Who Was Charlie Kirk?

 

“MLK was awful. He’s not a good person. I think it’s worth … some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. It is rational” -Charlie Kirk

The fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University on Sept. 10, 2025, has drawn widespread condemnation and renewed attention to the climate of political violence in the United States. To many, Kirk was not just another partisan commentator.

He was one of the most visible leaders of the young conservative movement. Kirk helped shape Republican politics on college campuses, in media and within President Donald Trump’s coalition.

To understand the significance of the attack — and why the reactions to it have been so strong — it helps to know who Kirk was, what the organization he built stood for, and the role he and his allies have played in national debates.

Turning Point USA founder

Charlie Kirk was a conservative activist, author and media personality who rose to prominence unusually early.

Raised in the Chicago suburbs, he made national headlines at 18 for founding Turning Point USA, a conservative youth movement. Kirk only briefly attended college. Instead, he chose to devote himself full time to conservative organizing.

That decision became central to the mythos surrounding him: He represented a choice among promising young conservatives to skip higher education in protest of the alleged left-leaning bias of universities.

Bottom of Form

Over the next decade, Kirk grew into a national figure. Beginning in 2016, he frequently spoke at Trump rallies, which helped him to build an extensive media profile.

In 2020 he published the “The MAGA Doctrine,” a bestselling book that argued in favor of nationalism and Trump’s “America First Agenda.” And his eponymous podcast – “The Charlie Kirk Show” – was downloaded more than 120 million times over the past 10 months, according to Turning Point.

Kirk’s program featured political commentary and interviews with prominent Republican personalities and politicians – guests included Tucker Carlson, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. These conversations amplified Kirk’s reach well beyond student audiences.

Connecting college students and GOP

Turning Point USA was founded in 2012 by Kirk and Bill Montgomery. Kirk met Montgomery, a retired businessman, after Kirk gave a speech at a conservative youth summit in Kansas. Montgomery urged him not to pursue college but to instead dedicate himself fully to building a youth conservative movement.

Kirk described the early days as lonely: driving to campuses, handing out flyers and trying to recruit students to talk about free markets and limited government.

Turning Point drew significant financial backing from high-profile conservative donors, including Foster Friess, the Wyoming financier; the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation; and Illinois businessman Richard Uihlein and his family foundation.

By 2024, Turning Point claimed chapters at more than 1,000 campuses, employed more than 400 staffers and had grown its annual budget to over US$8 million

U.S. conservatives gather at The People’s Convention hosted by Turning Point USA in Detroit, Mich., on June 15, 2024. Adam J. Dewey/Anadolu via Getty Images

Today, Turning Point is best known for hosting large-scale conferences. Its Student Action Summit in Florida regularly draws between 4,000 and 5,000 students and has featured appearances by GOP heavyweights including Donald Trump Jr. and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. A 2022 gathering in Phoenix, called AmericaFest, attracted more than 10,000 attendees.

Most controversially, the group’s Professor Watchlist webpage publishes the names of academics it accuses of bias against conservatives.

Turning Point has also spun off like-minded subsidiaries, including Turning Point Action and TPUSA Faith. These organizations expand Turning Point’s reach into electoral politics and church organizing. TPUSA’s media division produces a steady stream of popular videos, livestreams and podcasts, a legacy that should ensure Kirk’s influence lasts despite his death.

Expanding national role for Turning Point

Kirk and Turning Point provided important connections for younger conservatives and the Republican Party. In 2016, Turning Point mobilized thousands of students for Trump’s campaign, and Kirk was invited to speak at the Republican National Convention.

By 2020, the organization was playing a more overt political role. Turning Point Action ran voter-registration drives in battleground states, and the group sponsored buses and advertising to bring supporters to Washington, D.C., ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally. Kirk tweeted at the time that Turning Point would be sending “80+ buses full of patriots” to the event.

While he later deleted the message and distanced himself from the violence, it underscored the group’s entanglement in the most contested moments of the Trump era.

Kirk also acted as a crucial media surrogate for Trump. He used his podcast, social media, and speaking tours to amplify Trump’s message and attack critics. He was an early and persistent promoter of Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, helping translate them for younger conservative audiences.

Spreading misinformation, inflaming tensions

Critics argued that Kirk thrived on outrage and intimidation rather than debate.

The Professor Watchlist has been denounced by faculty associations as a blacklist that chills academic freedom. Journalistic investigations by outlets such as The New Yorker raised questions about Turning Point’s finances, including allegations of blurred lines between nonprofit educational work and partisan campaigning.

Kirk was criticized for spreading misinformation, such as false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election and misleading statements about COVID-19 vaccines and mask mandates. He suggested that public health measures were a form of government control, rhetoric that public health experts argue undermined trust during a crisis.

More broadly, his sharp attacks on political opponents – he framed them not merely as wrong but as dangerous – drew accusations that he fueled polarization and inflamed tensions on American college campuses and beyond.

-The Conversation

 “Charlie Kirk was no ‘victim.’ He had been out there drumming up hate and denigrating those seeking relief from mass murder. NO doubt, when he said that all these gun deaths were a ‘rational’ price to pay for our God-given right to arm ourselves to the teeth, he did not consider that he might be among those gunned down. This is the very definition of a moral idiot, who can't quite even grasp the golden rule.” 

-Leonard Waks, FB

Trump's Attempts at Sabotaging Our Elections

 

On August 18, I wrote to you about Trump’s “Truth”—his social media post—about voting. It was a screed that pulled in all of the debunked threads he’s used over time to support his completely unsubstantiated claim about massive fraud in American elections. In his post, he complained about mail-in ballots, voting machines, and cheating Democrats. He moved on to open borders and men playing women’s sports, neither of which has anything to do with elections, but he was on a roll at that point. Midway through, he came out with something new and truly alarming. He wrote that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.” The states aren’t agents of the federal government when it comes to holding elections. The Elections Clause of the Constitution, Article I, Section 4, Clause 1, gives them control over the times, places, and manner of holding elections, subject only to congressional, not presidential, action. But Trump, who has been on a power grab ever since he took the oath of office, wants to claim this real estate for himself, too. And there is news today confirming that he is firmly on that path. The New York Times reported that “The Justice Department is compiling the largest set of national voter roll data it has ever collected, buttressing an effort by President Trump and his supporters to try to prove long-running, unsubstantiated claims that droves of undocumented immigrants have voted illegally, according to people familiar with the matter.” Trump operated during the last election and continues to operate in a vacuum where he fails to acknowledge that it’s already a federal crime for noncitizens to vote in a presidential election, prohibited by Title 18 of the U.S. Code, Section 611.  In January 2024 he began floating that idea that “illegal aliens” were voting in large numbers, an idea that defies logic—few people would endure the trauma of entering this country without legal status, desperate to start a new life, only to throw it away by trying to vote in a situation where they would be sure to be found out and have no chance of impacting the outcome of the election. But for Trump, this isn’t about logic. It’s about riling up the base. And now, it’s about something more. Republicans have long dreamed of compiling national data. It can be used to try and intimidate voters or persuade them not to vote. They can be targeted with information, plans that are even more frightening in the era of AI. But most of all, it’s the idea of “caging,” of using the information to try and disqualify voters.  We know how that works with Trump. It doesn’t matter if there’s any truth to his allegations. As he did with false claims of fraud in 2020 or claims in the run-up to 2024 (they suspiciously went away as soon as he won) about noncitizens voting, prepare yourself for claims in 2026 about all sorts of ineligible people voting. And worst of all, it’s the Justice Department putting that information together. Not rogue political operatives. The work is being done in two DOJ components, the Civil Rights Division, which used to protect voters’ rights, and the Criminal Division, which used to prosecute people who violated them. The Justice Department has requested, and will presumably receive, voter data from at least 16 Republican-controlled states, including Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas.  It also sent demands for data to at least 17 mostly Democrat-controlled or swing states, including Pennsylvania, Nevada, Wisconsin, and New York. We spoke with Maine’s Secretary of State, Shenna Bellows, the week she received one and told the White House to “go jump in the Gulf of Maine.” What kind of information about you is the administration trying to get? According to the Times, they want “personally identifiable information on voters like driver’s license numbers or Social Security numbers.”  In a lawsuit in South Carolina, a judge has blocked the release, at least for now. That kind of information could let Republicans make untrue claims based on partial or misinterpreted information about where a voter’s primary residence is, for instance, and use that to drive half-baked claims of voter fraud. It’s dangerous because it would have the imprimatur of the Justice Department, something Trump tried but failed to get for his fake election fraud claims in 2020. The Times reported that “The administration plans to compare that voter data to a different database, maintained by the Department of Homeland Security, to see how many registered voters on the state lists match up with noncitizens listed by immigration agents, according to people familiar with the matter.” Of course, people can become citizens, and as we know from 2024, these records aren’t always accurate, and the data doesn’t always add up.  For instance, people with the same name can be falsely accused of fraud when they’re eligible to vote. States are highly effective at educating election personnel in how to ensure a voter who attempts to register is, in fact, an eligible citizen and declining to register anyone who isn’t eligible. Except in rare instances, these people don’t make it on the voter rolls, let alone into a polling place. But again, the truth is no bar to Trump, the man who, on repeated occasions, has asked people to just open an investigation, so that he can take it from there. This is more of the same. This is not your mama’s Justice Department—nor is it recognizable as mine anymore. It has tried to get access, unsuccessfully, at least for now, to Missouri voting machines and openly discussed prosecuting state officials, a clear effort to intimidate them and discourage them from holding free and fair elections. These efforts by the Trump administration echo Republican claims that they were worried about election integrity while they were actually trying to suppress Black and Brown voters. That’s the reason we had a Voting Rights Act in 1965, and some parts of the country were required to submit changes to elections for preclearance to the Justice Department before they could go into effect. Republicans made claims about voter fraud, but there was never evidence of it. It was about voter suppression. And it still is. There are stark reminders of that today. In Michigan, a prosecution brought against fake Trump electors in the 2020 election was dismissed by a state court judge. Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson issued a statement in response: “In 2020, Michigan was ground zero for a nationally organized, concerted effort to overturn a legitimate presidential election. The attempt to subvert the results of a free and fair election is an affront to our Constitution and a betrayal of American values. Since these individuals signed these false certificates more than four years ago, we have worked with lawmakers to pass additional laws and protections around the certification process. I am grateful to those who pursued justice, and who sought accountability in the name of our democracy. I’m committed to ensuring Michigan elections remain safe, secure, and the results reflect the will of the people – regardless of the outcome. But today’s decision is also a poignant reminder that it’s up to all of us to ensure democracy, our right to vote and to hold our elected officials accountable, prevails in Michigan and beyond. I remain dedicated to that work and am grateful to every Michigander who shares that commitment.” And earlier this week, Republican legislators in the Missouri House passed a redistricting plan, caving to Trump’s demand that they pervert their elections and subvert the rights of their voters to deliver another safe Republican seat in Congress. The bill is expected to clear their Senate and be signed into law by a Republican Governor. But Trump will accuse Democrats of voter fraud, and loudly. He will do it with the full force of the government, including the criminal justice system, behind him. Get ready, and be prepared to shine a spotlight on what’s happening. Longtime readers of Civil Discourse will recall a 2017 effort by Trump allies to collect voter data that backfired, precisely because a little sunlight proved to be an effective disinfectant. Trump created an “election integrity” commission that was supposed to identify voter fraud, but couldn’t find any. Instead, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was outed for using the commission to try to access sensitive voter information—a lot like this current operation—and Trump was forced to shut down the commission just months into its operation. Public outrage worked in that instance. We need to use it here, as well. We’ve protested for due process. We’ve protested for the rule of law. We’ve held signs proclaiming “No Kings.” The right to vote is always part of the dialogue, but now it needs to take center stage.  Share this information about what the administration is trying to do with friends and neighbors and ensure that future protests focus on the right to vote and keeping it. Voting is the right that unlocks all other rights. And Trump is trying to take it away. Our votes don’t exist in a vacuum—they’re shaped by laws, courts, and institutions that set the rules of democracy. At Civil Discourse, we unpack how those forces work together and why they matter at the ballot box. Subscribe for clear, informed analysis when and where it matters the most. We’re in this together, Joyce Vance

 

"Just because Donald Trump barks out an executive decree does not mean it is the law of the land"

 

The legacy media don’t get it. Just because Donald Trump barks out an executive decree does not mean it is the law of the land. When he insisted that the Defense Department would be renamed the Department of War, far too many headlines suggested that it was a done deal. The irresponsible, frankly unserious, billionaire-owned media calls this “rebranding,” as if a Cabinet agency is a cereal box.

The Defense Department is not a “brand,” and treating it as such insults the men and women who serve. In the real world, Trump does not get to name and rename entities established by law. In this case, the Department of Defense was created by statute in 1947 along with the CIA and the National Security Council. 

“The War Department and Navy Department merged into a single Department of Defense under the Secretary of Defense, who also directed the newly created Department of the Air Force.”

No wonder military personnel are flummoxed. Politico reported, “Many expressed frustration, anger and downright confusion at the effort, which could cost billions of dollars for a cosmetic change that would do little to tackle the military’s most pressing challenges — such as countering a more aggressive alliance of authoritarian nations.”

Trump would have the taxpayers shoulder the cost of relabeling “more than 700,000 facilities in 40 countries and all 50 states. … [including] everything from letterhead for six military branches and dozens more agencies down to embossed napkins in chow halls, embroidered jackets for Senate-confirmed officials and the keychains and tchotchkes in the Pentagon store.”

Instead of this nonsense, just one billion dollars could be used as follows:

• Permanently house all homeless veterans through rapid rehousing and supportive housing. (The National Alliance to End Homelessness put the total figure for an estimated 36,000 veterans experiencing homelessness at $442 million.)
• Pay for childcare for the 840,000 military families with children for more than half a year. (The Department of Defense spends $1.79 billion annually on child care.)
• Feed the 1.4 million food insecure veterans for two months.
• Cover almost half of one Navy Flight III destroyer ship.
• Pay for 11 F-15EX Eagle II fighter jets at $90 million each.
• Pay for about six National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile Systems.
• Pay for healthcare for almost 68,000 veterans for a year.
• Cover the purchase and operation of 5 new intercontinental ballistic missile interceptors.
• Restore the $1 billion Trump stripped from Army barracks maintenance and renovations to pay for a surge at the Southern border.

Trump’s resort to window dressing in lieu of responsible policy making is appalling. As evidenced by him stuffing the Oval Office with tacky gold knickknacks and choosing Cabinet officials based on their appearance on his television screen, Trump obsesses over the superficial (e.g., banishing overweight servicemen from his sight). Incapable of addressing substance, he resorts to inconsequential decoration and cringeworthy marketing.

Military honor, code of conduct, and duty (the actual qualities foundational to military service) are foreign to the president who ducked military service for spontaneous “bone spurs.” Since he cannot comprehend service, then men and women who have sacrificed their lives seem to him like “losers” and “suckers.” He cannot grasp that what matters is in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Constitution, not what is on the Pentagon letterhead.

Trump and Defense Secretary Hegseth’s (oops—is he out of a job, if the department he was confirmed to lead no longer exists?) insecurity is palpable. Inadequacy masquerading as hyper-manly infect every utterance and gesture. What they think is “warrior” talk comes across as little boys play acting. (What’s next—a gaudy faux-military get-up complete with epaulets?) They yearn to project toughness, but their silly antics (in addition to firing high-ranking women, transgender troops, and military lawyers) convey just how fragile their egos are.

Even more dangerous, Trump seems to believe that military toughness equates to unlawful brutality. Any commander in chief who respects our military would not order our armed forces to engage in extrajudicial killings on the high seas, which experts across the board have denounced as blatantly illegal actions that could subject anyone in the chain of command to domestic and/or international prosecution.

In trying to play tough-guy, Trump simultaneously endangers and demeans our military, while trivializing their mission. He can never comprehend what makes the military the greatest in the world (e.g., valor, self-sacrifice, discipline, honor), as these qualities are beyond his narcissistic imagination. Whether sending the proficient National Guard to D.C. to pick up garbage, or to serve as threatening props in Los Angeles, or to switch signage, Trump wants toy soldiers to play-act; not a disciplined fighting force tasked with the noble, awesome responsibility to defend the Constitution.

In an amici brief in the California case brought to stop Trump’s violations of posse comitatus, a distinguished group of retired military brass explained the harm to our troops when they are misused:

First, deploying military personnel in the context of domestic law enforcement diverts them from their primary mission, which is national security and disaster response, at the expense of local, state, and national safety.

Second, National Guard personnel and active-duty Marines are not trained or qualified to conduct domestic law enforcement operations, which poses a danger to the safety of both the troops and the public. Third, the use of federal military personnel in the context of law enforcement operations should be a last resort to avoid the politicization of the military, which inevitably erodes public trust, impacts recruitment, and undermines troop morale.

Trump cannot grasp any of this, nor can he understand the obligations we have to our current and former military personnel. If he cared one wit about them, Trump would not have fired hundreds of thousands of government workers (who are disproportionately former military), nor would he have slashed funding for the Veterans Administration, drummed out of service trans service personnel serving honorably, or tried to erase some of the most storied chapters in military history.

So, let’s dispense with the “rebranding” gibberish and explain what Trump is up to: trying to turn our armed forces into his cartoon version of a military. The Defense Department does not change its name because of the ravings of an unstable, unfit president with a juvenile understanding of military honor—and we must stop treating his play-acting as an exercise of legitimate authority.

Jennifer Rubin with additional research contributed by Senior Editor Jamie Riley. The Contrarian is reader-supported. To assist our work in the court of law and court of public opinion, join our community of good troublemakers as a free or paid subscriber.

 

"A glimpse into the pathological core of an authoritarian war culture"

 

Trump’s obsession with violence is more than a grotesque fixation on power and cruelty. It is a commentary on politics as pathology, a grim theater in which authoritarianism reveals its inner logic. Under Trump, politics is no longer about governance or vision. It is about the intoxication of destruction, the fetishization of cruelty, and the staging of violence as both spectacle and ritual.

On the individual level, it is the grotesque display of a delusional mind that can only feel alive through the embrace of terror that finds its emotional register only in the language of threat and annihilation. His boast that he “loves the smell of deportations in the morning,” a sadistic parody of Robert Duvall’s iconic line in Apocalypse Now— “I love the smell of napalm in the morning”—is not merely an offhand provocation.

It is a glimpse into the pathological core of an authoritarian war culture, where cruelty is transfigured into pleasure, violence becomes the grammar of belonging, and politics itself degenerates into a performance of derangement. 

In Trump’s hands, deportation is no longer a bureaucratic measure but an ecstatic ritual of exclusion, a celebration of malignant aggression that lays bare what the fascist subject looks like when cruelty is its only source of joy.

The terror of fascism produced a number of commentaries on the fascist personality and subject. Some Commentaries by Wilhelm Reich, Theodor Adorno and, of course, Freud are relevant here. Reich long ago insisted that fascism grows out of an “irrational character structure” in which repressed drives are transfigured into obedience, hatred, and a perverse pleasure in cruelty.

Adorno deepened this insight, noting that the fascist demagogue eroticizes violence, offering his followers the delusional notion that cruelty is a source of collective pleasure. Freud had already warned in Civilization and Its Discontents that aggression is woven into the very fabric of human drives, a force that seeks expression in humiliation, exploitation, and annihilation when left unchecked by culture and conscience.

Trump in this photo and commentary makes clear how his embrace of violence ties cruelty to pleasure. Erich Fromm later sharpened this analysis with his concept of “malignant aggression.” Erich Fromm suggests that such aggression was not defensive but ecstatic, a passion for annihilation experienced as intoxicating. 

Trump’s post embodies precisely this malignant aggression, turning state violence into a spectacle of pornographic pleasure and belonging, a ritualized performance in which militarized cruelty itself becomes the ground of agency.

What emerges here is not the sober language of governance but the delirious performance of spectacularized sadism where violence becomes the end itself and the exclusive mode of state rule. Trump’s boast is more than a grotesque slip of the tongue. It is the utterance of a deranged mind for whom cruelty is the only register of feeling and terror the only idiom of power.

This is politics transfigured into pathology, a criminogenic mode of rule that normalizes lawlessness, and a necropolitical order that elevates the management of death and suffering into the very principle of sovereignty. Here, governance is reduced to the staging of annihilation, and the state is recast as an apparatus of terror whose legitimacy lies in its capacity to inflict pain, humiliation, and disposability. 

As Anthony DiMatteo puts it "From the Heart of Darkness (the Congo holocaust) to Apocalypse Now (the Vietnam war) to American fascism - all in the name of supremacy and subjugation."

-Henry Giroux

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning”

 

We have the specter of an American president trying to take control of an American city for thinly veiled political reasons. Not for the first time, or even the second, but for the third. This time, Donald Trump lacks even the veneer of justification he asserted in Los Angeles, when he claimed anti-ICE protests were out of control. He lacks the unique status he holds in D.C. as the head of the National Guard, which gives him greater latitude to act than anywhere else in the country.

“I love the smell of deportations in the morning,” Trump posted on Truth Social Saturday morning, an off-base reference to the famous line in the Vietnam film Apocalypse Now, “I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.” “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the DEPARTMENT OF WAR, followed by three helicopters. Illinois Governor JB Pritzker was quick to point out “This is not a joke. This is not normal.”

In Chicago, Trump will be the invader if he moves in. His claims of rampant crime that state and local authorities can’t handle are undercut by statistics that show serious crime is decreasing, although no one is pretending it’s not a problem. But under our system of federalism, it’s a problem that is left to the states, which have the police power, to resolve.

The Tenth Amendment provides that “[t]he powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.” That includes the general police power, which is reserved to the states, because the Constitution does not specify it as a power of the federal government. 

The Tenth Amendment is the core tenet of federalism, which Republicans used to claim they believed in, offering it up as a reason for the federal government to stay out of all sorts of things far more benign than a federal takeover of a major American city.

The term police powers refers to a broad and somewhat amorphous governmental regulatory power. In 1954, in Berman v. Parker, the Supreme Court characterized it as involving “[p]ublic safety, public health, morality, peace and quiet, law and order,” while noting that “[a]n attempt to define [police power’s] reach or trace its outer limits is fruitless.” 

In other words, the power reserved to the states in this regard is broad, certainly encompassing Donald Trump’s newfound desire to have the federal government fight crime in the states—something better done by providing support and grant funding, and letting states and localities do their constitutionally assigned job.

But Donald Trump wants to be a dictator. And it isn’t limited to just his first day in office, as he once said on the campaign trail, not that anyone paying attention believed that bogus claim. Illinois’ Governor isn’t having any of it, calling out Trump for what, in essence, is a threat to go to war with an American city. That sort of plain-spoken truth is essential. 

We can no longer afford to try and make nice with a president who so cavalierly talks about taking over Democratic cities, and only Democratic cities, despite the fact that many red state cities, like my home, Birmingham, Alabama, have crime issues too. We know what Trump is doing. We know next year’s elections are coming. We understand the context for this effort to assert the authority to seize control, at will.

Coincidentally, the line in Apocalypse Now, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning," was spoken by Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore (played by Robert Duvall), about the absurdity of war and the profound psychological damage it inflicts on everyone involved. It followed a napalm attack on a civilian population, which is a war crime under international law. 

Perhaps, as is so often the case, Trump seized on the line without understanding its meaning. Perhaps he just doesn’t care now that he has his “Department of Warfare.” But it is not a president’s job to go to war against the American people. Apocalypse Now is about a man driven insane by war, a movie about how hollow war can make people. Donald Trump, unintentionally, has invoked just the right image for what is to come.

We’re in this together,

Joyce Vance

 

This Attack on Medicare

 

A huge, huge story broke just before the holiday weekend, but hardly anyone is talking about it. Let’s change that, shall we? Here’s the story: Donald Trump and Dr. Oz* are rolling out a pilot program to fundamentally change Medicare. They want to require senior citizens to get prior authorization for some healthcare services, and here’s the kicker: Artificial Intelligence (AI) gets to decide whether medical care is approved or not.

Believe it or not, it actually gets worse when you dig into the details of these “AI Death Panels,” which we’ll do in a moment, but if you’re already caught up on this story, here’s what you can do right now:

Email Congress right now and tell them to block Trump’s AI-powered attack on Medicare enrollees’ healthcare.

---

Introducing AI Death Panels

Medicare has historically covered more procedures, with fewer hoops to jump through, than for-profit insurance companies. Whereas private insurers callously limit care and require “prior authorization” before covering many services or procedures, Medicare offers broad coverage that’s comparatively transparent and simple.

Not anymore, if Trump and Oz get their way. The Trump regime wants to introduce prior authorization -- one of the most hated aspects of private insurance -- to Medicare, and they’re outsourcing those life-changing authorization decisions to unproven AI companies.

It gets even worse: AI developers will be paid based on the value of requested services or procedures they reject -- meaning AI companies would directly profit from denying needed care to seniors.

In short, if a computer program decides that you “don’t need” a medical procedure -- even if your doctor recommended it -- an AI executive gets paid while you get left holding the bag. Remember when the GOP invented the term "death panel" in their scare campaign to stop the Affordable Care Act? That was totally manufactured nonsense. This is actually happening. Trump is rolling out real-life AI Death Panels.

---

OUR DEMANDS

These for-profit AI Death Panels will roll out this January in six pilot states: Arizona, New Jersey, Ohio, Oklahoma, Texas, and Washington. The pilots will reportedly be limited to about 17 procedures to start, but if they achieve their goal -- cutting costs by denying a lot of people a lot of care -- they could expand to more procedures and more states.

This attack on Medicare creates massive political risk for Trump and his GOP enablers in Congress. Medicare is one of the most popular public programs in US history, and hardworking people typically don’t respond well when politicians interfere with their health decisions.

That gives us an outside chance of swaying enough congressional Republicans to take action to stop AI Death Panels before they roll out -- or failing that, make them pay a HUGE political price in 2026.

Step one: Let ‘em hear it. Give ‘em hell.

Email your Members of Congress right now! Demand that they stop AI-powered Medicare service rejections and use the upcoming federal budget fight to restore healthcare funding.

Email Congress Now

This is just the latest dystopian move in Trump and Republicans’ campaign to systematically dismantle our healthcare system at the behest of corporate backers and billionaires. With a huge federal funding deadline around the corner, now is the time to fight back hard.

In solidarity,
Indivisible Team

P.S. We focused much of this email on the Republican side of the aisle. But we need to put pressure on Democratic members of Congress, too, because it’s important they use all their leverage to protect healthcare. Whether Dems or Republicans represent you in Washington, email your senators and representative now.

---

*Did you forget that Trump picked (and GOP Senators confirmed) another disgraced TV star, Dr. Oz, to run the federal agency in charge of Medicare and Medicaid? That’s right, millions of seniors’ healthcare is in the hands of a famous snake-oil salesman!

"The rush to deport children in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend"

 

In the early hours of Sunday morning [August 31], in the middle of a three-day holiday weekend, the Trump administration attempted to take children out of government custody and ship them alone to their country of origin, Guatemala.

On Friday, Priscilla Alvarez of CNN broke the story that the administration was planning to move up to 600 children from the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where they are held according to law until they can be released to a relative or a guardian living in the U.S. who can take care of them while their case for asylum in the U.S. is being processed.

ORR is an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services. Its mission, according to its website, is to promote the health, well-being, and stability of refugees, unaccompanied alien children, and other eligible individuals and families, through culturally responsive, trauma-informed, and strengths-based services. Our vision is for all new arrivals to be welcomed with equitable, high-quality services and resources so they can maximize their potential.”

Alvarez notes that unaccompanied migrant children are considered a vulnerable population and are covered by the 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act. That law gives them enhanced protections and care, making sure they are screened to see if they have been trafficked or are afraid of persecution in the country they come from. Congress has specified that such children can be removed from the country only under special circumstances.

Nonetheless, the administration appears to have removed about 76 of these children from the custody of ORR—the only agency with legal authority to hold them—where they were waiting to be released to a relative or guardian and transferred them to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Once they were in ICE custody, the administration planned “to put them on flights to Guatemala, where they may face abuse, neglect, persecution, or even torture,” according to a U.S. court.

At about 1:00 in the morning, Eastern Time, on Sunday, August 31, advocates for the children filed a suit to prevent the administration from removing them. Shortly after 2:30 in the morning, Judge Sparkle Sooknanan got a phone call about the case, and by 4:00 she had issued an emergency order blocking the removal and scheduled a hearing for 3:00 that afternoon. She moved it up to 12:30 when she learned that the administration was already moving some children out of the country.

Legal analyst Anna Bower was on the call for the hearing and reported that Sooknanan said: “I got a call at 2:36 am because the government chose the wee hours of the morning on the Sunday of Labor Day weekend to execute a plan to move these children. That's why we're here. And I tried to reach the government.

I have been up since then…and didn't reach anyone from the government until later this morning. And the imminence that the plaintiff claimed proved true, because, in fact, those planes *were* loaded. One actually took off and was returned. And so, absent action and intervention by the court, all of those children would have been returned to Guatemala, potentially to extremely dangerous situations.”

Some of the children were actually in a plane to be removed while the hearing was underway. Sooknanan required the government to report to her when each child was back in ORR custody. By noon Monday, according to the government’s lawyers, all the children were back in ORR custody.

The rush to deport children in the middle of the night on a holiday weekend, in apparent violation of the law, looked a great deal like the administration’s removal of undocumented immigrants from Venezuela to the notorious terrorist CECOT prison in El Salvador in March... 

-Heather Cox Richardson

Trump's Dictatorial Ambition

 

One of legacy media’s common refrains—“Trump is testing the limits of [fill in the blank]”—is among the most revealing (about the media imploying it, that is). The phrase reminds us that obfuscation and evasion, not truth-telling, are driving their approach to covering Trump 2.0.

When corporate and billionaire media suggest that Donald Trump is testing the limits of the Constitution or executive authority or congressional Republicans’ self-debasement, one conjures up a vision of deliberate inquiry.

It assumes a level of intentional, rational analysis, a set of intellectual skills Trump has never demonstrated. Worse, the deceptive phrasing gives one the false impression that Trump would retreat if the “tested” scheme did not work or proved unnecessary (or if courts disallowed it). But it is not a “test,” if he plunges forward regardless of facts, deterrents, public reaction, or nettlesome lower court decisions.

Trump is not “testing” the limits of executive power in trying to fire Fed governor Lisa Cook. He is blasting through the plain letter of the law, violating the bipartisan consensus that the central bank should be insulated against political pressure, and putting at risk our economy so he can force the Fed to cover for his failures (i.e. fiscal and trade policies that are driving the economy into a ditch). “Testing” makes it sound so much more benign, which obviously is the point. Such language normalizes and justifies (Just testing!) his serial assaults on the Constitution and rejection of reality.

Likewise, media spinners of conventional wisdom prattle on that Trump is taking us into “uncharted” territory or waters. They would have us imagine he is a daring explorer seeking to pursue new adventures that predecessors lacked the courage to do. No one proposes the accurate alternative: that he is a crazed nihilist bent on blowing up legal, moral, and political norms that no predecessor had the galling disrespect to challenge.

We also hear the frequent observation that Trump is advancing an “unprecedented” argument or position (Tren de Aragua is a nation for purposes of the Alien Enemies Act! His toady’s baseless accusation against a Fed governor is “cause” for firing a Federal Reserve governor!), as if no one as clever as he ever devised a theory of the Constitution that would allow him to do whatever he pleases. Directly informing Americans that such an argument is preposterous, indicative of someone with contempt for language and the courts, is apparently verboten.

These lame weasel words seem designed to avoid saying the obvious: This wannabe dictator has been gleefully shredding the Constitution; he is the Framers’ worst nightmare and the sort of autocratic figure “conservatives” used to denounce (and prepared to arm themselves against).

The cowed corporate media (the same that has paid off Trump with phony settlements, turned themselves inside-out to curry favor with the Dear Leader, and studiously avoided thorough investigations into his physical and mental decline) resort to these expressions in order to duck the most important issue of our time.

They appear deathly afraid to acknowledge that we are turning into a police state. We should stop expecting this faction of the media to recognize that democracy is being imperiled by the unending attacks on the rule of law, American values, and our constitutional structure.

To normalize Trump means cringing media outlets need not “take sides” or flatly speak the truth. They can continue the pretense that this is a president like any other president. They can keep access to newsmakers and insist they are neutral in the fight between democracy and authoritarianism.

That does not mean the rest of us have to tiptoe around the truth. In citizens’ interactions with politicians, Democratic politicians’ speeches and messaging, and across independent media, clear-eyed Americans can lay out exactly what is happening.

This is not simply a matter of linguistic hygiene. If we soft-pedal Trump’s reign we wind up habituating the public to dictatorship. As political scientist Daniel Ziblatt (one of a group of academics who has consistently sounded the alarm that we are falling into authoritarianism) explains:

Democracy rarely dies in a single moment. It is chipped away via abdication: rationalizations and compromises as those with power and influence tell themselves that yielding just a little ground will keep them safe or that finding common ground with a disrupter is more practical than standing against him.

Trump is not Hitler (although he increasingly ruminates that others want a dictator), but the United States increasingly looks an awful lot like the Weimar Republic, which, Ziblatt points out, provides us with the “enduring lesson … [that] extremism never triumphs on its own.”

He argues that a dictatorship “succeeds because others enable it—because of their ambition, because of their fear, or because they misjudge the dangers of small concessions.” And they minimize the consequences that flow from cocooning a dictator in the language of routine politics.

In the end, many Trump enablers—including cowering press outlets—may be crushed by the dictators’ boot, but their demise is not nearly as tragic as the suffering inflicted on the most vulnerable people, i.e., those who lack the resources and power of toady politicians, multi-national corporations, or giant media conglomerates. So please, let’s dispense with piffle (“testing,” “uncharted,” “unprecedented”) and instead speak bluntly:

Trump is trashing our Constitution with the expectation that the Supreme Court’s MAGA majority will let him (as it has done every step of the way), and the Republican quislings will cover for him.

In resisting linguistic sloth and denouncing gaslighting, American can impede Trump’s dictatorial ambition. Whether we collectively confront MAGA politicians, feeble media outlets, and our fellow citizens with searing clarity will be the real “test” for our democracy.

The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts and assist with our work in the court of law and court of public opinion, consider joining our fighting community as a free or paid subscriber.

 

"Republicans, before the Donald Trump cult took hold, frequently railed (rightly so) against communist and fascist regimes that nationalized industry, indulged in crony capitalism, and substituted propaganda for the free flow of reliable information. Well, well. How times have changed"

Mr. Trump has attacked workers in other ways. He has gutted the Department of Labor through cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency. He is also rolling back Labor Department rules from the Obama and Biden administrations that allowed home care workers to earn overtime and farmworkers to campaign for better working conditions. And he has severely undermined the National Labor Relations Board, which handles thousands of unions' matters every year by firing its head and nominating corporate-friendly figures to steer its operations away from supporting workers.

Organized labor, for all its talk about solidarity, remains deeply divided on how best to approach organizing, politics and Mr. Trump. Certain labor leaders, particularly Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, have embraced Mr. Trump and his brand of Republicans, particularly around immigration restrictions. Other unions with memberships that are heavily white and male also lean toward Republicans. But they still represent a minority of union members.

In 2024, union workers were among the only demographic groups where Democrats improved (https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2024/general-results/voter-analysis) their standing compared with 2020. Perhaps that reflects efforts by Joe Biden to be, as he put it (https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771), “the most pro-union president in American history.”

Unions have the internal support, structure and organizing capacity to support the fight against Mr. Trump. Yet no one in the labor movement has taken the public role of countering Mr. O’Brien and making it clear to the American public that most unions are strongly opposed to Mr. Trump.

 If the labor movement wants to fight for its survival, it must return to mass mobilization tactics, reminding Americans that their rights come through working together — not through supporting a president who talks about helping American workers while slashing worker safety regulations, supporting tariffs that raise the cost of consumer goods and stripping workers of their legal rights to contracts.

All this is happening at a time when Americans’ approval of unions is the highest it has been since the mid-1960s.

One cannot overstate the significance of Mr. Trump’s attacks on government workers. Public sector work has become organized labor’s power base, allowing the total workforce’s union membership rate to remain at around 10 percent, despite less than 6 percent of private sector workers having unions.

Based on actions Mr. Trump has taken this year — and without any notable public pushback from supposedly pro-labor Republicans like Josh Hawley and Marco Rubio — it is unlikely that there will be any unionized federal workers outside of policing agencies by the end of his term in 2029.

Mr. Trump has attacked workers in other ways. He has gutted the Department of Labor through cuts by the Department of Government Efficiency. He is also rolling back Labor Department rules from the Obama and Biden administrations that allowed home care workers to earn overtime and farmworkers to campaign for better working conditions. And he has severely undermined the National Labor Relations Board, which handles thousands of unions' matters every year by firing its head and nominating corporate-friendly figures to steer its operations away from supporting workers.

Organized labor, for all its talk about solidarity, remains deeply divided on how best to approach organizing, politics and Mr. Trump. Certain labor leaders, particularly Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, have embraced Mr. Trump and his brand of Republicans, particularly around immigration restrictions. Other unions with memberships that are heavily white, and male also lean toward Republicans. But they still represent a minority of union members.

In 2024, union workers were among the only demographic groups where Democrats improved (https://www.foxnews.com/elections/2024/general-results/voter-analysis) their standing compared with 2020. Perhaps that reflects efforts by Joe Biden to be, as he put it (https://theconversation.com/bidens-labor-report-card-historian-gives-union-joe-a-higher-grade-than-any-president-since-fdr-228771), “the most pro-union president in American history.”

Unions have the internal support, structure and organizing capacity to support the fight against Mr. Trump. Yet no one in the labor movement has taken the public role of countering Mr. O’Brien and making it clear to the American public that most unions are strongly opposed to Mr. Trump…

 

The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts, enable our work, help with litigation efforts, and keep this opposition movement alive and engaged, please consider joining the fight by becoming a paid subscriber.