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Dear Progressive Reader,

It can be difficult to keep track of the multiple fronts on which the Trump Administration is attacking our democratic institutions. Three areas I have been looking at this week may seem distinct, but have some overlaps. The first is the ongoing federalization of policing in the nation’s capital. It makes perfect sense that the President would start with the easiest target, the city where he actually has some legal ability ([link removed]) to subvert local control. Recent efforts to use National Guard and even U.S. Marines in Los Angeles have been met with a legal challenge ([link removed]) by California’s Governor Gavin Newsom. A similar use ([link removed]) of more than 750 federal officers in Portland, Oregon, in 2020 also received legal pushback and was eventually ended.
In spite of lacking the legal authority, Donald Trump has continued to threaten deployments to other cities. As I noted last week, when Trump initially announced the Washington, D.C., takeover, he threatened ([link removed]) other cities, and now he has identified his next target, saying ([link removed]) on Friday: “Chicago's a mess . . . we'll straighten that one out probably next, that'll be our next one after this.” The playbook is not without historical precedent—as I pointed out in a previous newsletter, William L. Shirer, in his first hand reporting from Germany for CBS, described ([link removed]) how Adolf Hitler moved to consolidate control over local police forces and bring their administration under the federal government.

Another takeover that has ominous historical echoes is the attack on cultural institutions and the efforts to remove “woke culture” from our national museums, replacing it with what Trump terms ([link removed]) “Brightness.” An article on the official White House website highlights ([link removed]) a series of artworks with which the administration finds fault (including a portrait of Dr. Anthony Fauci). A recent letter ([link removed]) from the Trump Administration to Smithsonian head Lonnie G. Bunch III indicates that its exhibits and educational materials are now under review. In his classic 1966 volume Nazi Culture ([link removed]) , historian George Mosse describes
a similar crusade by Adolf Hitler to reshape German culture. “During the long years in which I planned the formation of a new Reich,” Hitler is quoted as saying in a 1937 speech, “I gave much thought to the tasks that would await us in the cultural cleansing of the people’s life: there was to be a cultural renaissance as well as political and economic reform.”

Finally, an area that has received less note in national news is the expansion of private, for-profit detention following ICE arrests of immigrants around the country. In August 2016, historian Evan Taparata reported ([link removed]) for the public radio program The World, noting that at that time “The Department of Justice announced . . . that the United States will no longer use privately managed facilities to jail individuals.” However, one of the largest players in the field of private prison creation the GEO Group ([link removed]'s%20mission%20is%20to%20develop,to%20the%20men%20and%20women) , is now a leader in the provision of private immigrant detention facilities, as David Bacon described ([link removed]) in his article on our website earlier this month. An ominous
part of the private prison system was the program of “convict leasing,” which is described ([link removed]) in the PBS documentary Slavery by Another Name. Now convict leasing has been making a comeback ([link removed]) through the private prison industry. Initially used to replace migrant workers whose numbers have been declining ([link removed]) due to the crackdown ([link removed]) on immigrants, now detained immigrants themselves are potentially being used ([link removed]) in prison labor schemes by these private detention facilities. And in Florida, where the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz” facility may soon be forced to shut down
([link removed]) , the state is seeking to loosen ([link removed].) decades-old protections against the use of child labor. What could possibly happen next?

This week on our website, Terrance Sullivan reports on ([link removed]) a “whites only” enclave being built in Arkansas; Mike Ervin looks at ([link removed]) the attempt by the Trump Administration to make people with disabilities invisible; Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies discuss ([link removed]) the possibilities for peace in Ukraine; and Michael Atkinson reviews ([link removed]) the first of a two-part documentary on the crushing of press freedoms in Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Putin. Plus, Carol Burris examines
([link removed]) a new report on the charter schools industry; and Tania Fabo pens an op-ed on the importance of diversity in science, explaining ([link removed]) : “If we believe that science must be by and for everyone, now is the time to fight for the world we want our science to exist in.”

Finally, today marks the ninety-eighth anniversary of the execution of labor activists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti during a surge of anti-immigrant sentiment a century ago. The Progressive (then called La Follette’s Magazine) covered the case extensively as I reported ([link removed]) in 2019, writing, “Fifty years after their deaths, in 1977, Sacco and Vanzetti were exonerated by Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who said in a proclamation that their trial and execution ‘should serve to remind all civilized people of the constant need to guard against our susceptibility to prejudice, our intolerance of unorthodox ideas, and our failure to defend the rights of persons who are looked upon as strangers in our midst.’ ”

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,
Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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