Politics

Some people are asking an important question after millions of people came out to participate in No Kings protests. After the joy and sense of community born out of coming together to say no to Trump had passed, the question was asked, are these protests making a difference? A better question is can these protests make a difference? PoliticusUSA will never bend the knee to any political party or special interest. Support our work by becoming a subscriber. Subscribe now History and research movements tells us that successful protest movements DO make a difference. Earlier this year, Brookings weighed the possibility of the success of the Trump protests and wrote about Professor Michael Lipsky’s research, “In 1968, Professor Michael Lipsky wrote an influential article titled “Protest as a Political Resource,” in which he compared effective and ineffective movements. He argued that successful movements have clear strategic goals, use protest to broaden coalitions, seek to enlist more powerful individuals in their cause, and connect expressions of discontent to broader political and electoral mobilization. Lipsky cited the civil rights movement as a classic example of political activism that met all of those conditions and achieved landmark political and policy successes.” Lipsky’s research was done decades before No Kings, and it focused on the civil rights movement, poor people’s protests, and other movements of the 1960s. Our world has changed since the 1960s. We are both less of physical community, but more bonded via technology that we as a nation ever have been before. I have questioned whether or not No Kings is a political movement, or a protest movement. The No Kings movement has currently reached only one of Lipsky’s criteria for a successful movement, but that one is a big one, maybe the biggest of all in 2025. Read more

The adult-education program at Federal Correctional Institution Danbury needed a civics teacher. Conveniently, a new prisoner with a history of intimate involvement in American politics—inmate No. 05635-509—needed a work assignment. And that is how Steve Bannon, the man who stood accused of helping orchestrate an effort to undermine American democracy and to overturn a presidential election, found himself on the federal payroll making 25 cents an hour teaching civics to fellow convicts. Bannon’s class met up to five days a week, with as many as 50 inmates showing up for the sessions. Whether that impressive attendance had more to do with Bannon’s lectures or the sweltering summer heat is anyone’s guess—the classes were held in one of the only buildings at Danbury with air-conditioning. In class, he taught the story of the American founding, referencing both The Federalist Papers and the writings of the anti-Federalists who believed that the Constitution gave the federal government too much power. His lesson plans described how the growth of what Bannon calls the administrative state betrayed America’s founding principles. After one class on the evils of the Federal Reserve and the national debt, Bannon says one of his convict students raised his hand to ask, “And they say we’re the criminals?”   The 70-year-old former chief strategist for Donald Trump had been found guilty on two counts of contempt of Congress. His crime: defying a subpoena and refusing to cooperate with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol. For four months, he would be housed in a two-story cellblock with 83 other men, all of whom shared two showers. Bannon’s willingness to serve time rather than cave to Nancy Pelosi cemented his status as a towering figure in the MAGA movement. “I am proud to go to prison” if that’s what it takes “to stand up to tyranny,” he’d told reporters on the day he showed up to serve his sentence. Danbury is not the kind of prison where you would typically find someone like Bannon. But because he had another pending legal issue—he later pled guilty to one felony-fraud count in New York related to a fundraising campaign—he could not be sent to one of the minimum-security prisons, sometimes referred to as “Club Fed,” where inmates live relatively comfortably. Bannon wants you to know that he was locked up with hardened criminals in a real prison. [From the July/August 2022 issue: American Rasputin] Just a couple of weeks after his release, I sat down with Bannon in the cluttered living room of his townhouse on Capitol Hill. We spoke for nearly three hours about his time in prison. It was a dialogue that started with a phone call the day he was released, in late October 2024, and continued over dozens of telephone interviews as the former inmate resumed his role as one of Trump’s most important outside advisers. As we talked about Trump’s return to power, our conversations often came back to Bannon’s experience behind bars.   “I wasn’t in a camp like that pussy Cohen,” Bannon told me, referring to Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen. Danbury is, in Bannon’s words, “a rough place”—“a fucking low-medium security with gangbangers and fucking drugs and stabbings.” Soon after he arrived, he told me he saw a group of inmates “take a shiv out and fucking rip a guy.” There was “blood everywhere.” When police officers asked Bannon what he’d seen, he refused to tell them anything. “You just can’t,” he said. “You answer any question a cop asks you, and you’re done.” He was eager, though, to tell me about the “murderers, fuckin’ mob hitmen, who were my besties.” This article has been adapted from Jonathan Karl’s book, Retribution: Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America. Among the prison’s few amenities is a small room with three TVs—“a Spanish TV, a white TV, and a Black TV”—behind a glass barrier; inmates can use handheld radios to listen to the TV of their choice. One evening in July, all three were tuned to the same channel, to the reports from a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Bannon had been in the computer room when a guy raced down to get him: “Hey, boss,” the inmate said. “Trump shot.” “What?” “Trump shot.” Bannon had long feared that something like this would happen. I had spoken to him weeks before his prison sentence began, and he told me the only way Trump wouldn’t return to the White House was if the election was stolen or he was assassinated. “I’m very worried,” Bannon said. The Democrats, the media, “they’re giving moral justification that whoever takes [Trump] out is a hero.” In a speech that summer, he warned a crowd in Detroit, at a conference sponsored by Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, that “between now and Election Day, they’re going to try to take out so many people.” It was, he predicted, “victory or death!” Now, watching the news through the protective glass, he was convinced his fears were coming true. The Secret Service had failed to protect Trump. A gunman had taken a shot at him. Bannon watched as a blood-flecked Trump stood up and shouted, “Fight! Fight!” Had Bannon not been in prison, he would have immediately taken to the airwaves to amplify that message. At the time, I had one thought: America is lucky that Steve Bannon is behind bars. For as long as Bannon has been in Trump’s orbit, he has been the voice channeling the anti-establishment rage at the heart of the MAGA movement, preaching a no-compromise, screw-your-opponents, tear-down-the-institutions approach to politics. He used his post as “chief strategist” in the first Trump presidency to go after Republicans inside and outside the White House who were unwilling to do what was necessary for Trump to transform Washington. Bannon kept a list of Trump’s major campaign promises on a whiteboard in his West Wing office. After seven months, only a few items were checked off, and Bannon was fired. The truly

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sunday announced there had been another U.S. strike on an alleged drug trafficking boat days prior. “On October 17th, at the direction of President Trump, the Department of War conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN), a Designated Terrorist Organization, that was…

Elie Mystal In this week’s Elie v. U.S., The Nation’s justice correspondent connects the dots between the Supreme Court’s Voting Rights Case and Trump’s whites-only refugee policy. The post Another Banner Week for White Supremacists appeared first on The Nation.

People of faith have a mission to serve. The ‘Yes in God’s Backyard’ movement offers a way. By Robbie Sequeira for Stateline Growing up in a religious family, Florida Republican state Sen. Alexis Calatayud has seen how many church communities are no longer anchored to a single building in the way they used to be. Her small prayer groups take place over chats these days, not necessarily in person or sitting shoulder-to-shoulder in pews. With churches in her Miami-Dade County district grappling with shrinking membership and aging buildings, Calatayud thinks those institutions can do good with their unused land, by acting as anchors of new housing rather than as bystanders in neighborhood redevelopment. “When you look at someone sitting on a small church, on a 10-acre property with a dwindling congregation, the question becomes, ‘How can this entity continue to be the beating heart of the community?’” Calatayud said in an interview. Florida Sen. Alexis Calatayud, R-Miami, explains her affordable housing bill at the state Capitol in Tallahassee in March 2023. “I think it’s to create a village, where we can create more housing and even centralize other needs in the community on that land.” This year, Florida enacted a measure, sponsored by Calatayud, allowing multifamily residential development on land that is both owned by a religious institution and occupied by a house of worship, so long as at least 10% of the new units are affordable. Some housing advocates believe the zoning override has the potential to unlock roughly 30,000 parcels statewide. Florida’s new law is part of a growing movement known as YIGBY — Yes in God’s Backyard. Touted by many faith leaders, lawmakers and developers, the movement imagines a connection between a religious mission to serve and the very real hurdles of building affordable housing. If the U.S. is to meet the nation’s demand for new apartments, developers are going to need land, experts say, and parcels owned by faith-based organizations are starting to become a part of the solution for some states. At the same time, some skeptics question whether the movement could strip local communities of having a say in neighborhood development. Places of worship are found in every corner of the United States. Land owned by faith-based organizations makes up 84 million square feet in New York City, for example, with enough land for 22,000 units on just the vacant lots and surface parking lots of those organizations, according to the Furman Center of New York University. Elsewhere, HousingForward Virginia says faith-based organizations own 74,000 acres in the state, nearly twice the size of Richmond. California enacted what is considered the first statewide YIGBY law in 2023. It cleared the way for churches and other places of worship, as well as nonprofit universities, to create affordable housing on their land. It allows landowners to bypass public hearings, discretionary votes by city councils or planning boards, and certain environmental reviews so long as they meet affordability requirements, with at least 75% of the homes affordable for low-income households. Several states — Arizona, Colorado, Kentucky, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York and Texas — have considered YIGBY legislation this year, though none has passed. And a bill filed last month in Congress would allow rental properties to be built on currently unused church land with federal assistance. Opponents of the Colorado bill frame it as state overreach on local zoning decisions and worry about a potential pathway for religious landowners to bypass Fair Housing Act protections for housing applicants who may not share that faith, according to a position paper opposing Colorado’s YIGBY legislation. Related | Locals oppose ‘insane’ plan to sell 500K acres of public lands for housing in Nevada and Utah Beverly Stables, a lobbyist for the Colorado Municipal League, told Stateline that local governments worry YIGBY bills could undermine constitutional home-rule authority and saddle towns with unfunded state mandates. “Our members have worked successfully with schools and churches on housing projects already,” she said. “The question is, what problem are we really trying to solve?” The Rev. Patrick Reidy, an associate professor of law at Notre Dame who has studied the relationship between housing and faith-based organizations, says states and cities are eager to partner with faith-based organizations to use their land. It’s not an easy decision for faith leaders to switch the purpose of their land from a devoted congregation space to housing, he said. “The decision to change the way church land has been used historically for decades or even centuries is not easy for a place of worship to make, so lawmakers should meet faith communities where they are,” said Reidy, who also is co-director of Notre Dame’s Church Properties Initiative. “It’s more an understanding that the way places of worship approach housing is from a moral mission to serve, so things like financing, zoning and legal know-how to create housing requires some walk-through for faith-based organizations,” Reidy said. “The real challenge is learning to speak each other’s language.” ‘Right in the middle’ Every afternoon at 3:22, members of St. John’s Lutheran Church in Madison, Wisconsin, pause what they are doing and pray. Whether they are working, at home, watching baseball’s Milwaukee Brewers or sitting in a temporary worship space, they pray at that exact time. It isn’t random: “322” is the address where the German Lutheran church has stood downtown at East Washington Avenue and North Hancock Street — just a block from the state Capitol — for 170 years, the Rev. Peter Beeson said. Congregation members no longer worship there because the site could be set for the biggest transformation in its history: trading in stained-glass windows and church pews for a 10-story high-rise that will combine a worship space with more than 100 affordable apartments. Beeson told Stateline that the congregation moved out of the building in the fall of 2023 for a groundbreaking later that same year. “Our current building was built in 1905, and was nearing the end of its useful life, with many additions and renovations over the years,” Beeson said. “And it made sense to sacrifice our existing

The questions keep coming for Speaker Mike Johnson about why he has not sworn in Rep.-Elect Adelita Grijalva of Arizona. Johnson has increasingly shown signs of cracking, as for once the mainstream press has gotten a hold of some Republican hypocrisy and is not letting it go. On ABC’s This Week, Jon Karl asked Johnson, “When are you going to swear in Representative-elect Adelita Grijalva?” The speaker responded by trying to blame Chuck Schumer for his decision to keep the House closed, “As soon as we get back to legislative session, when Chuck Schumer allows us to turn the lights back on.” Karl asked Johnson was he hasn’t done it already, and the speaker tried to blame Nancy Pelosi, “Because this is the way the institution works. To — I’m following the Pelosi precedent, by the way. When my dear friend from Louisiana, Julia Letlow, was elected to fill the seat of her deceased husband because of COVID, Nancy Pelosi took days to swear her in. By the way –” Karl asked, “Are you saying — let me stop you. Are you saying that Nancy Pelosi refused to swear her in earlier?” Johnson tried to change his story, “No, I’m saying — that’s — my very point is, this is the normal process -”- Karl was ready for Johnson’s example, “Because my understanding is that was the date that actually the representative-elect, Letlow, at the time requested. That she had obviously — her — her –” Keep reading and watch the video of Johnson’s new excuse for not swearing in Grijalva. Read more

In what appears to be a case of extreme political hardball, the Trump administration has frozen funding for two of the most important infrastructure projects in the country, both based in New York City: the construction of new tunnels to carry trains under the Hudson River, known as the Gateway project, and the extension of Manhattan’s Second Avenue Subway. The White House’s decision, announced during the government shutdown, seems designed to put pressure on Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leaders in the Senate and House respectively, who both happen to represent New York State. But the specific way in which Donald Trump has decided to block the projects—by imposing an onerous regulatory-review process—is a troubling omen of how he might broadly undermine development across the country. A figure who campaigned on promises to slash government bureaucracy and unleash prosperity has now become the nation’s NIMBY in chief.                           If anyone should appreciate the downsides of excessive red tape, it’s Trump. Forty years ago, the New York City parks department was struggling to rebuild Central Park’s decrepit Wollman ice-skating rink. But a state anti-corruption statute known as the Wicks Law precluded the city government from hiring a single general contractor to do the job. Instead, the parks department was required to bid the plumbing, electrical, and ventilation jobs separately, lest they all be awarded to some corrupt municipal official’s incompetent brother-in-law. As a result, the new rink’s construction had run behind schedule and over budget. Most dispiriting, when the project was ostensibly completed in 1986, the ice wouldn’t stay frozen. Mayor Ed Koch was rightfully enraged. Then swooped in a local builder named Donald Trump, who made the mayor an offer he  couldn’t refuse: Hand the rink over to the Trump Corporation, and the private company would rebuild it once more, for a much lower fee and no profit. What Trump understood was that, as a private developer, he could bypass the demands of the Wicks Law and accomplish what government had proved incapable of doing. And he did: The rink opened under budget and before the next holiday season, and Trump became known as a man who got things done. One skater, interviewed following the new rink’s celebratory opening, said of the future president: “Anybody who can get anything done right and done on time in New York is a bona fide hero. He should get a ticker-tape parade.” Now New York City is again trying to get something done, and this time, Trump is the obstacle. The problem revolves around diversity mandates. The federal government has long required that companies hired with federal funds direct at least 10 percent of the subcontracts for any given project to “disadvantaged business entities,” typically small businesses owned by minority or female executives. Because New York’s tunnel projects, as with essentially all major U.S. infrastructure, rely substantially on federal funding, the firms employed to build them have been subject to that requirement. [Marc J. Dunkelman: How progressives broke the government] Given Trump’s well-established antipathy toward diversity initiatives, you might have expected him to reverse any policy designed to benefit minority and female-owned businesses moving forward. Instead, in the case of the New York City projects, his administration has replaced one set of rules with an even more burdensome process that requires changing contracts for work that has already begun. As soon as the shutdown began on October 1, the Department of Transportation announced that it would investigate whether New York’s application of the rules favoring minority and female-owned businesses was contrary to new rules that the Trump administration had announced the day before. Until the review was complete, Washington would not uphold its financial obligations to the two projects. And thus, it seemed, the whole stack of financing, with preparatory work and manufacturing already under way, was at risk. Whether the “disadvantaged business entities” rule is good policy—whether the costs that it imposes on extending public transit to underprivileged communities, for example, outweigh the benefits to those communities—is up for debate. But when the various state agencies building these megaprojects signed the contracts to begin construction, they were unquestionably in compliance with the guidance they had received from Washington. Typically, when the government changes its guidance, the update applies only prospectively; projects that broke ground before the change are grandfathered in. But that’s not what Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy asserted. The government entities overseeing the tunnel projects, he announced, would need to follow the newly issued rules even though their contracts had already been signed. Until he was satisfied that they were in compliance, the agencies would be cut off. The implications of Trump’s stance are remarkable. After all, the Second Avenue Subway and Gateway projects are not the only ones to have heeded the federal law first passed decades ago to direct contracts to disadvantaged businesses. All of the major federal transportation projects being pursued in red and blue states alike have taken pains to comply. The Trump administration seems to be claiming the right to shut down every federally subsidized transportation project across the country. (On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that the Gateway project had been “terminated.”) America pays orders of magnitude more for infrastructure projects than other wealthy countries do. And a growing body of research reveals that the ultimate source of those added costs is process. Any given project faces so many legal hurdles—environmental reviews, community demands, preservation standards, and more—that contractors are compelled to charge higher prices for fears of delays, changes, and unforeseen hurdles. Trump seems to have won office in part by convincing some voters that he would do for the whole country a version of what he had done with Wollman Rink: sidestep burdensome regulations and simply get the job done. As president, however, he isn’t reprising his old role as a fixer. He is using the power of the White House not to get things done but to load projects down with bureaucracy. Instead of cutting through red tape,

The Senate on Thursday morning will hold its seventh vote on the GOP- and Democratic-led stopgap funding bills that could reopen the government. Senate Republicans need to flip at least five more Democrats to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to turn the lights back on. Despite three defections thus far, the last six votes on…

Laura Flanders The negotiator for the pro-Palestine student protests at Columbia University who was abducted by ICE explains why he is suing the Trump administration for $20 million. The post Mahmoud Khalil Warns That the US Is Failing the Palestine Test appeared first on The Nation.

Democrats know that they have the upper hand on the government shutdown. The arguments that Democrats have made for Republicans to come to the table and end their shutdown have been centered on the issue of healthcare, but there is also a deeper principle at work that resonates with a majority of Americans. Ever since the Republican tax cuts for the rich, paid for by cutting healthcare legislation, the issue of fairness has been lingering beneath the surface. Why should the American people have to pay for tax cuts for those who already have the most by losing their health insurance, or at best face exponentially rising costs? During an interview on CNN’s This Morning, Hakeem Jeffries put that question into policy terms when he explained why a one-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies was not good enough. CNN’s John Berman asked, “Are you suggesting that when it comes to Obamacare subsidies, you are for permanence or broke? If they’re not made permanent, you won’t change your position on the shutdown?” Jeffries answered: No, what I’m suggesting is that we need to have a meaningful bipartisan discussion, that our position as articulated in the legislation that we’ve introduced is a permanent extension of the Affordable Care Act tax credits. But we’re open to having a conversation in good faith to try to address this Republican health care crisis. It’s ironic, however, that Republicans just a few months ago passed their one big ugly bill, which included permanent tax breaks for their billionaire donors, the wealthiest and the most well-off people in the United States of America. Read more and watch the full interview below. Read more