Latest news with #nativism
Yahoo
09-07-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
JD Vance: Some Americans Are More American Than Others
The day after President Trump signed a bill that throws unprecedented amounts of money at ICE, extends tax cuts for the wealthy, and slashes health-care and social services to do so, Vice President JD Vance was in San Diego. And while he might have been far away from Washington, the administration's immigration crackdown was front of mind: he was there to give a keynote address at a dinner hosted by the Claremont Institute, the southern California nonprofit that's earned a reputation as a 'nerve center' for MAGA thought. At the core of Claremont thinking is immigration. The think tank pushed for an end to birthright citizenship long before that objective entered the mainstream of the GOP; it claimed ownership over Vance's thinking on the topic after Trump chose him as his running mate last year. It was not wrong to do so. During the 2024 Republican National Convention, Vance tried to sand down the idea of what it means to be an American citizen to a more European level: the country belongs more to those who share its 'common history,' he said, not just those who ascribe to its values. He put Claremont's intellectual approach to nativism into action last year, stoking racial tensions over Haitian immigration to Springfield, Ohio. On Saturday, Vance took up the theme again. But this time, he had more to point to than theoretical arguments or viral campaign moments. The second Trump administration is pumping huge amounts of cash into the country's detention and removal infrastructure for immigrants; it's moved to end birthright citizenship; it's staged high-profile civil liberties abuses with various efforts to remove people quickly and scare off others from coming; it is contemplating denaturalizations. Its radical actions do not undercut the fact that there was also a strong messaging component to Vance's Saturday remarks: the administration wants to talk about immigration to the exclusion of nearly everything else. What Vance expressed to the friendly Claremont audience was a dramatically reduced vision of American citizenship. It's one in which having ancestors who have lived here for generations entitles you to more; a vision of citizenship that's long existed around the world, with a notable and aspirational exception in the United States. 'Identifying America just with agreeing with the principles, let's say, of the Declaration of Independence — that's a definition that is way over-inclusive and under-inclusive at the same time,' Vance said. He explained that such a definition 'would include hundreds of millions, maybe billions of foreign citizens who agree' with the principles of the Declaration of Independence, dubbing it 'the logic of America as a purely Creole nation.' By the opposite token, Vance said, conceiving of American citizenship 'purely as an idea' would 'reject a lot of people that the ADL would label as domestic extremists, even though those very Americans had their ancestors fight in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War,' he said, referencing the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit that was founded to combat antisemitism and that, among other activities, tracks far-right groups. 'I think the people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America than the people who say they don't belong,' he concluded. Dog whistles aside (you can count quite a few in the above), Vance is channeling an idea that undergirds the administration's most aggressive immigration policies — policies that are, after the additional $170 billion that Congress appropriated for enforcement this month, set to expand. Vance wasn't talking about an America that's entirely closed off to new immigrants; rather, it's an America where 'heritage' counts as much as values. Watching this, it's easy to go too far down the opposite path: thinking that what Vance is describing is a leap towards something new; assuming that America has always found a way to offer people citizenship based on values and not descent from some old stock. And it is, in part, new: Vance is making this argument to support, fawn over, and give his boss and his boss's favorite policies a highbrow sheen. The vice president hit a familiar note in setting up New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani (D) as a foil, demanding that he show 'gratitude' to the country and attacking him for not being sufficiently patriotic on the Fourth of July. 'I wonder, has he ever read the letters from boy soldiers in the Union Army to parents and sweethearts that they'd never see again?' Vance asked. Yet that bizarre line of argument was revealing in its own way. For all Vance's — and those on the new right's — talk of imposing a new order on American politics, they're still reactionaries of a very old variety. Birthright citizenship, after all, was enshrined in the Constitution after those Union soldiers' victory in the Civil War. What he described on Saturday was fundamentally regressive: a vision of American citizenship anchored far in the past.
Washington Post
12-06-2025
- Politics
- Washington Post
Could Gavin Newsom be a Mario Cuomo for this moment?
I can't tell you whether events in California this week will end up making the state's governor, Gavin Newsom, the national spokesman for a revitalized Democratic resistance or a symbol of runaway immigration and social unrest. Like most things political these days, it could tip either way. I'll tell you this, though: If President Donald Trump now wants to turn his nativist fury on Democratic states and their governors, rather than on Congress and federal agencies, he'll be doing the beleaguered party an enormous favor. Because opposition parties are always stronger when the opposition comes from outside Washington.
Globe and Mail
05-06-2025
- Business
- Globe and Mail
Donald Trump's corruption knows no bounds or precedent
There are few days now when I don't think to myself: what has happened to the America I once knew and loved? What has happened to the people who once made their country the greatest republic on Earth? It now seems impossible to imagine that this same nation, not that long ago, elected a highly educated, progressive and deeply principled Black man to become their president. Barack Obama may not have been everyone's grande chai latte, but he had a strong moral foundation upon which he governed. This same country, only nine years later, is now ruled by a white nativist who will go down as the most corrupt President to ever hold office in the United States. Donald Trump came to power in 2016 promising to drain the swamp in Washington. In 2025, he is the swamp, and happy to wallow in it while personally enriching himself and using the seal of the presidency to do it. And yet there has been barely a peep about it. It's like people have decided there are bigger things to worry about than a President who has added hundreds of millions (at least) to his own bottom line, all while sitting in the Oval Office. There almost seems to be a method to the madness with which he operates, too. The near-daily chaos he creates acts like a perfect foil, a distraction to keep Americans looking one way as he stuffs more and more money into his pockets. More often, however, the brazenness with which he defiles the presidency, and his naked efforts to build his personal bank account, are beyond belief. Often, he doesn't even try to hide what he's doing, so confident is he that he can lead his country with impunity. And immunity. Recently, 220 people who were the top purchasers of the President's $TRUMP cryptocurrency meme coin were invited to dinner at Mr. Trump's Virginia golf club, where he spoke behind a lectern bearing the presidential seal. Mr. Trump refused to release the names of those who attended – many were reportedly foreign nationals – and gave him money in exchange for his insights. 'The President is attending [the dinner] in his personal time,' Mr. Trump's press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at the time. 'It is not a White House dinner.' A spokesperson for the Kremlin would have nothing on her. Mr. Trump's recent trip to the Middle East also paid off for him, with a US$2-billion investment from a United Arab Emirates state-owned enterprise in the Binance crypto exchange, which uses the Trump family's stablecoin asset. Trump Media & Technology Group, meantime, has announced it is going to raise US$2.5-billion from institutional investors in bitcoin, continuing the company's transformation from a media company to a crypto play. Is there any wonder Mr. Trump promotes bitcoin every chance he gets? His marketing is making him (and his family) money. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy is one of the few politicians ringing the alarm about the President's rogue activities. '[Mr.] Trump's meme coin is designed to facilitate corruption,' he said on X. In a separate post he added: 'All of this money is going straight into his pocket. He is trading U.S. policy to get paid.' Lest we forget the President also received, as a gift from Qatar, a US$200-million 747 luxury jet for his personal use while in office, and for when he leaves in four years' time. There is graft and then there is GRAFT! After a dinner at Mar-a-Lago with Mr. Trump, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos agreed to finance a promotional film about First Lady Melania Trump that will reportedly put US$28-million directly in her pocket. Still, something as overtly shady as that barely registers on the corruption Richter scale in America. The Trump family has created a new club called the Executive Branch which, for half a million dollars, gives members access to officials in the administration, including the President himself. Somehow, Mr. Trump has convinced a broad swath of the American public that he is the one ferreting out corruption in Washington by getting rid of public servants working for the 'deep state.' In fact, the only thing he has been successful in removing are the government inspectors and ethics watchdogs who might look into some of his activities. Partisan loyalists have now been installed in places like the FBI and Justice Department to take the place of those once entrusted to make sure officeholders were held accountable for their actions. Mr. Trump hasn't just bent ethical boundaries to his will; he has smashed them to smithereens. And the anger over what he is doing? It's nowhere to be found. The America of today is barely recognizable. It gets uglier with each passing day.
The Guardian
12-05-2025
- Automotive
- The Guardian
‘Would do more harm than good': what will Trump's tariffs really mean for Hollywood?
Citizen Kane, The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, Goodfellas, Sunset Boulevard and the Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicle Bloodsport – Donald Trump's favourite movies are thoroughly American and 20th century. Foreign films? Not his thing. At campaign rally in 2020 he reacted to the South Korean movie Parasite winning the best picture Oscar by demanding: 'What the hell was that all about? We got enough problems with South Korea with trade. On top of that they give them best movie of the year? Was it good? I don't know. Let's get Gone With the Wind. Can we get Gone With the Wind back please?' Now the US president is bringing his brand of nativist-populism to the film industry. Last Sunday he announced a 100% tariff on movies produced outside the country, saying the US industry was dying a 'very fast death' due to the incentives that other countries offer to lure film-makers. 'WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!' he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Not for the first time, Trump had latched on to a genuine concern: Los Angeles is currently experiencing its lowest levels of local production in decades, prompting comparisons with the manufacturing decline of Detroit. But while the Motion Picture Association of America declined to comment, industry figures interviewed by the Guardian expressed scepticism about the president's proposed solution due to its lack of detail, unclear legal basis and potential to provoke retaliation. Ava DuVernay, the award-winning film-maker whose credits include Selma and Origin, says: 'It was thoughtless and lacked any business foundation, any knowledge of how the industry works. There are people in our industry who've stepped up to say this would do more harm than good. 'It's not about tariffs; it's about tax incentives; that's what drives our industry. Hopefully more light can be shed on that and there could be a reconsideration of this with proposals that actually get people back to work and don't take away from an industry that's already struggling.' In January Trump appointed acting veterans Jon Voight, Sylvester Stallone and Mel Gibson to bring the industry back 'bigger, better and stronger than ever before'. On 3 May Voight and business associates Steven Paul and Scott Karol visited Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, to discuss a carrot and stick approach to the revival of Hollywood. Voight, the 86-year-old star of Coming Home, Deliverance and Midnight Cowboy, told the trade magazine Variety: 'Thank God the president cares about Hollywood and movies. He has a great love for Hollywood in that way. We've got to roll up our sleeves here. We can't let it go down the drain like Detroit.' According to the entertainment news site Deadline, Voight and his associates proposed a 10 to 20% federal tax credit that would be 'stackable' on what states already offer. But a US producer who chooses to shoot in a foreign country would face a tariff equal to 120% of the value of the foreign tax incentive received, the report said. Ben Allen, a member of the California state senate, subsequently met Voight and his two associates to discuss the plan. He says: 'There's a lot more to the proposals that came before the president this weekend than just tariffs. We might want to pursue a national tax incentive as we're also pursuing a statewide. Obviously Trump took the tariff idea and ran with it, which is not a surprise given what we know he feels about tariffs. Allen adds: 'If this is going to be successful it's going to have to be done carefully and thoughtfully. What are the implications for the international market? This is a different kind of product. Does it mean that there's going to be some sort of tax on arthouse foreign films? Is that really what we want? 'But if it's the tentpole stuff like the big Marvel movies that could just as easily be made in the US but often times we're losing to Canada or the UK or Australia or elsewhere, maybe there's something to this idea. I don't know: this was a Truth Social post. It wasn't some thoughtful policy brief that came out delineating a plan.' It is unclear how tariffs on the film industry would work. Trump did not say whether he envisaged applying them to streaming platforms as well as theatrical releases, or whether tariffs would be based on production costs or box office revenue. It was also not certain whether productions split between the US and other countries – such as the James Bond or Mission: Impossible films – would be exempt in some fashion. Industry professionals argue tariffs are a blunt instrument that would hinder rather than help Hollywood compete with Australia, Britain, Canada and elsewhere. They could drive up production costs, leading to less output, more disruption for distributors and fewer choices for consumers. And reciprocal tariffs against US films overseas could have disastrous consequences. Jeff Most, a writer, producer, director and financier whose credits include The Crow and The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, says: 'The idea of of providing a stick with a tariff is quite counterproductive because it unquestionably will give rise to other territories doing a similar protectionist move and will ultimately then result in penalties to the consumer who ends up paying the price to the availability of material on streaming platforms. 'This is a wonderful moment in time that attention is actually being paid to this but it needs the right attention. It needs the right programme. At the end of the day tariffs are not the way to address this problem. That will only result in less being made, giving us fewer options as consumers in terms of what we see. It would decimate the independent film market.' Trump, who has frequently called tariffs 'the most beautiful word in the dictionary', effectively declared a trade war last month by announcing sweeping import taxes on dozens of countries. But many experts doubt the feasibility and legality of implementing a tariff on movies, which are considered intellectual property or a form of service, not physical goods that pass through ports of entry. Most adds: 'Trump is focused on promoting his use of tariffs to address whatever inequalities he sees. But at the end of the day you're talking about a business in which there is a tremendous trade surplus for American producers because the streamers offer their services globally, as they have as theatrical distributors. It's one of the bright spots of what our economy can tout as a winning area. 'To do anything of a protectionist nature will ultimately have devastating effects if other territories around the world put up barriers. It's our produced material and distributed material, even if it is shot anywhere around the world, which generates a great tax revenue base for the US treasury; that would be impacted significantly, as we've already seen with some of the industrial tariffs that have been implemented.' The concerns are shared by Laura Friedman, a Democrat who says she is the only current member of congress who has worked in the film industry. Her 20-year career as a film and TV producer included spells at HBO and Paramount and credits such as It Takes Two, a romantic comedy starring Kirstie Alley, Steve Guttenberg, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. Friedman says: 'We do not want to have a trade war over screening of films. I'm also worried about a tariff making it more expensive to go to the movies. We are trying to lure people back to the box office, back to the movie theater. I got into this business because I'm a filmophile. I love going to the movies. I don't want to see that experience gone. 'As far as we know, it affects streaming services as well. Does this mean that if you watch Parasite you have to pay twice as much as you would watching a different movie? I don't understand how this is supposed to work. I don't want a policy that makes it more expensive for Americans to stream content or to go to the movies. 'That would be a policy that would be counterproductive. It would hurt the industry and it would kill jobs here. I want to work with the administration on a solution that brings production back, creates a healthy industry, increases our ability to produce content right here in America.' The idea of transplanting cast and crew overseas dates back 75 years to William Wyler's Roman Holiday, the Hollywood Reporter noted recently. Most of this year's best picture Oscar nominees were filmed outside the US, while a ProdPro survey among studio executives about their preferred production locations for 2025 to 2026 showed that the top five choices were all elsewhere. California also faces intensifying competition domestically. Georgia, where many Marvel superhero films are shot, has offered a tax credit since 2005. New Mexico, the setting for drug drama Breaking Bad, has been doing the same since 2002. Texas, which has offered tax breaks since 2007, wants to increase its budget allocated to such funding. Many in Hollywood are advocating for increased tax incentives to fight back. Gavin Newsom, California's governor, has offered to work with Trump and called for doubling the state's tax credits and proposed a $7.5bn federal tax credit. Friedman agrees that state incentive must be coupled with a national film tax credit. 'LA can't do it alone. It's not enough money to compete when other countries have their federal government putting in tax incentives. California is struggling with recovery from the tragic wildfires that we had here in Los Angeles. California needs the federal government to be a better partner with us on wildfires and also on keeping jobs local.' But others question Trump's motives, noting that he lost California by 20 percentage points in last year's presidential election and has craved acceptance by the Hollywood elite only to find it elusive. He once said: 'I think you learn in Citizen Kane that maybe wealth isn't everything.' Drexel Heard, a political strategist who has worked as an actor, producer and writer, says: 'If he shows his supporters that he's sticking it to California, sticking it to Gavin Newsom, sticking it to the legislature, sticking it to voters who didn't vote for him then that's all he thinks he needs to do. 'But ultimately it will only hurt a large swath of people, especially union workers that rely on that work. If I'm a studio I'm going to be like, well, how do I make cuts to that? How much AI work can I use? And then that opens up a whole new world of problems.'
Telegraph
11-05-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
The poison of Trumpism has been injected into the bloodstream of British politics
Trumpism has come to Britain. I don't just mean that we are turning against markets, globalisation and immigrants. A certain rise in nativism is an understandable – indeed inescapable – consequence of years of failure on immigration policy. No, I am talking about something else. I am talking about the negative polarisation, the desire to drink the other side's tears, the tendency to see politics as a way to upset people you don't like, the culture wars and the consequent downgrading of economic arguments. I am talking, too, about the rise of personality cults – to me, the creepiest and most un-American aspect of the entire Maga phenomenon. The US constitution was expressly designed to ensure 'a government of laws and not of men'. The founders had a horror of what they called 'Caesarism', meaning that a popular individual might regard himself as bigger than the system. Yet Donald Trump's supporters demand not only that everyone should contract out their opinions to him but also that his wishes be the paramount end of US policy, bigger even than the Constitution. When vice-president J D Vance was asked why the US was making a hostile territorial claim against Denmark, a loyal ally which had answered America's call after 9/11 and suffered a higher proportionate casualty rate in Afghanistan than any other nation, he replied: 'We can't simply ignore the president's desires.' Many Maga supporters, including congressmen and governors, took the same attitude to Trump's interest in securing a third presidential term, in plain defiance of the rules. Trump then renounced that ambition, pulling the rug, as he unfailingly does, from under his cheerleaders. Yet nothing dents their sycophancy. Every twist and turn of his tariff policy has had his supporters swithering back and forth in order to hail his genius. 'Raising revenue! Clever negotiating position! Bringing jobs back to America! Making other countries reciprocate!' As personality cults go, Trump's is bizarre. Various dystopian novels and films down the years have imagined an autocrat rising in America, a man promising to rise above the petty, bickering politicians in Congress. But no one imagined such a man being so needy, self-absorbed, wheedling, childish, petulant and deceitful. They envisaged a tyrant who would lead the nation astray with powerful rhetoric, not someone who would tell petty fibs about how popular he was. As Prince Hal says of Falstaff: 'These lies are like their father that begets them; gross as a mountain, open, palpable.' No, the only way to understand Trump's appeal is as a product of negative polarisation. People vote for him, in large measure, because of what he is against: immigration, foreign entanglements, politicians and what has come loosely to be called 'globalism'. And who can doubt that we are seeing the same phenomenon in this country? Here, too, an electorate weary of the failure of the established parties is looking for someone who can be, as Trump styled himself, 'your retribution'. Nigel Farage is not Trumpian in personality. He is more intelligent, more empathetic and more eloquent. And whereas Trump came late and malevolently to the Republican Party, Farage has been creditably consistent on his big-picture views (not even his strongest supporters claim that Farage is interested in policy details). Yet who can doubt that the surge in support for Reform UK is largely driven by the same factors as Maga in the US? Above all, a sense that all the other parties are a failed cartel, that no one is serious about controlling the borders and that, yes, in order to shake things up, perhaps a slightly autocratic style is needed. How many Reform supporters could tell you what the party's health or education policies are, or who would be in a putative Farage cabinet? When your motives are essentially negative, in the sense that you want to punish the establishment, such questions become almost irrelevant. 'I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters,' Trump told a rally in Iowa in 2016, and he was right. Much the same is true of Reform, and for the same reasons. In July, the party expelled several of its selected candidates too late to have their names taken off the ballot paper. Yet those candidates got almost exactly the same share of the vote as they would have done had they still had the party's endorsement. One, in Barnsley North, who was disowned after it emerged that he has said that 'black people should get off their lazy arses and stop acting like savages', came second with 29.3 per cent of the vote. Does that suggest that Reform voters were looking for a local champion, or simply that they wanted to register their anger at the old system? It was to Farage's credit that he wanted nothing to do with such candidates. He has, so far, kept his party free from some of the crazier policies adopted by Trump and by anti-systemic parties in Europe. He has toughened his position on Ukraine, and is more of a free-marketeer than his American hero. But, to repeat, none of that has much bearing on his support. Another thing Farage has in common with Trump is that he has made other politicians shift their positions. When British Steel was effectively nationalised last month, I was one of only two people who spoke against it in Parliament – who spoke, in other words, in favour of what was a cross-party consensus until 10 years ago. There has been an even more hurried retreat from free trade, with the Conservatives joining Reform in pretending that the India trade deal will somehow mean higher immigration. Those of us who followed the negotiations, and who tried to argue that there were no such implications, were told to read the room. People were furious about immigration, we were told, and we should not insult them by telling them that they had the wrong end of the stick. I was reminded of the demented summer of 2020, when any claim made by BLM supporters, however obviously false, had to be humoured in deference to their lived experience. I can just about see, although I dislike it, the logic that made the Tories attack the India deal. Farage was going to claim that it undercut British workers, and no one would want to hear him being corrected. But the Tories went further and also attacked the US deal – not on grounds that it was incomplete and left the door open to EU control of our regulations, but on the ludicrous grounds that Britain was cutting its tariffs too sharply. Where has it come from, this sudden fashion for strong men, statism and protectionism? When did we stop caring about civility, reason and pluralism? I think the answer has to do with the rise of smartphones in general, and the lockdown in particular. People say things online that they would never say to someone's face. The online atmosphere is angry, aggressive, bombastic, conspiratorial and egotistical – in a word, Trumpian. People who are more comfortable in the virtual than the real world are not as put off by narcissism, rudeness or straightforward cruelty as those who spend more time rubbing along with flesh-and-blood neighbours. During the pandemic, parents stopped telling their kids to put their screens away, and instead told them to get back online to finish their homework. Unsurprisingly, young men of that lockdown generation are some of the strongest supporters of the new style of politics. Farage is a much more likeable and credible figure than Trump. But there would once have been a time when insisting on being a one-man band, and kicking out anyone in your party who grew too popular, would have put voters off. Not anymore. We are all in Trump's world now.
