Enter the Hestafo and language resistance

                                   ICE and Hestafo arrest tracker here [updated regularly]

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Donald Trump and Republicans have an uncanny ability to weaponize language. 

In his inaugural address, Trump declared he would change the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America, and the Alaskan mountain peak Denali to Mount McKinley. When he’d pledged it on the campaign trail, the response was to find it ludicrous; hubris run amok. 

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/
The Daily Beast/Getty/Reuters [Click on photo to read story]

Within hours of taking office, Trump issued an executive action, officially doing what he proclaimed. The Interior Department followed suit. Still seemed ludicrous. Government overreaching by an imperialist tyrant stumbling to get his footing. 

The same week, the Associated Press, the leading international wire service, updated its stylebook standards to use Mount McKinley (Denali is gone). It is keeping Gulf of Mexico while acknowledging Trump’s designation of Gulf of America. [A few weeks later, the White House retaliated against the AP by barring its reporters from the Oval Office and demanding it do better with the name.]

Language matters and Trump and Republicans know how to throw a boomerang. If you pay closer attention, you’ll notice that the Democratic Party is often called the Democrat Party, and not just by

Republicans. The title, used pejoratively since the 1940s, avoids implying that the Democrats are the only true adherents of democracy, as the New York Times pointed out in 1984. 

 “Woke,” “Equity,” “even “Black Lives Matter” all started as positive references that Republicans caught and returned as damaged goods over time. 

As the Trump administration flexes its muscle, the immigrant landscape has become the devil’s in the detail language workshop. I write this coincidentally the week of the 80th anniversary of the Jan. 1945, liberation of Auschwitz, the complex of Nazi concentration camps in occupied Poland where my maternal grandparents were slaughtered. The radio story that awakened me spoke of the Nazi weltanshauung (world view) as dependent on the “deliberate dehumanization” of people, Jews in particular. 

I try to disassociate the histrionics of history from contemporary events. Any words or language associated with Nazism ring as alarmist hyperbole. I should know better. I risk it because the parallels are disturbingly compelling. 

In Germany before World War II, the Nazi government focused on antisemitic policies and actions intended to get Jews to leave voluntarily or be deported. If countries wouldn’t accept them, Jews were forced into ghettos to segregate and contain them. Germany was initially reluctant to deport Jews until the war was over because of a fear of resistance from the German population, according to the Wiener Holocaust Library in London. By the autumn of 1941, the deportations picked up, with countries in the Third Reich outside Germany the preferred destinations. The Library’s Holocaust Explained site characterizes the deportations as “improvised and haphazard.” Almost all nations, including the United States refused to admit deportees or refugees. 

In her book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Philosopher Hannah Arendt described Jewish refugees’ predicament in this way: “[The refugees] were welcomed nowhere and could be assimilated nowhere. Once they had left their homeland they remained homeless, once they had left their state they remained stateless; once they had been deprived of their human rights they were rightless, the scum of the earth.” 

Being a Nazi was not ignoble for Germany in 1932, at least not for the plurality of German voters in 1932 who voted Nazi, thereby creating enough of a mandate for President Hindenburg to appoint Hitler as governing Chancellor. Being MAGA is not ignoble for America in 2024-5, at least not for the majority 77 million who voted for Trump, thereby creating enough of a mandate for him to follow through on his pledge of “mass deportations.” 

The Jews of Nazi Germany are the immigrants of MAGA America. 

Trump laid the foundation for the “deliberate dehumanization” of immigrants at the outset of his first term, as detailed in NBC News’ retrospective - “From 'rapists' to 'eating the pets': Trump has long used degrading language toward immigrants” – on Sept. 19, 2024. 

Typically the wedge terms in the news media and among pundits and politicians of both parties have been “undocumented immigration” and “illegal immigrants,” though the Haitians at the center of the Springfield, Ohio pet-eating propaganda were neither undocumented nor illegal. Trump got ahead of the language banter. 

“The Democrats say, ‘Please don’t call them animals. They’re humans.’ I said, ‘No, they’re not humans, they’re not humans. They’re animals.’” 

Non-existent animals like unicorns. No matter, though language does.

 

The Trump administration and Republicans have seized control of the language high ground again with the issuance on day 1 of the Executive Order Protecting the American People from Invasion and nine days later with the signing of the Laken Riley Act, the first bill of Trump's second term to become law. Taken together, they are being framed as requiring the detention of unauthorized immigrants accused of burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting.

A key in the language distortions is that neither the Executive Order nor the Laken Riley Act applies only to unauthorized immigrants. Both apply to all aliens. Aliens include illegal immigrants. They also include green card holders (lawful permanent residents), asylum seekers, refugees, even some students on F1 visas. That can matter in nefarious and intended ways.  

Trump’s Executive Order underscores multiple times that pursuant to part VII of subchapter II of chapter 12 of title 8, United States Code, all aliens 14 years of age and over must register with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) or the U.S. Department of State within 30 days of entry into the US. They are to be fingerprinted when registered. 

It also lays out that every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration or alien registration receipt card issued to him. Any alien who fails to comply shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and shall upon conviction for each offense be fined not to exceed $100 or be imprisoned not more than thirty days, or both. 

Violation of either provision is “a civil and criminal enforcement priority.” 

As federal law enforcement officials roll out raids this week in and around Chicago and many other places, I presented a likely scenario to an array of immigrant services offices: It appears that in a raid, the crimes that ICE or a deputized agents or cooperating law enforcement are to consider are if anyone arrested in a raid has ever committed a crime, including shoplifting (at any time in any country), even if not prosecuted or convicted for it, also includes failure to register as an alien or failure to carry a registration card, which is a civil and criminal enforcement priority. 

With detentions being mandatory, if there is a raid, let’s say of a workplace or county jail or on the streets anywhere in the US, and 100 people are detained in the raid, if I were ICE or deputized agents or cooperating law enforcement, wouldn’t I detain everyone temporarily to determine if they’ve ever been arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, shoplifting or failing to have an alien registration card on their person? That includes green card holders, asylum seekers, and refugees. I think that means the detention can last as long as it takes within reason to make that determination. 

Is that possibly right? I heard back from six contacts in the immigrant services community. None is sure. All are alarmed. All are aware that for the foreseeable future, the lives of the immigrants they counsel have changed. There’s will be lives in hiding, trusting few people. 

If so, I think it’s foreboding. It’s also consistent with the Trump administration’s goals, which are to deliberately dehumanize immigrants to help drive home that anyone who as a non-citizen is deportable and anyone who has committed any crime or infraction of certain immigration rules should not be allowed to stay in the U.S. 

Millions of Americans support mass deportations, according to a recent poll that digs deeper into the specifics of who and how. 

Now that Americans can watch the Trump deportations already in progress, with Dr. Phil narrating, the Trump administration shouldn’t have a problem recruiting eager, able-bodied law enforcement agents to assist ICE. 

In the Executive Order, Trump established the Homeland Security Task Forces (HSTFs) in all states nationwide. Among the federal agencies deputized so far are Department of Justice law enforcement officials, U.S. Marshals, agents from the Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Already in place is the 287(g) Program, which allows ICE, through the delegation of specified immigration officer duties, to enhance collaboration with state and local law enforcement partners to protect the homeland through the arrest and removal of aliens who undermine the safety of our nation’s communities and the integrity of U.S. immigration laws. There’s also members of the Sheriff’s Constitutional movement, whose ideology is that the county – not state or federal governments – should control all land within its borders, and the county sheriff should be the ultimate law enforcement authority in the U.S. They’re locked and loaded, as are many of the nearly 1,600 people granted clemency from the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. 

The Trump administration has drawn the lines. Homeland Security has issued a directive allowing ICE and other law enforcement to enter schools and churches to arrest aliens. Sanctuary locations - many metropolitan cities and counties like Chicago, Atlanta, Baltimore, New York, New Orleans - are on notice that they are to cooperate with ICE and other law enforcement…or else. 

The name “Homeland Security Task Forces” or the acronym HSTFs is unwieldy. No more unwieldy than the Geheime Staatspolizei, which was created in 1933 to combine various agencies into one organization. Not a problem. The name was shortened. To Gestapo. 

Why not shorten the Homeland Security Task Forces? To Hestafo. (Gestapo's brother-in-law). Language matters and it works for me.

ICE and Hestafo arrest tracker here [updated regularly]

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Jack Doppelt is Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Medill School, Northwestern University, co-author of Nonvoters: America’s No-Shows, founder/former publisher of Immigrant Connect, and co-founder/publisher of Lines n' Lyrix

Now what?: A post-election appeal

For a historical reflection, check out Ship of Fools, the 1965 film set aboard a cruise ship bound for Germany from Mexico in 1933. The film ends with the boat's passengers disembarking into Nazi Germany and getting on with life seemingly oblivious. The last passenger to leave looks directly into the camera and asks the film audience, "What has all this to do with us? Nothing." And laughs.

For inspiration, read David Remnick's Nov. 9 piece, "It Can Happen Here." He invokes the admonition about fascism and looks into the immediate future. "Our time is now dark, but that, too, can change. It happened elsewhere. It can happen here."

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I wrote a version of this four months ago, the day before Joe Biden withdrew from the 2024 presidential race in a surprise posting on his personal Twitter account. The road was left to Kamala Harris to become better known and to reinforce the dangers of a Trump presidency.

It is now the immediate aftermath of a devastatingly convincing Trump victory in which he won the electoral college AND the popular vote. No Republican had won the popular vote since George W. Bush's 2004 reelection over John Kerry. Democrats regularly rail against the lopsided electoral college by invoking with pride that Hillary Clinton, who lost to Trump in 2016, had 2.8 million more popular votes than he did. In 2020, Trump was told by advisers that if he got more than 70 million votes, he'd be president. He exceeded it only to lose to Biden by more than 7 million votes. Trump's brain immediately exploded to stop the steal. 

He kept ranting until the Tuesday election results unveiled his shocking popular vote victory. Early morning vote totals had Trump at 72 million votes, more than ever. Harris had secured five million fewer.

Before many of us woke up, Trump had bestowed on himself “an unprecedented and powerful mandate.” 

Click on photo to read Politico story

Now what? Come January, Trump will be our president. And me?

I have often wondered, what is the measure of this man, Jack Doppelt? Martin Luther King preached that the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Plato is quoted as saying, it is what one does with power.

What would I do in times of war or in times when resistance to power is the challenge? I have never fought in a war. I did not enlist during the Vietnam War. My number was 335 when the draft lottery was held on Aug. 5, 1971. It would be the last draft lottery.

“the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Plato is quoted as saying, it is what one does with powerWhat would I do in times of war or in times when resistance to power is the challenge? I have never fought in a war. I did not enlist during the Vietnam War. My number was 335 when the draft lottery was held on Aug. 5, 1971. It would be the last draft lottery.

Over the years, when discussions among friends have turned to what would you do at times of challenge and controversy, such as a Trump presidency, the recourse has been one of frustration. Move to Canada. Have your passport current and ready. 

From all indications, Trump's presidency will be more dire, draconian and autocratic than fathomable. Putting aside the last few weeks of campaign rhetoric, which can be written off as strategic fulminations choreographed for short-term ballot return, what will the next four years really be like? Read Trump's lips. His words, as documented by Axios: 

• "Defund any school with a vaccine or mask mandate." 

• Impose the "largest domestic deportation operation." 

• "Protect innocent life." 

• "Investigate every radical out of control prosecutor." 

• Reimpose the "Trump travel ban." 

• End the "insane electric vehicle mandate." 

• Initiate "ideological screening on all immigrants." 

• Ensure "immunity for our law enforcement" 

• "Obliterate the deep state." 

He has pledged each of those measures, at least 5 times or more, again according to Axios. 

Or watch a handful of videos: 

• Trump on immigrants and deportations 
• Trump on climate change 
• Trump on Ukraine and NATO 
• Trump on Project 2025 

Project 2025, the transition report blueprint for Trump’s presidency that is spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, as summarized by the Washington Post, would: 

“Remake the federal workforce to be political: Instead of nonpartisan civil servants implementing policies on everything including health, education and climate, the executive branch would be filled with Trump loyalists…Give Trump power to investigate his opponents: Project 2025 would move the Justice Department, and all of its law enforcement arms like the FBI, directly under presidential control….Crack down on even legal immigration: It would create a new ‘border patrol and immigration agency’ to resurrect Trump’s border wall, build camps to detain children and families at the border, and send out the military to deport millions of people who are already in the country illegally (including dreamers)….Slash climate change protections: Project 2025 calls for getting rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which forecasts weather and tracks climate change, describing it as ‘one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.’” 

Trump has distanced himself from the frightful specifics of Project 2025. He’s no dummy demagogue. Fascism for the people and the power of positive bullying go hand in hand with bluster mitigated by practiced denial and buoyed by drumbeats of propaganda. 

The Post’s summary tries to comfort the easily distracted public by noting that “some of these ideas are impractical or possibly illegal. Analysts are divided about whether Trump can politicize the civil workforce to fire them at will. And the plan calls for using the military to carry out mass deportations on a historic scale, which could be constitutionally iffy.” 

That is not how dictatorships work when the judiciary has already been coopted, and Republican voters, public officials and media platforms have fallen under a toxic spell. Trump is a master dogwhistler and MAGA supporters are obedient, angry companions. It is ironclad. 

Trump has the bedrock go-ahead from 70 million voters.

Instead of shaking our heads in wonderment at how a deranged demagogue could have the support of millions and millions of Americans, do some basic math in assessing our fellow Americans. 

Despite the political cant that clings to American exceptionalism, that punishes political-speak for recognizing "deplorables" for what they stand for, that cringes at the "garbage" in our midst, whether they're on stage demonizing people and cultures or whether they're the "garbage" itself festering among 70 million people, we are now about to usher in a leader who slings putrid mud with the rousing support of millions. Interview after interview have MAGAs say Trump either doesn't really mean what he vents (it's just an attention getting act) or he's refreshingly welcome because he says what's on his mind. He's their führer, their generalissimo, their strong man. Why again is democracy preferable to patriotic authoritarianism? If it were only a self-evident truth. It's not. 

I try at this juncture to abide by Franklin Roosevelt's 1933 inaugural admonition that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself. If what that means, though, is that we don't have to fear fear-mongers, I'm not so sure. There appear to be millions of fear-mongers among us. No name calling needed. Yet, they turn to deplorable instincts, they spew hateful garbage. They can be entranced and mesmerized. They’ll follow orders.

Among us are segregationists whose response to the end of slavery during the end of the 19th century and most of the 20th century was to impose Jim Crow laws and fight civil rights legislation and protests with seething anger, fists in the air and bulldogs. 

Count off the Nazi sympathizing isolationists during the 1930s and World War II who linked arms to foment anti-Semitism. 

Add in the anti-Communists of the 1950s and ‘60s who were the thought police of that era. They cancelled culture through blacklisting that got people fired and rendered them unemployable. They burned books.

Don’t forget the White and Christian nationalists who use immigrant-phobia to keep the country from slipping into the clutches of the other. 

Toss in the anti-abortion activists whose beliefs and methods have spilled over to instill fear in women and doctors who aren’t even contemplating abortion. 

Hail to Huey Long, Bull Connor and Lester Maddox, hail to Charles Lindbergh and Father Charles Coughlan, hail to Joe McCarthy and hail to Donald Trump. Leaders with bullhorns and bully pulpits matter. 

So do the offspring of ardent segregationists, isolationists, Nazi sympathizers, anti-Communists, White and Christian nationalists, anti-abortion activists. Take out a ledger. Subtract the many, many offspring who have disassociated from their parents' beliefs. On the other side of the ledger, account for the biblical fruitfulness and multiplication that has repopulated each generation with revitalized venom. 

If you do some simple math allowing for overlap in the millions and for margins of error, you’d still have 50 million + people who constitute the willing followers of Fascism Trump-style. It is intoxicating. Trump is not a stand-alone nemesis. His legions are legion. They have a push-pull relationship and they mean business. 

As Project 2025 sets out in its opening paragraph [emphasis theirs]:

“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.” 

Project 2025 is driven by a 180-day playbook. Whether it’s Trump’s agenda or Project 2025’s playbook or a marriage made in heaven forbid, there’s work to do now that Donald Trump is president-elect. 

As promised, the Trump administration will bolt out of the gate with a governing agenda and the right people in place.

I’m not moving to Canada, as fond as I am of the place. 

So what to do and how to go about it? In Kamala Harris' campaign closing argument the night before she lost, she pointed to communities and coalitions as cornserstones of what would have characterized her administration. They're in place.

Robert Reich published a blog, The Resistance Starts Now, in which the former Secretary of Labor suggests that "our first responsibility is to protect all those who are in harm’s way" - women and girls who may now fear that they’ll be forced to give birth or be denied life, trans people, anyone who faces prejudice and marginalization, people who've stood up to Trump, those who may be weeded out for deportation, political dissenters, and soldiers who may be asked to arm against demonstators.

As a Jew whose grandparents were slaughtered in a Nazi concentration camp, I’m sensitive to the direct consequences of the demonization of the other and to the Righteous role models whose selfless sacrifices in resistance saved Jews from capture and death. 

Resistance is a controversial concept and undertaking. Even Wikipedia recognizes that. 

It is not something I know how to engage in. I have no playbook. When I think about it, it seems like a dystopian fantasy or the musings of a savior complex. When it goes beyond organized peaceful protests or legal strategies, its actions can’t be publicly shared or disseminated. Texts, email and social media would be mostly off-limits. 

If peaceful protesters are arrested, would I and others join in to swell the ranks to make arrests less feasible?  If immigrants are rounded up for deportation, would I and others hide people in our homes? Would I and others seek out churches, synagogues and mosques for sanctuaries, solidarity and moral guidance? Do undergrounds form organically? 

I’m in uncharted waters here. For starters, if you have thoughts, answers or time to mobilize, please get in touch with me at j-doppelt@northwestern.edu.

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We’re shocked, shocked to find out that Trump’s gambling with our future

Help me out. I’m a journalism sort by nature and profession. I’m used to Trump setting his cockeyed sights on the lamestream media. 

For months, though, I’ve found myself defending the news media, in particular The New York Times from attacks from the left. The most common complaint is letting Trump off the hook or failing to fact check him or to catch him in lies. 

Trump and politics itself in the NeanderTrumpian era is a rare species. Trump trades no more in facts or public service than chefs serve spaghetti by throwing it at a wall to see what sticks. Do we expect restaurant critics to squint at the mess to point out which of the pasta’s overcooked? Trump is on stage to tell us to pick it up if we don’t like it. 

Trump is and always has been a huckster with a hypnotic, Svengali-like hold on people. His con artistry has improved with age, even with creeping dementia, so that he now packages and sells it as a finely crafted weave. Some 70 million people are loyal customers. Their confidence is in his pocket. He can and does say whatever he wants. No wonder the Supreme Court has divined him with immunity. They are under his spell and have conjured up an enabler’s wand. He could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and he wouldn't lose any voters, OK? "It's, like, incredible” and it’s been incredible for more than eight years. 

[Click on photo to read the 2016 story]

We blame the news media. They should do something about it. Biden is too old and frail to campaign or govern. What about Trump? Is that fair that Trump gets a pass? 

Don’t we realize yet that we are way beyond comparing apples and oranges. The NeanderTrumpian era has us comparing apples and orangutans. Apples are about taste and sweetness. Orangutans are endangered, caged animals, with IQs of between 70 and 95. That’s high for orangutans. Probably high for apples too. Orangutans perform for us. 

For months, longer, reporters have been trying almost apoplectically to tame the orangutan, to ask questions, many of them gotcha variants, to get Trump to focus, to insert truth-telling disclaimers for his free-floating fulminations, or to spotlight his inanities. Far too many to hold onto. 

Can’t seem to be done. He’s nailed the perfect orangutan impersonation. It’s an uncanny version of the children’s taunt: “I’m rubber, you’re glue.” 

Retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, portends in all-too seriousness that Trump is and will be in office “a Fascist.” 

I’m not a Fascist, Kamala’s a Fascist, a Communist, a Marxist, a dumb woman who just recently realized she’s black. What are reporters to do with all that? Point out with numbing sincerity that Trump has no evidence that Harris is a Marxist, that Harris did well on her board scores.

I would think that showing videos of Trump, saying he "did not know [Harris] was Black until a couple of years ago when she happened to turn Black. And now she wants to be known as Black. Is she Indian, or is she Black?” would level any playing fields and both the news media and the Harris campaign have checked those boxes.

During Hurricane Dorian in 2019 when Trump was president, he updated the public on the direction of the hurricane by doctoring a map with a sharpie to make the case that the storm would hit Alabama. The media’s coverage had been wrong, he claimed. Only he could prevent or fix it.

[Click on photo to read the 2019 story]

When Hurricanes Helene and Milton recently hit Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia, Trump took after the media again while leading his acolytes to allege that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is channeling funds to illegal migrants and controlling the weather. The media did their tired duty, pointing out at every conceivable turn that Trump’s claims were baseless. Of course they’re baseless. They’re gunk. Yet they stick after bouncing off him. 

It's beneath me and any of us to need to bring up the Haitians of Springfield, Ohio eating the town’s pets, as if it were remotely plausible. Baseless, I tell you, and so do news outlets. All this does is allow Trump, Vance and the spineless to turn it into an ersatz lesson in immigration policy. 

A different pile of gunk will get heaved the next day and the next. Clean it up, news media, if you don’t like it. 

Another day passes and we get to the proverbial candidate closing arguments – Trump’s in Madison Square Garden and Harris’s on the Ellipse in Washington, DC. As The New York Times reported in “Trump at the Garden: A Closing Carnival of Grievances, Misogyny and Racism,” the inflammatory rally kicked off with a comedian describing Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage,” then mocking Hispanics for not using birth control, Jews for being cheap and Palestinians for being rock-throwers. 

The media hopped to it immediately, excoriating the event, pointing out that it’s not just Trump but his henchmen and his license to hate and divide. The media opined across the board that this one looks like it may stick. Even orangutans’ messes can sometimes smother their own.

Yet by morning, Trump had seized on a statement Biden made in a Tuesday eve video call with a Latin voting group that it was Trump’s supporters, not Puerto Rico, who are garbage. Sounded like a reprise from the deadly 2016 Hillary Clinton comment about the "basket of deplorables" supporting Trump. 

Doesn’t matter that I took Biden’s comment to refer to the cast of speakers at Trump’s rally. Trump knows garbage when he sniffs it. By his next public appearance, Biden (de facto Harris) was the villain, the divider of the nation, the threat to democracy. It’s front and center on the Trump-Vance campaign site. Trump manufactured the rubber. The garbage? It stuck to Harris. 

The news media is left dredging up Trump’s garbage, like Walter Matthau did in The Odd Couple. It’s a classic scene. 

"And now, it's garbage.

[Click on photo to watch the scene]

Another scene, even more classic, helps us realize how dumbfounded we pretend to be that Trump has such a stranglehold on the news media and on millions of people in the country. Maybe, they serve as garbage collectors.

As Casablanca showed us: Everybody’s having such a good time. Yes, much too good a time. It must be shut up. On what grounds? [Click on the url to watch the scene]        

We’re shocked, shocked to find out that Trump’s gambling with our future.                                                                         

                                                                                         #####

Will young people vote?: A college query

I recently retired from Northwestern University where I was a journalism prof. I get to campus regularly and find myself talking with students and becoming acquainted with the priorities of young people; some engaged in campaigns. Many more are turned off to politics. 

When I was in college, I was into politics. I went to school just across the border from Illinois. I was a Chicago guy, proud of my hometown, like young folks are now because of the TV show, The Bear. Yet for most of my four years, Chicago was out of sight, out of mind. 

I lived in a college bubble, so I get how students now can ignore the election and resent people trying to shame them for not paying attention to the debates, the candidates, and the avalanche of intrusive emails and texts. 

One student told me he has no intention of voting, despite issues that matter to him -- the economy, his ability to get a job, afford housing on his own, and abortion. 

A survey of college students earlier this year found that when asked “what they would do if they or their partner became pregnant while in college, most asserted they would seek abortion.” The student said it deeply matters to him that if his partner or a friend became pregnant, she’d be able to turn to abortion. 

An August CBS News poll found that 60% of voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. 

Last month, People Magazine published a story identifying 56 celebrities who’ve shared their abortion stories. They were young women, not celebrities, when they sought an abortion. 

Democrats Harris and Waltz are dedicated to a woman’s right to decide. 

Republicans Trump and Vance treat abortion like a campaign shell game. Under one card, they put Trump’s appointment of Supreme Court justices who did his bidding to overturn a woman’s abortion rights, under another is Vance’s call for a national abortion ban, under another is their mantra to leave abortions to the states. 

I wonder if the student I talked with and others who consider the issue as important still won’t vote. 

______________________

Jack Doppelt is Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University and co-author of Nonvoters: America’s No-Shows

Kamala Harris Campaign Anthem: Never Going Back Again

Trump broke down and let chaos in 

We could see what he had done 

Been down with Trump one time 

Been down two time 

We're never going back again 

 [guitar solo] 

 You gotta know what it means to win 

So get down, vote and then 

Took down Trump one time 

Will take down Trump two time 

Yah 

Took down Trump one time 

Will take down Trump two time 

And there won’t be three time 

We're never going back again 

Yah 

Written and played by Lindsey Buckingham/Fleetwood Mac 

With deep thanks 

Watch and listen to his virtuoso version here - https://lnkd.in/gWsmYmR7

 Anthem words by Jack Doppelt

Resistance: Who Am I?

Update: July 22, 2024 Evanston RoundTable Good Monday morning, Evanston.

Someone apparently reacted quickly to Joe Biden stepping down from the presidential race and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the nomination on Sunday, rearranging a yard sign on Asbury Avenue south of Greenleaf Street that previously spelled out "RESIST." (Picturing Evanston photo by Joerg Metzner.)

I have often wondered, what is the measure of this man, Jack Doppelt? Martin Luther King preached that “the ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Plato is quoted as saying, it is what one does with power.

What would I do in times of war or in times when resistance to power is the challenge? I have never fought in a war. I did not enlist during the Vietnam War. My number was 335 when the draft lottery was held on Aug. 5, 1971. It would be the last draft lottery.

Over the years, when discussions among friends have turned to what would you do at times of challenge and controversy, such as a Trump presidency, the recourse has been one of frustration. Move to Canada. Have your passport current and ready. 

It is conceivable, if not likelier than not, that Trump will become president again. From all indications, if that comes to pass, his presidency will be more dire, draconian and autocratic than fathomable. Read his lips. His words, as documented by Axios: 

• "Defund any school with a vaccine or mask mandate." • Impose the "largest domestic deportation operation." 

• "Protect innocent life." 

• "Investigate every radical out of control prosecutor." 

• Reimpose the "Trump travel ban." 

• End the "insane electric vehicle mandate." 

• Initiate "ideological screening on all immigrants." 

• Ensure "immunity for our law enforcement" 

• "Obliterate the deep state." 

He has pledged each of those measures, at least 5 times or more, again according to Axios. 

Or watch a handful of videos: 

• Trump on immigrants and deportations 
• Trump on climate change 
• Trump on Ukraine and NATO 
• Trump on Project 2025 
• 
  

Project 2025, the transition report blueprint for Trump’s presidency that is spearheaded by The Heritage Foundation, as summarized by the Washington Post, would: 

“Remake the federal workforce to be political: Instead of nonpartisan civil servants implementing policies on everything including health, education and climate, the executive branch would be filled with Trump loyalists…Give Trump power to investigate his opponents: Project 2025 would move the Justice Department, and all of its law enforcement arms like the FBI, directly under presidential control….Crack down on even legal immigration: It would create a new ‘border patrol and immigration agency’ to resurrect Trump’s border wall, build camps to detain children and families at the border, and send out the military to deport millions of people who are already in the country illegally (including dreamers)….Slash climate change protections: Project 2025 calls for getting rid of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which forecasts weather and tracks climate change, describing it as ‘one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry.’” 

Trump is distancing himself from the frightful specifics of Project 2025. He’s no dummy demagogue. Fascism for the people and the power of positive bullying go hand in hand with bluster mitigated by practiced denial and buoyed by drumbeats of propaganda. 

The Post’s summary tries to comfort the easily distracted public by noting that “some of these ideas are impractical or possibly illegal. Analysts are divided about whether Trump can politicize the civil workforce to fire them at will. And the plan calls for using the military to carry out mass deportations on a historic scale, which could be constitutionally iffy.” 

That is not how dictatorships work when the judiciary has already been coopted, and Republican voters, public officials and media platforms have fallen under a toxic spell. Trump is a master dogwhistler and MAGA supporters are obedient, angry companions. It is ironclad. 

Remember the titan. Trump got the votes of more than 62 million people when he defeated Hillary Clinton for president in 2016; he got more than 74 million votes when he lost to Joe Biden in 2020. 

Instead of shaking our heads in wonderment at how a deranged demagogue could have the support of millions and millions of Americans, do some basic math in assessing your fellow Americans. 

Among us are segregationists whose response to the end of slavery during the end of the 19th century and most of the 20th century was to impose Jim Crow laws and fight civil rights legislation and protests with seething anger, fists in the air and bulldogs. 

Count off the isolationists and Nazi sympathizers during the 1930s and World War II who linked arms to foment anti-Semitism. 

Add in the anti-Communists of the 1950s and ‘60s who were the thought police of that era. They cancelled culture through blacklisting that got people fired and rendered them unemployable. 

Don’t forget the White and Christian nationalists who use immigrant-phobia to keep the country from slipping into the clutches of the other. 

Toss in the anti-abortion activists whose beliefs and methods have spilled over to instill fear in women and doctors who aren’t even contemplating abortion. 

Hail to Huey Long, Bull Connor and Lester Maddox, hail to Charles Lindbergh and Father Charles Coughlan, hail to Joe McCarthy and hail to Donald Trump. Leaders with bullhorns and bully pulpits matter. 

So do the offspring of ardent segregationists, isolationists, Nazi sympathizers, anti-Communists, White and Christian nationalists, anti-abortion activists. Take out a ledger. Subtract the many, many offspring who have disassociated from their parents and their beliefs. On the other side of the ledger, account for the biblical fruitfulness and multiplication that has repopulated each generation with revitalized venom. 

If you did some simple addition allowing for overlap in the millions and margins of error, you’d still have 50 million + people who constitute the willing followers of Fascism Trump-style. It is intoxicating. 

Trump is not a stand-alone nemesis. His legions are legion. They have a push-pull relationship and they mean business. 

As Project 2025 sets out in its opening paragraph [emphasis theirs]:

“It is not enough for conservatives to win elections. If we are going to rescue the country from the grip of the radical Left, we need both a governing agenda and the right people in place, ready to carry this agenda out on Day One of the next conservative Administration.” 

Project 2025 is driven by a 180-day playbook. Whether it’s Trump’s agenda or Project 2025’s playbook or a marriage made in heaven forbid, there’s work to do over the next four months to defeat Donald Trump. 

There’s also work to do to organize for the resistance if he were to win. I’m not moving to Canada, as fond as I am of the place. 

So what to do and how to go about it? 

As a Jew whose grandparents were slaughtered in a Nazi concentration camp, I’m sensitive to the direct consequences of the demonization of the other and to the Righteous role models whose selfless sacrifices in resistance saved Jews from capture and death. 

Resistance is a controversial concept and undertaking. Even Wikipedia recognizes that. 

It is not something I know how to engage in. I have no playbook. When I think about it, it seems like a dystopian fantasy or the musings of a savior complex. When it goes beyond organized peaceful protests or legal strategies, its actions can’t be publicly shared or disseminated. Texts, email and social media would be mostly off-limits. 

Click on photo

If peaceful protesters are arrested, would I and others join in to swell the ranks to make arrests less feasible?  If immigrants are rounded up for deportation, would I and others hide people in our homes? Would I and others seek out churches, synagogues and mosques for sanctuaries, solidarity and moral guidance? Do undergrounds form organically? 

I’m in uncharted territory here. 

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Preparing the 2024 Haggadah is not the dilemma I feared

Jack C. Doppelt 

April 2024 

This year’s Haggadah seemed destined to be different in large part because of the complexities of the struggles throbbing in the Middle East. Surprisingly and poignantly, not much changing is needed. The places, the terms (Holy Land, Promised Land, Bible, exodus, desert, plagues), the themes, the introspection, even the jarring lessons of being the oppressed and the oppressors have been in our Haggadah all along. All that’s needed is to listen more intently, be more aware of suffering and of empathy, and truly recognize how the history of humanity and inhumanity keeps resonating. 

In 2014, I was teaching in the West Bank and wrote these reflections: Because We Can? Pondering Oppressor and Oppressed. We incorporated it into our Haggadah. 

The driving force of any Passover is the telling and retelling of stories so memories are more likely to be preserved. Take this one with you, whether you celebrate, respect Jewish traditions or not: 

Elijah the Prophet: A child’s view of plagues, miracles and the open door 

As I was putting this year's updates to bed, a friend discovered a story in Washington Monthly, called "From The Edges of a Broken World: The article Guernica retracted, and the translator who tried to tread the line of empathy." It's worth reading. 

In it, Joanna Chen, the author, quotes from poetry lines that others have written over the years. Many are translated from Hebrew or Arabic. They help bottle the empathy Passover needs to preserve. 

Joanna Chen

"The tree lost its mythical powers, horses huddled at the edge of the earth. The sniping light turned cold, winter came, we continued, faces sealed. Only at night did we sit down with our own names. How can I mourn the distance of years, of waste, of your silence seeping into the earth."

--“The End of Naivete” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

"You hand me a clean handkerchief, Ripe figs. I have been moving away For years"

--“Remembrance” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

"By the time the knock at the door came, I was dead. Who’s there? asked the photo in the frame. It is me, I said. I came back to wipe the dust off you." 

--“To My Mother” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

"Your morning is the morning of others. Your evening is the evening of others And we frequently set traps for birds."

--untitled, by Nasser Rabah, in Arrowsmith (translated collectively by Joanna Chen, Julie Yelle, and Mosab Abu Toha)

"No flag flutters for me, No bird alights upon the window. I am a clock on the wall." 

--“The Evening of Others,” published in Chen's 2017 blog in the Los Angeles Review of Books

"I want to be your foliage, Dense and cool against the heat, But I am dry thorns on a hilltop" 

--“Hebron” in Frayed Light 

"I want to be innocent of every line I ever wrote, I want to cry on every hand that ever hovered over the cover of a book. A flock of vocabulary jostles at my window, hammers at my heart." 

--untitled, by Nasser Rabah, Los Angeles Review of Books 

"The hand still moves across the page and on the balcony plants lean forward, long-necked, into the sun." 

--“Report from a Free City” by Yonatan Berg in Frayed Light 

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