh. The stench of the sprawling Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission treatment plant across the street saturates the air. When it comes to the children, the ones ripped from their parents by a nation that is institutionalizing cruelty, even Basher must catch his breath and stop. The scenes are too much to bear.

The savagery at Delaney Hall is the warm-up act. The goons, the ones who attack those demonized on the inside of the ICE jail and those demonized on the streets outside of it, are in training for the rest of us. Delaney Hall, run by a private prison company — The GEO Group — is the template for a world where we will be stripped of our rights; routinely jailed and tortured; denied adequate medical care; fed rancid, expired and moldy food infested with worms and maggots; forced to drink contaminated water and breathe polluted air; and work for poverty wages — in the case of those inside Delaney Hall, a dollar a day.

Some 300 of the roughly 600 people detained at Delaney Hall — which includes teenagers, the elderly and pregnant women — began a hunger and labor strike on May 22.

ICE and GEO Group guards reacted as you would expect. They beat the strikers. They seal vents and toss tear gas and pepper spray into cells. They place suspected leaders of the strike in handcuffs and force them out of the facility to unknown locations, or isolate them, in “punishment units.” They manipulate the heating and cooling systems so prisoners endure extreme heat or cold. They cut telephone and internet access and suspend visitation rights. They sexually harass women.

On May 31, 56 of those held inside Delaney Hall issued their fourth public letter. It was handwritten in Spanish on ruled paper: “The conditions in this prison are not fit for human beings over such a long period of time: medical neglect, water unfit for consumption, food that is past its expiration date and in poor condition, bathrooms that are unusable, and ventilation systems that have never been maintained and because of this, we are constantly sick,” the latest letter reads. “We demand freedom, a fair trial, and for our rights to be respected. S.O.S.”

On July 24, last year, at around 6:45 a.m., ICE vehicles blocked a van carrying 15 Guatemalan workers, three blocks from my house. I went to see the men at the ICE jail in Elizabeth, New Jersey, because I speak Spanish and because their families, terrified of being targeted, could not. The men told me they were threatened with lengthy prison sentences, followed by certain deportation, if they did not sign papers agreeing to their immediate deportation. They signed. It was my job to inform their families they would not be coming home.

A Guardian analysis of government records found that during the first seven months of Trump’s second term, the parents of at least 27,000 children — 12,000 of whom had U.S. citizenship — were arrested.

These men were my neighbors. Their children attend high school with my children. The kidnapping of parents — often at work or at immigration hearings and ICE check-in appointments — not only traumatizes the children of these families, but the entire community. Every child in the high school wonders if their parents will also one day be seized and disappear. Every child wonders how this cruelty can be inflicted on their friends. Every child wonders what kind of country we live in.

The state and the media organs that act as its echo chamber are doing their best to convince the public that those locked up in Delaney Hall are “criminals,” “the worst of the worst.”

But a review of ICE data by Austin Kocher — an assistant research professor at Syracuse University and an immigration data and policy expert — exposes the lie. Kocher found that 88 percent of immigrants detained at Delaney Hall have no criminal conviction and more than 70 percent have no criminal history. Those with criminal convictions almost universally committed low-level offenses.

The rogue paramilitary forces that pour daily out of the gates of Delaney Hall are unaccountable. They ignore the law. They are the Satanic foundation of our emergent police state. The terror they inflict on those in this small patch of Newark will soon be inflicted on all of us.

New Jersey Senator Andy Kim — who was pepper-sprayed outside Delaney Hall by ICE agents — and Governor Mikie Sherrill were denied entry into the facility. Kim, after an appeal to the Director of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, was eventually given a lightning tour, but forbidden to speak to any detainees. City and state health inspectors have also been blocked from fully accessing the ICE jail.

The message is clear: We will carry out any abuse with immunity.

On Saturday afternoon, after about a dozen protestors blocked cars from driving out of the facility, ICE agents, wearing combat gear and face coverings, charged the protesters with pepper-ball guns, mace and tasers.

“Move back! Get back!” they shouted as they unleashed clouds of pepper spray. Cars leaving the facility struck at least one protester.

By around 10:00 p.m., some 100 protestors had set up a barricade of barrels filled with sand to block the facility’s exits and entrances. The blockade saw a huge influx of ICE agents, GEO Group guards and Newark police push the protestors several hundred yards down the street.

Police announced a ban on protesters wearing protective gear, including respirators and goggles, although Delaney Hall is located in an industrial area with extensive air and water contamination known as “Chemical Corridor.”

The battle at Delaney Hall is not over. It is a battle not only for justice, for the rights of our neighbors, for a world where all are treated with dignity and respect, for children who should never be separated from their fathers and mothers, but a battle to save our country from galloping fascism. Join it now. Soon it may be too late.

The Chris Hedges Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

 

"He crushed his lapel mic underfoot on his way out"

“The election was rigged, it was a dirty election and it’s happening again right now in California,” he said, referring to primaries for mayoral and gubernatorial elections in the state, where votes are still being counted.

California sends every registered voter a mail ballot and accepts ballots postmarked on or before election day that arrive within a week. That often leads to slower vote counts. Republicans have long alleged wrongdoing, as votes for Democratic candidates often surge past those for GOP opponents after late-arriving ballots are counted.

“They’re cheating on the election,” Trump claimed. Pressed for evidence, Trump argued that “all I have to do is look ... and I listen to people and let’s see what happens.”

“Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?” he said. “They’re crooked, just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked and ‘Meet the Press’ is crooked.”

Welker attempted to press Trump for evidence to back up his claims, which he did not provide, and redirect Trump to a question about acting AG Blanche several times before the president pulled the plug on the interview and stormed off the set.

“Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough, thank you, darling, have a good time,” the president said as he crushed his lapel mic underfoot on his way out.

 -Meet the Press