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adolf hitler
Trump Issues His Nero Decree
His final strategy for the Kennedy Center, after judges have repeatedly told him he cannot put his name on another president’s memorial, is scorched earth.
Sep 18, 2026
On Friday night, DC-based advocacy organization Hands Off the Arts and its allies are going to form a human chain around the Kennedy Center, called Hands Around the Kennedy Center, putting their bodies on the line to protect the institution. While the group has been planning this action for several weeks, before the removal and literal disembodiment of Joel Shapiro’s 24-foot-tall sculpture "Blue," the board’s vote to close to the Kennedy Center, and pictures captured Wednesday night showing President Donald Trump looking at a plan to demolish the Kennedy Center aboard Air Force One, the action has taken on intense meaning.
At its core, his final strategy for the Kennedy Center, after judges have repeatedly told him he cannot put his name on another president’s memorial, is scorched earth.
I have been on the ground in Washington, DC from the beginning—reporting and raising awareness about Hands Off the Arts’ weekly protests since Trump’s second inauguration. Many of the Hands Off the Arts organizers—including co-founder Mallory Miller—were my colleagues, at the arts institution where I worked as an audio describer for three years. As a public historian witnessing Trump transform the Kennedy Center into his hill to die on, I cannot help but see the similarities to Adolf Hitler’s Nero Decree where he ordered the destruction of German lands and infrastructure to prevent its future use by any Allied forces.
“The demolition watch piece of this cannot be understated. It is truly a crazy timeline that we’re living in where the president of the United States can just say that he might demolish the Kennedy Center.”
Hitler’s strategy was named after the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, which, according to tradition, was blamed on Rome’s Christian communities and used by Emperor Nero to justify their persecution. Although there is no historical evidence that Nero set the fire, nor that he played the fiddle or lyre while watching the city burn, Nero was blamed all the same, especially since land cleared by the fire was used to build his new palace, the Domus Aurea. Hitler issued his decree once he recognized that Germany faced imminent defeat but was unwilling to accept the terms of unconditional surrender. He ordered that this land be destroyed on the grounds that the German people had failed his great mission.
As Hitler wrote in the March 1945 decree, “All military transport and communication facilities, industrial establishments, and supply deports, as well as anything else of value within Reich territory, which could in any way be used by the enemy immediately or within the foreseeable future for the prosecution of the war, will be destroyed.”
Even before Hitler issued the Nero decree, he was already burning thousands of works of art publicly. The Nazi government confiscated art from state-owned German museums and then put them on public display in 1937 as part of a propaganda art exhibition meant to classify art created in the styles of Dadaism, Cubism, Surrealism, and Abstraction as “Degenerate Art.” What could be sold to enrich the regime was and what couldn’t was publicly burned. The similarity to Trump’s criticism of Jose de Rivera’s "Infinity" in front of the National Museum of American History and destruction of Joel Shapiro’s "Blue" is palpable.
All of the other art that he favored, namely Classical and Renaissance works, were hidden in caches and planned to be displayed at a massive art complex called the Führermuseum in his hometown of Linz, Austria. The museum was never finished because the Nazi regime fell before Hitler’s goal was realized. In the chaos of the Nazi regime’s collapse, many priceless works of art burned in two devastating fires in May 1945 that destroyed the Friedrichshain flak tower. Whether the fires were caused by an accident, combat damage, or intentionally set, we will never know, but Hitler never intentionally ordered the destruction of the art held in these caches.
While the Hitler’s Nero decree ordered the destruction of German lands and infrastructure, not the art he had stolen, the connection to Trump’s fight for the Kennedy Center is glaringly obvious. Chris Raleigh, one of the co-founders of Hands Off the Arts, pointed out the historical similarities in an interview with me this week. Raleigh compared the Hands Off the Arts group to the Monuments Men fighting to preserve the art that Hitler and the Nazi regime stole and was holding hostage.
“Hitler wanted to build a museum where he lived… I think he wanted to make basically his mausoleum. It was his antithesis to all the degenerate art of the world at the time,” Raleigh explained. “I worry about the Nero decree. It was, "If I can’t have it, no one can. Destroy all of it.’ I don’t know if we’re in Nero decree territory, but we’re going pretty close.”
In truth, comparisons between Trump and Hitler are tenuous at best. There are striking social, economic, and even religious differences between the two dictators, but historical similarities are key to helping us understand how history can help us anticipate and fight back against violent escalation. At its core, Trump’s fight for the Kennedy Center as well as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History is about his legacy, about how he will be remembered. It’s just like Hitler’s own fight to create a cultural district synonymous with his name, not so different from Trump’s own attempts to cast DC as culturally derelict and remake the capital in his own image, with the installation of new sculptures of controversial founding fathers and gilding “The Arts of War” and “The Arts of Peace” equestrian monuments.
As Mallory Miller, co-founder of Hands Off the Arts, explained to me, the way that the Trump administration was purposefully not caring for the exterior of the building, leading to mold growth, deinstalling "Blue," and widely publicizing the ceiling collapse is another use of this purposeful tactic to convince the public that the Kennedy Center is falling apart and needs to be closed and demolished for safety reasons.
“The demolition watch piece of this cannot be understated. It is truly a crazy timeline that we’re living in where the president of the United States can just say that he might demolish the Kennedy Center,” Miller said. Hands Off the Arts organized a livestream of the front of the building, capturing some of the first photos of his name being removed from the building before the tarp went up. The administration has even started putting up bike racks and other barriers around the perimeter of the Kennedy Center, which Miller acknowledges is likely in anticipation of their protest tonight. But with more than 900 people registered for the protest, Miller is eager to just make their circle bigger to protect the memorial to the slain president.
“We can save this,” Raleigh continued, “We can save world heritage. American heritage, but it’s going to be hard, and they’re not going to go down without a struggle, but that is also one of the things that I think about—we are not the first people [to do this work].”
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Trump Gives Eugenic Vibes Ranting Against 'Genetics' of 'Sick' Muslim Immigrants
"He's a white supremacist," said one critic. "He doesn't hide it."
Mar 13, 2026
US President Donald Trump was accused Friday of espousing white supremacist ideology after he blamed the "genetics" of Muslim immigrants who commit crimes like Thursday's assault on a Michigan synagogue, while calling for their exclusion from the United States.
"Well, it's been going on for a long time. It's a disgrace. They're sick, they're really demented people," Trump said during a call-in interview with Fox News Radio host Brian Kilmeade. "They come into the country, they sneak in."
Trump was responding to a question about recent attacks by people who happen to be Muslims, including Mohamed Bailor Jalloh, who was stabbed to death by a cadet at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia after fatally shooting instructor Lt. Col. Brandon Shah, and Ayman Mohamad Ghazali, who was shot dead by security guards at the Temple Israel synagogue in West Bloomfield Township, Michigan after crashing his vehicle into the building.
Neither Jalloh nor Ghazali "snuck" into the country. Both were naturalized US citizens. Jalloh, originally from Sierra Leone, was a former National Guardsman. Ghazali had recently lost two of his brothers and other relatives to an Israeli airstrike in his native Lebanon.
"They’re sick people, and a lot of them were let in here. They shouldn’t have been let in," Trump told Kilmeade. "Others are just bad. They go bad. Something wrong—there’s something wrong there. The genetics are not exactly, they’re not exactly your genetics."
Trump has made many racist statements and has occasionally invoked what critics say is the language of eugenics, a debunked pseudoscience embraced by many white supremacists. He has also boasted about his own "much better blood."
While running for reelection, Trump echoed Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler's screed against "poisoning" by an "influx of foreign blood," declaring during a December 2023 campaign rally in New Hampshire that undocumented immigrants are "poisoning the blood" of the country.
"Trump is an old-school eugenicist nativist. He actually is fine with immigrants as long as they have the right 'genes,'" said David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, in response to Friday's interview. "This argument was the basis of the creation of the restrictive US immigration system 100 years ago."
Trump has previously said that he wants more immigrants from countries like Norway and not from what he called "shithole" nations in the Global South. His second administration has effectively ended refugee admissions—with the notable exception of white South Africans, the only people in the world allowed into the United States as refugees since last October, according to US Department of State data.
Progressive journalist Alex Cole said on X: "Imagine being the grandson of immigrants—who dyes his hair, paints his face orange, and wears lifts—lecturing the country about 'genetics.' The irony writes itself."
Trump's political rise began with his promotion of the racist "birther" conspiracy theory falsely positing that then-President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. He launched his 2016 presidential campaign by calling Mexican immigrants "rapists."
Once in office, Trump enacted a series of restrictions and outright bans on immigration from nations with Muslim majorities.
"He's a white supremacist," journalist Mehdi Hasan wrote Friday on X. "He doesn't hide it."
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No, We Can’t Just Wait for Dictators to Die
If history proves anything when it comes to authoritarian fascists, it’s that patient optimism is not a virtue.
Feb 11, 2026
Ruth Ben-Ghiat is a professor of history at New York University; her Wikipedia biography describes her as “a scholar on fascism and authoritarian leaders.” With these credentials, she has written an opinion piece in the New York Times telling us that dictators and would-be dictators generally make their economies worse and lead a precarious existence. Their efforts often “backfire,” as she puts it.
While this theory might seem like comforting evidence that history “proves” that dictators will get their comeuppance, it is actually a counsel of passively sitting on our hands and waiting out the authoritarian leader: either to await his death, or hang on till he’s ousted from power by his own miscarrying plans. If history proves anything, it’s that patient optimism is not a virtue.
Ben-Ghiat's area of expertise is Benito Mussolini and the fascist era in Italy, and she uses him as an example of a dictator getting what’s coming to him. After surrounding himself with sycophants and employing consistently disastrous military strategies, Mussolini was deposed in 1943 by the Fascist Grand Council: “He spent his last years as the head of the Nazi puppet state the Republic of Salò, his phone tapped by the Germans. He was killed by anti-Fascist partisans in April 1945.”
His demise—being strung up like a side of beef at a Milan filling station—may have been poetic justice, but wasn’t the cost just a little too high? He ruled Italy for 21 years until he was deposed, and by the time of his death, much of the country was in ruins. Italian campaign veteran and Stars and Stripes cartoonist Bill Mauldin described the landscape as “ghostlike,” recalling walls standing in the moonlight surrounded by rubble, with empty, "single unblinking" windows looking out like eyes. That’s what tends to happen when a dictator’s plans backfire – he pulls the whole country down with him.
The author’s more contemporary example is Vladimir Putin. At the beginning of 2022, she says, Putin had it all, including gold toilet seats in his Crimean palace. But according to Ben-Ghiat, he invaded Ukraine to shore up his waning popularity, a move that did not work out as planned. The Russian dead have piled up, Russia has become more dependent on China, and the economy has sputtered under the burden of the war.
If the cultural constellation provides a measure of both elite and popular support, the dictator can endure for years.
But so what? Putin has been in power for 25 years, and shows no sign of going anywhere soon. Perhaps some faction in the army or the FSB might “terminate him with extreme prejudice” (as the phrase in Apocalypse Now termed an assassination), because they would be the only ones with the firepower to do so, but I suspect Putin’s likely successors would not transform Russia into another Denmark. And Ben-Ghiat undermines her own thesis by reminding us that Donald Trump shows every sign of being willing to bail Putin out of his international difficulties.
Unfortunately, dictatorial systems tend to be more durable than she thinks. How many times in the last four decades have we heard that the Iranian regime is on the point of collapse? Even a usually savvy observer of international relations like Lawrence Freedman has flatly claimed “the regime is doomed.” Perhaps in the long run Freedman will be proved right, but the people in Iran have to live in the short run.
And sometimes the long run is very long. North Korea, possibly the most repressive regime on the planet, has been run as a family business by the Kim dynasty for 78 years. With a per capita GDP that is less than one-sixtieth (note: not one-sixth, one sixtieth!) of South Korea’s, it is the most spectacular example in the world of how dictatorships ruin economies. It also experiences periodic famines. Famine is the single biggest marker for the total failure of a governing system; historically, the one thing any regime wanted to avoid was bread riots in the big cities. Ask the shades of Louis XVI or Tsar Nicholas about it.
Yet, if the regime is repressive enough, as North Korea’s is, it can use lack of food as a regime stabilizer. The army, the secret police, and the regime’s vocal supporters get food as a reward; access to enough calories to survive becomes the reward for loyalty. The rest, as in North Korea or China during the Great Leap Forward, can subsist on grass, wood shavings, and potato peels, and will be too physically debilitated to overthrow the system, even if a comprehensive system of surveillance and informers did not exist.
Donald Trump certainly does not have a hold on the United States like that of Kim Jong-un on North Korea, or Putin on Russia. But even in a “mild” dictatorship, the odds are high that living standards for the average person will decline, free speech will be stifled, and culture will stagnate into regime propaganda and kitsch. Social trust, already in steady decline in the United States since the 1960s, will crater to the levels of Somalia or Yemen.
Without social trust, the economy cannot be entrepreneurial and innovative (as opposed to crony-ridden and subsisting on government favoritism), and our civil society cannot be vibrant and voluntaristic with so many informers about. Art and intellectual activity will wither; our public universities, once the best in the world, will decline to the level of Bob Jones U. or Trump’s own fake university.
I believe that Ben-Ghiat fundamentally errs in emphasizing the dictator, rather than the political and social culture that allows a dictator to reach the top, and that can sustain him in power despite his disastrous mistakes. If the cultural constellation provides a measure of both elite and popular support, the dictator can endure for years.
There is a solid American base of popular backing for fascism, and Trump’s departure from the scene will not cause these people to come to their senses as if by magic.
As in all dictatorships, Trump has a circle of elite supporters. Only in this case, the extent of their international influence is orders of magnitude greater than any previous group of oligarchs. Our American class of billionaires, deci-billionaires, and centi-billionaires dearly loves Trump for the fact that the bribes they render unto him are smaller than the taxes they would have to pay in normal circumstances.
As a bonus, the billionaires receive no-bid contracts; the return on their investment is so great that the public groveling they must periodically perform is well worth it. These malefactors of great wealth will stand like a praetorian guard to protect the privileges they have received under Trump. Any attempt to return America to a functioning representative democracy under the rule of law cannot succeed over the long term unless there is a firm reckoning with our billionaire class.
Finally, dictators must have at least some popular support. Trump’s opponents must contend with the uncomfortable fact that in three consecutive presidential elections, the number of Americans who voted for him grew each time. There is a solid American base of popular backing for fascism, and Trump’s departure from the scene will not cause these people to come to their senses as if by magic.
Ben-Ghiat is trafficking in platitudes by saying that dictators make decisions that are terrible for their countries. That is the nature of dictators and the sycophants who fawn over them; competent and moral people are systematically weeded out of the governmental apparatus and replaced by yes-men. As Hannah Arendt observed 75 years ago:
Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.
None of this is to say that Trump and his goons cannot be levered out of power. But there is no basis for us to complacently wait for his mistakes to cause the scales to fall from the eyes of his supporters in a miraculous fashion. Making America a decent society will require a tough-mindedness and unflinching determination that Merrick Garland so conspicuously lacked when he had the chance. We must not fail the next chance.
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Trump Labor Department Takes a Page From Hitler’s Playbook
This fascist propaganda dishonors the government agency whose charge is to support the workers of this country. It has no business deifying any President, particularly one already drunk with power.
Jan 27, 2026
Something is rotten in the Department of Labor. I’m not talking about the recent news that Secretary of Labor Chavez-DeRemer is being investigated about claims she used taxpayer money for personal trips disguised as business-related. Or that she allegedly engaged in an improper tryst with a subordinate.
If true, these are serious issues that call for appropriate responses. But, from my perspective as an attorney who committed a 39-year career to a government agency I continue to care deeply about, they pale in comparison to something that’s out in the open, carefully curated for all to see: the Department’s latest social media campaign.
Just take a look at the past few weeks’ postings on the Labor Department’s Facebook or X accounts. One might ordinarily expect to find content that reflects the Department’s worthy mission of lifting up all workers in the United States, regardless of race, religion, or national origin. That might include reminders about employers’ responsibilities under wage and workplace safety laws Congress enacted over the past several decades, or maybe spotlight a series of particularly impactful enforcement actions that vindicated workers’ rights.
Don’t hold your breath. Instead, watching a jarring graphic with a dystopian soundtrack, you’ll be instructed to “Remember who you are, American.” Those words are placed below the header, “One Homeland. One People. One Heritage”—a slogan promptly recognized by visitors to the Facebook site as a haunting echo of the 1930’s Nazi propaganda poster featuring Adolf Hitler and the slogan “One People, One Nation, One Leader.”
That’s only one of a steady drumbeat of similar phrases, like “Faith in God. Law and Order. Pride in Our Homeland…central tenets of the American Way of Life.” We learn that “[u]nder President Trump, the globalist dominance of our government is over,” and that a year ago “our country was dead.” Now, however, we’re “the hottest country anywhere in the world because we finally have a President who puts America first.”
We’re instructed not to “believe the fake news lies.” Multiple entries feature paintings and posters depicting 1940’s-era churchgoers and families with beatifically smiling children, all white. And most prolifically, we’re treated to one hero-like depiction of Donald Trump after another, mostly in bold silhouette, with captions like “Americans First,” “NEVER SURRENDER,” “Second to None,” “Trust the Plan, Trust Trump,” "PATRIOTS IN CONTROL,” and “One of One.” We learn that “No President has cared more about hardworking Americans than President Trump.”
There’s so much wrong with all this it makes the head spin. Most blatant is the unmistakable resemblance to the style and messaging of the Nazi propaganda machine. As described by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, during the Third Reich “public adulation for Adolf Hitler was an ever present feature in the public square of German life.” Hitler was portrayed “as the living embodiment of the German nation,” radiating strength as the savior of a beaten-down German nation, and idolized as a “gifted statesman who brought stability, created jobs, and restored German greatness.” Take a look at the Labor Department’s Facebook page and see if that description resonates.
Add to that: the posts’ repeated targeting of undefined “globalists”—a recognized “dog whistle” for racist, anti-Semitic and anti-government conspiracy theorists—as the shadowy characters responsible for our country’s woes, not unlike Nazi propaganda demonizing Jews and other “outsiders”; the Christian imagery and language, smearing the line that separates church and state, and implicitly, if not explicitly, promoting white Christian Nationalism; the full-on outrageous assertion made on X, just days after the killing of Renee Good by an ICE agent, that “Mass Deportations are Improving Americans' Quality of Life.”
Appalling as all this is, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised. Substantively, in addition to the countless other ways Trump’s presidency has been a disaster for this country, he has been no friend to US workers—undermining their wages and economic security, weakening job creation, and assaulting their rights to organize. Federal worker ranks have been terrorized and dissembled by DOGE, and soon tens of thousands will be judged not by merit alone but by their loyalty to Trump. Religious prayer services have been introduced at the agency’s headquarters. Labor Department employees are demoralized. And for months, an enormous banner with Trump’s face has been hanging off the front of the Francis Perkins Building, sternly looking down at the passersby below.
Still, the Facebook/X campaign brings the Department to a new low. It dishonors the government agency whose charge is to support the workers of this country. It has no business deifying any President, particularly one already drunk with power. Nor should it be promoting a white, Christian nationalist vision for this country, that was built by immigrants -- people of all colors, places of origin, and beliefs. As a Labor Department veteran, I’m ashamed. And as a first generation son of Jewish refugees who lived through the horrors of Nazi Germany, I’m aghast, at seeing history rhyme, if not repeat.
This poem no one should have to recite to their grandchildren.
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Mussolini Had His Blackshirts, Hitler Has the SS, and Trump Has ICE
The existence of this profoundly unaccountable, overtly fascist military apparatus poses a structural danger to our democracy. This is why "Abolish ICE" is an extremely moderate position.
Jan 16, 2026
On Tuesday ofthis week, The Economist and YouGov released a poll finding, for the first time, that more Americans want to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) than don’t.
According to the poll, 46 percent of people support getting rid of ICE, compared to 43 percent who oppose its abolition. This represents a major shift in public opinion—this same polling outfit found only 27 percent support for abolishing ICE as recently as July. Today’s survey also found that most Americans believe ICE is making them less, not more safe, by a margin of 47 percent to 34 percent.
In perfect form, this morning the centrist advocacy group Third Way released a memo warning Democrats not to call for dismantling ICE, arguing that “politically, it is lethal.” Their evidence includes a focus group they conducted in October, which…is dumb. ICE’s execution of Renee Nicole Good has broken through—69 percent of Americans report having seen video of the shooting. This has clearly impacted public opinion in a way that makes information from months ago significantly irrelevant.
We cannot let the Third Ways of the world—the centrist establishment muckety mucks whose version of the Democratic Party already lost to Trump, twice—win this debate. It’s simply too important.
There are lots of reasons to dismantle ICE. There’s a functional argument: We do not need ICE to enforce immigration laws; the U.S. handled this just fine for 227 years prior to the creation of this specific agency. There’s a fiscal argument: ICE is now larger than every other federal law enforcement agency combined. It’s larger than the militaries of all but 15 countries in the world! It’s annual budget, $37.5 billion, could pay for the health insurance of every needy child in the country!
But the core reason for abolishing ICE is that it poses a structural threat to American democracy. This is an unaccountable agency, by design. ICE is not subject to the rules governing local or state police departments; there are no laws barring ICE agents from wearing masks, driving in unmarked cars, and operating in plainclothes. ICE was designed after 9/11 to support the FBI’s domestic terrorism efforts, with almost nothing in the way of transparency or guardrails. So what happens when domestic terrorism gets defined as expressing “opposition to law and immigration enforcement; extreme views in favor of mass migration and open borders; adherence to radical gender ideology, anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, or anti-Christianity,” and “hostility towards traditional views on family, religion, and morality,” as Trump’s NSPM-7 directive and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s recent memo to the FBI do?
Well, what happens is everything that we are seeing from ICE today—a federal agency operating quite explicitly as Trump’s personal militia. Mussolini had his Blackshirts, Hitler had his SS, and Trump has ICE—an army of ideologically motivated MAGA loyalist chuds whose new members owe their employment not to the state (being largely unqualified for positions in legitimate law enforcement agencies) but rather to Trump’s personal patronage.
The existence of this profoundly unaccountable, overtly fascist military apparatus poses a structural danger to our democracy. Structural dangers like this can’t be reformed—they need to be dismantled. “We shouldn’t have a Gestapo in this country” isn’t a radical position. It’s actually the only non-radical position you can take on the question. That’s long been true morally. And today’s polling shows it’s true politically, as well. In every way, abolishing ICE is now the moderate position.
So email your Democratic elected officials, call their offices, speak up at their town halls. Tell our Democratic representatives and senators that they need to use every tool at their disposal—including, in the near term, the Congressional appropriations process—to stand up to this rogue militia. And help our Democratic leaders understand—if we are so lucky, come 2028, to get a second chance at resetting our democracy—that getting rid of Trump’s SS is nonnegotiable.
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'Disgusting': Racist, Homophobic, Antisemitic, and Violent Private Chats of GOP Leaders Exposed
"These are the people who pretend to be offended when called Nazis."
Oct 15, 2025
Is this who they are when not in view of public judgment or recrimination?
That is just one of the questions being widely asked after Politico on Tuesday revealed nearly seven months of grotesque private chats between members of Leaders of Young Republicans, the party's batch of up-and-comers, though already in positions of power within the faction's ranks.
From praising Adolf Hitler to casual use of racial slurs and calls for violence against their opponents, the Telegram chat logs obtained by Politico paint a picture of vile individuals who share a deep loyalty to President Donald Trump and reveled in sadistic contempt for their political enemies, hatred of minorities, and lust for power.
As Politico reports,
They referred to Black people as monkeys and “the watermelon people” and mused about putting their political opponents in gas chambers. They talked about raping their enemies and driving them to suicide and lauded Republicans who they believed support slavery.
William Hendrix, the Kansas Young Republicans’ vice chair, used the words “n--ga” and “n--guh,” variations of a racial slur, more than a dozen times in the chat. Bobby Walker, the vice chair of the New York State Young Republicans at the time, referred to rape as “epic.” Peter Giunta, who at the time was chair of the same organization, wrote in a message sent in June that “everyone that votes no is going to the gas chamber.”
Reaction to the leaked private messages was swift and full of contempt, if not shock.
"Welcome to Trump’s Republican Party," said Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) in response to the reporting. "Disgusting."
" Racism, rape, homophobia, antisemitism … Are we greater yet?" asked Maya Wiley, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "Feel safer?"
According to Politico, "the messages reveal a culture where racist, antisemitic and violent rhetoric circulate freely—and where the Trump-era loosening of political norms has made such talk feel less taboo among those positioning themselves as the party’s next leaders."
The members themselves seemed to recognize that if their free-flowing conversations were ever revealed to the public, it would be bad. "If we ever had a leak of this chat, we would be cooked," said one member inside one of the chat threads. But as Politico noted, "they kept typing anyway."
Melanie D'Arrigo, executive director of the Campaign for New York Health, an advocacy group, said, "These are the people who pretend to be offended when called Nazis. Where’s the GOP leadership outrage?"
Congresswoman Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) came under fire in the wake of Politico's reporting, given her vocal support for the New York members of the group, many of whom were identified and named in the reporting. Just this summer, Stefanik called them the "backbone" of the Republican Party and key to its future.
Some of Stefanik's top young allies in the party, noted Addison Dick, a member of the New York Democrats' communication team, "praised Hitler, called to put opponents in gas chambers, and repeatedly used racist and antisemitic hate speech in leaked chats." Dick was among those chiding Stefanik for characterizing the reporting as a "hit piece" as opposed to more harshly condemning the vile behavior it exposed among her party's core of young leaders.
For his part, Vice President JD Vance said he would not join in the "pearl clutching" over the leaked chat logs and refused to condemn the myriad examples of racist, sexist, antisemitic, and calls to violence by the group of party officials.
New York Gov. Katherine Hochul, a Democrat, was asked about the revelations during a Tuesday afternoon press conference, and whether it was a case of a few "bad apples" or a "deeper toxicity" within the entire Republican Party.
Q: Politico reported on a group chat of young Republicans. Does this just reflect some bad apples?
HOCHUL: Some bad apples? These are the future of the Republican Party. This is so vile it's hard to find the words to put into context that these are people who are part of one of… pic.twitter.com/aDjnmcQTaJ
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 14, 2025
"Some bad apples? These are the future of the Republican Party," Hochul responded. "This was so vile it's hard to find the words to put into context that these are people who are part of one of the two major political parties, and they believe in gas chambers, rape, and discrimination based on the color of people's skin. These are racist, sexist, disgusting remarks."
"And I would say this," Hochul continued, also calling out Stefanik as the highest-ranking elected GOP official in the state for her history of inflammatory and bigoted comments, most notably against New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim, whom Stefanik has called a "jihadist" and "terrorist."
Stefanik, said the governor, should do a bit of self-reflection and "reexamination" of her own "inflammatory words" and of her broader role in influencing these young members and "normalizing" such thinking and rhetoric. As for the members exposed in the chats, Hochul said "there's gotta be consequences" for their behavior and that everyone in the party, from Trump on down, should condemn it.
"Kick them out of the party. Take away their official roles. Stop using them as campaign advisers," she advised. "This bullshit has to stop."
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'The Hitler of Our Time!' Trump Confronted Inside DC Steak House
"They feast while Gaza starves!" said members of the peace group CodePink to the far-right president and his cabinet.
Sep 10, 2025
Local peace activists in Washington, DC, were swiftly ejected on Tuesday night after confronting President Donald Trump and several members of his cabinet who were dining in a steak and seafood restaurant, but not before they castigated the men for "feasting" in opulence while the people of Gaza "starve" under the brutal humanitarian blockade imposed by the US and Israeli governments.
The small group of CodePink activists chanted "They feast while Gaza starves!" and "Trump is the Hitler of our time!" as Trump looked on just several feet away inside Joe's Seafood, Prime Steak & Stone Crab restaurant, alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and others.
"He's terrorizing Gaza and communities all over the world!" one activist in the group shouted at Trump. At the same time, the president looked on and then shooed them to go away with a point of his finger and then a gesture to his Secret Service detail.
- YouTube
"While Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth, and others feasted at a steakhouse, we stood our ground and told them the truth," said Olivia DiNucci, the group's DC organizer, in a statement following the confrontation. "Two years into genocide, Gaza is under evacuation orders, Puerto Rico and Venezuela are in the crosshairs, and the Pentagon proudly calls itself the Department of War. Trump looked us in the eyes, and we made sure he would never dine in peace while communities are under siege."
CodePink said a Trump administration "prioritizing war and the wealthy over the needs of the American people and human rights abroad" should not be able to dine in luxury when it is causing so much pain and misery both abroad and in communities nationwide in the US, including the capital.
The group specifically condemned ongoing "support for the genocide in Gaza, reckless and illegal military strikes on vessels in the Caribbean, and the deployment of troops and ICE agents within US borders. As well as the growing threat of occupying U.S. cities with the deployment of the National Guard."
With National Guard troops now deployed in Los Angeles and Washington, DC—and with the Trump administration announcing the launch of what it dubbed operation "Midway Blitz" in Chicago this week—CodePink said there is growing anger nationwide over the president's authoritarian and fascist tactics that are reminiscent of how Adolf Hitler intensified his violent grip on power in Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s.
"We hope he sees our faces in his mind, for a long time," said one group member who confronted Trump in the restaurant. "Because he looked us all in the eyes as we were standing there. We will continue to fight for DC. We will continue to fight for a free Palestine every single day."
While Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Pete Hegseth and others feasted at a steakhouse, we stood our ground and told them the truth: Free DC. Free Palestine. Trump is the Hitler of our time.
Two years into genocide, Gaza is under evacuation orders, Puerto Rico and Venezuela are in… pic.twitter.com/FswxHD9QHA
— Medea Benjamin (@medeabenjamin) September 10, 2025
The activists received high praise online for their disruptive efforts.
"Pretty gutsy in my opinion. I don't know how they got so close," said journalist and writer Tim Shorrock.
"Amazing!" declared writer Polly Sigh. "My hats off to these brave protesters for saying it right to his ugly orange face."
In its statement, CodePink said that while Trump's authoritarian march at home and warmongering abroad continues, "the very programs that support struggling Americans—healthcare, education, and addiction treatment—face severe cuts."
"This agenda, funded by a bill providing massive tax cuts for the super-rich, is being paid for by a working class that cannot afford it," said the group, which added that their minor disruption of a dinner for some of the world's most powerful men represents the frustration of a majority of Americans who reject these priorities.
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Fascism: A Word That Matters Here and Now
We call Trump a fascist because with each passing day, it rings increasingly true.
Sep 06, 2025
Words matter in life generally and politics particularly. They are the medium of thought, the means of sensemaking, the vehicle of communication and persuasion. They shape us collectively and individually.
Words, political scientist Francis Beer writes, are “the defining framework for political authority” and “a primary means of motivating political actors.” Our physical and verbal worlds are interconnected and “inseparable,” thus “the political importance of language”: political rhetoric carries and constructs meaning that shapes conduct.
Verbal action “operates parallel to” nonverbal action in multiple ways, Beer notes, formulating and conveying perception, memory, history, story, myth, and message, differentiating friend from foe, articulating preferences, describing trends, developing plans, policies, and strategies, expressing feelings, structuring motives, and constructing identities, interests, and hierarchical relations. In these ways, words matter for citizens, not just political leaders.
Language is structured and structuring, settled and dynamic. It enables us to stabilize and communicate meaning but also to reflect thoughtfully on the key terms of our discourse, to describe, critique, destabilize, revise, and apply them productively as circumstances warrant. As linguistics professor Sally McConnell-Ginet illustrates in Words Matter: Meaning and Power (Cornell University Press, 2020), words are politically potent means of domination but also cooperation, of oppression but also resistance, because their significance can be unsettled and reassigned. Thus, we might come to see their application in new and unexpected ways.
The celebrated achievement of America’s “greatest generation” was their military victory over fascism in defense of democracy. Fascism was perceived as un-American, a threat from abroad, an alien and malevolent enemy of freedom and self-government.
The word "fascism" is a case in point. A label we are not accustomed to associating with American governance, it is increasingly featured in critiques of the Trump administration’s authoritarianism as a way of both describing and rallying resistance to Trump’s escalating overreach and oppression.
A conventional definition of fascism, drawn from the Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary (10th edition), is “a political philosophy, movement, or regime (as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition”; the same entry defines fascism succinctly as “a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control.” (A Fascista refers to “a member of an Italian political organization under Mussolini governing Italy 1922–1943 according to the principles of fascism.”)
Benito Mussolini is the embodiment of fascism in our collective memory along with Adolph Hitler, Germany’s more brutal Nazi Führer, and to a lesser extent the Japanese militarists allied with Germany and Italy in World War II. The celebrated achievement of America’s “greatest generation” was their military victory over fascism in defense of democracy. Fascism was perceived as un-American, a threat from abroad, an alien and malevolent enemy of freedom and self-government.
Yet the seeds of fascism sprouted in US soil during the years leading up to World War II. One notorious example of American Nazi proclivity occurred on February 20, 1939, when over 20,000 people attended a Madison Square Garden rally sponsored by the pro-Hitler German American Bund, one of several pro-Nazi organizations in the US. Film footage of the event was compiled in 2017 by documentarian Marshall Curry “as a cautionary tale to Americans.”
The Bund, as Sarah Kate Kramer recounted in 2019 on NPR’s “All Things Considered,” was “one of several organizations in the United States that were openly supportive of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Europe. They had parades, bookstores and summer camps for youth. Their vision for America was a cocktail of white supremacy, fascist ideology, and American patriotism.”
At the Madison Square Garden rally, swastikas were on full display complete with a 30-foot tall portrait of George Washington (modeling him as America’s first fascist), US and Nazi flags, Nazi arm bands and salutes, martial drummers and music, the American national anthem, a German-accented pledge of allegiance, and a “vigilante police force dressed in the style of Hitler’s SS troops.” Speakers called for a return of the country to the rule of true American white gentiles. Fritz Kuhn, the Bund’s leader, opened his speech with the call to “Wake up! You, Aryan, Nordic and Christians, to demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!”
New Yorkers, numbering 100,000, protested the event; the US government took steps to suppress the Bund after the rally; and the Bund met its demise with Germany’s declaration of war on the US. Yet, as Kramer concludes, “the white supremacist ideology they championed remains.” Indeed, the 1939 Bund rally has been cited as precedent for the violent August, 2017 “Unite the Right” white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. The Nazi outburst in pre-war Depression years grew out of a history of American authoritarianism. The Bund rally in Madison Square Garden is one of the country’s own fascistic precedents.
Trump was President in 2017 when the Charlottesville rally occurred, a rally that turned violent and that the Virginia state police declared unlawful. It consisted of neo-fascists, neo-Nazis, white nationalists, Klansmen, and far-right militias. Some carried weapons, some chanted racist and antisemitic slogans, some carried Confederate battle flags. Violence occurred when the protesting marchers engaged counter protesters. A white supremacist drove his car into a group of counter protesters, killing one woman and injuring 35 other people. Trump condemned “the display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides” and subsequently said there were “very fine people on both sides” and “blame on both sides,” suggesting an equivalency between the two sides for which he was roundly criticized. (See “Unite the Right Rally” on Wikipedia for a detailed account of the rally.)
There has been no hedging by Trump since he took office for a second term on January 20, 2025. He stated during his campaign that he intended to be a dictator on Day 1, an intention that has extended in quick order from Day 1 forward. An onslaught of executive power overwhelming Constitutional checks and balances and assaulting democratic principles was immediately recognized by critics as the work of an authoritarian and increasingly is seen as fascistic.
The difference between authoritarianism and fascism is largely a matter of degree. An authoritarian expects blind submission and a concentration of power unhampered by responsibility to a people who are allowed only restricted political freedoms. A fascist is an extreme right-wing authoritarian with totalitarian propensities, pursuing total control over the state while propagandizing a racist brand of nationalism and viciously suppressing dissent. Acting as a right-wing populist, the fascist demagogue claims to “represent” the people and actively mobilizes their sometimes-violent support.
As Robert Longley recently put the matter of fascism:
The foundation of fascism is a combination of ultranationalism—an extreme devotion to one’s nation over all others—along with a widely held belief among the people that the nation must and will be somehow saved or “reborn.” Rather than working for concrete solutions to economic, political, and social problems, fascist rulers divert the people’s focus while winning public support by elevating the idea of a need for a national rebirth into a virtual religion. To this end, fascists encourage the growth of cults of national unity and racial purity.
Further, Longley and others report, fascist (or neo-fascist) dictators typically extol militarism and promote military readiness, assert dominance over other countries, undertake aggressive military actions, engage in territorial conquest and expansion, suppress domestic opposition (with police and military force, propaganda, and/or mass violence), attack universities, advance state-controlled corporate capitalism with protectionist policies such as tariffs, aim for national self-sufficiency, portray themselves as defenders of traditional Christian family values, manipulate elections to remain in power, and cultivate a cult of personality in which the dictator symbolically embodies the nation.
By this account, Trump—followed by his MAGA cult—is no less than an aspirational neo-fascist pursuing policies that closely resemble fascism. Some experts have maintained that he is better described as an authoritarian; other experts, including Yale University historian Timothy Snyder, have fled to Canada in the belief that the US is becoming a fascist dictatorship. Serena Dash, writing for the Fordham Political Review, concluded that “after the first month of Trump’s second term, no doubt should remain of whether or not the ‘fascist’ label applies.” It does.
The fascistic trajectory of Trump’s rule is manifested in his actions since Day 1. Some glaring examples include military occupation of cities governed by elected Democrats; deployment of masked ICE agents by the massively funded Immigration Enforcement and Customs agency and its growing prison system; defying court orders; attacking universities to undermine academic freedom, dictate curriculum, and bar student protests; aggressive gerrymandering and other election maneuvering to retain power; repressing news media for unfavorable news coverage, editorials, and programing; targeting critics for federal prosecution; imposing his will on key industries in the private sector, including keeping track of which corporations are loyal to him and therefore candidates for tax and regulatory benefits and exclusion from federal lawsuits; enriching himself at the public’s expense; and so on.
Fascism is no longer a word relevant only to other countries and applicable to a threat from abroad. As Serena Dash observes:
The discourse around Donald Trump being a fascist is not just an academic exercise; it is essential for recognizing and addressing the potential dangers he poses to democratic institutions and social equality and knowing how to combat it. The utility of using a term like “fascism” is that it has successfully been thwarted and fought before.Words matter. And right now, the words we use to describe Trump’s rule matter greatly. There is a reason why growing numbers of commentators, activists, and political leaders are calling Trump a fascist—because with each passing day, it rings increasingly true. The remnant of the country’s founding aspirations of liberty and self-governance “seems now to be shrinking day by day,” writes political scientist Jeffrey Isaac. “Whether it will survive the next few years [of Trump’s repression] is an open question.”
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Trump's ICE Recruitment and Hitler's Einsatzgruppen: A Study in Method
The deepest similarity between what Trump is doing now and what Hitler was able to achieve lies in the bureaucratic ability to render extraordinary measures administratively ordinary.
Aug 16, 2025
In the last month, ICE has launched a recruitment campaign of unusual scale and persistence. Reports document emails sent to county deputies in Florida, outreach to FEMA personnel, targeted solicitations to retired federal workers, and policy changes that expand the age range for applicants well past forty. The campaign is not framed as an emergency measure but as a permanent expansion, made possible by a $170 billion appropriation for immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. ICE’s leadership has portrayed this as necessary to fulfill the agency’s mission. Local law enforcement leaders, particularly in Florida, have voiced both irritation and unease, objecting to the federal government’s bypassing of their command structures and raising concerns about losing trained officers to ICE’s ranks.
The practical explanation is straightforward: ICE is attempting to rapidly scale up its workforce to meet the Trump administration’s stated political goal of removing an estimated 20 million Latino people from the United States. In 2024, Donald Trump described these individuals as “poisoning the blood” of the country. The recruitment model—its targets, its institutional framing, its bypassing of local intermediaries—mirrors patterns visible in the historical record of the Einsatzgruppen, the Nazi mobile killing units deployed in Eastern Europe during the Second World War. The comparison is not rhetorical excess. It is a study in method. The question is not whether ICE today is equivalent to the Einsatzgruppen. It is whether the logic of building a force for extraordinary enforcement has recurring features that should trigger historical alarm.
The Einsatzgruppen emerged from the SS security apparatus as Germany prepared for the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. According to Richard Rhodes in Masters of Death, they were formed from an existing pool of police officers, security agents, and civil servants. Recruitment was highly targeted. Men with experience in policing, intelligence, and military command were sought out for their capacity to operate under orders and within a rigid hierarchy. History makes clear that these were not simply volunteer fanatics. Many were approached through professional networks, offered postings that promised status and advancement, and placed within a structure that normalized their assignments as legitimate state work.
The current ICE recruitment drive is not a historical aberration. It is a recognizable pattern in the history of state enforcement agencies preparing for expansive and potentially coercive missions.
Stefan Kühl, in Ordinary Organizations, underscores that the Einsatzgruppen operated according to the routines of bureaucratic administration. Orders were written in formal language, couched in terms of security and order maintenance. Missions were framed as operational tasks rather than moral questions. Men were told they were combating “banditry” or “partisan activity,” categories that erased the civilian status of their victims. This was a central mechanism for recruiting and retaining participation: the transformation of killing into a technical job, embedded in the standard practices of an organization.
Zygmunt Bauman’s Modernity and the Holocaust identifies this as a hallmark of modern bureaucratic violence. The Holocaust was not an eruption of irrational savagery but the product of systems designed to translate political directives into manageable administrative processes. The Einsatzgruppen were a case study in how to assemble a killing force from ordinary professionals, train them to think in technical rather than moral terms, and deploy them with minimal overt coercion.
The contours of ICE’s recent recruitment push follow a comparable bureaucratic logic. The recruitment targets a pre-screened pool of law enforcement and security professionals. Florida deputies, FEMA personnel, and retired federal agents are not random job seekers. They are individuals whose careers have conditioned them to follow formal orders, work within hierarchical structures, and frame their actions in procedural rather than purely moral language. This mirrors the Nazi recruitment strategy: draw from those already trained to execute state directives.
ICE is actively lowering entry barriers. The policy change lifting the maximum age limit above forty broadens the eligible pool in a way that signals volume as the overriding goal. In Nazi recruitment, similar expansions occurred when the need for personnel outpaced the available pool, with the result that older men or those with less ideal physical profiles were nonetheless brought into field operations. ICE is also leveraging bureaucratic legitimacy. The agency’s recruitment messages describe “enforcement opportunities” and “critical response positions” in terms that emphasize lawful authority, federal mandate, and organizational purpose. This is the same language of legitimization that Kühl and Bauman document in the Einsatzgruppen’s framing: orders presented as components of a rational plan, embedded in established institutional structures.
The campaign shows a willingness to bypass local institutional intermediaries. Florida sheriffs’ complaints that ICE directly contacted their deputies without coordination recalls historical cases in which Nazi units were introduced into territories without consulting local military or police commanders. In both cases, central authority overrode local norms in pursuit of a larger strategic objective.
The deepest similarity lies in the bureaucratic ability to render extraordinary measures administratively ordinary. Bauman warns that this capacity is intrinsic to modern organizations. The division of labor fragments moral responsibility. Language reframes acts of violence as technical assignments. In the Einsatzgruppen, mass shootings of civilians were described as “executions” or “security operations,” terms that masked the nature of the task from the participant’s own conscience.
In ICE’s case, the recruitment pitch itself functions as this kind of framing device. Potential hires are told they will be part of “national security” and “public safety” operations. In the context of an administration that has already pursued mass deportations, family separations, and expanded detention, such language situates controversial or coercive actions within the acceptable vocabulary of law enforcement.
Franklin Mixon’s concept of the “entrepreneurial bureaucrat” sharpens this point. Bureaucracies, and the officials within them, seek opportunities to expand their remit. ICE’s leadership has seized on a political moment—backed by unprecedented funding—to expand its manpower. In historical terms, the Einsatzgruppen leadership did the same within the SS apparatus, enlarging their operational scope whenever political conditions permitted.
The United States is not operating under the same conditions as the Nazi Reich in 1941, but the present safeguards are functionally nonexistent. Judicial review now functions as a rubber stamp for the Trump administration, with courts repeatedly validating executive actions that stretch or disregard statutory limits. Congressional oversight is, in practice, nonexistent, with leadership unwilling to confront or even meaningfully question enforcement policy.
The United States is not operating under the same conditions as the Nazi Reich in 1941, but the present safeguards are functionally nonexistent.
National media outlets remain cautious to the point of self-censorship, their corporate owners fearing retaliatory measures against other business holdings. In this environment, the assumption that legal and institutional checks will restrain an expanded, specially recruited force is untenable. Political leadership can and does issue directives that push beyond the law’s original intent, and the mechanisms designed to resist such directives have already shown their willingness to accommodate them. When that reality is combined with a rapidly enlarging enforcement body trained to operate under centralized command, the potential for escalation is immediate and concrete.
The modern state’s capacity for violence is not determined by the moral character of its personnel but by the institutional and political boundaries within which it functions. Ordinary organizational processes can adapt to deliver extraordinary harm when circumstances shift. The Einsatzgruppen were assembled and deployed in exactly this way, with bureaucratic procedures serving as the mechanism rather than an afterthought.
The current ICE recruitment drive is not a historical aberration. It is a recognizable pattern in the history of state enforcement agencies preparing for expansive and potentially coercive missions. Its targeting of trained law enforcement personnel, lowering of entry barriers, bypassing of local intermediaries, and reliance on bureaucratic framing are all features visible in the assembly of past forces that went on to commit atrocities. To note this is not to equate the present with the past in outcome. It is to recognize the continuity in method, and to understand that method as a warning. The Einsatzgruppen remind us that the path from “ordinary” enforcement to extraordinary violence is often paved with administrative memos, recruitment drives, and appeals to professionalism. The time to interrogate such patterns is before the mission expands and the boundaries shift.
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Trump Admin Announces $200 Million Contract for Musk's AI After Grok Hitler Incident
"Stop entertaining this man. Stop giving him money. It's really that simple," said one critic of Elon Musk, the richest man on Earth.
Jul 14, 2025
The U.S. government on Monday awarded a $200 million contract to Elon Musk's artificial intelligence company, despite the tech billionaire's ongoing spat with President Donald Trump and his AI chatbot's recent praise for Nazi leader Adolf Hitler.
The Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office announced contract awards to Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, and Musk's xAI "to accelerate Department of Defense (DOD) adoption of advanced AI capabilities to address critical national security challenges."
Last week, xAI garnered sweeping condemnation after Grok, the chatbot built into Musk's social media platform X—formerly known as Twitter—started spewing antisemitic content and calling itself "MechaHitler."
Meanwhile, Musk and Trump have been at odds since shortly after the richest man on Earth left the president's administration, in which he was the de facto leader of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Musk's involvement in the administration generated widespread concern, both because of DOGE's efforts to gut the federal government and because his various companies get so much money from federal contracts.
In a Monday statement about "Grok for Government," xAI not only confirmed the new DOD contract but also said that its products will be "available to purchase via the General Services Administration (GSA) schedule. This allows every federal government department, agency, or office, to access xAI's frontier AI products."
The Trump administration's new money for Musk drew intense criticism on various platforms, including X—where Congresswoman Becca Balint (D-Vt.) wrote that "despite the social media wars, the Trump-Elon corruption machine is alive and well."
Kat Abughazaleh, a progressive Democrat running in Illinois' 9th Congressional District, said: "Stop entertaining this man. Stop giving him money. It's really that simple."
Abughazaleh also pointed to her past with Musk—she was laid off from the nonprofit watchdog Media Matters for America as it faced financial strain from legal battles, including what the billionaire described as a "thermonuclear lawsuit."
"Elon Musk cost me my job, deposed me for being too mean to him online, and now he's responsible for tens of thousands of job losses while getting hundreds of millions of our tax dollars," she noted. "I'm running for Congress to stop men like him."
Nina Turner, a former progressive congressional candidate from Ohio, noted that "the Pentagon, which has failed seven straight audits, just gave $200,000,000 of our tax dollars to Elon Musk to use xAI. Meanwhile, funding for food banks [was] cut in the name of 'efficiency.'"
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