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Comparisons of Trump to Hitler have become common. But some of Trump’s policies may more closely resemble those of Francisco Franco of Spain, says a Spanish scholar.

European publics and more government leaders are questioning the value of the alliance with the United States under Trump. But a different path remains elusive.

You can watch this episode of Right Now With Perry Bacon above or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.President Trump is plunging in the polls, and many of his policies are being defeated, either legislatively or through the courts. That’s worth celebrating, says Georgetown University philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò. On his Bluesky account, Táíwò constantly highlights instances where the Trump administration is slowed or defeated, with this signature phrase, “I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win.” In the latest edition of Right Now, Táíwò explains the virtues of thinking of the Trump presidency as part of a longer struggle where the side of equality and justice is winning in the long term. He argues amplifying resistance successes is vital both to keep morale up but also to widely disseminate tactics and strategies that are working.

This is a lightly edited transcript of the January 29 edition of Right Now With Perry Bacon. You can watch the video here or by following this show on YouTube or Substack.Perry Bacon: Good morning. I’m Perry Bacon. I’m the host of The New Republic’s Right Now. I’m honored to be joined by one of the smartest people, I think, writing about politics and government philosophy. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò is a professor of philosophy at Georgetown. He’s written these brilliant books about reparations and also about a concept he refers to as Elite Capture, but I have in mind to talk about something much less intellectual—which is a lot of his posts on social media these days.He uses the phrase, “I regret to inform you that we’re going to win.” We are going to win. I’m not getting the words exactly right, but he’s emphatically been saying this over this last year as Trump has done radical thing after radical thing.You’ve been one of the voices saying that everything’s not—go, the—things are—things that are bad are happening, but also that some resistance is working. Welcome, first of all.Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Bacon: And so what phrase are you using most when on social media?Táíwò: I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win. That’s what I’ve been saying over and over. Bacon: And why do you use that phrase? Táíwò: Honestly, the first time I used it was just playful in the moment—poking fun at the blenders on the right, of which there are plenty. And I think this is an important time to remember that’s the case. But people really seemed to respond to it.So I just kept saying it. And more or less what I’ve had in mind is, I think we are appropriately responsive to the death and devastation. I think sending people to torture centers, breaking up families, killing people in the streets—that is absolutely the right response on a human level human.But a thing that’s hard to keep in mind is that tactically, strategically, the point of that hyper-violence is to keep us there emotionally and to keep us from realizing how much power we have to resist them and how successful we cana, and in the case of recent weeks, are being resisting them. That’s the kind of thought behind why it’s important to say stuff like that.Bacon: So talk about the last few weeks. Are we at an inflection point? And I guess maybe since the election—or really in Minneapolis—it does feel like something has changed. But it feels like Trump is on the defensive a little bit. It feels like there’s a—it’s not—we’re not quite at 2020 levels, and it feels like people are outraged in a certain way. What are you seeing when you look at where we are right now?Táíwò: People are outraged. And I think it’s too early to tell for sure whether we’re at an inflection point. Only historians have the benefit of being sure about those sorts of things. But it does seem like that—and it seems like that because we’re seeing things on both the left and the right that we saw maybe inklings of before, but I think we’re seeing more dramatic versions of those updates.On the right, there’s been this kind of shamelessness: We’re not going to fire people for having Nazi ties—a kind of attempt to institute a culture of impunity. And it’s never been total or absolute, right? They—just to give one example—Paul Garcia ended up suspending his potential nomination to a federal position because of what was leaked in Republican group chats. So they’ve never actually been able to project a total culture of impunity throughout the right.But nevertheless, they themselves called attention to Minnesota with this extreme mobilization of a disproportionate amount of federal [law enforcement] leadership. That’s not a minor position. A position they themselves called attention to does show a level of vulnerability that they haven’t shown before in such a grandiose, charged way.And they can probably read the polls. There was a YouGov poll that came out that showed them underwater with white people, with men, with demographics that are typically strong for the right wing. So those updates probably correspond with whatever internal polling they’re doing. Something is scaring them. And on the subject of something that’s scaring them, here’s the update on—let’s call it—the left.We’re seeing an unprecedented amount of mobilization—mobilization not just from ragtag groups of activists, but being joined by people who didn’t previously have organizing experience, being joined by unions that were throwing their weight around. Minnesota had a general strike—in all but name, essentially—on one day. And the most recent murder of Alex Pretti is likely a response to the frustration that the federal agents felt from that incredible mobilization, right?So we’re seeing levels of organized resistance that don’t really have much of a parallel in recent history. The last general strike was announced in the 1940s—maybe in the 1990s, depending on what you count as the general strike. So we’re seeing big changes.Bacon: So you mentioned polls—why do you think polls matter? Because you’re a philosopher, I assume you don’t sit around and your actual work does not involve polls. I think there’s a couple indications that the resistance to Trump is working, but I think the one that is the most—I want to say “objective”—is polls. What do the polls tell you?Táíwò: Me? I don’t think they say much except the short-term horizon of political messaging. Who’s winning the messaging battle the last couple of weeks? But we have to understand for political elites—people that run for office or whose parties get reshaped every two years—they have more of a tangible reason to pay attention to polls than the rest of us do, right?Their political fortunes, their ability to throw their political weight around, depend on these short-term changes of opinion. While it’s important not to get lost there because things like institutional developments—say, the creation of a Department of Homeland Security, right?—are not short-term problems. And we’re right now seeing why we have to be willing to think in a more long-term manner than the next election.But it does tangibly seem to change the behavior of these people in office who are scrambling to get allies every couple of years in these elections.Bacon: And you said, like the general strike, something has happened in Minneapolis that is unique, and I think that’s a good sign. What do you attribute that to? Like, just how heinously they’ve behaved, or is Minneapolis a particularly unique place? What do you attribute that to?Táíwò: It’s a combination of things. One: They’re finding out the hard way that you don’t invade a strong winter people in the winter—Napoleon and countless others found out.On a more serious note, there’s been a large undercurrent of organizing since the murder of George Floyd, which was not far from where these recent murders happened. And those connections, I’m hearing, are being reactivated in the wake of this recent invasion by federal agents of a U.S. city. All of that, combined with the heinous behavior of these federal agents, I think has had the effect of political—it’s the worst version of political education.It would be much better to explain history to people, but people living in Minnesota can just go outside and see that, in fact, what the left has been saying about DHS in particular, about ICE in particular, or about Border Patrol—what all these seemingly radical activists have been saying that might have sounded alarmist six months ago—is just a plain, unvarnished description of empirical reality that you can see in front of you.And that has, I think, demonstrably radicalized a lot of people in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, and people outside of that state and city who are reasonably plugged into credible information about what’s happening over there.Bacon: When you say “we,” how do you think about that term in this context? And I assume you don’t necessarily mean Democrats, but I’m just curious what you mean by that.Táíwò: Yeah. Honestly, I mean, at this point, anti-fascists, right? I think we’re entering a stage of politics where—for whatever misgivings people have—something like a “popular front” is needed, where people who identify as Democrats and people like myself, who would consider themselves to be to the left of that, all need to find common cause. And even people on the right who have principles—as many of them as there are—need to find common cause in fighting this particular fight against authoritarianism and seem to be doing so.Bacon: “We are going to win” is different than “we are winning.” So, why are we going to win?Táíwò: Yeah, I think that phrasing is important because one of the things that I alluded to when I first explained why I use that phrase is: what I’m not trying to do is look at these heinous murders, look at this mass campaign of ethnic cleansing, and say nothing bad is happening or “this is what victory looks like.”That is absolutely not the impression that I’m trying to give. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. Why I’m saying this is because things look so dire. And the ability of federal forces to concentrate on slivers of the country and generate these spectacles of hyper-violence is part and parcel of their political strategy to make it look like they have power that they don’t, in fact, have.This is a massive country. They’re facing massive resistance even in the large cities that they target—and that resistance is effective, by the way. They can’t deploy this strategy everywhere, right? So they depend on generating these spectacles, generating a social media environment of fear and capitulation as a force multiplier.If they can just harass and attack this many children, they think they can convince people that their victory is inevitable. And it is important now, more than ever, to remind people that’s not, in fact, true. The brave people risking their lives on the streets of Minnesota are in fact doing something that is effective; they are in fact doing something that we can and must learn from and are in fact doing something that can work at scale.The more we pay attention to how they’re resisting, rather than just the evil they’re resisting, the likelier we are to realize that we can win, we must win—and we will.Bacon: Let me frame it differently because I try to make sure some of my coverage is about victories over Trump instead of all “Trump did something evil.” And that’s what you’re doing too, is like in, it’s in, it’s important to highlight the wins, both because that’s a reality, but also to mo—keep people aware of that victory is possible.Táíwò: Absolutely. I might just bring up in this kind of valence: there was a really good interview that Eric Blanc at laborpolitics.com did with a Minneapolis organizer who works with the Twin Cities Sunrise Movement, sunrise, and it’s just detailing how effectively they’ve been able to target specific businesses and target ICE through targeting those businesses—doing things like holding up the counters at Target and campaigns targeting the hotels that they were staying at to complicate the logistics.And some of these events ended up in the national news. Not all the news coverage highlighted the role of activism in getting hotels to say they’re going to stop hosting ICE agents, but the results of what they did ended up in the national news because the results of what they did were demonstrably effective. And paying attention to interviews like that, learning the tactics that they used, understanding that we were not helpless. There’s a lot of us and a lot of us are in fact doing things that are effective in protecting their neighbors. I think that’s important for all of us to pay attention to.Bacon: Is there a way you see this as a philosopher, the rest of us don’t see resistance that is, might be worth thinking about? How do you see this because of you, the way you think, the way you studied? Is there anything about this that the philosophers see that the journalists don’t see that I should think about?Táíwò: I’m not sure. I’ll tell you how I think of it as a philosopher and, you can tell me if it matches how you, or how your view is. But really for me as a political philosopher, some philosophers have “science envy”—they try to be like scientists. As a political philosopher, I feel like the kind of envy that I do have and should have is “historian end,” right? I want to think about politics like historians.Think about it as these long-term, pitched, protracted struggles that pop up in waves and recede in waves but that nevertheless push in certain directions, right? And it’s hard in the mud and muck of day-to-day life to tell these long-term, decades-long, centuries-long stories of political struggle. It’s hard to realize that’s what you’re in fact doing when—what is what’s happening day to day.And if there’s any market difference between how a philosopher or political philosopher might think about these things and a journalist, it might just be that, right? Just because [of] the nature of our jobs, right? One of us has to pay attention to the short-term, right, to do their job effectively. I have to pay attention to [the] long-term [to] do my job effectively. By talking to each other, we can, both learn something, right?Bacon: But you’re watching the short-term view now?Táíwò: Yeah. I am, exactly. But exactly that: I’m watching the short term and watching journalists explain the short term to me so that I can figure out what’s going on. The way that I’m thinking about this from that perspective is—the right in this country has been losing for decades.That’s what the civil rights movement was. It was a world-historical defeat of the politics of segregationism and apartheid that this administration and its allies palpably want to bring back, right? And this hysterical, comic-book villainy is their attempt to spectacle and meme and “earned media” their way out of the reality that no one likes what they stand for.And that is a victory that has been won culturally through, literally, generations-long struggles. Before the abolitionism of the nineteenth century, people were fighting this fight over what the terms of basic moral decency were going to be. And those terms eventually came to exclude the outward misogyny and the valorization of ethnic cleansing and segregationism that this administration represents and everything that they’re doing.Those losses—by way of terrorism, essentially. And if there’s a place that my confidence comes from, it’s by looking at the long arc of history and seeing how decisively it’s swung against them. And just thinking that we are capable of winning the battles that were won in the sixties. We’re capable of winning the battles that were won in the fifties and seventies. We’re not any less capable of doing that than the people who preceded us.Bacon: It’s interesting you said that, ’cause I think a lot of people—you can read history, particularly the history of Black Americans in the U.S., and you can read that in two ways. One: that there’s been a lot of resistance that has succeeded. The other: that a lot of the structure of the country has not changed in a lot of ways.The inequality has remained; the civil rights movement did not produce economic gains it hoped to. So you are reading it—there’s a couple different ways to read this, and I think these stories are connected—but you are reading it [in a way that says] maybe the history says we can resist, but also you acknowledge history also says we may not overcome, so to speak.Táíwò: Yeah, absolutely. And just both of those things are true. We didn’t achieve the world we deserve. But they used to buy and sell people on the street in many of the places that we’re protesting. And we don’t have to pretend that—for whatever distance there is between the egalitarian utopia and where we are now—we don’t have to pretend that things are the same.There were battles that were won. The limitations and constraints on those victories represent the continued investments of the structures of this country, and all the others, in various forms of inequality, various forms of injustice. Both of those things are true. But what this administration and the current authoritarian opposition represents is an attempt to bring back a form of inequality—a specific set of forms of injustice that were decisively defeated and can be defeated again.Bacon: Let me go through a sort of a—not a rapid-fire—but I want to finish with a couple [of] things that are a little bit away from what we were talking about. The first is, Zohran, you said the Democrats and people to the left are the Democrats. So you put yourself in a group of people left [of] the Democrats. Let [me] ask this.So on the one hand, Zohran Mamdani wins this great election; it seems to be reforming New York in a more left-progressive way. On the other hand, today I read about the Center for American Progress—maybe the leading think tank among Democrats—is calling for more policing and an embrace of more “tough on crime” policies. And so my question might be: I agree with more Zohran and less with the Center for American Progress, but I guess my question is, are these conflicts related at all? The sort of fight with the right and the fight between the left and the center-left.Táíwò: I think so. I think the most charitable way to put it would be to think of it as a kind of ideological fight or a tactical fight over how it is that we’re going to resist authoritarianism. And the center-left believes that the kind of policing that has evolved in this country is, at least in principle, professionalizable—in principle, an engine of the democratic will.And what we’re seeing in ICE, with the Border Patrol, this policing that the president is pushing is something other than what’s developed in local police departments. So it’s an attempt to wall off the protests of 2026 from the protests of 2020. That’s the charitable view; it’s not my view.I happen to think, as a matter of fact, that ideologically an embrace of policing and the kind of authoritarian politics behind that is just an element of convergence between the center-left and the far right. They just both believe in the project of handing people guns and handing money to the people with guns—whatever fraction of social resources, public resources, that they demand this year—and being willfully ignorant of the abuses of those people, whether it’s Cop City in Atlanta or the feds in Minneapolis.And I think what we have to gear up for is a struggle with those people, right? It’s [not] different in principle from political struggle writ large. There’s the compromised position that makes sense. One side is going to have to lose and the other side is going to have to win. And the best version, let’s say in a liberal democracy, would be an electoral process. There are more “activisty” versions where people have to do direct actions of some sort. And then there’s open conflict—and you hope that it’ll take one of the first two forms—but those questions aren’t for us today.Bacon: Let me end with talk about Hammer & Hope. You’re involved in this journalism project—let’s talk about that a little bit, if you can. Hammer & Hope is a website; it’s about three years old now. A very important one, I think. So talk about what you guys are doing there.Táíwò: At Hammer & Hope, it’s a Black Left magazine that really tries to be both, to varying extents, a center for real open thinking and conversation around core ideas. What kinds of appeals to people make sense? What are the obstacles in Black politics and Left politics writ large? What’s the best way to understand them? But also reporting as well.What happens with the federal agents who attacked a Chicago apartment building, right? What’s going on in Cancer Alley? What’s going on, for that matter, in Minneapolis right now—especially with Black union members? So really trying to—Bacon: Great piece on how Zohran won the Black working class, which I hadn’t really read anywhere else.Táíwò: Yeah, absolutely. So trying to be a place where especially, you know, people adjacent to the Black Left can have conversations and find information that maybe one wouldn’t find elsewhere.Bacon: Tell people what the Black Left means—what you mean when you say that.Táíwò: Yeah. So you have Black people involved in the labor movement. You have Black nationalists; you have Black people who are members of, I guess what you could call traditional Left formations: Democratic Socialists, anarchists, et cetera.All of those people for, very different reasons maybe might have a range of political perspectives, a range of things that they think are central political questions that maybe other people in those kinds of organizations or different kinds of organizations wouldn’t think of as central political questions. We at Hammer & Hope just wanted to facilitate a space where conversations can happen within and across those different groups of people.Bacon: Okay. Thanks for joining me. This was a great conversation. Good to see you. And thanks for giving us all a little bit of hope this last year. It’s been helpful how you’ve flagged things I hadn’t seen. And I do feel like you’re helping me see that we maybe can get past this moment we’re in now.Táíwò: I’m glad to hear that. Thanks for having me.

The US president nominated Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, to helm the central bank.

A floundering Donald Trump gaslights on overdrive, Chuck Schumer pirouettes on thin ICE, and Amy Klobuchar threw WHAT!?

US President Donald Trump warned Britain’s prime minister that it was “very dangerous” to strengthen ties with China.

It was Soren Stevenson’s third day in office on the Minneapolis city council when, in the middle of a strategic planning session, Mayor Jacob Frey rushed out of the room. Soon, the council learned why: Federal agents had shot and killed Renée Good. Stevenson hurried down to the site of the killing, on the edge […]

The following is a lightly edited transcript of the January 30 episode of the Daily Blast podcast. Listen to it here. A clip on Trumpworld sinking into finger-pointing is here.Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent. There’s been a shift in media coverage of Donald Trump and ICE. What’s happening now is being treated as a real political crisis for the president. He’s treating it like one. He just demoted Border Patrol chief Gregory Bovino and basically put him in a box. And Republicans are admitting to reporters that they’re in real trouble. Yet meanwhile, MAGA media figures are not just demanding that Trump continue on his current course—they’re demanding that he escalate the cruelty and brutality and carry out more atrocities against Americans. It’s now very clear that the Trump coalition is getting badly splintered by these ICE horrors. So how should Dems exploit this moment? We’re checking in with Jennifer Rubin, editor in chief of The Contrarian, who has a new piece arguing that Dems have a very rare opportunity that they mustn’t squander. Jen, good to see you. Jennifer Rubin: Good to see you too. Sargent: So here’s a sampling of headlines on Trump and immigration right now. Politico: “The GOP is losing one of its best issues.” New York Times: “On immigration, the GOP finds itself in a shocking place—on defense.” CNN: “Trump is scared of the politics of ICE and it’s showing.”Jen, not long ago, we were still being told that Trump and the GOP are “strong” on immigration and that Democrats don’t dare engage on it. Funny how quickly this turned around, isn’t it?Rubin: It really is. You and I, a lifetime ago—which was, I think, last summer when they were invading Los Angeles—told them that this was not a popular thing. People don’t like brutality. They don’t like these extreme measures. People may have voted to get rid of the “worst of the worst,” but they didn’t vote to get rid of grandma. They didn’t vote to have a five-year-old taken into custody, and they sure didn’t vote to have people murdered on the street.So I think they have come around. But in fairness, Trump also overplayed his hand again and again. And that’s what he does. That is the big advantage that we have, is that he doesn’t know when to stop. He can’t stop himself. And as you pointed out, there’s some in his base that want him to double down again.Sargent: Well, we’re going to get into a lot of that, but first let’s go through some of these Republicans who are sounding the alarm. Per Politico, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt says what Trump is doing inside the border seems to be “not working.” New Jersey Republican Jose Arango, from a heavily Latino area, says, “We’re losing in the public relations campaign.” House Republican Glenn Grothman suggests that the latest ICE shooting is murder. And Texas Governor Greg Abbott, of all people, says it’s time to “recalibrate.”Jen, Republicans are violating Trump’s first commandment, which is that you always portray Trump as formidable and dominant and never admit Trump is on the losing side of anything. What happened here with these Republicans? Rubin: They are in panic. The elected Republicans—whether it’s Rand Paul, who now admits that Kristi Noem is a “despicable liar,” or whether it’s city mayors or governors or, frankly, members of Congress—are now running in the other direction. They see the polls, which are horrific. They saw what happened in 2025 in the election and they understand they have blown it.According to Chris Murphy, whom I spoke to earlier today, his colleagues report that this past weekend they received the largest number of calls to their offices ever. And that’s considering healthcare, that’s considering COVID, a zillion other issues over the past decade or so. This has really touched a nerve and they are running scared.Sargent: Yeah, I think you get at something important here, which still, I think, eludes a lot of people: that this is actually a really incendiary cultural moment as well. It’s extremely rare for low-information voters to pick up on what’s going on in politics. Like, most normal people—unlike you and me—don’t want anything to do with this shit. They can’t stand it. You and me, we love it. Because we’re crazy—but they aren’t.And yet they are hearing all about this stuff day in and day out. They’re seeing videos of it. They’re seeing videos of Kristi Noem lie about it. They’re seeing videos of Stephen Miller call murder victims a “domestic terrorist” and worse. This is penetrating into information spaces where low-information voters hang out. And that, I think, has got people in a panic.Rubin: Absolutely. We see reports that it’s in the gamer community. When you have people like Martha Stewart and Bruce Springsteen both coming out with—in one case, a statement and the other case, an anthem—then you know something is going on. It is a long time before politics gets into the popular culture, but you have now, I think, a phenomenon that is frightful for the GOP.They have always thought they control the culture wars, but in fact, they control it in a very narrow stratum of their own base. And when it gets out to the population at large—when what Richard Nixon called the “silent majority” hear about this stuff—they don’t like it. There was just a poll out today from Pew. Trump’s approval ratings on everything from the economy to immigration are in the toilet.And these people for the first time understand it is not in their interest to be tied to Trump at the hip. We can bemoan the fact that it took this long. We can bemoan the fact that they’re not motivated by morality or by the Constitution. But at some point, it does break through. And I think what we saw this week was a demonstration of what you and I have always known: politicians follow, they do not lead.And when you have the entire country in an uproar, and when you have, as you say, these low-information voters suddenly activated, then and only then do Republicans get a clue. And so I think we are at this inflection point. And the question is what we do with it.Sargent: Well, let’s talk about what MAGA media is doing right now, because they’re lurching violently in the other direction. They’re demanding more brutality. Media Matters had a good roundup. Here’s white supremacist Nick Fuentes talking about murder victim Alex Pretti:Nick Fuentes (voiceover): You feel bad about this race traitor? If you’re out there throwing yourself in front of ICE to die for these dirt bags, let them. Let them. One less asshole in the world. One less traitor in the world. Sargent: Here’s Megyn Kelly:Megyn Kelly (voiceover): I know I’m supposed to feel sorry for Alex Preti, but I don’t. I don’t. Do you know why I wasn’t shot by Border Patrol this weekend? Because I kept my ass inside and out of their operations. Sargent: Here’s Matt Walsh:Matt Walsh (voiceover): The first conclusion is that Alex Pretti was part of an organized campaign to legally obstruct law enforcement operations on behalf of open borders communists who want to destroy the country. He was a domestic terrorist.Sargent: Here’s Steve Bannon:Steve Bannon (voiceover): President Trump, you’ve got that opening salvo...you should now invoke the Insurrection Act and flood the zone with troops, either federalized National Guard or good old bring in go to Fort Bragg where Todd Wood is and bring in the good old 82nd Airborne. Sargent: So, Jen. There’s lots more like that. They actively want Trump to escalate. They want him to kill more liberals and more Democrats. Is there any other way to read that?Rubin: No. It seems like just yesterday, by the way, anyone who said a harsh word about Charlie Kirk was fired, set upon by the media horde, and all the rest. Remember when we were hearing that the left is responsible for all of this vitriol and all of this violence? I guess we were right—it’s really projection on their part.It is very interesting that even within the right-wing media space, you see a splintering. You have those characters, but you also have characters like Laura Ingraham, who suddenly reminds herself that she doesn’t really like DHS, which was this hodgepodge of entities, bureaus, ordinary and unordinary entities that were created and thrown together during the aftermath of 9/11.So on one hand, Fox now sounds semi-normal at times as they’re panicked on behalf of Donald Trump. You have the bomb-throwers, literally and figuratively, who are egging this on. And by the way, we haven’t talked much about the Second Amendment crowd. Trump, of course, has made the mistake of very visibly throwing one of his key constituents under the bus. And that is the Second Amendment crowd.We’ve gone from lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse to indicating—arguing—that Alex Pretti was a legitimate target because he had a licensed firearm in a state that permits concealed carrying.Sargent: Right. If you lawfully carry a gun and you show up at a protest, God, you’re asking for it.Rubin: Exactly. Well, you—you and I have not been in favor of concealed-carry laws for exactly this reason, but this is the world they created and now they don’t like it. Well, I think it’s this sort of infighting that will eventually destroy—I don’t even say the Republican Party, because the Republican Party doesn’t exist anymore, but the MAGA movement.And the aim should be to exploit these divides, to widen the gap and get them pointing fingers at each other. You now have Kristi Noem pointing the finger at Stephen Miller, Stephen Miller backtracking and saying, “Well, maybe these people didn’t follow protocol after all.” [In doing this, Miller is in effect blaming Noem, since she runs DHS, and CBP is under DHS]. This is what we want. It’s usually that the finger-pointing is on the Democratic side. Republicans are notorious for being lockstep in unanimity with one another, but this is one of those instances where they won’t be. And Democrats have to exploit it. They have to push and push and push. Sargent: Let’s talk about the nature of the schism here. I think it’s clear right now that those far-right voices represent real constituencies in the Trump coalition. And I think we need to be clear about this point: they want a violent race war. That’s what they mean when they say that stuff.But these other Republicans who represent swing territory—or suburban or exurban areas—they want Trump’s crackdown to proceed without too much obvious violence. “Keep it clean, guys.” And without too much white nationalism making swing voters uncomfortable. That’s the split. What do you make of it?Rubin: I think that’s right. And that’s the difference between Kristi Noem—slash—Stephen Miller on one side and Tom Homan on the other. Tom Homan is just as much of a white nationalist as the others, but he knows better than to say these things out loud after the murder of two individuals. So I think we shouldn’t kid ourselves that there are any moderate Republicans left, or any multicultural Republicans, or anyone on their side who really believes in democratic pluralism.But they are absolutely panicked for exactly this reason. All those people whose quotes you read care about ratings. They don’t care about getting elected. And that’s the difference. Even people who are in, quote, “safe districts” understand that if you have a shift in the electorate as big as what we are seeing, there will be people who are swept out of power who they never imagined would be.We are talking about congressmen who never had competitive races; we are talking about senators who never had competitive races—and they understand how bad this is for them. They don’t know how to compete other than in a closed-circuit universe where the media is all on their side, Republicans are all unified, and Democrats are either cowed or nonexistent. And once you get into competitive politics, lo and behold, many of them are now changing their tune.Sargent: Well, so to your point about the need to exploit this moment to really exacerbate the split—which is a real one within MAGA—let’s talk about that. Beyond the sort of very short-term deal-making around funding DHS and restricting ICE and so forth, what can Democrats do to exacerbate the split?I think maybe one thing would be to highlight the fact that Trump and Noem and Miller are fundamentally ethnonationalists, and that they’re trying to carry out an ethnonationalist purge with state violence, and then make Republicans defend that. That’s one thought. What do you think of that, and what else could Democrats do? Rubin: I absolutely believe in that. And that’s one reason I think that it’s actually useful to impeach Kristi Noem—not because you’re going to get someone better, but you make Republicans defend her and make them go on record. Let’s see how Susan Collins is gonna vote. Let’s see how some of these swing Republicans in upstate New York are gonna vote.Make them take the hard vote and defend the indefensible. So yes, I think part of it is tying it to personnel. And part of it, I think, is also making the case that Trump has set up a lawless, violent secret police. And the problem cannot be solved simply by putting controls on them. But you have to break up DHS, you have to redesign our immigration system, and you have to push for realistic border control—just like the Democrats and Republicans agreed to, if you remember, before the 2024 election.And they can’t be afraid to call out this lawlessness, this violence, and to make them put themselves on the side of freedom. First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Second Amendment—my gosh—and to make the case that this is what Republicans used to tell us we should be afraid of. The government is going to come to your door. Tyranny is going to knock. Guess what? The tyranny is them. And the people who are going to protect you are not Republicans; they are the Democrats who do not think the state should be all-powerful.So I think making this, yes, about immigration—yes, about what kind of country and what kind of morality we want—but also simply making this about tyranny finally may pierce through the consciousness. We have talked so many times about how it’s difficult for people to care about democracy. Well, I think they are beginning to see what tyranny looks like, and that’s where the conversation, I think, has to go.Sargent: Well, the country really is awake to what’s happening. And you wrote in your piece that one of the critical things that has to happen right now is that Democrats have to figure out how to feed and sustain this mass movement—this big cultural moment that’s sweeping the country. What can Democrats do to keep that going?Rubin: I think, first of all, they have to go to these places. They have to show what’s going on. They have to physically stand in these communities and support them. They have to tie the actions of ICE and the Border Patrol to the Republicans who voted for all this money for them. And I think they have to be aggressive, bold—even maximalist—in their demands.It’s not enough to simply say, “We want judicial warrants when you go into somebody’s house.” How about no arrests, period, without specific warrants? And ICE should not be going after people who do not have criminal records. Push the advantage.And what’s more, I think they have to begin to go into these communities and stand with the communities. One reason why Minnesota and Minneapolis were so successful is they had banded together—whether it’s the advocacy groups like Common Cause, whether it’s the moms who are going to these detention centers and giving clothing and coffee once these people are kicked out on the streets, whether it is the Native American community or teachers. They have to show common cause with these people and continue to put a human face on what has been going on.What gets people motivated? The picture of a five-year-old in a bunny hat, quite frankly; the sight of Alex Pretti being beaten and executed in the street. We can bemoan the fact that it shouldn’t come to this, that we should have gotten the country much more riled up a long time ago. But the fact that they’re there now needs to make it an absolute priority for Democrats to stand by and alongside those people who are being victimized—and the victims are all of us. It’s not simply undocumented immigrants.So I think a sense of solidarity, of unity, of going to these places, of making demands. And one thing I think that was wonderful that happened yesterday was this group of nine district attorneys. They have named themselves FAFO—a play on the slang phrase—but what they are doing is saying: “You know what? Absolute immunity is a canard. Even the Supremacy Clause does not entirely protect ICE and Border Patrol when they step so far out of bounds and they execute people. And we are going to go after them.”That’s the kind of action that will get people to rise to the Democrats’ cause. Do not rely on the legal precedent that was in effect a year ago or two years ago. Push the envelope. That’s what Republicans do. Make the claims. Bring the cases. Bring the lawsuits. Demand that we get the evidence of this impropriety. And then people will understand that you are fighting for them and with them.Sargent: I couldn’t agree more. I think at the most fundamental level, Democrats need to spend every second thinking about how to use every last lever of their power to defend the American people and American communities against this madness—against this paramilitary assault on them being mounted by the President of the United States and his conciliaries.Jen Rubin, awesome to talk to you. Thanks so much for coming on.Rubin: It is great to talk to you, Greg. Keep doing this great job. I love talking to you and you bring on the best and the brightest to talk to your folks.Sargent: You as well. We’re loving The Contrarian; you’re doing great work.