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racism
Trump Is Testing the Limits of Our Democracy—Will We Hold Firm?
The way we all react to these tests—from the disappearing of U.S. citizens to the threatening of judges—will determine Trump’s and the GOP’s next steps. So, what do we do?
Jul 15, 2025
U.S. President Donald Trump’s threat to strip Rosie O’Donnell of her citizenship is a “test.”
Kids do it all the time. Throw a tantrum in the store demanding cookies and if the parents don’t remove them from the store right away, every visit will see the tantrums escalate. Testing the boundaries. When the test succeeds, the boundaries get moved and a new boundary gets tested, on and on until finally the child’s behavior is so egregious he’s stopped. Or he always gets away with everything and grows up to be Donald Trump.
We learn this early.
We’ve seen a series of these tests coming from the Trump administration, following the very specific and consistently repeated pattern that history tells us played out in the regimes of Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, Putin, Orbán, Erdoğon, el Sisi, and pretty much every other person who took over a democracy and then, step-by-step turned it into a dictatorship.
Trump started testing racism as a political weapon when he came down the elevator at Trump Tower and spoke about “Mexican murderers and rapists” in front of what media reports said was a crowd he’d hired for $50 per person from a company that provides extras to movie and TV production companies.
While his initial goal was reportedly to get NBC to renew “Apprentice” and pay him more than Gwen Stefani, his racism test work out shockingly well; suddenly he was a serious contender for the party that had inherited the KKK vote when Democrats abandoned the South with the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts in the 1960s.
If he can do it to Rosie—if there isn’t furious pushback (and so far, there isn’t) against this latest test—he can do it to me or you.
Another test was whether the exaggerations, distortions, and outright lies that he and his family had used to hustle real estate could work in politics.
He quickly discovered that GOP base voters—after decades of having uncritically (slavishly, even) swallowed lies about trickle-down economics, “evil union bosses,” and the “importance of small government”—were more than happy to embrace or ignore, as the occasion demanded, his prevarications.
From there, Trump tested exactly how gullible his most fervent supporters—and the media that fed them a daily diet of very profitable outrage and hate—would buy into a lie so audacious, so in defiance of both the law and common sense, so outside the bounds of normal patriotism, that they could be whipped into a murderous frenzy and kill three police officers while trying to overthrow the government of the United States of America.
The nation and our press reacted as if he’d failed that test, but when he was able to cow enough senators to avoid being convicted in his impeachment trial, he knew he’d won.
Now he’s again testing how far he can go.
George Retes is a 25-year-old Hispanic natural-born American citizen and disabled Army veteran working as a security guard at a legal marijuana operation in California. When it was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), he got in his car and tried to drive away to avoid getting in the middle of what he saw as trouble.
Masked agents chased him down, smashed the window of his car and pepper-sprayed him in the face, dragged him out of his car, and disappeared him.
Testing.
Will Democrats make a stink? Will the media make it more than a one-day story? Will any Republicans break rank and stand against his excesses? Was it even mentioned on any of the Sunday shows? How far can he go next time?
So far, Trump thinks he’s winning these tests. The outrages are coming so fast and furious that it’s becoming impossible to keep track of them, just like in Germany in 1933 and Chile in 1973.
Retes wasn’t the only U.S. citizen who’s been arrested or detained by ICE; they’ve gone after a mayor, a member of Congress, and even assaulted a United States senator.
A 71-year-old grandmother was assaulted and handcuffed by masked agents. Axios documents others; as the CNN headline on the story about other U.S. citizens being snatched notes: “‘We Are Not Safe in America Today:’ These American Citizens Say They Were Detained by ICE.”
Testing.
After years of hysteria on the billionaire-owned sewer of Fox “News” about our nation’s first Black president deploying “FEMA Camps” to detain white conservatives, Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and wounded hundreds of others in Las Vegas, ranting that Federal Emergency Management Agency Camps set up after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 were “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and... confiscating guns.”
He murdered those innocent concertgoers, he said, to “wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves,” saying, “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”
Now those detention facilities conservatives feared has come into being, as Republicans in Congress just funded concentration camps like “Alligator Auschwitz” in multiple states across America.
Visiting congress members claim inmates are packed over 30 to a cage, with Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) reporting her horror when she was shown that “they get their drinking water, and they brush their teeth, where they poop, in the same unit.”
Testing.
We recently learned via CBS News from a whistleblower and now-released texts that Trump’s former lawyer and now-nominee for a lifetime federal judgeship, Emil Bove, then working in the Justice Department, advised the administration officials to tell federal courts “fuck you” when they ordered the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from an El Salvadoran hellhole concentration camp.
But now—as it was in South Korea when their president tried to end democracy there last year and people poured into the streets and forced the government to act—it’s apparently going to be pretty much exclusively up to us.
For months, the administration appears to have followed his obviously unconstitutional and illegal advice. Republicans want him on the federal bench anyway.
Testing.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia—who Trump official Erez Reuveni said had been deported “in error”—described how he was treated in that El Salvadoran concentration camp, telling his attorneys and the court that he’d been repeatedly beaten, then forced to kneel from 9:00 pm to 6:00 am “with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion.”
He had committed no crime and was deported in open violation of a federal judge who demanded the plane either not take off or return before landing in El Salvador. The Trump administration simply and contemptibly ignored the court’s order.
Testing.
In a White House visit, Trump told the El Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele (who refers to himself as “the world’s coolest dictator”), that he wants to send American citizens to that country’s torture centers.
“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns,” Trump said as the two men laughed. “You’ve got to build about five more places.”
Testing.
Meanwhile, ICE detention facilities are also holding U.S. citizens like Andrea Velez, 32, who was snatched by masked agents during a raid in Los Angeles. As LA’s ABC News affiliate Channel 7 reported:
Velez, a marketing designer and Cal Poly Pomona graduate, was arrested Tuesday morning after her family dropped her off at work. According to her attorneys, Velez's sister and mother saw her being approached and grabbed by masked men with guns, so they called the Los Angeles Police Department to report a kidnapping.
Police responded to the scene near Ninth and Spring streets and realized the kidnapping call was actually a federal immigration-enforcement operation.
She’s out of the detention facility now, but on $5000 bond; ICE apparently has plans for her future.
Testing.
And now Trump is telling us he wants to strip a natural-born U.S. citizen comedienne—who’s made jokes about him that pissed him off—of her U.S. citizenship, “Because,” he says, “of the fact that Rosie O’Donnell is not in the best interests of our Great Country, I am giving serious consideration to taking away her Citizenship.”
If he can do it to Rosie—if there isn’t furious pushback (and so far, there isn’t) against this latest test—he can do it to me or you.
Hitler gained the chancellorship of Germany in January 1933; by July of that same year, a mere six months later, he’d revoked the citizenship of thousands for the crimes of being “socialists,” “communists,” Jews, or journalists and commentators who’d written or spoken ill of him. Trump appears to be just a bit behind him on that timeline.
Testing.
Trump wants NPR and PBS defunded as soon as possible, having issued an Executive Order to that effect, and has ordered his Federal Communications Commission to launch investigations that could strip major TV networks of their broadcast licenses if they continue to report on him and his activities in ways that offend him. He shut down the Voice Of America, ending America’s promotion of democracy across the world. He kicked The Associated Press out of the White House press pool.
Testing.
Trump has declared large strips of land along the southern border to be federalized territory and put the American military in charge of policing the area, in clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act. That law prohibits the military from performing any sort of police function against civilians.
Testing.
When students spoke out on campus against Trump ally and longtime Kushner family friend Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s murderous assault of Gaza and support for settlers stealing West Bank land from Palestinians, armed and masked federal agents began arresting those students, imprisoning them for their First Amendment-protected speech.
Then Trump went after their universities, bringing several to heel just as Orbán has in Hungary and Putin has in Russia.
Testing.
Yesterday, six Republicans on the Supreme Court said that Trump could wholesale mass- fire employees of the Department of Education, essentially shutting down an agency created and funded by Congress in defiance of the constitutional requirement that the president “shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent, flaming in extreme alarm at her colleagues:
This decision] hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out... The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.
Or maybe the six Republican justices on the court are just scared? After all, judges across the country are being threatened, having pizzas delivered to their homes in the middle of the night by way of saying, “We know where you live.” This after U.S. District Judge Esther Salas’ son, Daniel Anderl, was fatally shot at their New Jersey home by a gunman disguised as a pizza delivery driver. Her husband was also shot, but survived.
A few months ago, after one of Trump’s rants against judges who rule against him, Judge Salas told the press:
Hundreds of pizzas have been delivered to judges all over this country in the last few months. And in the last few weeks—judges’ children. And now Daniel’s name was being weaponized to bring fear to judges and their children. You’re saying to those judges—“You want to end up like Judge Salas? You want to end up like Judge Salas’ son?”
Testing.
What’s next? Will we see Americans who’ve spoken poorly of Trump on social media arrested like both Orbán and Putin do?
Will more students end up on the ground or in jail?
Will more judges be charged with the crime of running their own courtrooms in ways Trump and ICE dislike?
More mayors arrested?
More Democratic Senators taken to the ground and handcuffed?
Will Americans start being disappeared in numbers that can’t be ignored? Deported to El Salvador and South Sudan?
Will journalists be destroyed by massive libel suits or imprisoned for what they write?
Will more judges bend to Trump’s will because they’re either terrified or, like Clarence Thomas and Sam Alito, have apparently become radicalized by Fox “News” or other right-wing propaganda outlets?
The way we all react to these tests will determine Trump’s and the GOP’s next steps. So, what do we do?
Former President Barack Obama says Democrats need to “toughen up.” While true, it would have been nice to hear “tough” words of outrage, warning, and leadership from him and former Vice President Kamala Harris over the past six months. And former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
But now—as it was in South Korea when their president tried to end democracy there last year and people poured into the streets and forced the government to act—it’s apparently going to be pretty much exclusively up to us.
See you on July 17—this Thursday—for some “good trouble.”
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Why Mamdani Is Right About City-Run Grocery Stores
Public grocery stores would not eliminate hunger. But they could function as stabilizing infrastructure in food systems that are currently brittle and uneven.
Jul 01, 2025
Amira Santiago leaves her apartment by 8:45 am most mornings, pushing a folding cart through cracked sidewalks and traffic haze to reach the food pantry on time. She lives in East New York, in a ZIP code where grocery stores have vanished, corner delis double as pharmacies, and fresh food is scarce. What ends up in her cart depends entirely on what’s on the shelf. Usually it’s canned goods, powdered milk, maybe some onions or carrots. Today it’s dry cereal, pasta, and an overripe cantaloupe. Her son Malik skipped breakfast again. There’s nothing left in the fridge she can turn into a meal.
This is not an outlier. It is the consequence of systems that stopped functioning long ago. And it helps explain why a political upset in New York City on June 24, 2025 carries meaning far beyond the five boroughs.
That day, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year-old democratic socialist assemblymember from Queens, defeated former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for mayor. The result was historic, but more importantly, it made visible a shifting political consensus. Voters rejected the narrative that government must limit its ambitions. They chose a candidate who insists that public institutions should do more than regulate; they should provide. Mamdani's platform spoke directly to people like Amira, whose daily struggles reflect the withdrawal of basic public functions from everyday life.
Mamdani’s proposal reflects the reality that food access cannot be left entirely to private enterprise.
Central to Mamdani’s platform is a proposal to launch a city-run grocery system. The plan is straightforward. Five municipally owned grocery stores, one in each borough, would operate without a profit motive. They would serve areas where the private sector has pulled out or never invested in the first place. The stores would source food wholesale, hire union labor, and reinvest in the neighborhoods they serve. These would not be pilot programs tied to foundation grants or nonprofits operating under precarious contracts. They would be permanent public institutions.
Opponents were quick to ridicule the idea. Billionaire grocer John Catsimatidis warned of industry disruption. Mayor Eric Adams dismissed the proposal outright. Think tanks called it inefficient and unnecessary. The comparison to “Soviet-style” provisioning spread quickly, suggesting central planning and bureaucratic waste. Others raised concerns about the city outcompeting small independent grocers or failing to ensure supply chain efficiency, leading to chronic understocking and quality control issues. But these objections rarely addressed the basic premise: Millions of New Yorkers, like Amira Santiago, already live in neighborhoods where food is hard to find, overpriced, and nutritionally inadequate.
Across the city, more than 3 million residents live in low-access food areas. In Brownsville, Mott Haven, East Flatbush, and parts of Staten Island, residents rely on corner stores and fast-food chains that carry little or no fresh produce. These conditions are not the result of natural market forces. They reflect decades of public and private disinvestment, often concentrated in communities of color. Grocery redlining—the practice by which supermarket chains avoid low-income neighborhoods based on demographic risk factors—has left entire ZIP codes without stable access to food. In the past five years alone, more than 100 full-service grocery stores in New York City have closed, primarily in lower-income neighborhoods.
The result is predictable. People pay more for less. They commute longer distances for basic goods. They ration meals. Children go to school without breakfast. Public health data shows elevated rates of diabetes, hypertension, and diet-related illness in these same neighborhoods. Hunger is not simply a function of poverty. It is shaped by the spatial and logistical architecture of access—or its absence.
Nationally, the picture is no better. As of 2023, 18 million households in the United States reported experiencing food insecurity at one point. Since the pandemic, grocery prices have risen nearly 30%, while SNAP benefits have failed to keep pace. In 2015, 44 U.S. counties had no grocery store at all. On South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, families routinely drive 80 miles round-trip for produce. In rural Alabama, Mississippi, and parts of Appalachia, the nearest full-service store might be a two-hour round trip. These are not temporary disruptions. They are ongoing crises that have been normalized.
Mamdani’s proposal reflects the reality that food access cannot be left entirely to private enterprise. When profitability becomes the determining factor for whether people can eat, large segments of the country are left behind. In neighborhoods where chains cannot turn reliable margins, stores close. Where customer data indicates low discretionary spending or high SNAP usage, suppliers scale back. The grocery industry, like any other, is designed to maximize return. It is doing what it was built to do. But the outcome is a landscape filled with price inflation, scarcity, and abandonment.
Public grocery stores would not eliminate hunger. But they could function as stabilizing infrastructure in food systems that are currently brittle and uneven. They could provide consistent access to affordable food, especially in neighborhoods where no alternatives exist. They could also serve as community hubs, offering services like SNAP enrollment, health screenings, nutrition classes, or childcare coordination. Their purpose would not be to replace private markets, but to serve where those markets have withdrawn or refused to invest.
Mamdani’s victory sends a message that voters are ready for governments that solve real problems.
The concept is far from unprecedented. Military commissaries already provide subsidized food to service members across the country. State-run liquor stores operate in Pennsylvania, Utah, and New Hampshire, generating revenue while serving a public function. In St. Paul, Kansas, a town of fewer than 600 residents, the only grocery store is city-owned and locally operated. In Alaska, the federal Bypass Mail program subsidizes food shipments to rural villages. These are not theoretical constructs. They are functioning examples of public provisioning.
Of course, the success of any public grocery system will depend on implementation. Poorly managed public programs can erode trust and fuel political backlash. Mamdani’s plan will require serious design: transparent procurement, equitable site selection, accessible transportation connections, competitive wages, and meaningful community oversight. But the risks of a poorly run store must be weighed against the ongoing costs of inaction. In New York, nearly 1 in 4 children live in food-insecure households. The absence of public response is not neutral. It is itself a decision, with measurable health and economic consequences.
What Mamdani’s campaign has done is shift the boundaries of political imagination. Cities like Chicago and Atlanta are now exploring public grocery models. Federal tools such as the Healthy Food Financing Initiative and the Community Economic Development Grant program could support them. Philanthropic institutions, once focused exclusively on nutrition education, are beginning to fund food infrastructure. Local governments have the capacity to act. What they have often lacked is the political permission to do so.
That permission now exists. Mamdani’s victory sends a message that voters are ready for governments that solve real problems. The campaign drew on a deep well of frustration among New Yorkers who have watched their neighborhoods lose not just grocery stores, but clinics, schools, and public transportation. It articulated a basic expectation: that cities should function, that infrastructure should be visible, and that the state should be present where the market disappears.
In the months ahead, other cities will watch closely. If New York moves forward, it may offer a blueprint for how public institutions can reenter the business of meeting essential needs. If it hesitates, the message will still resonate. A candidate won by promising groceries—not charity, not deregulation, but a public store with stocked shelves and affordable prices.
There is a lesson in that. Governance is not only about writing checks or issuing permits. It is also about provision. People trust institutions when those institutions show up with something tangible. In that sense, a bag of groceries might be more than food. It might be the start of a new civic contract.
If Mamdani’s proposal succeeds, it will not be because it was visionary. It will be because it was honest about what people are living through—and offered a way out.
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A Post-Roe world Is a Post-Rights World
The loss of Roe wasn’t just about abortion, it was a green light to dismantle reproductive freedom at every level.
Jun 24, 2025
It has been three years since Roe v. Wade was overturned. A seismic ruling shattering the constitutional right to abortion sent this country into a public health crisis. In the aftermath, millions of people have been stripped of autonomy over their own bodies, forced into pregnancies they did not choose, denied medication for miscarriages, and criminalized for seeking basic healthcare.
This is not a post-Roe world. It is a post-rights world. And we are still living through the consequences.
Across the nation, 19 states now have near or-total abortion bans. In many more, access has been drastically limited by targeted restrictions, clinic closures, and political interference. But the loss of Roe wasn’t just about abortion, it was a green light to dismantle reproductive freedom at every level. The attacks have expanded to birth control, emergency contraception, gender-affirming care, IVF, and even medical privacy.
Gerrymandered districts, activist judges, and extremist lawmakers continue to pass laws that do not reflect the will of the people.
Everyday clinics and doctors are under siege. Providers are being driven out by threats, legal risks, and burnout. Many Planned Parenthoods and independent clinics in banned states no longer provide abortion care at all. That burden has fallen on organizations like ours—small, often women-, queer-, and BIPOC-led abortion funds doing the lifesaving work of helping patients afford care and travel across state lines. But the need has skyrocketed, and funding has not. Foundations give less than 2% of their dollars to direct abortion support. We are asked to do more with less while the people we serve pay the price.
Survivors of rape or domestic violence are forced to carry pregnancies because they don’t qualify for their state’s narrow exceptions. Minors have to beg courts for permission to terminate pregnancies. Patients sleep in cars while waiting for appointments in the closest legal state. And we are their safety net and will continue to be in this man-made disaster.
Meanwhile, politicians—mostly white, mostly male—continue to play God with our lives. They are not doctors. They are not ethicists. They are not the people bearing the risks, the trauma, or the responsibility of pregnancy. And yet they are the ones deciding who deserves healthcare and who doesn’t.
Nowhere is that clearer than in Georgia, where a heartbreaking story made national headlines. Adriana Smith, a 31-year-old woman, was declared brain dead four months ago. But because she was pregnant, her body was kept alive by machines—not out of medical necessity, but due to Georgia’s abortion ban, which includes personhood language that grants legal rights to embryos at six weeks gestation. Her family was forced to watch as she was kept on life support against her wishes. In Georgia, the embryo inside her had more legal value than Adriana herself.
This is what happens when politicians legislate ideology. When we prioritize hypothetical life over a real one: a daughter, a sister, a human being, we lose not just rights, but our humanity.
And still, we hear silence when it comes to men’s responsibility.
No law mandates men to support a child they helped create before birth. No one is tracking their behavior, forcing paternity tests, or denying their autonomy. They are not losing jobs, skipping school, or facing stigma for becoming parents. Yet the full burden of pregnancy, childcare, and judgment falls squarely on the pregnant person who are forced to risk their health, financial stability, and futures to carry pregnancies. Where patients are denied their fundamental rights under the guise of “protecting life.” Where the father of a child can disappear without consequence.
It has been three years since Roe fell. And still, we are shouting the same truths:
- Abortion is healthcare.
- Bodily autonomy is a human right.
- Pregnancy should never be a punishment.
The majority of Americans agree. Poll after poll shows that most people support legal abortion and reproductive freedom. Yet the system is rigged. Gerrymandered districts, activist judges, and extremist lawmakers continue to pass laws that do not reflect the will of the people.
But here’s the truth: Roe was never enough. It was the floor, not the ceiling. Even before its fall, access was unequal based on race, income, zip code, and immigration status. Roe protected a legal right, but it didn’t guarantee access, safety, or justice. And we should not be fighting to go back to that flawed baseline. We must demand a future that does better for all of us.
So, what do we do?
We keep fighting—harder than ever. We vote like our lives depend on it, because they do. We support abortion funds that are on the frontlines, providing help when no one else will. We demand accountability—not just from politicians, but from the people in our communities who stay silent. We uplift the stories of those who’ve been harmed by these cruel policies, and we refuse to let them be erased.
And we imagine a future where our rights are not just restored but expanded. A future rooted in justice, equity, and compassion. A future where no one is forced to give birth against their will, and no one dies waiting for the law to catch up to basic humanity.
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