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USA Today
02-07-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Can shared public spaces bridge the American divide?
On a special episode (first released on July 2, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: To what extent is divisiveness baked into our infrastructure, politic, and psyche? Anand Pandian, Professor of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, joins USA TODAY's The Excerpt to discuss his new book 'Something Between Us.' In it, he explores the walls that divide us as a nation. Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello, I'm Dana Taylor, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Walls, we all navigate them, whether they be the walls throughout our homes, neighborhoods, the places we choose to frequent, or the internal walls that allow us to maintain our distance from others. What do the walls we erect represent when we look at how they shape our society as a whole? Anand Pandian, professor of anthropology at Johns Hopkins University traveled across America in search of answers. What is keeping us apart? That's the subject of his new book, Something Between Us, on bookshelves now. Anand joins us now to discuss his experiences seeking out people whose views he disagrees with and whether our disconnection is a choice or a consequence of living within a world of physical, political, and psychological walls. Thanks for joining me, Anand. Anand Pandian: Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure. Dana Taylor: I want to start with the idea of cultural belonging in America, deciding who's in and who's out. Has this idea become increasingly fluid or has it always been this way? Anand Pandian: Well, this is of course a nation of immigrants and we've been lucky to share this country with people from so many places of the world, and at the same time, we have most certainly seen that cultural difference, racial and social difference have become much more fraught topics. In recent years there has been a lot of consternation around the question of who really belongs in this country and who may not quite have a place. And it's questions like that and concerns like that, that led me to pursue the research for this book. Dana Taylor: What drives Americans' suspicions of migrants, especially when we look at policies like Title 42, which allows curbs on migration in the interest to protecting public health. What's the origin of those fears? Anand Pandian: That's a really important question to think about, and in fact, it was the border wall in particular and the slogan Build the Wall. That was such a powerful image and idea in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election that motivated me to pursue the research for this book. I was interested in why it was that that idea of a wall around the entire country appealed to so many people. And why it was that an image like that seemed to make it okay for people to stop thinking about the suffering of those beyond those walls, the needs of those beyond that barrier, why it was that we could turn a blind eye to the kinds of concerns that migrants and refugees and others come to this country with, often in circumstances of profound need and even desperation. What I've found, however, in pursuing this research is that it isn't enough to simply think about the boundaries of the country, the division between our nation and others. That many Americans all around the country have come to live with many different forms of everyday walls, everyday divides, everyday barriers and boundaries that I argue in the book make it more difficult for people to relate to others outside the circumstances of isolation, separation, and indeed, segregation that they have fallen into. Dana Taylor: You wrote that living in gated or walled communities has become a symbol of security and not just for the wealthy. Are these choices about exclusion? Or are there other societal issues at play here? Anand Pandian: It is certainly true that gated communities are a serious phenomenon that we have to grapple with in the contemporary United States. One in five Americans who lives in a residential community at this point, lives in a community that is gated. And that has all kinds of implications for who people see on a day-to-day basis, and the simple fact that those who share those communities with people who choose to live in such spaces are often very much like them, who share the same background very often. And circumstances like that make it that much more difficult to interact with people who are different than those that one is surrounded by. At the same time, what I try to argue in the book is that there are all kinds of other every day walls divides barriers, forms of separation and isolation that Americans have also come to take for granted that they live with on a daily basis. You see this in the way that people occupy the space of their homes, whether they're in gated communities or not, the fact that people are spending much less time on their front porches than they used to, that we're seeing people walking less on sidewalks in the company of strangers and neighbors. You see it in the kinds of vehicles that people drive, which are ever larger in the United States, SUVs and trucks that make it much more difficult to interact with people outside the shells of those cocoons, often pedestrians and cyclists whose lives can be put at greater danger because of the sheer mass of those vehicles. You see it in cultures of the body in the United States that take seriously the idea that our bodies need to be secured from others as if they were also fortresses to armor and defend. And lastly, I argue in the book you see it in what I call walls of the mind, the ways in which our social media and our information ecosystems segregate us once again by putting us in the company of ideas we're already familiar with, exposing us to points of view that we already tend to agree with, and making it that much harder to access the ideas, experiences, and perspectives of those whose positions in the world and those whose experiences in the world are so much different than our own. Dana Taylor: Anand, you raised a comparison between the "certified clean idle crowd and the certified dirty idle crowd". First, explain what those mean and second, what's the cultural significance of this divide? Anand Pandian: There's an entire section of the book on roadway culture in the United States in which I'm trying to make sense of the rise of much more massive vehicles, as I mentioned before, SUVs and trucks. I'm trying to think about what it's like for those who continue to choose to navigate the world in a more exposed and vulnerable manner as pedestrians and cyclists, what it feels like to be outside the walls of those hulking vehicles. But I'm also interested in those who have in a way leaned into the polluting nature of some of these automobiles, who have embraced the fact that there are higher emissions and often much more polluting emissions at stake in larger vehicles, but especially in diesel vehicles. And that distinction that you draw comes from a chapter in the book on the phenomenon of coal rolling, which has to do with diesel trucks that are deliberately retrofitted to expel excessive amounts of black smoke, which is a kind of subculture here in the United States, a way of celebrating the soot and exhaust that comes from these vehicles, of thumbing one's nose at those who would say, "These are things that are polluting and that we should therefore try to control or restrict." There are cultures in this country that have formed around a backlash to those forms of environmental concern that would seek to encourage all of us to organize what we do as individuals in relation to these larger concerns around the environment. And I try to document how it is that people get pulled in to practices like coal rolling despite the incredibly violent effects it can have on those who are submitted to those kinds of tactics. Dana Taylor: What do you think it would take to turn public spaces of movement such as our roadways, walkways and transit systems into spaces that foster a way to experience a feeling of community? Anand Pandian: It's a really important question. It's a question that planners and designers and people who are interested in more habitable forms of urban space have really been wrestling with, and we see all kinds of interesting experiments of this kind that would seek to make our shared space more accessible and friendly and open to those who would like to occupy that space in different ways. You can think, for example, about the complete streets movements that are setting aside roadway space for pedestrians and cyclists and others on streets in localities all around the country. These kinds of possibilities also build, I argue in the book, on generations of social movements that have tried to organize for the protection of common space, for the protection of shared space, for the protection of places in which we can come together for more collective sense of who we are as Americans and what we owe each other and what we could be doing with the welfare of each other in mind. I think that there's a great deal of power in the idea of the commons, in the idea of approaching shared public space as a commons, a space that we nurture together, that we take care of together, that we look after together, and that we can protect as a symbol of the larger encompassing collective life that we still share despite all of these individualizing, isolating tendencies that we're grappling with these days. Dana Taylor: Have Americans reached a breaking point where we resist seeing others' perspectives and don't want to risk someone else's problems becoming our problems, this is a sign of privilege of moral indifference, exhaustion? What are your thoughts here? Anand Pandian: Yeah, I met many people over the course of this research who felt that the country was at a breaking point, who felt that we were teetering on the edge of something like a civil war in the deep inability that people seemed to have developed in talking to those that they disagree with. And we see this in all kinds of ways. We see it in our public discourse. We see it in work environments. We see it at the dining table when people gather as extended families and learn that they can't address certain topics because they're too difficult to take up. This is a really serious matter that we have to find our way around. And my feeling is that the only way to do that is to learn to have those more difficult conversations, learn to have more difficult exchanges, learn to see things from the vantage point of others whose position in the world may be very different than yours. Ultimately, I don't see these problems as moral failings on the part of individuals. I don't think we should blame people for how they are or what they've become. I am inclined as a researcher to see this as a consequence of the infrastructures that we've come to live with in this country, these isolating circumstances that have made it so difficult for us to see those other points of view. So the more work we can do to put ourselves in the company of others that are unlike us, to open ourselves up to more contrary perspectives, to have more difficult and challenging conversations, I think ultimately the better off we'll be in terms of coming to some sense of shared understanding and common sense once again when it comes to what a country as diverse as ours really needs in moving forward. Dana Taylor: Anand's book, Something Between Us is on bookshelves now. Thanks for being on the excerpt, Anand. Anand Pandian: Thank you so much, Dana. It really is a privilege. The reality is that we live in a world of such deep interconnections, such deep relationships with so many people both in our neighborhoods and in the world far beyond. We need to find a way of coming back to the importance and the reality of those relationships that we share with countless others around the world. This book is just a very small effort to try to move us in that direction. I really appreciate the chance to talk with you about it. Thank you. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Greene and Kaylee Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to Podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
The Hill
12-06-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
What has Trump actually accomplished, for all his sound and fury? Not much.
You don't need to understand President Trump to understand his strategy. You only need to understand Roy Cohn, the legal architect of McCarthyism and later the personal attorney and mentor to Trump. He wasn't a statesman. He wasn't even a policy thinker. He was a political street-fighter who distilled power into three principles: attack relentlessly, never admit fault and always claim victory — especially when you lose. This isn't just a style. It's a system. And Trump has followed it for decades, treating politics as performance, power as theater, and truth as optional. Now, in his second term, the Cohn doctrine is running the show. But once you recognize the playbook, the mystique evaporates. Beneath the fury, there is no machinery. Beneath the threats, there is no architecture. Trump is louder than ever, but no more effective. The country, bruised as it is, is still intact. And once we see the strategy for what it is, we also see something else: we're going to get through this. Take a step back. What has actually happened? Yes, Trump returned to the White House with more fury. He's issued proclamations about mass deportations, implemented sweeping tariffs, and imperiled funding for elite institutions he wants to punish, such as Harvard. His administration floats executive orders, threatens agencies and rattles markets. But the substance of governance remains thin. As of this writing, he has signed only five bills into law, the most significant being the Laken Riley Act. His much-hyped 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' passed the House but faces an uphill climb in the Senate. Compared to former Presidents Biden, Obama and even George W. Bush, who passed more bills and major economic and relief packages within their first 100 days, Trump's second term record is among the weakest in modern presidential history. His executive orders, meanwhile, have produced more headlines than outcomes. Despite issuing a record number in his first months, many are either symbolic, redundant or immediately challenged in court. Few, if any, have altered the policy landscape in meaningful or measurable ways. They serve more as performative declarations than governing tools. Even on immigration, one of his core promises, the numbers tell a different story. Trump deported, via removals and returns, approximately 1.8 million people during his first term. By comparison, Biden oversaw approximately 2 million deportations, excluding Title 42 order expulsions. Obama, once labeled as 'deporter in chief,' removed about 5.2 million over his eight years. In his current term, Trump has struggled to meet internal ICE targets. A federal judge in Texas recently blocked his effort to fast-track mass removals, citing due process concerns. So the rhetoric is aggressive, but the machinery hasn't delivered. The judiciary, too, has served as a firewall. The Supreme Court blocked Trump's attempt to rescind Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals in 2020, calling the move 'arbitrary and capricious.' More recently, it halted the administration's plan to deport Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act. These decisions underscore a pattern: Trump pushes, but institutions push back. What has persisted is perception. The southern border feels more secure, in part because Trump projects strength, whether or not the policies are working. His unpredictability on the global stage has unsettled adversaries. There is some deterrent value in erratic leadership, but this isn't strategy. It's volatility. And volatility doesn't build trust — it frays it. Meanwhile, Congress still debates. States resist federal overreach. Journalists investigate. Independent agencies function. Foreign governments still call Washington first. They may grit their teeth, but they haven't walked away. What Trump has broken is not the government. It's the illusion that leadership must be stable to be legitimate. This isn't to excuse the harm. Trump has degraded public discourse, eroded civic trust, and placed millions of Americans in a state of political anxiety. He's made cruelty a feature of policy, not a flaw. But the deeper damage — the irreversible kind — has not occurred. And that matters. There has been no constitutional breakdown, no military purges, no Supreme Court packing, and no canceled elections. Trump's critics feared democracy would die in darkness. What's happened instead is that democracy has dimmed and flickered but remained alive. MAGA, for all its fury, is not a governing ideology. It is a personal brand. Without Trump, it collapses. No other Republican has replicated his media dominance or party control. And even he is losing his grip. The longer this term drags on, the less fearsome he appears. In that sense, this is not a fascist consolidation. It's a slow-motion unraveling. And that's the paradox: The more Trump lashes out, the more it becomes clear he cannot control the system he claims to command. The real threat is not his power. It is the illusion of power, and our tendency to confuse chaos with transformation. Roy Cohn taught him to dominate the room, never back down, and frame every loss as a win. But governance isn't a courtroom fight. It's not a brand campaign. It's the slow, difficult work of building coalitions, writing laws and executing policy. And it cannot be faked forever. America has survived presidents who tested the boundaries of power — Nixon, Wilson, even Jackson. Each time, it bent. Each time, it corrected. Each time, it stood again. Trump is not the end of the American experiment. He is a stress test — one we are passing, barely, but undeniably. Yes, we've been wounded. But we're still standing. Winston Churchill, a man familiar with democratic dysfunction, once said, 'You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they've tried everything else.' We're trying everything else. The right thing is coming. Corey Kvasnick is an entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist, and a contributor to Common Ground Thinking.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump blasts Biden, aides for use of autopen
President Trump on Tuesday blasted former President Biden, vowing to look into the use of the autopen during his presidency days after his predecessor announced he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. 'Biden — look, It's a very sad thing what happened, but we're going to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation. Who signed legislation opening our border? I don't think he knew. I said, 'There's nobody that can want an open border. Nobody,'' Trump told reporters when he arrived to the Capitol to help break the GOP impasse on the reconciliation bill. 'And now I find out, that it wasn't him. He autopenned it.' 'Who was operating the autopen? This is a very serious thing,' he continued. 'We had a president that didn't sign anything. He autopenned almost anything. He opened the borders of the United States of America.' The president previously questioned if Biden's last-minute pardons in January are 'void' because they were signed with an autopen. He doubled down on that argument over the weekend also, after audio from the former president's interview with a special counsel was unveiled. Trump did not specify what legislation, order or action on immigration he was referring to Tuesday that may have been signed with an autopen. Biden in 2021 ended 'metering' of foreign nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border, which put an end to a Trump-era border management policy that limited the number of people processed at ports of entry. In 2023, Trump-era Title 42 expired, marking the end of a policy that allowed for the U.S. to turn away migrants almost immediately. The former president also signed an executive order last June that aimed to turn away migrants seeking asylum who cross the southern border illegally at times when there is a high volume of daily encounters. Biden had lobbied for a bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would have provided funding for additional Border Patrol agents and investments in technology to catch fentanyl and target drug traffickers, among other provisions, but Republicans blocked passage of that bill twice. Trump had urged Republicans to oppose the legislation, suggesting it could give Biden an election year win. Trump continued to question if an autopen was involved in policies on immigration, suggesting that aides who were more aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) than Biden were in control. 'No sane person would sign it. You know who signed it? Radical-left lunatics that were running our country, and the autopen signed it, and they didn't want him and they were disappointed in getting him because they wanted Bernie Sanders,' Trump said. 'And then after about two weeks, they said, 'Wait a minute, this is a gift. He'll do anything. We're going to use the autopen.' [And] they used the autopen on everything. He didn't approve this,' he added. The president on Monday also questioned why Biden's prostate cancer was not caught sooner. 'So look, it's a very, very sad situation, and I feel very badly about it. And I think people should try and find out what happened,' Trump said. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The Hill
20-05-2025
- Politics
- The Hill
Trump blasts Biden, aides for use of auto-pen
President Trump on Tuesday blasted former President Biden, vowing to look into the use of the autopen during his presidency days after his predecessor was diagnosed with prostate cancer. 'Biden, look, It's a very sad thing what happened but we're going to start looking into this whole thing with who signed this legislation. Who signed legislation opening our border? I don't think he knew. I said, there's nobody that can want an open border. Nobody,' Trump told reporters when he arrived to the Capitol to help break the GOP impasse on the reconciliation bill. 'And now I find out, that it wasn't him. He auto-penned it.' 'Who was operating the auto-pen. This is a very serious thing,' he continued. 'We had a president that didn't sign anything. He auto-penned almost anything. He opened the borders of the United States of America.' The president previously questioned if Biden's last-minute pardons in January are 'void' because they were signed with an autopen. He doubled down on that argument over the weekend also, after audio from the former president's interview with a special counsel was unveiled. Trump on Tuesday did not specify what legislation, order or action on immigration he was referring to that may have been signed with an autopen. Biden in 2021 ended 'metering' of foreign nationals at the U.S.-Mexico border, which put an end to a Trump-era border management policy that limited the number of people processed at ports of entry. In 2023, Trump-era Title 42 expired, marking the end of a policy that allowed for the U.S. to turn away migrants almost immediately. The former president also signed an executive order last June that aimed to turn away migrants seeking asylum who cross the southern border illegally at times when there is a high volume of daily encounters. Biden had lobbied for a bipartisan legislation in the Senate that would have provided funding for additional Border Patrol agents and investments in technology to catch fentanyl and target drug traffickers, among other provisions, but Republicans blocked passage of that bill twice. Trump had urged Republicans to oppose the legislation, suggesting it could give Biden an election year win. Trump continued to question if an autopen was involved in policies on immigration, suggesting that aides who were more aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) than Biden were in control. 'No sane person would sign it. You know who signed it, radical left lunatics that were running our country and the auto-pen signed it and they didn't want him and they were disappointed in getting him because they wanted Bernie Sanders,' Trump said. 'And then after about two weeks, they said 'wait a minute, this is a gift. He'll do anything. We're going to use the auto-pen.' [And] they used the auto-pen on everything. He didn't approve this,' he added. The president on Monday also questioned why Biden's prostate cancer diagnosis was not caught sooner. 'So look, it's a very, very sad situation, and I feel very badly about it. And I think people should try and find out what happened,' Trump said.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Frustrated Man Drops Six Figures On Incomplete 1967 Ford F100 Restoration
Read the full story on The Auto Wire It's a tale we see told over and over all the time: someone pays for a professional vehicle restoration, but years and tens of thousands of dollars later it's still not done. A father in Oklahoma turned to his local investigative reporter after he spent over $100,000 to restore a classic 1967 Ford F100 for his son's birthday, yet after two years it's still not father wanted to give his then 14-year-old son what he always wanted for this birthday when he turns 16: a classic Ford pickup. They found the right truck, bought it, then took it to a local shop that does restorations. While the shop set out expectations on the timetable for completion, the father figured it would take a little longer. Instead, it's taken a ridiculous amount of time and the Ford still isn't even running. Talking with KFOR, the man said he was told all kinds of excuses about why the 1967 Ford F100 wasn't finished. One was the shop had trouble sourcing parts, which seems ridiculous since it's not exactly a rare vehicle. With the truck in the shop's possession, the father kept getting invoices for work supposedly done. That was adding up and when the guy didn't want to keep paying, he says the shop owner threatened to have the truck Title 42'd, allowing the shop to take legal ownership of the vehicle. In other words, they guy felt he was stuck and being coerced into spending a ton of money for nothing. That would be enough to make our blood boil, but we see this exact scenario play out all the time, all over the country, and it's infuriating. Sadly, shops get away with this kind of behavior because customers feel intimidated and helpless. Most don't know what kind of recourse they have at their disposal. We recommend talking to a local attorney if you're facing this kind of situation. This guy turned to an investigative reporter who fortunately took up his cause. After all, what kind of work on a '67 Ford F100 costs $115,000? It's not like they did a restomod with a Hellcat engine, new chassis, performance suspension, etc. When the investigative reporter called the shop owner and asked about the long timeframe and astronomical cost, the owner tried to play it all off as standard for the industry. Then he played victim, saying the father was trying to turn things around on a minority female-owned shop (the guy's wife, who is a Colombian immigrant, apparently owns the shop). Be careful where you get restoration work done and have everything spelled out in writing before you hand over the keys. Also, if a shop starts doing things you don't like, rather than ride it out you might want to consider taking your vehicle back, then find someone else. Image via KFOR/YouTube Join our Newsletter, subscribe to our YouTube page, and follow us on Facebook.
