American Decline

Trade, Trump, and the War on Immigrants

APRIL 18, 2025
Trade, Trump, and the War on Immigrants
Trump Could Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia Home if He Wanted To →
The Trump administration admits that it mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, yet he’s still languishing in a notorious mega-prison. “District Court Judge Paula Xinis came down hard on the Department of Justice…[citing] the Supreme Court’s 9–0 decision finding that the Trump administration had to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States,” Joan Walsh explains this week. But as always, Trump believes he’s above the law and is instead shifting blame onto someone else—El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele. Walsh calls the claim that the Trump administration couldn’t get Abrego Garcia “the worst kayfabe ever.”

 

Meanwhile, Trump’s deportation spree threatens college students and faculty. “It’s important to acknowledge the unprecedented nature of what we’re living through,” Saree Makdisi writes of Trump’s attacks on pro-Palestinian activists. “This moment has been compared to McCarthyism,” he argues, but the difference here is that “not one of the students being pursued or detained today is accused of criticizing the United States or its system of government.”

While these abuses of power might not deter Trump’s base, hopefully his corrupt tariffs will. While we shouldn’t conflate Trump’s dangerous and corrupt tariffs with tariffs themselves, columnist Zephyr Teachout writes, we must see the president’s trade policy for what it is: “a devastating blow to America, akin to the Covid-19 pandemic in [its] scope.”

 

-Alana Pockros

Engagement Editor, The Nation

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Trump Could Bring Kilmar Abrego Garcia Home if He Wanted To
As much as Donald Trump wants the public to believe this is in the hands of “the world’s coolest dictator,” he is holding all the cards.
JOAN WALSH
 
Trump’s War on the Palestine Movement Is Something Entirely New
Never before has a government repressed its citizens’ free speech and academic freedom so brutally in order to protect an entirely different country.
SAREE MAKDISI
 
Trade, Monopoly, and the Fight We Can’t Let Trump Define
Tariffs and trade are not side issues, but a central front in the battle against monopoly power—and for self-government.
ZEPHYR TEACHOUT
 
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Two works—a new film, The Shrouds, and a career-spanning monograph by the film critic Violet Lucca—present a more sanguine image of the master of body horror.
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For the first time, I feel driven to speak publicly, because our company is now powering state violence across the globe.
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Our May 2025 Issue: The Other Red Hat. Plus: Spring Books!

 

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