This is a very important interview, a thoughtful discussion between two remarkable people.
Two historians talk about Trump tyranny, the rule of oligarchs, and the power of the fossil fuel industry.
Snyder reminds us of the importance of the November elections. It’s our chance to put limits on the oligarchs and authoritarians.
You probably never heard of a U.S. Supreme Court decision called Plyler v. Doe (1977). But you should learn about it, because immigrant-haters are doing their best to overturn it right now.
In this post, Peter Greene explains what Plyler v. Doe said and why it’s now in the red-hot center of American politics right now.
You’re going to see the Supreme Court case Plyler v. Doe coming up a bunch these days, and if you are not up on your SCOTUS cases, let me provide you with the basic info about what the case was, why its decision matters, and why some folks are looking to get it overturned. This is about immigrants and education and, as is often the case these, a whole lot more.
Why did the case happen in the first place?
Texas. In 1975, they passed a law prohibiting “the use of state funds for the education of children who had not been legally admitted to the U.S.” In 1977, Tyler Independent School District adopted a policy requiring students who were not “legally admitted” to pay tuition (”legally admitted” included having documents saying they were legally present or in the process of getting such documents).
A group of students who couldn’t produce such documents sued the district. The district court ruled the policy (and therefor the state law on which it rested) was unconstitutional. The federal appeals court agreed, and the district pursued appeals all the way to the Supremes, who handed down a decision in June of 1982.
What did SCOTUS say?
SCOTUS was 5-4 against the policy.
The majority opinion, written by Justice William J. Brenan. found that the law was aimed squarely at children and discriminated against them for a characteristic that they could not control. The ruling also asserted that there is a state and national interest in educating these children, regardless of immigration status, because denying them an education would lead to “the creation and perpetuation of a subclass of illiterates within our boundaries, surely adding to the problems and costs of unemployment, welfare, and crime.”
The majority argument also rested heavily on the Fourteenth Amendment, which should ring a bell because that is also the amendment that establishes birthright citizenship, which Donald Trump would very much like to get rid of. The arguments in Plyler rested on the Equal Protection Clause. Justice Lewis Powell (a Nixon appointee) argued in his concurring opinion that the children were being kept from schools because their parents broke the law. “A legislative classification that threatens the creation of an underclass of future citizens and residents cannot be reconciled with one of the fundamental purposes of the Fourteenth Amendment.”
Even the dissent, written by Chief Justice Warren Berger, actually agreed with the majority that it would be a bad idea to “tolerate creation of a segment of society made up of illiterate persons.” But they asserted that this was an issue to be settled by lawmakers and not the court.
One notable argument raised by Texas officials was that the phrase “within the jurisdiction” in the Equal Protection Clause did not cover illegal aliens. Both the majority opinion and the dissent disagreed, arguing that illegal aliens are, in fact, persons, and they are here.
Why do we care?
Many pieces of this case have re-emerged in recent years, in part because conservatives have a bone to pick with the Fourteenth Amendment. The Equal Protection Clause was, for instance, instrumental in Obergefell v. Hodges, the decision that established same-gender marriage as Constitutional.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott has been itching to revive that 1975 anti-child law since SCOTUS struck down Roe, arguing that the Dobbs decision draft opinion from Justice Samuel Alito (the one that was leaked) was based on the idea that abortion rights are not specifically protected by the Constitution and neither does it mention education rights for undocumented immigrants.
And if SCOTUS can be convinced to take another look at that “within the jurisdiction” language, so that the court no longer recognizes being a person and being here as enough, we could be looking the wholesale creation of all sorts of second-class tiers in America, people who are not protected by the Equal Protection Clause.
The Trump administration has been pushing back against Plyler for a while, But in just the last week, hateful homunculus Steven Miller has pushed Texas to kick those undocumented immigrant kids out of school. Earlier this month the House held a whole hearing on “the adverse effects of Plyler v. Doe.“ The underlying argument is part bullshit, part chilling prediction of where these guys are headed, the argument being basically “Why spend money on anyone who is not One Of Us,” an argument that is sociopathic baloney, but also alarming in how easily it can extended to anybody We Don’t Like. Witness also this tweet from the official White House twitter account:
Get that? Not the worst of the worst. Not illegal or undocumented immigration. The promise made and kept is to chase all immigrants away. And if scaring them away from schools with ICE, or chasing them out of schools entirely– well, if that gets a few more of those immigrants out of the country, then the administration thinks that’s just fine.
The GOP in Tennessee has obligingly advanced a bill that would allow schools to deny, or charge tuition for, education to any children without legal immigration status. They did amend the bill so that children thrown out of school for immigrant status will not be in trouble under the state truancy laws. What big hearts! The bill exists to allow legal challenges to carry it all the way to the Supremes so they can, if so inclined, undo Plyler.
Just imagine if SCOTUS also undoes the Fourteenth Amendment’s birthright citizen language. America gets a large, uneducated generation of young humans who can either be deported or put to work as good old fashioned hard laborers (thank all the states that have rolled back child labor laws).
There’s an extra layer of irony here. As we learn from Adam Laats in his book Mr. Lancaster’s System, one of the forces behind the invention of the U.S. public school system was a concern about the number of illiterate and unschooled youths who were out on the street causing trouble and worrying their elders.
So pay attention to what happens to Plyler next under the regime. It could spell trouble not just for undocumented immigrants, but for all of us. If leaders agree that only Certain People are entitled to an education, we’d better pay attention to who qualifies as Certain People, and who does not.
Harold Meyerson, editor-at-large of The American Prospect, has advised Texas Republicans to deny access to public schooling to undocumented children. The Supreme Court decided the issue more than four decades ago; maybe today’s conservative Court might overturn that ruling.
The Don’s consigliere tells Texas Republicans to end undocumented children’s access to public schools.
Last week, Stephen Miller—Don Trump’s wartime consigliere—met with Texas’s Republican legislators and asked them why they hadn’t passed a bill that banned undocumented children from public schools.
At first glance, the answer to that question might be that in 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that states were legally required to pay for the elementary school education of children regardless of their immigration status. But, as Tom Oliverson, the chairman of the Texas House Republican Caucus, told The New York Times yesterday, “There’s a lot of people that believe that that ruling has some pretty faulty logic associated with it.”
Well, sure. The Supreme Court clearly had a bias in favor of a generally well-educated public, able to perform the range of jobs and tasks that a functioning nation tends to require. That a bias in favor of a well-educated public has seldom infected Texas Republicans, Fox News, the MAGA movement, or Stephen Miller and his Don goes without saying. Indeed, a well-educated public inherently poses a long-term threat to authoritarians and authoritarian wannabes, inasmuch as such a public may wish to have a say in many public policies.
Miller’s current offensive against immigrant children should come as no surprise. He was the force behind the separation of small immigrant children from their parents during the Don’s first term. As well, one Miller biographer has documented how the teenage Miller once cut off his friendship with a Latino pal because, he told said pal, he’d realized he didn’t want to be friends with a Latino. (I know this goes beyond mere immigrant hatred, but it seems illustrative of Miller’s larger mindset.)
This war on immigrant children is not without precedent. In 1994, California voters enacted Proposition 187, which denied public services—including the right to attend K-12 schools—to undocumented children. Plyler v. Doe was one reason why federal courts almost immediately struck down 187 as unconstitutional, but Miller and many Texas Republicans seem bent on trying it again.
In the weeks before 1994’s Election Day, Los Angeles high school students, both documented and undocumented, foreign-born and U.S.-born, began demonstrating against 187 and in favor of—O, the horror—continuing their education. At first, a few demonstrated on their campuses, and as the movement grew, they began amassing by the thousands across Southern California. Some politically sentient unions, disproportionately Latino-led, began offering those students the chance to work phone banks and walk precincts against 187 in the closing days of the campaign; many jumped at the chance. For some, this was their entry into politics: Two of the march’s organizers became, years later, Speakers of the California Assembly. (I covered all this for the L.A. Weekly.)
One question that 187’s supporters never answered was what the undocumented children and teens would be doing during the hours when schools were in session. Hanging at home, compelling their moms and dads to miss work? Roaming the streets? Expressing the normal reactions of young people whom the state had effectively told to go fuck themselves?
Thanks to Plyler v. Doe, these were questions that nobody had to answer. But Texas Republicans routinely act in ways every bit as sociopathic as Miller. They may be hoping that if they codify Miller’s war on the school-aged, they can at least find some Trump-appointed judge who’ll rule that Plyler was decided in error. Until or unless some higher court overrules that decision, they’d then be able to answer those questions in a distinctly Texas Republican way: They’d be empowered to loose the Rangers, or ICE, the Border Patrol, or any gun-carrying white Texan, on Latino kids on the streets or in stores or at home during school days. Not only would rough beasts be deploying to Bethlehem, but, to Miller’s particular delight, entire children’s ceremonies of innocence would be drowned. Look for those particulars in the next Republican platform.
I subscribe to Marc Elias’ blog called “Democracy Docket.” Marc is a veteran prosecutor who is actively pursing lawsuits against the crimes of the Trump administration and winning many of them.
On his blog today is a fascinating conversation with another veteran prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.
Together they discuss how the Trump regime has corrupted the rule of law; how grand juries have usually stood firm in defending it; why Trump and his cronies must be held accountable for their efforts to destroy our democracy; why Merrick Garland was weak but Jack Smith was strong; why the Department of Justice must always be apolitical and hold members of both parties accountable; how Pam Bondi has repeatedly broken the law; and why the Epstein Files will eventually reveal a massive coverup.
All that is to say that I found the discussion to be enlightening and informative. These two—Elias and Kirschner–are truly experts, not just someone fulminating at the latest outage.
Since the content of the blog is for subscribers only, I can’t post it in full. It is definitely worth your while to subscribe.
Here is Marc Elias’ introduction to the dialogue:
For decades, the American justice system has operated on a “presumption of regularity” — the idea that the government acts in good faith. But as we enter the second year of this administration, that presumption has become a dangerous fantasy. Glenn Kirschner spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor, and he knows that when the rule of law is hanging by a thread, there’s no such thing as “business as usual.”
Glenn joined me to explain why we need a “scorched earth” mission to investigate the criminal enterprise currently occupying the White House. We also dive deep into the Epstein files cover-up and discuss what it takes to hold the Trump administration accountable when we take back the White House in 2029.
And here is a brief snippet from Kirschner’s remarks:
Glenn: I think accountability doesn’t look like “you’ve got to throw them all in prison, they all need to be in orange jumpsuits.” That’s not accountability. My version of accountability, my definition of accountability, is if we fairly, impartially, aggressively — and I mean scorched earth — investigate in an apolitical fashion every crime that we see with our own eyes. The President and his cabinet, basically this is a criminal enterprise. I prosecuted lengthy RICO cases in federal district court in Washington, D.C. I don’t say that flippantly. This is a criminal enterprise.
So what we need to do is make sure every crime gets fully investigated through an apolitical investigation whereby we give all of the evidence to the grand jury and we let them serve as the first check on our instincts with respect to who should be prosecuted. Do we have enough evidence to make out, one, probable cause, and two, beyond that, do we prosecutors believe we have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits, which looks like a conviction at trial? That’s some of the language taken from the U.S. Attorney’s Manual. That is our procedural Bible at the Department of Justice. Once we secure indictments against everybody who has been victimizing the American people and violating our nation’s laws, then we move into the courtroom. We try the case as best we can. We deliver it to the jury and they begin to deliberate.
Accountability is done at that point. That may sound counterintuitive coming from a prosecutor who liked winning convictions. I enjoyed holding perpetrators accountable, vindicating the rights of victims, and protecting the community. But the result is not as important as the process. Justice is a process. And once we deliver it to the second check on our instincts—the trial jury sitting as the conscience of the community, just as grand jurors do—we live with the result, win, lose, or draw: conviction, acquittal, or mistrial because it’s a hung jury where the jurors couldn’t agree unanimously on a verdict. That’s what accountability looks like: putting everybody fairly and apolitically through the criminal justice system and let first the grand jurors decide and then we let the trial jurors decide.
Daniel Dale is CNN’s fact-checker. He has noticed Trump’s repetitive use of the term “nobody knows” or “nobody knew,” which often means that everyone knew but him. Trump is like a carnival barker or a used car salesman who will say whatever might persuade gullible listeners to see “the tallest man on earth,” or the used car that’s five years old but has never been driven, not a single mile.
When President Donald Trump says “nobody” knew or expected something, that often means lots of people knew or expected it.
Trump made wildly inaccurate “nobody” claims about multiple subjects during his first presidency. Perhaps most famously, he declared in 2017, while trying and failing to pass a replacement for Obamacare, that “nobody knew health care could be so complicated.”
He’s now doing it again amid the war with Iran.
On multiple occasions this month, Trump has claimed “nobody” had expected Iran to attack its Persian Gulf neighbors after it was attacked by the US and Israel. “Nobody ever thought they’d be shot at,” he said of Gulf countries on Thursday. “Nobody was even thinking about it,” he said Monday. “Nobody, nobody, no, no, no. No, the greatest experts – nobody thought they were going to hit,” he said last week.
In reality, various experts had not only thought but publicly predicted that Iran would retaliate by striking countries in the region. Iranian officials had themselves saidthis was their plan.
Like Trump’s health care claim in 2017 and the “nobody” claims he made about the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, the new claim about Iran appears to be an attempt to shield himself from criticism. If nobody expected Iranian attacks on Gulf nations, nobody thought the US needed to prepare for another pandemic and nobody knew it would be so tough to pass a health care bill, surely none of these situations could be the president’s fault.
Many of Trump’s other false “nobody” claims this term have served both his political and personal aims.
His laughable declaration that he ended wars that “nobody” even knew were occurring even though they had killed “millions and millions” of people portrays him as a heroic foreign policy visionary. His strange assertion that “nobody” knows the last name of former vice president Kamala Harris belittles his 2024 election opponent. His false claimthat “nobody” knows who is receiving California’s mail-in ballots fuels both his push to restrict mail-in voting and his lie that he only lost the popular vote in the 2016 and 2020 elections because of widespread fraud in Democratic-dominated areas.
In some cases, though, it’s a mystery why Trump made a “nobody” claim.
For example, when he gave a February speech at the US Institute of Peace headquarters building in Washington, DC, which his administration seized from the nonprofit organization last year, he claimed, “It’s brand new, they built it for peace, but nobody occupied it. You know, nobody knew what the purpose of it (was).” In fact, it was known to numerous people in the federal government and in the broader capital that the building had been custom-built as a home for the US Institute of Peace, which had occupied it since 2011.
Was Trump lying, or did he not know this himself and therefore assume nobody else knew either? Nobody knows.
Trump’s false “nobody” claims are in keeping with the penchant for hyperbole that has characterized his rhetoric since his days as a celebrity businessman. The most head-spinning of the claims are boasts.
Specifically, they’re the boasts in which Trump correctly says that nobody expected some particular great thing to happen during his presidency… but incorrectly says the thing has happened during his presidency.
For example, in January, he said, “We actually have peace in the Middle East. Nobody thought that was possible.” He said the next day, “We have peace in the Middle East. It’s an amazing thing. Nobody thought we’d ever see that.”
In reality, “nobody” had been proven right.
Despite 2025 ceasefires between Israel and Iran and between Israel and Hamas, the Middle East as a whole obviously wasn’t atpeace at the time Trump made these January comments. Trump implicitly conceded that he was exaggerating, admitting the same day as the latter remark that there were “little flames” in the region and in mid-February that there were “some flames here and there.”
Less than two weeks later, Trump started the war with Iran – the one that prompted the Iranian response he claimed “nobody” had expected.
Donald Trump’s serial depredations and violations of the law and Constitution inspired a retired educator to write a new Declaration of Indepence, tailored to a new age.
Whereas the people of these United States of America have given their lives in defense of our country, let not the federal usurper attempt to crown himself king and return to the time of George III.
Our populace will rise up and demand a return to the rule of law and civil discourse on issues confronting us. Have no kingly proclamations discourage us from following the traditions and norms of our 249 years. We do not live in the time of the divine right of kings. Our government derives from the will of the people and our rights cannot be dissolved by a false monarch. The strength of our democracy always lies with the hopes of our populace.
In all of our country’s existence we have never faced such an evil. We are not accustomed to a fraud who would besmirch our constitution and attempt to rule with his own pronouncements. He has divided us into many differing camps and beliefs with his lies that he will continue to separate us.
His claims that we are being invaded by groups of nefarious cutthroats that are bent on taking over our country are untrue. He will then be able to declare martial law and use all of the levers of government to suppress all protest activities. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.
He has not complied with the laws and disregards our judiciary.
He has enriched himself by accepting emoluments from foreign countries, princes and oligarchs.
He has deliberately favored states that voted for him and disavowed those who did not.
He has supported taxes that would enrich the wealthy and deprive the poor.
He has endeavored to make judges bend to his will.
He has plundered our economy and dissolved our relationship with our allies.
He has abducted our people in public places- schools, places of worship, and public buildings.
He has threatened our institutions of higher learning if they did not bend to his will.
He has erected a multitude of new offices in the federal government to dispose of thousands of dedicated public servants.
He has restricted the entry into our country of the brightest young people in the world.
He has aligned himself with our enemies and supports their tyranny.
He has installed a health secretary who is destroying our health system and our capability to do health research.
He has encouraged and pardoned 1500 people who tried to overthrow our government.
His sycophants mock our populace and threaten to jail them if they are not compliant with his wishes.
He is, at this time, transporting armies of masked hoodlums to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty, perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy as the head of a civilized nation.
At every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress of these grievances. We have asked in a most civilized manner. Our petitions have been answered in only the most desultory and vengeful actions. A president whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant is not fit to be the leader of our country.
We have been warning our legislative representatives of the danger of these usurpations. They are fearful of his retributions both political and personal. We have entered the justice system in the highest court of the land to create estoppel. Their decisions do not seem to impede the leader’s desire to remake our democracy into an autocracy. The monied interests have formed a choral group for the president. Their support and their largesse have given him impetus to continue his cruelty. No inhabitants of our land are safe from his reach. Children of any age have felt his sting and have been spirited away.
We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, in Assembly, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, and the populace, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States of America are and have a right that our allegiance to the current regime will be absolved if the governing bodies of our federal legislature refuse to restrain the president from his policy of revenge and destruction of our country. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.
Attest.
Signed by Order and in behalf of the American People
Charles Bryson
Jeremiah Foyle
Brian Stelter writes “Reliable Sources” for CNN. He is a reliable source himself.
In the second part of the article, watch Trump’s response to a question he doesn’t want to answer. Trump is predictable: he says “I hadn’t heard about that” or he changes the subject. In this case, he changes the subject or pretends he didn’t hear the question.
Trump vs. Fox polls
Every so often, an hour of television showcases President Trump‘s reliance on “alternative facts” and his supporters’ reluctance to tell him the truth.
Fox‘s “The Five” was that hour of TV yesterday. Trump called into the show and claimed that real polls about his meager approval rating are “fake.” He said that liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov, who was absent from the segment, “uses fake numbers. She’ll give, ‘Well, he’s only polling 42%.’ That’s not right. I’m polling very high, actually.”
That was at 5:29 p.m. At 6 p.m., Fox released a new national poll showing Trump’s approval rating stands at 41%.
“That’s down two points from a month ago and eight points from a year ago,” Jacqui Heinrich said on “Special Report.”
Of course, many Fox fans trust Trump over Fox’s reporters and pollsters. And Trump has a long history of attacking the Fox polling unit and denying statistical reality. When he complained yesterday about real polls — “I hate people that use fake polls because polls are just like bad journalists. You know, bad journalists, they write fake stories, well, fake polls do damage also” — no one on “The Five” interjected.
Too bad Tarlov wasn’t there. “Was so bummed to miss the show today!” she wrote on X. “But I definitely would’ve said he’s even inflating his numbers to 42%!”
When Bret Baier asked House Speaker Mike Johnson about the poll’s findings, Baier said, “The president doesn’t love Fox News polls, but these polls track with others.” He showed this graphic 👇🏻 and said the “tough numbers” are “real,” and Johnson concurred, “They’re real.”
Another peculiar moment from ‘The Five’ chat…
What the president believes — and where he gets his information, even about his popularity — has heightened relevance in wartime. Wednesday’s NBC News story about Trump watching a rah-rah daily video montage about the Iran war is continuing to get picked up for that reason. NBC said the highlight reel has raised concerns among allies “that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the war.”
I thought “Pod Save America” co-host Tommy Vietor was joking when he summed up another moment from “The Five” this way: “Dana Perino asks Trump how the Iranian people are doing in the midst of this horrible war. He responds that he remembers having lunch with Dana years ago, and piothat she looks hotter now.”
But Vietor was simply summarizing what actually happened. Perino asked, “Do they have drinking water? Do they have food? It’s upsetting.”
Trump said, “I do” have insight about that, “but first, do you remember when we had lunch years ago in the base of Trump Tower… You haven’t changed. You have not changed. Now, I’m not allowed to say this, it’s the end of my political career, but you may be even better looking [now], okay. I don’t know what you’re doing…”
Trump did not circle back to Perino’s humanitarian concerns. But he did invoke gruesome scenes of Iranian protesters being “women being shot right between the eyes” and people “bleeding from the brain badly.” Then he somehow came back around to Fox and started complimenting “Fox & Friends”and Maria Bartiromo.
“You have so many great people,” he exclaimed. “A couple of bad ones, but you can’t have everything.”
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont posted this message on social media:
@BernieSanders •
One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control:
TikTok
CBS
CNN
HBO
Discovery Channel
BET
Cartoon Network
Comedy Central
DC Studios
Fandango
Miramax
MTV
Nickelodeon
Paramount
Pluto TV
Showtime
TBS
The CW
TNT
Warner Bros.
And more
This is oligarchy.
•
Dr. John Gartner has been warning the public about Donald Trump since 2015.
Not enough people heard him.
Trump’s MAGA base became obsessed with him because they thought he was a strong man. They were impressed that he was a billionaire, a very successful businessman who had achieved financial success because of his brilliance. Even better, this billionaire expressed their grievances. He was on their side. Like Trump, his followers believed that the rest of the world was cheating them, treating them unfairly.
Many evangelical Christians believed that Trump was God’s instrument, the one who would end abortion and make America a Christian nation. Those who hated blacks and immigrants, who believed that these groups were stealing their jobs and destroying their white Christian homeland, thrilled to his rhetoric about ending DEI and getting rid of immigrants.
They were willing to overlook his moral flaws because they believed his promises. He was the ultimate film-flam man, the carnival barker who could sell ice to Eskimos. There was a time when divorce or even infidelity could ruin a man’s chances to be president. Not any more. Trump was forgiven his undisguised lust and sexual escapades. His MAGA cult didn’t care that he had been married three times. They didn’t care that he slept with other women while he was married. Strong men did that. They weren’t bothered by his boast that he could have any woman he wanted by simply grabbing their private parts.
The fact that he was a close friend–maybe even the best friend–of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein did not disillusion his fanatical followers. None of that dimmed their adoration for Trump. If Trump said he knew nothing about Epstein’s activities, that was good enough for the cult.
If he was a philanderer and a sexual predator, well, that just proved that he was a strong man, untouched by political correctness.
They believed he was a brilliant businessman because they saw him on “The Apprentice,” playing a brilliant businessman. Having that deeply rooted belief in his business success, they refused to believe that he had gone bankrupt six times.
His image as a strong man impressed both men and women who longed for a rough, tough guy in the White House. Nothing he did, nothing he said, no vulgarity that he uttered, could dissuade them from their idolatry. No matter how many times they heard that Trump had dodged the draft six times by presenting a letter from a podiatrist claiming he suffered from bone spurs, they simply didn’t believe it.
When Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly, who had been a Marine general, said that Trump had called fallen service members “suckers” and “losers,” Trump denied it, and his devoted followers believed him.
His MAGA base believed that Trump was sent by Jesus to lead them, to protect their gun rights and stop abortion. He alone would save them from the others. He cared about them.
Trump’s rise to the Presidency is an amazing riches-to-riches story. I have lived in New York City since 1960, with a one-year detour in Georgia (when my then-husband was called to active duty after the Berlin Wall crisis) and a sojourn in D.C. from 1993-1994 (first as Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, then as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution).
During the 1980s, the 1990s, and until he annnounced his entry into the Republican presidential campaign in 2015, Trump was viewed as a clown by leaders of the business community. They laughed at him. They knew he was not a successful businessman. It was no secret that he frequently didn’t pay his bills and that banks would not finance his deals.
Trump achieved notoriety as a playboy who took beautiful women to high-end nightclubs. He made sure to get his name in the gossip columns by calling them, pretending to be his own publicist, and giving out the details of where he was seen and which gorgeous woman was with him.
After other banks refused to deal with Trump, he established a relationship with Deutsche Bank, which was documented in 2019 by David Enrich in The New York Times.
In 2003, he borrowed money from Deutsche Bank to pay off loans he owed for his failing casinos. However, “Mr. Trump’s company defaulted in 2004, leaving Deutsche Bank’s clients with deep losses. The bank’s investment division that sold the bonds vowed to not do business again with Mr. Trump.
A year later, though, Mr. Trump approached another part of the investment division for a $640 million loan to build a skyscraper in Chicago. It made the loan — and in 2008, Mr. Trump defaulted and sued Deutsche Bank. That prompted the whole investment division to sever ties with Mr. Trump.
And then, three years after his previous default, Deutsche Bank started lending to him again, this time through the private-banking division that catered to the superrich. In fact, it lent Mr. Trump money that he used to repay what he still owed Deutsche Bank’s investment division for the Chicago loan.
One of Trump’s most successful ventures was selling apartments to wealthy Russians. He got the riches he longed for by selling condos at very high prices to Russian gangsters and oligarchs who needed to “launder” money from their various enterprises.
Craig Unger wrote about Trump and his “Russian laundromat” in The New Republic in 2017.
The magazine, knowing of Trump’s extreme litigiousness, preceded the article with this disclaimer:
The questions began the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015: What were the extent of his financial ties with Russia, and was he compromised? While some on the left conjectured wildly that Trump was a Russian “asset,” Craig Unger did the hard work of connecting the dots—while resisting the temptation to overreach. “To date, no one has documented that Trump was even aware of any suspicious entanglements in his far-flung businesses, let alone that he was directly compromised by the Russian mafia or the corrupt oligarchs who are closely allied with the Kremlin. So far, when it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, there is no smoking gun,” he wrote. And yet, there was a lot of smoke in the public record showing that “Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia.” Trump may have simply been “a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters” and “an easy ‘mark’ for anyone looking to launder money.” But there’s no question that the trail of dirty money from Russia to Trump is long and wide—and no doubt continuing to this day.
—Ryan Kearney, executive editor, The New Republic
When he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce that he was running for President, those who knew his history thought it was a joke. The Huffington Post announced that it would not cover his campaign because he was not a serious candidate.
He won in 2016 because FBI Director James Comey announced that he was reopening an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, only days before the election. A few days later, the investigation was closed. But the damage was done.
A cult was born and Trump continued to burnish his image as a savior and a man of strength.
Historians will sort this out in years to come. And we will know someday whether the nation can recover from the damage he has done to our institutions, our institutions of education, the rule of law, the career civil service, scientific research, the environment, and our international alliances. Whatever he touched has made him wealthier and impoverished our ideals and our standing in the world.
The Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden, publishes an annual report on the state of democracy around the world. In the recently published report, the authors made clear that democracy in the world is in retreat. Nowhere has it declined as dramatically as in the United States.
A special section of the report is focused on the United States. Under Trump, democracy in the USA is under attack. The President has centralized power in his office. The Republican-dominated Congress has ceded almost all of its Constitutional powers to Trump. The word “almost” may be an overstatement, as it’s difficult to remember an issue when Congress said no to a Presidential power grab.
The V-DEM report begins its special section about the “autocratization” of power in the United States:
*Under Trump’s presidency, the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.
Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era. In 2025, the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach undermining the rule of law, along with far-reaching suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices.
*The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.
*Legislative Constraints – the worst affected aspect of democracy – is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.
*Civil Rights and Equality before the Law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.
*Freedom of Expression is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.
*Electoral components of democracy remain stable. Election-specific indicators are re-assessed only in electoral years, and the 2025 scores are based on the quality of the 2024 elections.
The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times. Within one year, the USA’s LDI score has declined by 24%; its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations. The level of democracy on the LDI is dwindling to 1965 level – the year that most regard as the start of a real, modern democracy in the USA.
Yet the deficiencies of American democracy today are fundamentally different from that of the Civil Rights era. As the V-Dem data and other evidence below show, the autocratization now is marked by executive overreach, alongside attacks on the press, academia, civilliberties, and dissenting voices.
The Most Dramatic Decline in American History
In 2023, the USA scored 0.79 on the LDI – shortly before the 2024 election year when first deteriorations were registered. The scores plummeted to 0.57 in 2025 (Figure 22). With such a sharp drop on the LDI, the level of democracy at the end of 2025 is back to the 1965 level. Symbolically, that is the year that most analysts consider the USA began its transition to a real democracy.
Democracy in the USA is now at its worst in 60 years. We are not alone in this assessment. Professor Steven Levitsky at Harvard University says the regime in the USA is now some type of authoritarianism. The Century Foundation argues that “American democracy is already collapsing…”
By magnitude of decline on the LDI, the 2025 plunge is the largest one-year drop in American history going back to 1789 – that is, in the entire period covered by V-Dem data. Only Trump 1.0 compares, when the LDI in the USA fell from 0.85 to 0.73 in four years, bringing the country back to its 1976 level and far below the regional average (Figure 22). American democracy survived Trump 1.0 but did not recover fully.
One notable shift is the transformation of the Republican Party to endorsing a far-right, nationalist, and anti-pluralist agenda. Nationalist, anti-liberal, far-right parties and leaders have largely driven the “third waveof autocratization.” Yet the USA stands out as the only case where such movement seized control over one party in a rigid two-party system.
Please open the link and read the report to review the sources and to understand how dramatically democracy has been undercut during the first year of Trump’s second term.
The Founding Fathers thought they had written a Constitution that would prevent the rise of tyranny. They were wrong.
Diane Ravitch's blog 