TRUMP'S CHAOTIC & HISTORIC FIRST 100 DAYS

 

April 30, 2025 In the Oval Office.  Eric Lee/The New York Times A furious start by Irineo Cabreros and Aatish Bhatia The first 100 days of Donald Trump’s second presidency have been a study of extremes, especially when compared with the start of presidential terms over the last century. Today, The Upshot — a section of The Times focused on data and policy — published eight charts comparing Trump’s performance with that of his predecessors. Here are a few of them: He issued more executive orders than any other modern president … Source: Federal Register | Data for Trump 2025 as of April 29. | By The New York Times On his first day in office, Trump signed a record 26 executive orders — and he didn’t stop there. The executive order has become something of a hallmark of his governing style, a way to express clear policy directives without the bureaucracy of regulation or the horse trading of legislation. Some orders direct federal agencies to develop policy in particular areas, like oil drilling, prescription drug prices or the water pressure delivered by shower heads. Some mostly express the president’s sentiment on an issue. Some function as warnings or punishments for political enemies. But many — in key areas like immigration and tariffs — effectively carry the force of law. Compare the president’s output with that of Congress, which has passed only a handful of laws since Trump’s inauguration. … and was sued in federal court more, too Source: PACER | Data for Trump 2025 as of April 29. | By The New York Times Trump’s executive actions have already led to an explosion of lawsuits. In other recent administrations, the suits have come later, in response to laws and regulations that take months and years to develop. But Trump is moving quickly to cut funding, fire federal workers, impose tariffs, reshape immigration policy and more. Although the Supreme Court has begun considering aspects of a few cases, most of this litigation is in preliminary stages. Markets plunged Source: LSEG | Shifts are relative to the value on the day the president was sworn in. Data for Trump 2025 is as of April 29. | By The New York Times During his first term, Trump often referred to the stock market as a barometer of success for his presidency. This time, he seems less focused on it. And some of his proclamations — on tariffs or his views on the Federal Reserve and interest rates — have led to wild swings in recent weeks. The S&P 500 has fallen by more than 7 percent since Trump’s inauguration, on track for the worst performance for stocks in this period of a presidency since Gerald Ford in 1974. Trump’s popularity fell, too Source: New York Times average of presidential approval polls | Data for Trump 2025 is as of April 29. | By The New York Times When Trump entered office, voters said they trusted him to handle the economy and immigration. But 100 days into his second term, his approval is underwater. Partly it’s because he turned those long-term strengths on the economy and immigration into weaknesses. Read about how Trump fared in our recent poll here. Our charts also look at revenue from tariffs and the fate of the dollar. See them here. More on Trump’s first 100 days Trump has done more in his first 100 days to change the trajectory of the country than any president since Franklin D. Roosevelt, Peter Baker writes. Trump has altered foreign policy, gutted government agencies, undertaken a campaign of retribution and upended global trade. Read about the different ways he’s made his mark. Trump marked his 100th day with a rally in Michigan, where he celebrated his border crackdown and dismissed his falling poll numbers as rigged.

N.Y. Budget Deal Includes School Cellphone Ban, Public Safety Changes & a Tax Refund to Cover Inflation

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced a $254 billion state budget agreement that includes tax credits. A measure to restrict mask wearing was watered down.
“We worked through some really challenging issues,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said at a news conference Monday afternoon. “We refused to be drawn into the toxic, divisive politics of the moment.”Credit...Cindy Schultz for The New York Times

By Benjamin Oreskes and Grace Ashford

Reporting from the State Capitol in Albany, N.Y.
April 28, 2025

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday announced the framework of a roughly $254 billion state budget agreement, ending a monthlong stalemate over public safety issues that the governor had insisted on including in the fiscal plan.

The budget deal, which will now go to the Legislature for a full vote, includes changes to make it easier to remove people in psychiatric crisis from public spaces to be evaluated for treatment, and eases so-called discovery requirements for how prosecutors hand over evidence to criminal defendants in the pretrial phase.

Ms. Hochul also successfully pushed for an all-day ban on students having cellphones in schools. But another of the governor’s policy priorities relating to the restriction of the wearing of masks was whittled down by legislators over concerns that it would be selectively enforced and infringe on people’s civil liberties.

“We worked through some really challenging issues,” Ms. Hochul said at a news conference Monday afternoon. “We refused to be drawn into the toxic, divisive politics of the moment.” Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, the majority leader, and Carl E. Heastie, the Assembly speaker, were not present at the announcement.

The changes related to criminal justice and mental health were major priorities of Mayor Eric Adams and district attorneys from New York City, who appeared several times with Ms. Hochul to push for the proposals. She made them clear priorities, frustrating lawmakers who were forced to pass several so-called budget extenders to keep the government running after the April 1 deadline passed.

Ms. Hochul did not provide many details on what exactly would be changed and to what degree, saying that her aides would iron out the final details with legislative leaders in the coming days.

Other changes may yet be in store, depending on the severity of the rolling cuts to federally subsidized programs, the specter of which has heightened anxiety among lawmakers. Most concede that a special legislative session may be needed to reckon with the shortfalls once Congress passes its budget. Ms. Hochul and others have been saying for months now that it is essentially impossible to plan until they fully understand the cuts.

“We can only devise a budget based on the information we have at this time,” Ms. Hochul said, adding the state had already been hit with about $1.2 billion in cuts.

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“There’s a possibility that we’ll have to come back later this year and update our budget in response to federal actions,” she added.

Image
Ms. Hochul, who is keenly aware of voters’ frustrations with rising costs for basic goods like food and housing, is up for re-election next year. Credit...Cindy Schultz for The New York Times


Still, New York’s budget agreement, which will be fleshed out and voted on next week, dealt only glancingly with the transformed fiscal picture that could be on the horizon a few months from now — a bleak outlook made even more uncertain by President Trump’s tariff-driven global trade war.

State Democratic leaders have stressed that congressional Republicans seem all too willing to cut entitlement programs such as Medicaid and Social Security.

Yet the budget proposal called for New York to spend $17 billion more than last year, made possible in part after state officials disclosed earlier this month that tax revenues and the state’s general fund closed the fiscal year with billions more dollars than expected.

Ms. Hochul, who is keenly aware of voters’ frustrations with rising costs for basic goods like food and housing, is up for re-election next year. Several Democrats are considering primary challenges, and several prominent Republicans, including Representative Elise Stefanik, are also weighing bids.

In effort to boost her flagging political prospects, she stuffed her executive budget proposal in January with populist efforts to “put money back in people’s pockets.” It included a $3 billion tax refund that would have seen New Yorkers receive between $300 and $500 and a generous expansion of the state’s child tax credit program.

The framework agreement with the Legislature included the governor’s proposed child tax credit of up to $1,000 for families with a child under 4, but the refund was scaled back in negotiations, amid pushback over whether that was the best use of so much cash. Now about $2 billion will be devoted to the program, with New Yorkers receiving between $200 and $400, depending on their income.

Similarly Ms. Hochul had promised no increases to state income taxes, although she proposed an extension of an existing tax on residents making more than $1.1 million through tax year 2032, and relief for many middle-class New Yorkers earning up to $323,000 per year as joint filers. The budget agreement reached on Monday maintains the tax cut but includes an increased payroll levy on companies with more than $10 million in revenue.

This largess would help fund the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $68 billion five-year plan to make systemwide infrastructure upgrades. Smaller companies will see a cut in their payroll tax burden because of the deal. The M.T.A., the state and New York City will each kick in $3 billion to fund the plan. Ms. Hochul also said that $1.2 billion that had been previously allocated for renovating Penn Station will go toward safety improvements and stopping fare evasion.

Harry Siegel: Limited NYC mayoral picks in a limited primary

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks at the New York City District Council of Carpenters while campaigning for mayor of New York City, Sunday, March 2, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

By Harry Siegel | harrysiegel@gmail.com
PUBLISHED: April 26, 2025 at 5:00 PM EDT

There’s a fresh glimpse of a silver lining in another slow-motion catastrophe of an election where circumstances and a relative handful of voters are again poised to decide on the city’s future with millions of other people here along for the ride.

Let’s start with the dark clouds:

The historically unpopular mayor, a Democrat who cut a crooked deal with President Trump, lied for months about how he was committed to running for reelection as a member of his party until announcing on the last possible day that, actually, he’d try to win a second term as an independent. (But Eric Adams is hardly running so far, while using his public office as a de facto campaign operation).

The Democratic candidate dominating the polls is doing his damndest to coast on name recognition and avoid engaging with the public, the press or the other candidates while racking up endorsements from many of the same institutional players who demanded he resign as governor not even four years ago because of his bad behavior toward women who worked for him. (And while Andrew Cuomo now prefers to say he was pushed out, he did resign).

A socialist with compelling presence and posters and promises but limited accomplishments, experience or credibility has broken out to lead the crowded pack of challengers as they’re all running short on time to close what remains a vast gap in the polls between them and Cuomo ahead of the primary in June. (Zohran Mamdani might want to talk with Dianne Morales or Andrew Yang about what can happen to surging candidates with dubious credentials when the klieg lights stay on them).

It’s a bizarre race where Cuomo and Adams are laying low while their challengers are running a gauntlet of candidate forums and interviews and appearances while laying out ambitious proposals for more housing, more cops, free buses, rent freezes, universal 3-K and afterschool and more as if the Trump administration wasn’t already punishing the city and state even before pushing a federal budget slashing slash huge new holes into already tattered social safety nets.

Voters will have their say soon in this clown-car election, first Democrats in June’s closed, ranked-choice primaries and then everyone in November’s general election.

Remember: Bill de Blasio effectively won eight years in City Hall on the basis of a quarter million primary votes in the 2013 primary. Eric Adams won his seat at the table by eking out a win in 2021 by a margin of 7,000 votes.

Now Adams has convened a commission to consider changes to the City Charter for voters to decide on in November. He’s doing so in part to block the City Council, which is well to his left largely because of how low-turnout primary elections have outsized influence on how the city is run, from offering its own ballot proposals.

The mayor’s commissioners are reportedly considering city election changes, including moving the city’s elections to even years and creating open ranked-choice primaries with the top candidates then competing in a ranked-choice general election.

Those are both fine ideas, with open primaries in particular being an overdue fix to New York’s deeply flawed democracy that too many voters are checked out of and effectively disenfranchised from.

As the Daily News Editorial Board explained it:

Under RCV as it now works, voters can put candidates first, second, third and so on rather than picking just one candidate. That doesn’t make support for a candidate zero sum; it also means that a voter could express support for a candidate who may not have a realistic chance of victory without throwing his or her ballot away.

The problem is that, in service of the political parties, ranked-choice is only operative in primaries, which remain closed. That means some slice of the city’s 3,081,389 active Democratic Party members who come out to vote in the mayoral primary — it was 26.5% in 2021, a relatively high number — choose the top Democratic contender for mayor, who then faces off in November against a Republican and any independent who might happen to get on the ballot.

In a city where Democrats are two-thirds of registered voters, that makes the general election a foregone conclusion.

That’s no way to run a democracy. A chance to vote for open elections would be a reason for every voter to show up this November, so that their votes matter in future Novembers.

Siegel (harrysiegel@gmail.com) is an editor at The City, a host of the FAQ NYC podcast and a columnist for the Daily News.

American Consumers Serve Up Bleak Outlook on Economy

The University of Michigan’s closely watched sentiment index fell to its lowest levels ever among Democrats and independents

By Harriet Torry


Surveys this year ​suggest growing economic worry among households a​nd businesses. PHOTO: RICHARD B. LEVINE/ZUMA PRESS


Key Points

Consumer sentiment fell to 52.2 in April, from 57 in March, according to the University of Michigan.


Consumers expect prices to surge 6.5% over the next year, the highest reading since 1981.


Concerns about higher prices and a weaker labor market suggest fears of stagflation.

American households ended April feeling much worse about the economy than they did in March, according to a closely watched measure of consumer sentiment.

The University of Michigan said Friday its final index of consumer sentiment for April was 52.2, down from 57 in March, a drop of 8% from the previous month. The index hit its lowest levels ever for Democrats and for independents.

The ‘Never Surrender’ President Retreats

The White House tempered its position on key issues this week, as polling suggests voters are souring on Trump’s steering of the economy

By Molly Ball

April 25, 2025 9:00 pm ET

President Trump’s ebbing popularity might be pushing him to moderate some of his lofty goals. PHOTO: KEVIN DIETSCH/GETTY IMAGES

This week, President Trump said he had “no intention” of seeking the ouster of the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell—despite having called for his “termination” just a few days earlier. Hours later, he allowed that tariffs on China were “not going to be that high”—weeks after escalating them to 145%.

All in all, it was an unusual week for a president whose rallying cry has long been “never surrender.”


Those weren’t the only fronts on which the past week saw Trump backpedal. Having once pledged to broker peace in Ukraine immediately upon taking office, he now says the U.S. could walk away from the conflict entirely if the deal he’s put forward isn’t accepted. And having once boasted that DOGE would radically downsize the federal government, Elon Musk said this week he would step back from the effort, having reduced its top-line goal by 90%. “He was always going to ease out,” Trump told reporters Wednesday.

Taken together, the reversals were a startling pattern for a president who prides himself on never backing down, potentially denting his political brand as an unflinching fighter. As the 100-day mark of Trump’s tumultuous second term draws near, the climbdowns were a signal that his ebbing popularity may be forcing him to moderate some of his lofty goals.

White House officials disputed the idea that Trump had reversed himself. Any reduction in the China tariffs would only come as part of a deal and wouldn’t be a unilateral move, an official argued, while Trump’s pressure on Powell never took the form of an explicit vow to fire him. The threat to walk away from the Ukraine talks was clearly a negotiating tactic, the official said, while DOGE’s work has had a meaningful impact and will continue with or without Musk’s involvement.

“In his first 100 days, President Trump has delivered on hundreds of promises and already accomplished his two most important campaign goals—the border is secure and inflation is ending,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The next 100 days will consist of trade deals, peace deals, and tax cuts. More American greatness is on the way.”

Many of Trump’s maximalist promises are better understood as trial balloons, and he has a skill for spinning reversals to his advantage, said Marc Short, who served as chief of staff to Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence. But Short said he viewed the tariff climbdown as qualitatively different because it constituted Trump backtracking on one of his core beliefs in the face of adverse consequences. “He has a remarkable ability to pivot and present a new position as if it was always the old position. It’s one of his political talents,” Short said. “But he truly believes that we can bring a nostalgic manufacturing golden age back to America through tariffs, so that walkback is a little more stark.”

Trump insisted this week that negotiations are under way with China that could result in tariffs being reduced. But the Chinese government says that is not the case, and has taken to openly mocking Trump. Chinese state television has nicknamed him “10,000 Tariff Grandpa,” and the hashtag “Trump chickened out” was trending on the Weibo social media network Wednesday.

Meanwhile, with fighting continuing between Russia and Ukraine and Trump’s ultimatum to both parties meeting a chilly reception, the president pleaded with his Russian counterpart on social media, “Vladimir, STOP!”

And Musk, once an omnipresent force rampaging across government departments, told investors he planned to spend more time with his businesses as the effort he once claimed would slash $2 trillion now looks like it will barely achieve one-tenth of that aim. Tesla profits have plummeted by 71%, and Musk’s high-profile attempt to swing a Wisconsin supreme court election earlier this month appeared to backfire: the liberal candidate who cast Musk as the race’s central villain won by 10 points.
China denies Trump’s assertion that negotiations are under way with Beijing that could result in tariffs being reduced. PHOTO: ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES

To be sure, no president can be expected to fulfill all his campaign promises, which are rightly seen as aspirational, and voters have long accepted that Trump’s outlandish bluster isn’t necessarily meant to be taken literally. Where detractors see flip-flopping, Trump’s supporters see flexibility. Trump has acknowledged that unpredictability is a tactic he uses to his advantage: In an interview with The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board last October, he said Chinese President Xi Jinping wouldn’t dare cross him, “because he respects me and he knows I’m f— crazy.”

And while Trump may have dialed back here and there, plenty of active confrontations remain as he seeks to reshape longstanding institutions through aggressive executive action. His administration faces numerous court battles as critics contend his actions threaten the separation of powers and due process guaranteed by the Constitution.

In his first term, there were numerous instances in which he made bold promises and then pivoted. Mexico never paid for the border wall that Trump only partially completed. The administration ended its practice of separating migrant children from their parents under public pressure in 2018. Trump publicly pledged to take action on gun control in the wake of mass shootings in 2019, then reversed himself after discussions with the National Rifle Association. He wound down his first-term China trade war with a 2020 deal touted as “historic,” but some analyses found that China never fulfilled its promised U.S. export purchases. Some observers expect the current trade war to end in similar fashion, with an agreement that amounts to little in practice but allows the president and his supporters to claim he’s won the standoff.

To critics, the walkbacks are evidence that Trump was never as resolute or as deft a dealmaker as he claimed. “He talks a big game, but he doesn’t have a coherent strategy, so he has to backtrack and then try to spin it into a win,” said Sarah Matthews, a former Trump White House aide who broke with Trump after Jan. 6, 2021. Matthews, who now views Trump as dangerous, said the dynamic was familiar from her days trying to portray his whims as masterfully intentional in his first term. “They’ll say this is the art of the deal, but how is it the art of the deal when he hasn’t actually negotiated anything?”
Demonstrators gathered on the National Mall and then marched to the White House last weekend, during a ‘Hands Off!’ day of action, a protest against the policies of the Trump administration and Elon Musk. PHOTO: PROBAL RASHID/ZUMA PRESS

Polls show Trump’s approval rating has steadily declined since the beginning of his term, slipping by about seven points in the polling average maintained by analyst Nate Silver. The public’s loss of confidence in his ability to manage the economy, long perceived as his greatest strength, is particularly striking: in a Fox News poll released this week, just 38% approved of his handling of economic matters, while 56% disapproved.

Democrats see a political opening in the president’s inconstancy. Research by the center-left think tank Third Way has found that swing voters are perturbed by what they see as Trump’s “chaos,” particularly when it comes to the economy and government services. “In our focus groups and polling, this comes up organically,” said Jim Kessler, the organization’s executive vice president for policy.

“The Trump chaos right now means higher prices, a struggling economy, dwindling retirements, and uncertainty about people’s economic well being,” he added. “For a long time, people could say, ‘You may not like him, but the economy is good.’ They’re now having doubts about the impact of his chaos on their daily lives.”

Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@wsj.com

Trump suffered at least 11 legal setbacks this week

As Jacob Knutson of Democracy Docket wrote, Trump suffered at least 11 legal setbacks this week as judges blocked Trump from gutting the Voice of America media outlet, blocked the administration from removing people in Colorado and New York under the Alien Enemies Act, ordered the administration to comply with discovery requests from Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers, told the Department of Education not to implement anti-DEI measures, blocked Trump’s executive order about elections, stopped the administration from impounding money from cities that don’t comply with its mass deportation orders, and blocked the administration from ending collective bargaining rights for federal workers.

Later today, news broke that the administration appears to have deported a U.S. citizen. Chris Geidner of Lawdork reports that the administration deported a two-year-old born in the United States and thus a U.S. citizen, along with her mother and her sister, to Honduras, her mother’s country of origin, even as the child’s father tried frantically to keep her in the U.S. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the Federal District Court in the Western District of Louisiana, a Trump appointee, said that “it is illegal and unconstitutional to deport” a U.S. citizen, and set a hearing for May 16 because he has a “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

In an interview with Time magazine, published today, Trump did not seem at the top of his mental game. He reiterated that the country is about to become richer than ever and that the problems in his administration can all be blamed on his predecessor, President Joe Biden. He claimed that he has already made 200 trade deals, which could be possible if he is cutting private deals with corporations but not if he is talking to countries: there are only 195 countries in the world. He claimed China’s president Xi Jinping has called him to make a deal, although Chinese officials deny this.

In the interview, Trump repeatedly deferred to his lawyers to answer questions about Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man the administration says it sent to an infamous terrorist prison in El Salvador because of “administrative error.” He said that he did not personally approve payments to El Salvador to hold the men his administration sent there.

FBI arrests Milwaukee Judge

This morning, FBI director Kash Patel posted on social media, “Just NOW, the FBI arrested Judge Hannah Dugan out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on charges of obstruction—after evidence of Judge Dugan obstructing an immigration arrest operation last week.” Patel quickly deleted the post, but the story had already gotten attention.

FBI agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan at the courthouse this morning in what, as Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo notes, appeared to be an attempt to draw attention and to illustrate that judges “must cooperate with the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign or else face overbearing actions from federal law enforcement.”

The story appears to be that on April 18, while Dugan was about to hear a pre-trial conference in the case of an undocumented immigrant charged with misdemeanor battery, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to arrest the person. They had an administrative warrant rather than a judicial warrant and Judge Dugan asked them to produce a judicial warrant. When courtroom discussions about the man’s case ended, Judge Dugan invited the man and his lawyer to leave by way of the jury door rather than the public exit, although both exits led back to the public hallway where ICE agents waited. The man appeared in the public hallway but got to an elevator before the agents did, enabling him to run down the street before the agents caught up and arrested him.

Federal prosecutors have charged Dugan with “[o]bstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States” and “[c]oncealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.”

George Santos’s Closing Act: A Prison Sentence of More Than 7 Years

Federal prosecutors had said Mr. Santos, whose pattern of lies and fraud led to his expulsion from Congress, should receive a lengthy sentence to “protect the public” from future fraud.

George Santos said during his sentencing that he had “betrayed the confidence entrusted to me” by the American people. He was given until July 25 to surrender.Credit...Adam Gray for The New York Times

By Michael Gold and Grace Ashford

The reporters have been covering Mr. Santos since 2022, when they broke the news that he had lied extensively about his résumé.
Published April 25, 2025Updated April 26, 2025, 1:26 p.m. ET

George Santos, the former Republican congressman from New York whose outlandish fabrications and criminal schemes fueled an unforeseen rise and spectacular fall, was sentenced to more than seven years in federal prison on Friday.

His 87-month sentence was a severe corrective to a turbulent period in which Mr. Santos was catapulted from anonymity to political and pop cultural infamy, a national spotlight that, even when negative, he often relished more than rejected.

Mr. Santos pleaded guilty last year to wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. He acknowledged his involvement in a variety of other deceptions, including lying to Congress, fraudulently collecting unemployment benefits and bilking campaign donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sitting before Judge Joanna Seybert in Federal District Court in Central Islip, N.Y., a teary Mr. Santos, 36, seemed far removed from the swaggering politician whose lies — that he was a college volleyball star and a Wall Street financier with ties to the Holocaust and Sept. 11, to name a few — turned him into a national punchline and led to mocking impersonations on “Saturday Night Live.”

His voice trembling, Mr. Santos told the judge that he had “betrayed the confidence entrusted to me” by the American people. “I cannot rewrite the past,” he said, but “I can control the road ahead.”

He asked for a lenient sentence to have time to “let me prove that I can still contribute positively to the community I wronged.”

But citing Mr. Santos’s history of lies and noting that he has not yet paid any court-ordered restitution to his victims, Judge Seybert cast doubt on Mr. Santos’s contrition.

“Where is the remorse?” she asked incredulously at one point. “Where do I see it?”

She expressed some sympathy for Mr. Santos and hope for his future, even if it was now derailed by a prison sentence. But she ultimately sided with federal prosecutors’ recommendation that he receive an 87-month sentence.

“Mr. Santos, words have consequences,” the judge told him. “You got elected with your words, most of which were lies.”

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Mr. Santos, who cried into his hands as the sentence was being read, was given until July 25 to surrender and begin serving his term. He was ordered to pay more than $370,000 in restitution to his victims and will have to give up 10 percent of his income toward payments once he is released.

After his sentencing, Mr. Santos straightened and pulled a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses out of his suit jacket. He strode from the courthouse to an awaiting car without speaking to the press, and he did not respond to a subsequent request for comment.

Hours later, he called the judge’s decision “an over the top politically influenced sentence” in a social media post and appealed to President Trump to offer him “a chance to prove I’m more than the mistakes I’ve made.”

One of Mr. Santos’s lawyers, Joseph W. Murray, said the legal team would seek a presidential pardon — something that Mr. Santos had ruled out just two days before his sentencing.

A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

If Mr. Santos’s lies accounted for his ignominious rise, his financial misdeeds are what triggered his downfall. Well before any resolution in his criminal case, his colleagues in the House made the unprecedented decision in December 2023 to expel him from Congress without a conviction.

After an ethics investigation found Mr. Santos had spent campaign funds on Botox, designer fashion, cosmetics and OnlyFans, more than 100 Republicans joined Democrats to push him out.

It was a bipartisan break from party orthodoxy that seems unthinkable less than two years later, as Mr. Trump uses the bully pulpit to unite Republicans in Congress behind him and hold their slim majority.

Trump Budget to Take Ax to ‘Radical’ Safety Net Programs

A draft document outlines steep cuts or the elimination of funding for programs that provide child care, housing assistance, foreign aid and health research.

The budget is merely the president’s formal recommendation to Congress, but it is likely to inform Republican lawmakers as they seek to fund a package that would extend and expand a set of tax cuts enacted during President Trump’s first term.Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times

By Alan Rappeport and Tony Romm
Reporting from Washington
April 25, 2025


The Trump administration, which has made clear that it aims to slash government spending, is preparing to unveil a budget proposal as soon as next week that includes draconian cuts that would entirely eliminate some federal programs and fray the nation’s social safety net.

The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year would cut billions of dollars from programs that support child care, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly, according to preliminary documents reviewed by The New York Times. The proposal, which is being finalized by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, also targets longstanding initiatives that have been prized by Democrats and that Republicans view as “woke” or wasteful spending.

Technically, the president’s blueprint is merely a formal recommendation to Congress, which must ultimately adopt any changes to spending. The full extent of President Trump’s proposed cuts for 2026 is not yet clear. Rachel Cauley, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that “no final funding decisions have been made.”

But early indications suggest the budget will aim to formalize Mr. Trump’s disruptive reorganization of the federal government. That process — largely overseen by the tech billionaire Elon Musk — has frozen billions of dollars in aid, shuttered some programs and dismissed thousands of workers from their jobs, prompting numerous court challenges.

The early blueprint reflects Mr. Trump’s long-held belief that some federal antipoverty programs are unnecessary or rife with waste, fraud and abuse. And it echoes many of the ideas espoused by his budget director, Russell T. Vought, a key architect of Project 2025 who subscribes to the view that the president has expansive powers to ignore Congress and cancel spending viewed as “woke and weaponized.” He previously endorsed some of the cuts to housing, education and other programs that Mr. Trump is expected to unveil in the coming days.

The White House is expected to release the budget as soon as next week, according to two people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the highly secretive process. The president is expected to couple his blueprint for 2026 with a second measure — also set for release next week — that would slash more than $9 billion in previously approved spending for the current fiscal year, including money that funds PBS and NPR.

In total, the proposed cuts are likely to inform Republican lawmakers as they look for ways to fund their economic agenda, including a package that would extend and expand a set of tax cuts enacted during Mr. Trump’s first term. Their ambitions are projected to cost trillions of dollars, though Republican leaders have explored whether to invoke a budget accounting trick to make it seem as though their tax package does not add considerably to the federal debt.

In an interview with Time published on Friday, Mr. Trump suggested that he liked the idea of making millionaires pay higher taxes to help offset tax cuts for others but also said it would be politically untenable.

Some of the cuts the administration is envisioning could exacerbate the federal deficit. The White House is looking to reduce about $2.5 billion from the budget of the Internal Revenue Service with the goal of ending the Biden administration’s “weaponization of I.R.S. enforcement,” which it said targeted conservatives and small businesses. Budget scorekeepers have previously said that cuts to the I.R.S. would reduce the amount of revenue coming into the government, since it would make it harder for the tax collector to go after businesses and people who owe money but do not pay.

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In many cases, the draft budget slashes many federal antipoverty programs, generally by cutting their funds and consolidating them into grants sent to the states to manage. The full extent of those changes is not clear, but the result could be fewer programs and dollars serving low-income Americans, who may be at risk of losing some benefits.

Among the most prominent programs that could be eliminated is Head Start, which provides early education and child care for some of the nation’s poorest children.

Documents reviewed by The Times show the White House is considering a $12.2 billion cut, which would wipe out the program. The budget document says Head Start uses a “radical” curriculum and gives preference to illegal immigrants. A description of the program also criticizes it for diversity, equity and inclusion programming and the use of resources that encourage toddlers to welcome children and families with different sexual orientations.

Despite the Trump administration’s pledge to make housing more affordable, the budget draft would reduce funding for several programs that support housing developments or provide rental assistance. The budget proposes saving $22 billion by replacing the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental assistance programs with a state-based initiative that would have a two-year cap on rent subsidies for healthy adults.

The draft budget also eliminates the Home Investment Partnerships Program, cutting the $1.25 billion fund that provides grants to states and cities for urban development projects on the basis that it is “duplicative” of other federal housing programs. It also cuts the $644 million housing block grant programs for Native Americans and Native Hawaiians, saying that these would be unnecessary because of new, unspecified initiatives such as enhanced “opportunity zones” that would give states greater incentives to provide affordable housing.

The overhaul of the nation’s health research apparatus, a few years after the coronavirus pandemic killed millions of people around the world, could also be drastic, with about $40 billion in proposed cuts to the Department of Health and Human Services.

The draft budget recommends cutting $8.8 billion from the National Institutes of Health, which it declared has “broken the trust of the American people with wasteful spending, misleading information, risky research and the promotion of dangerous ideologies that undermine public health.”

The proposal would consolidate and shrink some of the agency’s core functions that focus on chronic diseases and epidemics. It would entirely eliminate funding for some divisions, such as the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, which would lose the $534 million that it currently receives.

The budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would be almost halved, to $5.2 billion from $9.2 billion. Associated programs such as the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health and Public Health Emergency Preparedness and Response would be eliminated. A note in the preliminary document refers to overdose prevention funding by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration as the “Biden crack pipe.”

Although Mr. Trump has said he prioritizes “law and order” in his presidency, his budget proposes about $2 billion of combined cuts to the F.B.I., the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The D.E.A. cuts would scale back international counternarcotics efforts in European countries that are equipped to crack down on drug trafficking. The A.T.F. cuts would eliminate offices at the agency that the Trump administration says have “criminalized law-abiding gun ownership through regulatory fiat.”

The proposal said the goal was to invest in getting F.B.I. agents into the field and to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the bureau that were “pet projects” of the Biden administration.

“Importantly, this administration is committed to undoing the weaponization of the F.B.I. that pervaded during the previous administration, which included targeting peaceful, pro-life protesters, concerned parents at school board meetings and citizens opposed to radical transgender ideology,” said the note explaining the proposed cuts.

As part of Mr. Trump’s “America First” approach, the budget draft calls for more than $16 billion in combined cuts for economic and disaster support for Europe, Eurasia and Central Asia, as well as humanitarian and refugee assistance and U.S.A.I.D. operations.

“To ensure every tax dollar spent puts America First, all foreign assistance is paused,” the draft budget document said. “To be clear, this is not a withdrawal from the world.”

What’s Happening Is Not Normal. America Needs an Uprising That Is Not Normal.

Credit..Mario Tama/GettyBy

NY TIMES By David Brooks

In the beginning there was agony. Under the empires of old, the strong did what they willed and the weak suffered what they must.

But over the centuries, people built the sinews of civilization: Constitutions to restrain power, international alliances to promote peace, legal systems to peacefully settle disputes, scientific institutions to cure disease, news outlets to advance public understanding, charitable organizations to ease suffering, businesses to build wealth and spread prosperity, and universities to preserve, transmit and advance the glories of our way of life. These institutions make our lives sweet, loving and creative, rather than nasty, brutish and short.

Trumpism is threatening all of that. It is primarily about the acquisition of power — power for its own sake. It is a multifront assault to make the earth a playground for ruthless men, so of course any institutions that might restrain power must be weakened or destroyed. Trumpism is about ego, appetite and acquisitiveness and is driven by a primal aversion to the higher elements of the human spirit — learning, compassion, scientific wonder, the pursuit of justice.

So far, we have treated the various assaults of President Trump and the acolytes in his administration as a series of different attacks. In one lane they are going after law firms. In another they savaged U.S.A.I.D. In another they’re attacking our universities. On yet another front they’re undermining NATO and on another they’re upending global trade.

But that’s the wrong way to think about it. These are not separate battles. This is a single effort to undo the parts of the civilizational order that might restrain Trump’s acquisition of power. And it will take a concerted response to beat it back.
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So far, each sector Trump has assaulted has responded independently — the law firms seek to protect themselves, the universities, separately, try to do the same. Yes, a group of firms banded together in support of the firm Perkins Coie, but in other cases it’s individual law firms trying to secure their separate peace with Trump. Yes, Harvard eventually drew a line in the sand, but Columbia cut a deal. This is a disastrous strategy that ensures that Trump will trample on one victim after another. He divides and conquers.

Slowly, many of us are realizing that we need to band together. But even these efforts are insular and fragmented. Several members of the Big Ten conference are working on forming an alliance to defend academic freedom. Good. But that would be 18 schools out of roughly 4,000 degree-granting American colleges and universities.

So far, the only real hint of something larger — a mass countermovement — has been the rallies led by Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But this, too, is an ineffective way to respond to Trump; those partisan rallies make this fight seem like a normal contest between Democrats and Republicans.

What is happening now is not normal politics. We’re seeing an assault on the fundamental institutions of our civic life, things we should all swear loyalty to — Democrat, independent or Republican.

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It’s time for a comprehensive national civic uprising. It’s time for Americans in universities, law, business, nonprofits and the scientific community, and civil servants and beyond to form one coordinated mass movement. Trump is about power. The only way he’s going to be stopped is if he’s confronted by some movement that possesses rival power.

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Peoples throughout history have done exactly this when confronted by an authoritarian assault. In their book, “Why Civil Resistance Works,” Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan looked at hundreds of nonviolent uprisings. These movements used many different tools at their disposal — lawsuits, mass rallies, strikes, work slowdowns, boycotts and other forms of noncooperation and resistance.

These movements began small and built up. They developed clear messages that appealed to a variety of groups. They shifted the narrative so the authoritarians were no longer on permanent offense. Sometimes they used nonviolent means to provoke the regime into taking violent action, which shocks the nation, undercuts the regime’s authority and further strengthens the movement. (Think of the civil rights movement at Selma.) Right now, Trumpism is dividing civil society; if done right, the civic uprising can begin to divide the forces of Trumpism.

Chenoweth and Stephan emphasize that this takes coordination. There doesn’t always have to be one charismatic leader, but there does have to be one backbone organization, one coordinating body that does the work of coalition building.

In his book “Upheaval,” Jared Diamond looked at countries that endured crises and recovered. He points out that the nations that recover don’t catastrophize — they don’t say everything is screwed up and we need to burn it all down. They take a careful inventory of what is working well and what is working poorly. Leaders assume responsibility for their own share of society’s problems.

This struck me as essential advice for Americans today. We live in a country with catastrophically low levels of institutional trust. University presidents, big law firms, media organizations and corporate executives face a wall of skepticism and cynicism. If they are going to participate in a mass civic uprising against Trump, they have to show the rest of the country that they understand the establishment sins that gave rise to Trump in the first place. They have to show that they are democratically seeking to reform their institutions. This is not just defending the establishment; it’s moving somewhere new.

Let’s take the universities. I’ve been privileged to teach at American universities off and on for nearly 30 years and I get to visit a dozen or two others every year. These are the crown jewels of American life. They are hubs of scientific and entrepreneurial innovation. In a million ways, the scholars at universities help us understand ourselves and our world.

I have seen it over and over: A kid comes on campus as a freshman, inquisitive but unformed. By senior year, there is something impressive about her. She is awakened, cultured, a critical thinker. The universities have performed their magic once again.

People flock from all over the world to admire our universities.

But like all institutions, they have their flaws. Many have allowed themselves to become shrouded in a stifling progressivism that tells half the country: Your voices don’t matter. Through admissions policies that favor rich kids, the elite universities have contributed to a diploma divide. If the same affluent families come out on top generation after generation, then no one should be surprised if the losers flip over the table.

In other words, a civic uprising has to have a short-term vision and a long-term vision. Short term: Stop Trump. Foil his efforts. Pile on the lawsuits. Turn some of his followers against him. The second is a long-term vision of a fairer society that is not just hard on Trump, but hard on the causes of Trumpism — one that offers a positive vision. Whether it’s the universities, the immigration system or the global economy, we can’t go back to the status quo that prevailed when Trump first rode down the escalator.

I’m really not a movement guy. I don’t naturally march in demonstrations or attend rallies that I’m not covering as a journalist. But this is what America needs right now. Trump is shackling the greatest institutions in American life. We have nothing to lose but our chains.

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Electrify Democrats Who Want to Fight Trump

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York have held rallies across the West in recent weeks, pushing a message that President Trump and his billionaire allies like Elon Musk must be stopped.Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times


By Kellen Browning


The biggest political rallies anywhere in America right now are being headlined by an 83-year-old senator in the twilight of his career and his 35-year-old protégée.

Roughly 36,000 people in Los Angeles. More than 34,000 attendees in Denver. And another 30,000 on Tuesday night near Sacramento.

Those monster crowds — more than 200,000 people in all, according to organizers — have turned out to cheer on a fiery anti-Trump, anti-billionaire message from Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York during their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour of Western states. Mr. Sanders even surprised attendees at the Coachella music festival near Los Angeles last week, popping onstage to introduce the singer Clairo and make an appeal to young people.

As Democrats search for a spark after being routed in November, the two progressives are providing the kindling, offering the party’s beaten-down base the fighting spirit it has been missing ever since President Trump returned to office.

Even as some top Democrats tack to the center or try to find common ground with the emboldened Republican president, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez dismiss the notion of any concessions. Instead, they have stuck to the simple argument that won over millions during Mr. Sanders’s two runs for president and endeared him to the types of working-class voters who abandoned Democrats in November: The system is broken, with the wealthy enriching themselves while others scrape by.

“All over this country, people are struggling, every single day, just to survive,” Mr. Sanders told the crowd on Tuesday in Folsom, Calif. “Brothers and sisters, in the richest country in the history of the world, we can do a hell of a lot better than that!”

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Roughly 30,000 people attended the tour’s stop on Tuesday in Folsom, Calif., according to organizers, on the heels of even bigger crowds in Los Angeles and Denver.Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times
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Many Democratic voters have signaled that they want their party to do more to oppose Mr. Trump, and donations have poured in for politicians who have loudly criticized him and his administration. Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times

Fine-tuning that old message for an era in which the world’s richest person is wielding a powerful position in the federal government to benefit his businesses, Mr. Sanders is finding that Democrats are all ears.

“Mad respect for him at this point,” said Tammy Burgess, 52, a Democrat who attended the rally in Folsom even though she has long been skeptical of Mr. Sanders’s support for democratic socialism. “I like that they’re fighting against this oligarchy and the administration,” she added, because a lot of Democrats “are too scared” to do so.

The day before their Folsom rally, Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez drew 12,500 people at a stop in Nampa, Idaho, according to a Sanders spokeswoman, who said it was the largest political event in the deep-red state since Barack Obama visited in 2008. His staff said the crowd of 36,000 in Los Angeles last week was the biggest of Mr. Sanders’s career.

The enormous turnout has surprised even Mr. Sanders’s staff members, who have had to switch to larger venues to accommodate the crowds. In Folsom, attendees waited in a line three miles long to get in, the Sanders spokeswoman said, with thousands peering through fences and watching from nearby hills.

What remains to be seen is whether the two leading progressives can sustain this momentum and channel it into victories for their movement in next year’s midterm elections, or in 2028, when Mr. Sanders is unlikely to run again for president.

Rebecca Katz, a veteran Democratic strategist, said Mr. Sanders’s decades-long crusade against corporate power and inequality felt newly relevant to Democrats at a time when the income gap is growing.

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“A lot of people were ready for this years ago, but it kept getting swept under the rug,” she said. “More people are listening now than ever before.”

Ms. Katz said she thought Mr. Sanders’s progressive pugilism would resonate widely, even if it needed tailoring for a diverse and fractured electorate, especially in wealthier areas. His spirit of opposition, she said, could be applied universally.

“This is not about left versus center — this is about, are you willing to fight or not?” she said. “That’s it.”
In an interview before taking the stage on Tuesday, Mr. Sanders expressed confidence that the wave of anti-establishment anger could turn into something substantive for the left. His short-term goal is to highlight vulnerable Republican House members and hammer them on issues like potential cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. In Folsom, at the edge of the conservative foothills stretching between Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, any mention of the area’s Republican congressman, Kevin Kiley, was met with boos from the crowd.
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With a few tweaks, Mr. Sanders has stuck to a simple argument he has long made: that the American political system is broken, with the wealthy enriching themselves while others scrape by. Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times


But Mr. Sanders said he also wanted to hire organizers to help build a broader movement that would challenge the establishment in both parties — an aim he has long pursued, with limited success.

“The goal is to build a grass-roots movement who will not only take on Republican incumbents but also will demand that whoever represents districts in this country stands for the working class,” he said. “If you have incumbent Democrats who are not prepared to do that, they’re going to be challenged.”

Whether voters will ultimately trust proudly left-wing leaders to run the country is an open question.

Mr. Sanders, a longtime independent who suggested recently that more progressive candidates should run as independents, offered Dan Osborn, the independent who mounted a serious but unsuccessful challenge last year to Senator Deb Fischer, Republican of Nebraska, as an example of how to run on a working-class platform outside the Democratic Party apparatus. Mr. Osborn, a union leader, ran on strengthening labor protections, raising wages and enhancing railway safety.

Asked whether he had talked recently with former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. or former Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Sanders said he had spoken with Mr. Biden shortly after the election, though he would not say what they discussed. He also seemed skeptical of the two Democrats’ role in the movement he envisions.

“I think that the future of the Democratic Party is not going to rest with the kind of leadership that we’ve had,” he said.

Other signs point to a growing appetite for the kind of message Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are offering. Both raised staggering sums of money in the first three months of the year, according to new financial filings: Mr. Sanders raised $11.5 million, and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez brought in $9.6 million. Other, more moderate Democrats with an unflinching anti-Trump message, like Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, also posted impressive hauls.

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez, who is often seen as Mr. Sanders’s heir, has trended upward in very early — and highly speculative — 2028 Democratic presidential primary polls. But her intentions remain unclear, with some Democrats hoping that she will instead mount a primary challenge to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, who leads the Senate Democratic caucus and is up for re-election in 2028.

On Tuesday, she blasted Mr. Trump, demanding that he free pro-Palestinian activists whom he has sought to deport and that he order the return of a migrant whom his administration erroneously deported to El Salvador. And she pointed to the billionaire Elon Musk’s prominent role in Mr. Trump’s administration as evidence that the wealthy have corroded America’s political system.

Recounting how a plane had flown over the rally trailing a sign proclaiming, “Folsom is Trump Country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez pointed to the skies and declared, to laughter and applause, “It sure don’t look like it today.” She added, “I don’t think this is Trump country — I think this is our country.”


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Some progressive Democrats want Ms. Ocasio-Cortez to run for president in Mr. Sanders’s place in 2028, while others hope that she will instead mount a primary challenge to Senator Chuck Schumer of New York.Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times

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Recounting how a plane had flown over the Tuesday rally with a banner reading, “Folsom is Trump country,” Ms. Ocasio-Cortez said, “It sure don’t look like it today,” adding, “I don’t think this is Trump country — I think this is our country.” Credit...Andri Tambunan for The New York Times

Ms. Ocasio-Cortez also assailed the president in deeply personal terms, suggesting that if he “wants to find the rapists and criminals in this country, he needs to look in a mirror, today.”

Republicans should be wary of Mr. Sanders’s ability to appeal to voters in an authentic way that is not dissimilar to how Mr. Trump captured their attention, said Landon Wall, a conservative strategist whose firm, GrayHouse, conducts polls for Republican senators. He noted the Coachella appearance as an example.

But Mr. Wall suggested that by criticizing other Democrats, progressives could simply end up fracturing the party.

“It’s a clear sign that a Tea Party-style insurgency is building inside the Democratic Party,” he said. “Explicitly targeting incumbents will open the door to costly, divisive primary battles.”

Mr. Sanders’s rallies have also drawn independents and even some disaffected Republicans who, the senator suggested, were having a “a little bit of buyer’s remorse” after watching Mr. Trump slash the federal work force.

Faiz Shakir, an adviser to Mr. Sanders, said 21 percent of those who signed up to attend Mr. Sanders’s events reported that they were independents, and 8 percent said they were Republicans.

At the Folsom rally, some Democrats who in the past had backed other candidates said they were coming around to Mr. Sanders’s way of thinking.

Fred Hultin, 84, a self-described political independent, said he had no particular affection for Mr. Sanders. But he showed up, he said, because he was worried about the country’s direction and wasn’t seeing anyone else on the left taking charge.

“There’s got to be somebody buried in there who has some brains,” Mr. Hultin said. “But I’m not seeing the Democrats really coming through.”

Trump’s expulsions are jaw-droppingly cruel. But they’re part of an American tradition

Steven Hahn   Guardian

Since colonial times, self-designated ‘communities’ have used expulsions to address supposed threats. It helps to explain how easy it has been for Trump to win support

The recent expulsion of Kilmar Armando Ábrego García, a protected legal resident who had committed no offense, is only the latest example of the Trump administration’s unbounded efforts to detain and rapidly expel any immigrant, undocumented or not, who may come into its grasp.

Although expulsions – often known as deportations – of undocumented men, women and children have been regular features of life under Democratic as well as Republican presidents in recent years, those of the new administration have been jaw-dropping in their cruelty and utter defiance of federal law and judicial due process, in their heralded scale and in the lust with which they have been carried out. And we would be mistaken to believe that immigrants will be the only victims of what is in effect a widening campaign of political expulsion. After all, Trump has just requested a sixfold increase in funding for detention facilities.

Unprecedented as they may appear, the expulsive policies that Trump and his supporters relish, in truth, have a very long and worrisome history in this country. Indeed, they have been integral to political and cultural life since the colonizing settlement of the early 17th century, almost always expressing the will of a self-designated “community” against those accused of threatening its security and integrity. Puritans had barely established the colony of Massachusetts Bay before they expelled Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams for challenging their religious doctrine and civil authority. Others, of less notoriety, would follow them, not to mention the many women who suffered lethal expulsions owing to witchcraft accusations before the century was out.

The enlightened republicanism of the 18th century offered little respite and, in some cases, further provocations. Thomas Jefferson expressed the belief that slavery could not be abolished unless the freed Black population, whom he regarded as inferior to the white, was expelled to some foreign territory. His perspective, soon sanitized as “colonization”, would be embraced by most white people in the antislavery movement, including Abraham Lincoln, until well into the civil war. During the revolutionary and constitutional periods, those holding objectionable political views could be treated to tar-and-featherings, ridings on the rail and other well-known rituals of humiliation and expulsion.
Over time, expulsions became more common and widespread, almost routine methods of resolving problems

The early republic and Jacksonian eras, when political democracy appeared to be on the march, were in fact awash with violence-laden expulsions. The targets included Catholics (long associated with “popery”), Mormons (not seen as Christian), abolitionists (accused of promoting miscegenation) and Masons (reviled for their political secrecy) as well as Native peoples who were subjected to the largest mass expulsion in all of our history, forcibly driven out of their homelands east of the Mississippi River to “Indian” territory in the west. Both Alexis de Tocqueville and Abraham Lincoln feared at the time that the tyranny of public opinion and the rule of the mob, found north and south, were eating at the vitals of the young United States, and threatened to turn the country into a despotism.

Yet, over time, expulsions became more common and widespread, almost routine methods of resolving problems as communities – however large or small – saw them. For African Americans, expulsions came in the form of segregation, political disfranchisement, red-lining, the destruction of their settlements (think Greenwood, Oklahoma, and Rosewood, Florida), and the brutal treatment of those who attempted to find housing in white neighborhoods. For unwanted and politically radical immigrants, expulsions came in the form of deportations, vigilante violence and federal repression. And for the poor, expulsions have long come in the form of turning-outs, confinements to workhouses, the denial of political rights and housing, and arrests for vagrancy. At all events, expulsions depended on paramilitary enforcement, whether by armed patrols, the Ku Klux Klan, the American Legion, citizens’ associations or neighborhood watches.

Mass incarceration is but the awful culmination of an expulsionism that has been at the heart of criminal punishment since the advent of the penitentiary in the early 19th century. Enlightenment-inspired social reformers had begun to insist that convicted offenders be removed from their communities rather than punished in public, apparently to the benefit of all. From the first, however, those incarcerated were disproportionately poor and Black (wherever they were held), and subject to close surveillance and coerced labor, even when slavery and involuntary servitude were under attack. Recall the “exception clause” of the 13th amendment, which allows for slavery or involuntary servitude as criminal punishment. Expulsive incarceration was deemed an appropriate solution to growing social disorder and was quickly embraced when racial unrest became of concern to politicians and policymakers, who then roused an easily frightened public with warnings about crime and demands for law and order. The expulsions were political as well as social, disenfranchising felons not only during their time of incarceration but often for years thereafter as they fulfilled parole requirements and attempted to repay debts contracted while they were locked up. The state of Florida now has nearly one million formerly incarcerated people who are still expelled from the arenas of American politics.

Race-based gerrymandering, which denies the Black representation that a state’s population would have required, has enabled Republicans in some legislatures to in effect define themselves as a political community, set their own rules, establish rights that members could claim, and expel those who push back. In Tennessee, the general assembly recently expelled two duly elected Black legislators – and nearly expelled an “unruly” white female legislator – with some of the most explicitly racist language to be heard in public these days, clearly performances for their white Republican supporters. But they were only following politically expulsive traditions begun during the turbulent days of Reconstruction, when Black elected officials were expelled from their seats in legislatures, regularly run off after assuming local office, or murdered if they determined to stay in power.

This long history helps us understand how easy it has been for Donald Trump to attract millions of supporters by offering expulsions – soon, perhaps, of political opponents as well – as a solution to their fears of economic decline, diminishing opportunities, racial replacement and social unrest. As was true in the past, Trump has described “communities” under siege from internal and external enemies alike, and has encouraged summary punishments for those who have “invaded”, either from within or without. And as was true in the past, these are ethnic and political cleansings that should warn us of the illiberal cast infusing our democracy and of the dangerous road to its possible collapse. First they came for those who could be declared “illegal” and were accused of “poisoning the blood of our country”. Then …

It would be difficult to find a precedent for Trump’s expulsive policies in their potential reach and ambitions. Yet, frighteningly, in one form or another, they have happened before in America.


Steven Hahn is professor of history at New York University and author, most recently, of Illiberal America: A History