First Draft: America Is Broken
Is Trump turning the US into one of those ‘shithole countries’ he speaks about? Plus, Gavin Newsom has a new (and bad) answer on Israel and apartheid.
On this day in 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. led 25,000 protesters to the state capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, the culmination of a five-day march for voting rights reform. Sixty-one years later, Donald Trump is pushing his anti-voting rights SAVE America Act, while organizers of “No Kings” anti-Trump protests on Saturday expect millions to turn out.
Good Morning! Andrew here. What happens when a Mad King gains total control over a government built for dysfunction? Today’s answer: US air travelers have a very bad time.
In today’s ‘First Draft,’ we review one of the many ways Donald Trump and MAGA are breaking America, likely Democratic presidential candidate Gavin Newsom has changed his mind about Israel being an “apartheid state,” and the Supreme Court could help Trump mistreat more immigrants.
Has Trump Made the US a ‘Shithole Country’?
Donald Trump likes to make racist complaints about immigrants from “shithole countries.” He recently described Somalia as a “fourth-world” nation, claiming: “They don’t have government … They shoot each other all over the place.”
The United States, the exceptional nation that it is, has a higher gun mortality rate than Somalia. And in Trump’s second term, our already dysfunctional government is operating according to the whims, edicts, and tantrums of America’s first Mad King. It is absolutely breaking our country.
Take a look at US airports, where travelers have been waiting in three- and four-hour TSA security lines, with many missing their flights, because of a partial government shutdown. At several major airports, security lines have stretched to parking garages outside.
Republicans have repeatedly rejected offers from Democrats to end the partial shutdown. Democrats have refused to provide new money to ICE without reforms, after Trump turned the agency into a masked secret-police force that racially profiles and kidnaps people off the streets, kills US citizens on camera, and acts as his personal militia.
Now consider this: When an Air Canada jet collided with a fire truck at LaGuardia Airport on Sunday night, killing two pilots and injuring dozens of people, federal safety investigators were significantly delayed in responding to the accident due to the excessively long security lines.
National Transportation Safety Board chair Jennifer Homendy said Monday that an “air traffic control specialist” had been stuck in a TSA line in Houston for three hours until her team called “to beg, to see if we can get her through.”
Insane, right? The incident occurred after the president forbade Republicans from reaching a deal with Democrats to fund the Department of Homeland Security, and start paying TSA workers again. Trump has demanded Republicans pass his sprawling, dangerous voter-suppression bill as part of a shutdown deal.
Instead of accepting a bipartisan deal on Sunday, Trump made the personal, political, partisan decision to send ICE agents to major airports – underscoring just one reason why Democrats aren’t comfortable giving ICE more money without reforms.
On Tuesday, Trump said Republicans and Democrats may be “fairly close” to a funding deal – but added that he is “not happy” about it. He said Democrats had “hurt our country” by refusing to fund ICE, and had done so “at a very difficult time because, we are at, they would say, a war.”