Politics | Voter.org

Why Trump Won’t ‘Produce a Scalp’ After the Signal Debacle

March 27, 2025 debacle, Scalp’, after, won't, produce, signal, Trump0 comment

In the telling of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, he was only executing his duties when he shared plans about a forthcoming attack on Yemen in an unclassified group chat on the Signal messaging app. “My job,” he told reporters during a swing through Hawaii, “is to provide updates in real time.” The implication: Nothing to see here. The reaction inside the Pentagon to Hegseth’s communications—disclosed this week by The Atlantic after the editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently added to the chat—told a different story, as security specialists raced…

America Is Watching the Rise of a Dual State

March 23, 2025 state, America, rise, Dual, watching0 comment

On September 20, 1938, a man who had witnessed the rise of fascism packed his suitcases and fled his home in Berlin. He arranged to have smuggled separately a manuscript that he had drafted in secret over the previous two years. This book was a remarkable one. It clarified what was unfolding in Berlin at the time, the catalyst for its author’s flight. The man fleeing that day was a Jewish labor lawyer named Ernst Fraenkel. He completed his manuscript two years later at the University of Chicago (where I…

Stephen Miller Has a Plan

March 19, 2025 plan, Stephen, Miller0 comment

During the first Trump administration, when Stephen Miller’s immigration policy proposals hit obstacles in federal court, rumors would circulate about his plans to dust off arcane presidential powers. Government lawyers were wary of overreach; officials in the West Wing and at the Department of Homeland Security would sometimes snicker. LOL Stephen, they’d say, amused by his creative zealotry. No one is laughing now. Miller, Donald Trump’s Homeland Security adviser and deputy chief of staff, has returned to the White House stronger and more determined than ever to silence the derision…

Was Integration the Wrong Goal?

March 15, 2025 Wrong, Goal, Integration0 comment

On May 17, 1954, a nervous 45-year-old lawyer named Thurgood Marshall took a seat in the Supreme Court’s gallery. The founder and director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund hoped to learn that he had prevailed in his pivotal case. When Chief Justice Earl Warren announced the Court’s opinion in Brown v. Board of Education, Marshall could not have known that he had also won what is still widely considered the most significant legal decision in American history. Hearing Warren declare “that in the field of public education…

ICE Isn’t Delivering the Mass Deportation Trump Wants

March 11, 2025 delivering, Mass., Wants, Trump, Isn't, deportation0 comment

The opening salvo of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation campaign has made immigrants across the United States fear that simply going to work, school, or the supermarket might result in a life-altering arrest. Sightings of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, real and imagined, are everywhere on social media. Teachers say students are panicked that ICE will take their parents while they’re in class. One Maryland doctor who treats patients with cancer and chronic pain from worksite injuries told me that many are skipping appointments. “They’re terrified,” he said. That much,…

Is DOGE Losing Steam?

March 7, 2025 Losing, Steam, DOGE0 comment

President Donald Trump’s shift on the Department of Government Efficiency began with a warning from an unlikely source. Jesse Watters, a co-host of the Fox News hit show The Five, is usually a slick deliverer of MAGA talking points. But on February 19, Watters told a surprisingly emotional story about a friend working at the Pentagon who was poised to lose his job as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal workforce. “I finally found one person I knew who got DOGE’d, and it hit me in…