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Standing Up to Trump’s Un-American Nightmare
MAGA has given us a government that turns its back on democracy, and an economy that proactively prevents millions of people from meeting their basic needs.
Aug 16, 2025
The first weekend in August, the neo-Nazi group Blood Tribe showed up in Concord, New Hampshire to intimidate us in front of our capitol. They chased families out of the park, barked hate into a megaphone, and conducted an organized and choreographed march, complete with Nazi flags and repugnant chants.
I am Jewish, for the record. I have a family portrait on my wall, and two of the people in it died in the camps. I’m also disabled. I was once an able-bodied EMT, and even a state legislator. But I got sick. And like far too many in chronic pain, I now spend my days fighting for the healthcare I need, while greedy insurance company CEOs and the corrupt politicians they’ve bought and paid for live high on the hog.
I’m not afraid of Nazis. You can punch a Nazi in the mouth. But I am afraid of Nazi policies. The idea of a “master race” is antithetical to American values. Yet, eugenics are increasingly popular. The same tech bro billionaires who bankrolled Donald Trump’s presidency and the MAGA majorities in the House and Senate are paying to gene-edit babies to make them “smarter,” and “athletically better.” American Eagle’s advertising campaign with Sydney Sweeney, and Dunkin’s advertising campaign with Gavin Casalegno reference genetics to put neurotypical, white, Christian actors on pedestal. This, in a time when Trump’s border czar admits that Immigration and Customs Enforcement detains people based on “physical appearance,” and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for data registries of autistic Americans, doing away with vaccines he claims cause neurodiversity, and firing anyone who isn’t willing to toe the line. This is the same RFK Jr. who made antisemitic claims about Covid-19 immunity, and stated vaccine mandates were worse than Anne Frank’s persecution.
These ideas are dangerous, not because they feed outrage algorithms on social media, but because they seek to remove millions of people from our democracy and replace economic mobility with a caste system void of economic opportunity. The Constitution’s preamble reads, “We the People” because our Founders knew that G-d given rights preceded citizenship in any nation. These words were written before our own Constitution’s ratification. America is America because Americans sought to make a living as workers and entrepreneurs before we had a federal government. We were promised life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness before the American Revolution was won. And that has remained the promise of the American Dream ever since. There have never been any asterisks applied. And every past effort to deny someone the rewards of their work because of race, gender, ability, nationality, or religion has been met with resistance, because ours is a country that believes effort, not pedigree, should be rewarded.
Or at least we did until Trump.
The right to petition our government for grievances has been replaced with a version of democratic governance that mirrors the frustrations of automated touch-tone customer service and the unhelpfulness of scripted chatbots.
After passing his “Big Bill” to gut Medicaid, Medicare, and more to give tax cuts to billionaires and corporations, Trump called for a 2025 census that only counts the people he wishes to be counted, days after signing an executive order to lock up anyone experiencing homelessness. And in so doing he is overtly telling us that noncitizens and those experiencing hardship have no claim to the American Dream. Imagine saying that to people who fled their countries of birth like Albert Einstein, Desi Arnaz, Gloria Estefan, and Madeline Albright. Imagine saying that to Suze Orman, Halle Berry, James Cameron, or Jim Carrey, who once lived in their cars. Again, as you begin to add in the layers of genetic modification, and the further expansion of economic inequality through a trillion dollar AI arms race that is hyperfocused on eliminating middle class and working class jobs, and you are left with an unmistakable picture of an unrecognizable America. One in which class mobility exists only in fables. And the right to petition our government for grievances has been replaced with a version of democratic governance that mirrors the frustrations of automated touch-tone customer service and the unhelpfulness of scripted chatbots designed to increase your frustration level, so you just give up.
Everyone deserves to earn a living wage working one job instead of three. We deserve affordable childcare and education for our kids without mountains of debt. We deserve comprehensive healthcare from the day we’re born to the day we die. We deserve a planet that is living and breathing for generations to come. And we deserve a retirement with security and dignity. Anyone who says that we cannot afford this vision of America is lying. Our country is not suffering from scarcity. We are suffering from greed. There’s plenty to go around to make sure that every American can thrive, not just survive if the billionaires and corporations don’t steal it.
The call to Make America Great Again has been fundamentally un-American. It has given us a government that turns its back on democracy. And an economy that proactively prevents millions of people from meeting their basic needs. It’s time to reject every un-American thing Trump and MAGA are doing. No more eugenics. No more denying anyone the promise of the American Dream because of where they were born or the circumstances they live in. No more billionaires and corporations that don’t pay taxes. No more politicians who don’t understand that they work for us, regardless of whether we can or did vote for them. Because in this country, we stand up to bullies, we punch Nazis, and we don’t care where you’re from or what you have, as long as you’re willing to roll up your sleeves.
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'Corporate Crime Pays' Under Trump as His Agencies Drop Enforcement Against 165 Companies
"The Trump administration is protecting lawbreaking corporate insiders from accountability instead of protecting Americans from corporate lawbreaking," said the author of a new Public Citizen report.
Aug 14, 2025
During the first six months of his second term, President Donald Trump's administration has withdrawn or suspended enforcement actions against 165 companies in sectors across the U.S. economy, with Big Tech benefiting most from federal agencies' lax approach to corporate crime.
A report released Wednesday by the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen found that the Trump administration has halted or ended a third of misconduct investigations and enforcement actions targeting technology firms—including behemoths such as Meta, Tesla, and Google.
Both Meta and Google donated to Trump's inaugural fund, and Tesla CEO Elon Musk spent big in support of the president's 2024 White House bid. Public Citizen found that the tech corporations that have benefited from Trump administration decisions to drop enforcement efforts have spent a combined $1.2 billion trying to influence the president.
"The Trump administration is protecting lawbreaking corporate insiders from accountability instead of protecting Americans from corporate lawbreaking," said Rick Claypool, a research director for Public Citizen and author of the new report. "To Big Tech corporations, this sends the message there is little risk in breaking the law in pursuit of profit—especially if you are an ally of the administration."
"For insiders," Claypool added, "corporate crime pays."
"Although he pretends to be tough on Big Tech, Donald Trump is a willing enabler of Big Tech's wrongdoing."
Public Citizen's report comes amid growing scrutiny of what one critic recently described as "the incredible shrinking Trump antitrust enforcers."
Despite claims of a "surging MAGA antitrust movement," Trump's Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission have repeatedly shown a willingness to bow to White House-connected lobbyists and allow corporate consolidation to proceed unabated. Last week, as Common Dreams reported, the Trump DOJ settled a Biden-era legal challenge against UnitedHealth Group, allowing the monopolist to swallow yet another competitor.
"The second Trump administration has now become a pay-to-play operation where influential MAGA lobbyists paid millions by large corporations use their clout with the president and Attorney General Pam Bondi to overrule the enforcers and push through mergers," The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote following news of the UnitedHealth settlement.
"It seems that if you're a company and can pony up the money," Dayen added, "you can get whatever regulatory treatment you wish. Bribery has gone in a few short months from a prohibited activity to the coin of the realm in Trump's America."
As Public Citizen's report showed, tech giants have been the chief beneficiaries of what the group characterized as the Trump administration's corrupt approach to corporate crime enforcement.
At the start of Trump's second term, at least 104 tech corporations faced more than 140 federal investigations and enforcement actions. The Trump administration has withdrawn or halted nearly 50 of those enforcement actions, Public Citizen found.
"Although he pretends to be tough on Big Tech, Donald Trump is a willing enabler of Big Tech's wrongdoing," Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, said in a statement. "For Big Tech, a relative pittance in political spending has generated gigantic returns in dropped prosecutions, policy U-turns, and aggressive administration support for Big Tech's global agenda."
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Protesters Target Dutch Microsoft Data Center for 'Genocidal Collaboration' With IDF
"Microsoft stores thousands of terabytes of surveillance data from the Israeli intelligence service Unit 8200—data that is used to oppress, imprison, and murder innocent Palestinians."
Aug 11, 2025
Protesters staged a demonstration Sunday at a Microsoft data center in the Netherlands following last week's revelation that the facility is being used by the Israel Defense Forces to plan genocidal airstrikes in Gaza and to store massive amounts of intelligence on Palestinians in the illegally occupied territories.
Members of the direct action group Geef Tegengas (Push Back) led the demonstration at Microsoft's data center near the northwestern city of Middenmeer. Some activists scaled the roof of a building and lit flares, while others locked themselves to poles and blocked an entrance to the facility.
On its Instagram page, Geef Tegengas said it was targeting "genocide in our backyard."
"Microsoft stores thousands of terabytes of surveillance data from the Israeli intelligence service Unit 8200—data that is used to oppress, imprison, and murder innocent Palestinians," the group said. "Thanks to its Azure cloud service, Microsoft plays a direct role in the genocide of the people of Gaza."
Geef Tegengas demanded that Microsoft "remove all Israeli intelligence data" and urged employees at the facility to "lay down your work."
The group also called on people to boycott Microsoft and support the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel.
"We will continue to take action until this genocidal collaboration stops," Geef Tegengas vowed.
Sunday's demonstration followed the publication last week of a joint investigation by The Guardian, +972 Magazine, and Local Call revealing that Unit 8200, the largest unit in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), is storing 11,500 terabytes of data containing roughly 200 million hours of Palestinians' phone call recordings on the Azure servers in the Netherlands.
According to the investigation—which involved interviews with 11 Microsoft and Israeli intelligence sources and a cache of leaked company documents—former Unit 8200 head Yossi Sariel traveled to Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington in the United States in 2021 to meet CEO Satya Nadella.
Sniffing a lucrative opportunity, Nadella agreed to grant the cyberwarfare unit access to a special area of the Azure cloud platform. The project's goal was storing "a million calls per hour."
An intelligence source said that some of the Microsoft employees involved in the undertaking were Unit 8200 veterans, making collaboration "much easier."
One leaked Microsoft document showed that company leaders embraced the IDF partnership as "an incredibly powerful brand moment."
Microsoft responded to the investigation by claiming that Nadella was unaware of exactly what kind of data Unit 8200 was storing on the company's servers.
Three Unit 8200 sources told The Guardian that Azure has facilitated IDF airstrikes on Gaza, where 674 days of U.S.-backed IDF bombing, invasion, and siege have left at least 229,000 Palestinians dead, maimed, or missing amid a worsening famine and the specter of ethnic cleansing and full Israeli occupation.
Israel's conduct in the war is the subject of an ongoing genocide case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. The International Criminal Court, also located in the Dutch city, last year issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza.
Microsoft said Monday that it has launched an investigation into how Unit 8200 is using Azure. This, after the company said in May that an internal review "found no evidence to date that Microsoft's Azure and [artificial intelligence] technologies have been used to target or harm people in the conflict in Gaza."
A Microsoft spokesperson said Monday that the company "takes these allegations seriously, as shown by our previous independent investigation."
"As we receive new information, we're committed to making sure we have a chance to validate any new data and take any needed action," the spokesperson added.
The Guardian reported Monday that the news outlets' investigation prompted debate last week in the Staten-Generaal, the Dutch Parliament, where Christine Teunissen of the left-wing Party for the Animals pressed the government on what it is doing to prevent data stored in the Netherlands from "being used to commit genocide" in Gaza.
Dutch Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp replied that he would "request further investigation."
"If there are serious indications of criminal offenses in that information, legal proceedings can of course be initiated, and that is then up to the public prosecution service," he said.
The Guardian/+972 Magazine/Local Call investigation follows last month's revelation by the latter two outlets that the IDF has undertaken a "dramatic increase in the purchase of services from Google Cloud, Amazon's AWS, and Microsoft Azure."
Big Tech's profiteering from Israel's annihilation of Gaza and occupation, settler colonization, and apartheid in the West Bank has sparked numerous protests, including by employees of complicit companies. At least dozens of workers at companies including Google, Meta, and Microsoft have been fired for Palestine advocacy. Others have resigned in protest.
Hossam Nasr, a former Microsoft software engineer, was fired after organizing an October 2024 "No Azure for Apartheid" vigil for Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Nasr told The Guardian after his termination that he was fired "simply because we were daring to humanize Palestinians, and simply because we were daring to say that Microsoft should not be complicit with an army that is plausibly accused of genocide."
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