It's Never a Bad Idea...

“If all politics is spectacle in the era of Donald Trump, few episodes illustrate this more vividly than that created by Republican governors who bused asylum-seeking immigrants from their states into Northern cities during Joe Biden’s presidency. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida ensured that in the run-up to Trump’s 2024 reelection effort, the news media—and millions of social media feeds—were flooded with imagery of immigrants camped out in urban areas: desperate mobs swamping blue states and cities and straining their social service systems to the breaking point.

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Yet now something just as powerful is happening, albeit in the other direction, and, mystifyingly, the savvy media almost never describe it in such terms. A handful of Democratic governors have found an innovative way to leverage the power of spectacle against Trump by relentlessly highlighting his ICE raids, kidnappings, and paramilitary abuses, in part by encouraging countless ordinary people to join in the project of using their phones to, as the old left phrase has it, document the atrocities. And it’s working: It’s done real political damage to Trump, just as those GOP governors damaged Biden. It’s creating a cultural moment around immigration that’s perhaps more powerful than the one created by those GOP governors. And it’s forging a new way for Democrats to go on offense on this issue—if they’ll seize upon it.

Perhaps the deepest innovation from both governors has been at the level of language and politics. Newsom, who as leader of the country’s most populous state is probably the most prominent Democratic 2028 hopeful, is widely assumed to be Trump’s chief antagonist on immigration. But Pritzker has, with less fanfare, challenged Trump in a way that deserves attention. He has repeatedly called on Illinois residents to help document abuses of power toward immigrants. “People of Illinois, we need your help,” he posted on X last fall. “Get your cell phones out—record what you see.... We need to let the world know this is happening—and that we won’t stand for it.” At a presser around the same time, Pritzker added: “Look out for your communities and your neighbors. Know your rights. Film things you see happening in your neighborhoods and your streets and share them with the news media. Authoritarians thrive on your silence.”

It turns out there’s a deeper theory of the case behind these directives, as Anne Caprara, Pritzker’s chief of staff, told me. Countless Illinois residents were horrified by what they were seeing but felt deeply lacking in agency. “People needed to feel part of the pushback here,” Caprara said, noting that the goal was to “empower them to do something” and “give them something to do.”

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Finally, Democrats can speak with conviction about what they know to be right, wrong, and true. Rather than haggling over the precise words “abolish ICE,” Democrats can stand for some basic principles: ICE is a catastrophic, irredeemable failure, and interior enforcement must be totally rethought from top to bottom. Enforcement is of course necessary—especially at the border and also inside the country—but armed paramilitary forces should not be patrolling our streets and residential communities. It’s correct to focus on serious criminals, but not on longtime noncriminal undocumented residents, who should not be hunted and deserve a chance to get right with the law.

Let’s close by returning to that Pritzker challenge to Trump: “If you come for my people, you come through me.” Democrats can say: We will defend you and your communities from this absolute madness. They can say: We need more immigrants, not fewer. They can say: ICE is bad and immigration is good. They can speak to voters like adults about these issues. Public opinion is incredibly fluid on these matters. Democrats: You have a rare opportunity. Don’t run from it. Seize upon it, forcefully and enthusiastically.“

“Their answer was to create Allied Control Council Directive 38, a sorting system based on questionnaires (Fragebogen) that assessed an individual’s involvement with the Nazi regime. These questionnaires inquired about personal history; secondary and higher education; professional and trade training; record of full time employment, experience and military service; membership and role in all types of organizations before and after the Hitler regime, especially the Nazi Party and its organizations; writings and speeches since 1923; income and assets since 1 January 1931; and travel and residence abroad.

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The law also established special German tribunals (Spruchkammern) in the U.S. occupation zone to adjudicate the individuals once their level of culpability was determined from the questionnaire. One thing I found interesting was that the burden was on the individual to prove their innocence, rather than for the tribunal to prove their guilt, which reflected the presumption that everyone was complicit unless they could demonstrate otherwise.

The Frageboden/Spruchkammern system became increasingly ineffective as a sorting mechanism, partly because of the sheer volume of people that had to be processed (approximately 13.7 million Germans over the age of 18 were processed in the U.S. zone alone), and partly because the judges who were adjudicating the system were themselves complicit to some degree in the regime as well.

But cleaning up the federal government — and the civil service more specifically — could be a much more manageable task in this regard, one that might be more amenable to this type of “sorting.” One thing is for sure: There is no way to go back to “business as usual” when this is all over. Some deep surgery will be needed before we can return our governing institutions to a remotely healthy state.”

“The huge gaps in wealth and income create an enormous power imbalance and plausible changes in tax policy will do little to rectify the situation. If Elon Musk’s fortune was cut in half to $200 billion, he would still have a ridiculous amount of political power. The same applies to the rest of the crew of billionaires.

If we want to get responsible media that does its job in reporting on the deeds and misdeeds of the rich and powerful, plausible reductions in inequality (and how do we get those?) will not be sufficient. We need to look to fundamentally restructure the media.

This is not as far-fetched a goal as it may sound. We will not get the current Congress, or even one with a Democratic majority in 2026 to take the lead in pushing for responsible media. But we can have initiatives at the state and local level to build up independent media that is not owned and controlled by the rich and very rich. 

My preferred route is a system of individual tax credits, say $100 per person, to support the person’s favorite news outlet(s). This would be a credit, not a deduction, and fully refundable, so even the poorest person gets the same amount as Elon Musk. There could be different conditions attached to receiving the credit. In my view, the material supported should be freely available outside a paywall; but that’s something that could be decided by the state or local governments implementing the system.

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I know the standard line is that we counter lies with more speech; but save that for the kindergarten class. When the right owns all the major news outlets and social media platforms, the idea that the truth will magically overcome their lies is not the sort of argument that can be taken seriously.

Anyhow, that is a longer story. But we do need to come up with ways to support independent media and not just complain about right-wing Trump sycophants taking over the media we have. My scheme is on the table. Let’s hear others.”