A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo. Sign up for the email version.
An America for White Americans
I usually cast President Trump’s anti-immigrant mass deportation agenda as a rule of law story. But it is of course so much more than that. It is fundamentally a story about racism, xenophobia, and othering. It’s about preying on our fears, differences, and prejudices to create a villainous foe whom he can easily vanquish in repeated set-pieces. It’s about letting loose the worst of our impulses to heighten and sustain divisions among us.
The mass deportation agenda is just one part of a larger agenda in which white Americans are fronted as the real America and everyone else is second-class, unless they individually demonstrate in lavish ways a high enough degree of fealty to Donald Trump.
It’s against this backdrop that much of this week’s news is taking place: Trump’s minimizing of chattel slavery; the federalization of D.C. police and the deployment of red state national guards to a plurality Black city; the phasing out of support for non-native English speakers in school; new hoops for legal immigrants to jump through; and a gauntlet of other indignities and slights that preference white citizens.
I try to remain mindful that white nationalism is as much performative as it is an actual threat. The transgressiveness is intended to provoke. Outrage is the currency. I don’t think it’s helpful or precise to call it a distraction, but it’s good to be aware when one’s buttons are being pushed and to determine for yourself whether and how to react.
My main point here is to urge you to listen to the music of this week’s news and not be too literal about the lyrics. So much of what we’re seeing is striking similar chords, has the same rhythms, and hits in the same emotional place.
With that in mind …
Yep, Slavery WAS Bad
In his ongoing attack on the Smithsonian Institute, President Trump charged it with overplaying “how bad Slavery was.” The reaction was withering.
In the same social media post, Trump explicitly compared his attack on the Smithsonian to his attack on higher education. “I have instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made,” he wrote.
No Let Up in the Attack on D.C.
As some of the former Confederate states race to send their national guards to D.C., the Trump administration opened a new front in its attack on the Democratic-heavy city: U.S Attorney Jeanine Pirro’s office has launched a bogus investigation to try to provide ammunition for President Trump’s baseless claim that D.C. has falsified crime statistics to make it look like crime is on the decline.
Separately, in a NRA-friendly move that seems on its face to run counter to the administration’s own tough-on-crime rhetoric, Pirro announced that her office will no longer seek felony charges against people carrying rifles and shotguns guns in D.C.
The Pirro announcement came the same day that new reporting suggests D.C. National Guard troops are undergoing on-the-fly training in how to use a specific type of pistol that they don’t typically carry in preparation for being armed on the streets of D.C.
‘McCarthyism Returns to Immigration Law’
Legal immigrants will now be screened for “Anti-America ideologies or activities,” U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced in a new policy alert. USCIS will impose the new requirement on visa and green card applications.
What “Anti-America” means, how it will be interpreted by individual case officers, and what emphasis the White House will put on it is all left vague and undetermined, itself a foreboding threat. “The term has no prior precedent in immigration law and its definition is entirely up to the Trump admin,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.
“McCarthyism returns to immigration,” he added.
The new guidance comes on the heels of another USCIS policy memo that directed case officers considering citizenship applications to more vigorously investigate whether applicants are of “good moral character.” That guidance is also left vague, giving case officers wide discretion on a case-by-case basis.
English Only
The Trump Education Department has quietly rescinded longstanding guidance requiring schools to accommodate students who are learning English, prompting fears that support for non-fluent English speakers will evaporate, the WaPo reports.
This news comes as the Department of Housing and Urban Development has stopped providing materials and information in any languages other than English and plans to remove any non-English materials it has previously made available.
America First
In another of his performative flourishes, Oklahoma Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters (R) is imposing a new requirement on teachers from New York and California applying to work in his state. They must pass a 50-question test developed by … wait for it … Prager University.
“We’re not bringing in woke indoctrinators into the classroom,” Walters told the WaPo this week. “It’s a very America-first approach.”
For Hetero Whites Only
In a NYT feature on a northern Arkansas development called “Return to the Land” that is restricted to white heterosexuals, this passage was the coup de grace (emphasis mine):
Mr. Orwoll recently gave The New York Times a limited tour, allowing entry to the property through a gate that had a lock. He sat on a folding chair in his office, housed in an insulated shed with air-conditioning and fiber internet, two pianos and shelves full of philosophy texts. Before a photographer could snap pictures, he pulled a copy of “Mein Kampf” from a bookshelf and turned it around to hide its spine.
The whole thing is worth a read.
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