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      How millions of US children would be hurt by Trump’s mass deportation plan: ‘Deep harm is intentional’

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      Donald Trump confirmed on Monday his intentions to make mass deportations a hallmark of his second term.That such measures would drastically upend the lives of the US’s immigrant communities is widely understood. But sweeping anti-immigrant policies would also be detrimental to American citizens – most notably the nearly 20 million US-born children of immigrant parents.“Mass deportations will be profoundly harmful to US citizen children,” said Andrew Craycroft, staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco.In 2022, one in four US children had at least one immigrant parent, and more than 4 million US citizens under age 18 lived with an undocumented parent.“These are millions of US citizen children who were born here, who have grown up going to your elementary schools and playing on your little league baseball teams, who are facing a very real danger of losing their parents,” said Kelly Albinak Kribs, co-director of the Technical Assistance Program at the Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights.And while the mechanics by which the president-elect would actually execute his sweeping anti-immigrant agenda remain murky, there is little doubt that creating a climate of fear for immigrant communities is one of his administration’s top priorities – and one that will cause irreparable psychological damage to millions of US citizens.Deporting the parents of US-citizen children didn’t begin with Trump. However, past administrations took precautions to limit the trauma it caused, advocates and legal experts say.The Obama administration barred Ice raids from taking place in schools, childcare centers, hospitals and places of worship. Before that, the Bush administration required Ice to notify schools and child protective services in advance of a large-scale raid.Trump’s policies, on the other hand, appear to traumatize children by design to curb unwanted immigration. “Under Trump, previously and in the future, deep harm to children is absolutely intentional and in many ways is the entire point,” said Wendy Cervantes, director of immigration and immigrant families at the Center for Law and Social Policy.Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy at the southern border separated at least 5,000 foreign-born children and hundreds of US citizen children from their parents. He also ramped-up interior enforcement measures, such as targeted worksite raids. In 2019, Cervantes visited towns in central Mississippi where Ice agents had arrested nearly 700 undocumented poultry plant workers, many of whom had US-born children attending nearby public schools.View image in fullscreen“The kids could see their parents being marched into white vans, handcuffed, as they were leaving school,” Cervantes said. “It was like a nightmare. And those kids, to this day, are still requiring a lot of mental health support.”Come January, Americans should anticipate a return to “draconian measures” such as family separation, said Kribs. Trump has also indicated desires to go after immigrants with legal status, expand the circumstances that allow for denaturalization and pursue unlawful measures that explicitly target the US-born children of immigrants like ending birthright citizenship.But how Trump would execute his more radical ambitions, including militarized mass deportations, is unclear.Such an operation would take a high degree of coordination, both between US agencies and with foreign governments, to pull off. A country like Mexico may accommodate receiving a few hundred people, “but it’s a completely different issue to talk about hundreds of thousands of people being sent back”, said Nando Sigona, professor of international migration and forced displacement at the University of Birmingham.It would also be expensive. According to Debu Gandhi, senior director for immigration policy at the Center for American Progress, deporting workers would accelerate inflation, shrink the food supply, slow efforts to build affordable housing and squander taxpayer dollars in efforts to “deport mothers of US citizen children who [pose] no security threat”, Gandhi said.And then there’s the question of public opinion.Backlash again Trump’s 2018 family separation policies was widespread across the political spectrum, explained Lee Gelernt, an attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union who led the lawsuit against “zero tolerance”. “If a second Trump administration does extreme things, we hope and expect the public will push back,” he said. “In his first term, I think they believed they had dehumanized the immigrant population to such an extent that the public would not push back even when little babies were torn away, but there was enormous pushback across the political and ideological spectrum.”Whether or not mass deportations occur, citizen children of immigrants will be adversely impacted by living in a constant state of fear.Research shows that the threat of parental separation alone can cause PTSD and toxic stress in young children. Under the coming administration, that stress will be especially pronounced in mixed-status families, where one or more parent lacks legal status. “It’s easiest to start with people who are wholly unprotected,” said Kribs.Anti-immigrant policies can also have a chilling effect by which immigrant parents, fearing arrest and separation, keep their citizen children home from school, refrain from signing up for benefits such as food stamps or health insurance, and avoid taking their citizen children to the doctor, said Sigona.View image in fullscreenMisinformation exacerbates immigrant parents’ fears that engaging with public services could jeopardize their status or their chances of acquiring permanent residency. The repercussions can be dangerous. “There were parents telling us about how they were making decisions about whether or not to take their kids to the emergency room in the middle of the night,” Cervantes said.Other citizen children may lose contact with the US entirely. If a parent facing deportation chooses to keep their family together, a citizen child will have to leave the US and resettle elsewhere – often in an unfamiliar country that their parent fled for reasons of safety or security.Existing guidance urges Ice agents to detain the parents of citizen children near their children’s residence, arrange for visitation rights, and give them time to make childcare arrangements – but this isn’t binding. “Broadly speaking, these citizen children don’t have the right to have their parent remain with them,” Craycroft said.“Children simply don’t have the same rights as adults,” echoed Cervantes, describing the discrepancy as one of the immigrant system’s biggest flaws.Knowing this, immigrant and child welfare advocates are prepared to have all hands on deck to combat what they see as an imminent crisis for millions of citizen children.“We are facing these next four years clear-eyed and ready to meet the challenge,” said the Young Center’s Kribs. “But there’s going to be a lot of heartbreak along the way.” More

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      Project 2025: the Trump picks with ties to ultra-rightwing policy manifesto

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      On the campaign trail, Donald Trump repeatedly disavowed Project 2025, saying he had “nothing to do” with the blueprint for a conservative presidency and didn’t know the people behind it. But as he starts to assemble his cabinet and White House staff, it seems likely he’ll get to know the people involved very well soon.Trump’s attempts to disavow the project before winning re-election seemed improbable, given that it was written by various members of his first administration and aligned on policy goals with his own proposed second term agenda.His transition team claimed it would not hire any people associated with Project 2025 because it was “radioactive”.But, in his selections for key roles, he has already tapped people with direct ties to the rightwing manifesto.Brendan CarrView image in fullscreenTrump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission wrote the chapter on the FCC in Project 2025. In the chapter, Carr advocates for “reining in big tech”, in part by limiting the immunity tech platforms have from content posted by third parties. He specifically mentions abuses by Google, Meta and YouTube as examples of platforms requiring such reining in.Tom HomanView image in fullscreenHoman, chosen as Trump’s “border czar”, is listed as a contributor to Project 2025, though his name is not listed on any specific chapter or policy ideas.He also worked as a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He penned op-eds, promoted by Heritage, that attacked the Biden administration over immigration and panned the bipartisan immigration deal. He wrote in one op-ed that “race-baiting Democrats” had called him names when he led Ice.Mike HuckabeeView image in fullscreenMike Huckabee, named by Trump to be his ambassador to Israel, interviewed the Heritage president and Project 2025 architect, Kevin Roberts, on his show in October 2024 as part of an effort to counter the negative press about the project.Karoline Leavitt View image in fullscreenThe incoming White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in training videos for Project 2025. In addition to the policy manifesto, the project’s four pillars involved amassing a database of potential employees and creating a training program for conservatives who wanted positions in a rightwing presidency. In a video called “The Art of Professionalism”, obtained by ProPublica and Documented, Leavitt talks about her advice for people who would serve as staff. While she was the national press secretary for Trump’s campaign, she claimed the project had nothing to do with Trump. She also appears in a promotional video for the project.Stephen MillerView image in fullscreenStephen Miller will be back in the White House, this time as deputy chief of staff for policy. He is the president of the America First Legal Foundation, a legal attack dog non-profit for rightwing causes.America First Legal was listed as a supporter of Project 2025 and appeared as a member of the project’s advisory board, though the group then asked to be removed from it. Miller also appeared in a promotional video for the project, which is still posted on the project’s website.John RatcliffeView image in fullscreenRatcliffe, offered the role of CIA director by Trump, was a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, where he was tasked with chairing a project to hold China accountable for Covid-19 and “helping Project 2025 build out policy recommendations for intelligence reform in the next presidential administration”, according to the Heritage website.Ratcliffe is listed as a contributor to Project 2025. He also is interviewed for the project, and excerpts of the interview went into a chapter on the intelligence community. In the chapter, Ratcliffe is quoted multiple times, on issues such as making sure the intelligence community is accountable to the director of national intelligence and on countering China.“I had an $85bn combined annual budget for both the national intelligence program and military intelligence program,” he is quoted in Project 2025. “My perspective was, ‘Whatever we’re spending on countering China, it isn’t enough.’”JD VanceView image in fullscreenTrump’s vice-president has close ties with Roberts, the Heritage president. Vance wrote the foreword for Roberts’ book, which was released after the election.Roberts “is somebody I rely on a lot who has very good advice, very good political instincts”, Vance told news outlet Notus in January 2024. In the foreword, Vance praises Roberts’ ideas and boldness, saying the book advances a “fundamentally Christian view of culture and economics” and a “surprising – even jarring” path forward for conservatives. More

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      Americans agree politics is broken − here are 5 ideas for fixing key problems

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      Now that the elections are over, you might be left feeling exhausted, despondent and disillusioned – whether your preferred candidate won or not. You are not alone.

      Survey after survey has found that Americans agree that the political system is not serving them.

      Americans say they are angry at the political dysfunction, disgusted with the divisive rhetoric, weary from the lack of options, and feel unheard and unrepresented. I am a mathematician who studies quantitative aspects of democracy, and in my view, the reason for this widespread dissatisfaction is evident: The mechanisms of American democracy are broken at a fundamental level.

      Research shows that there are clear mathematical fixes for these malfunctions that would implement sound democratic practices supported by evidence. They won’t solve every ailment of American democracy: For example, Altering Supreme Court rulings or expanding voting access are more political or administrative than they are based in math. Nevertheless, each of these changes – especially in combination with one another – could make American democracy more responsive to its citizens.

      Problem: Plurality voting

      Plurality voting, or the winner-take-all method, is how all but a handful of the nation’s 520,000 elected officials are chosen. It is also mathematically the worst, because it can give victory to a candidate who does not have majority support. This method is rife with mathematical problems, such as vote-splitting and the spoiler effect, which both deliver victory to less popular candidates.

      Solution: Ranked-choice voting

      Ranked-choice voting allows voters to put their preferences in order, rather than just registering their top selection.

      This system, used in Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere around the world, as well is in over 50 jurisdictions in the U.S., including Alaska, New York City and Minneapolis, elects a candidate that has broad support. Because voters are not worried about wasting their votes, this method allows people to show support for third-party candidates even if they don’t win. This method also punishes negative campaigning because candidates can win even if they are some voters’ second or third choices, not just their first choice.

      Using mathematical principles and methods, it’s possible to rebalance democracy.
      Andrii Yalanskyi/iStock / Getty Images Plus

      Problem: Electoral College

      The Electoral College is a unique and uniquely archaic mechanism that no other country in the world wants anything to do with. Its legacy of slavery and the Constitution’s framers’ skepticism about the populace being smart enough to make good decisions for themselves is only exacerbated by its many mathematical problems, which give some states’ voters more power than others when electing a president.

      Solution: Popular vote

      The evidence shows that switching to a popular vote would eliminate those biases. But even if 63% of Americans support getting rid of the Electoral College, history shows that the constitutional amendment required is not likely to happen.

      A way to avoid a need for a constitutional change could be the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, currently supported by 17 states, including California and Illinois, and Washington, D.C. It would require the electors from the states in the compact to vote for the winner of the national popular vote. But it does not take effect until enough states join that their combined electoral votes reach the winning threshold of 270. Right now, states with a total of 209 electoral votes back the measure.

      Problem: Single-winner districts

      Because of winner-take-all voting, congressional and state officeholders don’t necessarily reflect the district’s partisan makeup, giving disproportionate representation to one party.

      Solution: Multi-winner districts

      Most democracies around the world have geographically larger districts that elect multiple candidates at the same time. Multi-winner districts are designed to achieve proportional representation. Right now, all nine Massachusetts representatives in the U.S. House are Democrats, even though one-third of the state’s voters typically opt for Republican candidates. But if Massachusetts had three congressional districts instead of nine, and each elected three House members, one-third of the seats would go to Republicans, commensurate with the proportion of the state’s Republican voters. Multi-winner districts also effectively eliminate gerrymandering.

      South Carolina state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, D-Columbia, questions his Republican colleagues’ new map of congressional districts on Jan. 20, 2022.
      Jeffrey Collins/AP

      Problem: Party primaries

      About 10% of eligible voters cast ballots in congressional primaries. Those voters often represent a fired-up base that can elevate fringe or extreme candidates who go on to run in general races that are often not competitive due to a confluence of factors such as plurality voting and single-winner districts.

      The final figures are not yet available for 2024, but this one-tenth fraction of voters effectively decided 83% of congressional seats in 2020. Representatives mold their politics to pander to the demands of that base and can keep their jobs for decades with little effort.

      Presidential primaries have their own mathematical flaws that distort the preferences of the voters and reward polarizing candidates who can turn out the base.

      Solution: Open primaries, or none at all

      A system of open, nonpartisan primaries is employed in California, Colorado and Nevada. Three or four top candidates advance to the general election, which is then conducted using ranked-choice voting. This structure increases voter participation and delivers more representative outcomes.

      A simpler solution could be to eliminate primary elections and hold a single, open general election with ranked-choice voting.

      A 1913 postcard shows the U.S. House of Representatives in the year its membership was fixed by law at 435.
      vintagehalloweencollector via Flickr, CC BY-ND

      Problem: Size of the House of Representatives

      The very first amendment the framers of the Constitution proposed was one that would have required the size of the House of Representatives to grow as the nation’s population increased. For close contact between officeholders and constituents, they liked a ratio of 30,000 to 50,000 people per House member. Their amendment was never ratified.

      The ratio today is 760,000 people per representative. The size of the House is set by law and has been fixed at 435 members since 1913. It is hard to imagine that a representative can speak knowledgeably about so many constituents or understand their collective needs and preferences.

      Solution: Make it bigger

      To reduce the ratio, the House would need to be bigger. With a national population over 337 million, James Madison’s preference would require more than 6,700 House members. That’s unwieldy. Most democracies either intentionally follow or seem to have naturally settled on a different formula, in which the size of the legislature is about equal to the cube root of the country’s population.

      For the U.S., that number is currently nearly 700, which would put the population-to-representative ratio at 475,000-to-1. This would still upset Madison, but it’s considerably more representative than the current state of affairs.

      Could the Capitol handle such an expansion? Architectural studies show that won’t be a problem. More

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      Graduate students explore America’s polarized landscape via train in this course

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      Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

      Title of course:

      Crossing the Divide

      What prompted the idea for the course?

      I developed the idea for this course in 2016 during an Amtrak writing residency program. I spent over two weeks crisscrossing the United States via train while working on my 2021 book about the French National Railways and World War II. After binge-watching the country and gabbing with strangers, I knew the train would be the coolest classroom. I wrote some articles about its value for Smithsonian magazine.

      The increasing polarization and the then-upcoming U.S. presidential election made May 2024 the perfect time to invite graduate students studying peace, conflict and justice to join me.

      Students visited the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala.
      John Coletti

      What does the course explore?

      Students met two times at the Kroc School of Peace Studies within the University of San Diego to discuss our forthcoming two-week trip’s scheduled stops and assignments, which would include talking with strangers, different readings, keeping a journal and producing individual blogs.

      We rode Amtrak trains between states and rented vans to move about within states. We departed from San Diego’s Old Town Transit Center, heading first to Los Angeles to visit Homeboy Industries, the largest gang rehabilitation program. Then, over the course of two weeks, we stopped in Arizona, Texas, Louisiana, Alabama and Washington D.C., visiting places that cut across various divides: red and blue, eco-friendly and pro-fossil fuel, as well as urban and rural populations. On the train, we got to know each other, made new friends, watched the passing landscape, read, and wrote in our journals.

      We then visited Patagonia, Arizona, a 900-person town that has the gift of being one of the most biologically diverse ecosystems in the USA and the curse of resting atop critical minerals about to be extracted for national security. Ecologists say the mining extraction project, known as the Hermosa project, will likely have a significant negative impact on the area’s water supply and endangered species in the region, as well as residents living near the manganese processing plant.

      After 26 hours on the train, we arrived in Houston. There we visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science to understand how the petroleum industry explains – or does not discuss – its role in climate change. In New Orleans, we visited the Whitney Plantation, a nonprofit museum on the site of a former slave plantation. This museum tries to educate visitors about the South’s history from the perspective of the enslaved. We also studied the prison conditions at Louisiana State Penitentiary, where incarcerated persons engage in physically harmful forced labor.

      In Birmingham, Alabama, we attended a church service at the 16th Street Baptist Church, made famous by the 1963 bombing by white supremacists that killed four girls. In Montgomery, Alabama, we visited the Legacy of Slavery Museum and a lynching memorial.

      We ended in Washington, D.C., where we visited the National Archives, which houses the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

      In between our stops, we spent time on the train talking to strangers and getting a sense of the country’s vast landscape – both politically and geographically. We also made a short video about the trip.

      The class stops in Houston along its two-week, cross-country tour.
      Tony Campos, CC BY

      Why is this course relevant now?

      According to the Pew Research Center, the American public remains more deeply and bitterly politically polarized than at any time in the past two decades. There has been an increase in both “ideological polarization,” meaning political disagreement, as well as “affective polarization,” an increased antipathy and animosity toward others with whom we disagree. Some people fear that these divides can lead the country into civil war and eventually cause democracy to fail.

      I wanted to explore with students just how polarized the country felt. I also wanted us to react to this polarization by reaching out to others, rather than recoiling.

      What’s a critical lesson from the course?

      When we rely on our smartphones and televisions to tell us about our country, it’s easy to become afraid and withdraw from public life and to avoid strangers. We did the opposite and found many wonderful people as well as many challenges, such as torturous, forced prison labor, resistance within the fossil fuel industry to acknowledge or respond to its role in climate change, the difficultly of safely extracting critical minerals from fragile ecosystems, and tensions over what U.S. children will learn about the country’s historical practice of slavery.

      What materials does the course feature?

      Site visits, local newspapers and strangers. Prior to departure they read parts of Monica Guzman’s “I Never Thought of it That Way” to prepare them to be open to new ideas and people. They also read academic articles about polarization and watched a PBS clip about national divides. Students found the 2024 documentary “God and Country,” about Christian nationalism, especially powerful.

      Along the way, they read websites of the sites we planned to visit, as well as local newspapers, including the Patagonia Regional Times, Houston Chronicle and The Birmingham Times. Supplementary articles included readings about book bans in Texas.

      What will the course prepare students to do?

      I want the course to help students feel more confident engaging with strangers and exploring connection, instead of assuming difference. They also become better versed in some of the challenges of our time – including climate change, mining impacts, racial divides, legacies of slavery – as well as approaches to addressing these conflicts. They learned how to seek out different perspectives and embrace complexity without becoming immobilized. Several students dedicated their final capstone project to exploring more deeply the mining impacts in Patagonia, Arizona, and meeting with stakeholders to find ways to lessen the environmental impact of this mining work. More

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      The US needs more working-class political candidates | Dustin Guastella and Bhaskar Sunkara

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      Dan Osborn’s performance this month was a bright spot in an otherwise bleak election cycle for progressives. Although he ultimately lost, the independent US Senate candidate outperformed Kamala Harris in Nebraska by 14 percentage points while running an assertively anti-establishment, pro-union platform. His formula was simple: connect with people about their economic problems, tell them who to blame for them, and tell them what he would do about it.Now he’s starting a new political action committee, Working Class Heroes Fund, to support working-class candidates, something our national politics direly needs.Throughout 2024, Osborn’s ideas shaped what should have been an uneventful race in a deep red state. He ran on a pro-union agenda that would have passed the Pro Act to aid organizing efforts, raised the minimum wage, and provided mandatory bereavement leave for all workers. His statement to ABC News’ Jonathan Karl – “I want to challenge the system because the system has to be challenged” – captured a common campaign theme.Osborn’s egalitarianism was profoundly connected to his personal experiences. “Thirty-thirty 16-hour shifts on Sundays,” he recalled in one of his closing campaign ads. “That’s what I had to do to provide for my family.” His story wasn’t unusual, but it wasn’t one reflected in Washington (a city he hadn’t even visited until April of this year).Osborn led a strike in 2021 at a Kellogg’s plant in Omaha and has spent most of his working life as an industrial mechanic – in fact, he’s already back working as a steamfitter. He made $48,000 last year, within a few thousand of the Nebraska median income. This background was highlighted by the Osborn campaign through the race, contrasting the candidate with a Congress where most members are wealthy: “My opponent, Deb Fischer, is … taking so much corporate cash she should wear [sponsor] patches like Nascar.”Osborn’s working-class identity isn’t just an affect; it’s something that connects him to the needs and aspirations of millions of other American workers. And the profound lack of people like him in Congress is one of the major reasons why working-class people have been treated as a political afterthought. Right now, fewer than 2% of congressmembers come from working-class backgrounds. There is virtually no one in government who speaks for, or speaks like, regular workers.But wait, isn’t advocating for more working-class candidates just another form of identity politics? That is, isn’t this just more of the same thing that hurt Democrats in the first place?It’s true that the emphasis on a person’s race, gender and sexuality as a demonstration of their moral and political rectitude has been an albatross for progressives in recent years. This has been especially true when it’s been presented as tales of personal trailblazing (think #ImWithHer and Hillary Clinton’s crusade to become the first female president) or to trumpet individuals simply because of qualities they were born with rather than the ideas they espouse. However, class is different. And, in the case of Osborn, his class background was key to his being able to deliver a credible populist appeal that challenged the rule of the wealthy.In other words, as a working-class populist, Osborn’s appeal could cut across the various divisions of race, gender, region and religion to unite working people, because to be working class, and to proudly identify as such, is not just to show voters that you “feel their pain”, as Bill Clinton once dramatized, but that you actually understand the world from their position. And that’s one reason Osborn thinks that getting more workers represented in office is such a good idea.We agree. After all, the fight for working-class political representation was part of the origin story of self-conscious workers’ movements everywhere in the world. In the United Kingdom and Australia, the battle to extend the franchise helped give rise to labor parties. In Germany, the Social Democratic party swelled under the leadership of August Bebel, a carpenter and woodturner. In Brazil, the Workers’ party, led by a metalworker with little formal education, rose to become a governing force.Even in the United States, at the height of the New Deal, the Congress of Industrial Organizations organized the first-ever political action committee with the explicit aim of getting workers into Congress.In each case, and there are many others, the simple argument that workers – their organizations, and their interests – deserved representation in government generated immense excitement. And in each case, the parties that pursued such a goal became, at least for a time, the undisputed representatives of working-class interests in government.There are similar political opportunities in the United States today. While Nebraska might have had a particularly effective worker populist, there is evidence that people want to vote for workers across the country. A study by the Center for Working-Class Politics found that among working-class voters, hypothetical candidates with elite or upper-class backgrounds performed significantly worse than candidates from humbler backgrounds.Yet, in reality, there were few working-class candidates to vote for. Only 2.3% of Democratic candidates worked exclusively in blue-collar jobs before entering politics. Even if we broaden out the category to professionals like teachers and nurses, the number is still under 6%. Why? Mainly because it’s extremely expensive to run for office. Most workers simply do not have the fundraising networks or the ability to take time away from their jobs to run for office.What’s more, as Duke University political scientist Nicholas Carnes has shown, the burdens of running for office are much higher for blue-collar workers than they are for those in white-collar professions because they also include the considerable challenges that working-class candidates have in persuading political gatekeepers to endorse their candidacies over much more familiar options in salaried professions who speak the same language and run in the same social circles. Osborn’s new effort to help ease some of these burdens is laudable for this reason.The lack of working-class representation in government is also one major factor in explaining the dysfunction in our politics and the persistence of economic policies that seem to only benefit the rich. Working-class voters have been cut adrift. Their views and voices are invisible in Washington, and they see no real champions for their interests. One reason these voters are likely to prefer working-class candidates is that these candidates are much more likely to advance an economic agenda that benefits them.Osborn’s appeal might not be so unique if we can encourage more working-class candidates to run. Here the labor movement has a role to play in recruiting talented candidates, protecting their day jobs during the campaign, providing training and working with organizations like Osborn’s to get these candidates the funds they need to win elections. It’s not a silver bullet to fixing our broken politics, but it’s a great start.During his campaign, Osborn reminded a crowd that “the Senate is a country club of millionaires that work for billionaires”. It’s high time that the people who created their wealth got a foot in the door.

      Dustin Guastella is a research associate at the Center for Working Class Politics and the director of operations for Teamsters Local 623

      Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation, founding editor of Jacobin and author of The Socialist Manifesto: The Case for Radical Politics in an Era of Extreme Inequalities More

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      I’d much rather share a ladies’ room with Sarah McBride than with Nancy Mace | Margaret Sullivan

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      Since the conversation, if you can call it that, about trans people always seems to come down to bathrooms, I am sure of one thing.I would much rather share a ladies’ room or a locker room with Sarah McBride than with Nancy Mace.McBride, of course, was just elected to Congress and, in January, will be the highest-ranking elected official in America who is transgender. The 34-year-old comes to the US House of Representatives after serving in the Delaware legislature; before that, she was the national press secretary of the Human Rights Campaign.Mace, a member of Congress from South Carolina since 2021, has been on an ugly campaign in recent weeks clearly intended to belittle and marginalize McBride – and to get on TV as much as possible doing so. She has filed a resolution, and the House speaker, Mike Johnson, has given it his nod of approval, that would somehow force trans people to keep out of the congressional bathrooms that reflect their gender identity.“If you think this bill is about protecting women and not simply a ploy to get on Fox News, you’ve been fooled,” wrote Natalie Johnson, Mace’s former communications director. She added, pointedly, that a real effort to protect women would involve “a bill to bar Matt Gaetz, a sexual predator with an affinity for underage girls, from ever walking those halls again”. (Trump, as you know, tapped the far-right former Florida representative as his attorney general as part of this month’s parade of appalling cabinet choices. Gaetz later withdrew from consideration.)On Wednesday, McBride reacted with dignity to all the performative insults and abuse. She simply responded that she would follow the rules and that she’s in Congress to represent her Delaware district; I’m sure she’ll eventually find ways to continue her admirable advocacy.Mace, on the other hand, can’t be described as dignified. She’s running around pasting the word “biological” on restroom doors for photo ops, and snidely tweeting in McBride’s direction about International Men’s Day.And she’s getting plenty of the media attention she craves.On one level, this is all part of the unending circus of the Trump era.On a human level, it’s scary, wrong and damaging.“As a trans person myself, I’m really worried about where this is headed,” wrote Parker Molloy, who writes incisively about politics and media in her newsletter the Present Age. “I spend each day worrying about whether or not the healthcare that keeps me alive will remain legal, whether I’m going to face new restrictions on where I’m allowed to exist in public, what would happen to me if (god forbid) I wound up in prison for some reason, and whether or not my identity documents like my passport will be retroactively made invalid.”She added poignantly: “Now, more than ever, I feel alone.”Trans students may have it even worse. Again, it often comes down to bathrooms.A lot of children, especially transgender and gender-nonconforming children, avoid bathrooms all day, since that’s where the bullying can be most intense. Thus, advocates say, trans kids often are prone to urinary tract infections or eating disorders because they’ve avoided eating and drinking.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionAs for the right’s obsession with trans students on sports team, the vast majority have no unfair advantage on the playing fields (or courts, or pools). They are just trying to reap the same benefits of sports as do other kids – leadership, teamwork and friendship.The meanspirited and misinformed narrative about transgender people makes it difficult for them to feel cared about and to live full lives.But don’t try to tell that to Mace, whose preoccupation is not with kindness or decency, but with getting attention and winning the culture wars.As the Daily Beast reported last year, Mace’s staffers were given a handbook that outlined just how intensely this mattered to their boss; they were told to book her on TV multiple times a day, amounting to nine times a week for national outlets and six times a week for local outlets.In 2021, Mace depicted herself as supportive of LGBTQ+ rights. That was before the tide turned so forcefully and, as Philip Bump of the Washington Post put it, before “the Republican base had been fed a steady diet of anti-trans rhetoric, making trans issues fertile ground for anyone willing to engage in the fight”.Mace, clearly, is more than willing.If that means being cruel, then so be it. As writer Adam Serwer observed about Trumpian politics: “The cruelty is the point.”Meanwhile, vulnerable and marginalized people are made to suffer for trying to be true to themselves. And despite the progress shown by McBride’s election, the world around this milestone seems to be getting increasingly harsh.

      Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture More

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      Elon Musk has cozied into Trump’s White House. How long will this bromance last? | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      It’s deja vu all over again, again. In the wake of Donald Trump’s decisive re-election, his transition team has moved to pack his cabinet and adviser positions with figures straight out of the Star Wars cantina – some of the most dangerous and bizarre sideshows from every corner of his chaotic galaxy.In the Trump Cinematic Universe, loyalty usurps qualification. That’s why Pete Hegseth, a Fox News host who wants to eliminate “woke” officials from the military, got tapped to oversee our national defense. And it’s why Matt Gaetz was asked to helm the very Department of Justice that was investigating him for alleged sex trafficking, before his abrupt withdrawal from consideration.But perhaps no figure better captures the cartoonish nature of Trump’s staffing philosophy than Elon Musk, the literal richest man on Earth, who has somehow grabbed the wheel of a presidential transition that’s navigating the road ahead about as well as one of his Teslas.From offering his two cents on presidential appointments, to joining calls with the Ukrainian president, to adjudicating the race for Senate majority leader via an X poll, the man who broke Twitter now has his sights set on breaking the federal government. He’s poised to hack the budget, ramrod in his half-baked policy musings and push through deregulation that will inevitably benefit his fleet of companies.Like any great romcom, Musk and Trump got off to a rocky start. Two years ago, before he donned a “dark gothic Maga” cap himself, Musk was urging Trump to “hang up his hat”, and Trump was calling Musk too chicken to buy Twitter. But then Musk did buy Twitter, and began diligently turning it into a bastion of rightwing misinformation called X.The arc of this entanglement reached its inevitable conclusion when Musk rewired the platform’s algorithm to promote his own conspiracies about immigrants and election interference, while also giving free advertisement to Trump to the tune of 2bn views. Though Trump was already the first major party nominee to own a social media platform in Truth Social, he now essentially leases a second one for free.While Trump received support from Musk gratis, his voters received million-dollar checks. For all Musk’s handwringing about “ballot harvesting”, he engaged in a brazen election interference scheme when he more or less paid citizens to vote for Trump.Musks’s so-called sweepstakes, which a Pennsylvania court waved through, culminates big money’s political playbook. Billionaires no longer need to launder their bribes through Super Pacs with vaguely patriotic names. They can avoid that rigmarole, cut out the middleman and offer direct financial incentives for supporting whichever candidate they deem most favorable to their business interests.And now that Musk’s doubtfully legal efforts have paid off in the election of the country’s first president with a felony conviction, the true singularity can begin – not the merging of humans with AI supposedly portended by Neuralink, but of Musk’s agenda with Trump’s. There’s no shortage of “catastrophic conflicts of interest”, to quote former chief of government ethics Walter Shaub. Sure enough, Musk’s corporate empire has received $15bn in public contracts, while facing 20 federal investigations. But it would be no more than coincidence should that first number skyrocket and the second number plummet over the next four years.More troubling than his informal heft as Trump’s self-proclaimed “first buddy”, though, is Musk’s appointment to co-lead the Department of Government Efficiency – which, as many have pointed out, somehow takes two people to lead. This glorified taskforce has a mandate to slash government costs, regulations and employment. With his typical spunk, Musk has pledged to eliminate a third of the $6.75tn federal budget, not unlike how he cut half of Twitter’s workforce.Fortunately for Musk, that austerity doesn’t extend to his own bank account, which has received a generous Trump bump. Post-election Tesla stock surges have already earned him $70bn, and Musk’s appointment may also qualify him to receive a massive tax break. That seems only appropriate given that this faux department’s name abbreviates to Doge, a cryptocurrency that Musk owns “a bunch of”.Nevertheless, the patent absurdity of the Musk-Trump pact just might offer a silver lining for Democrats. First, analysts and casual observers alike remain skeptical of how long the honeymoon can last between two narcissists whose power is exceeded only by their pettiness. Their relationship, like Trump’s coalition at large, is perilous and fragile.Second, Doge’s recommendations are just that: nonbinding. Trump himself has described Musk and Ramaswamy as offering “advice and guidance from outside of government”. That means the Department of Government Efficiency is not actually a department, nor is it government – so its proposals can be dispensed with efficiently.This cuts both ways. The few worthy, populist ideas that could expand the Trump administration’s appeal – like reining in the Pentagon – will never get past a Republican House of Representatives. And if they dared touch entitlements like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, there won’t be a Republican House for much longer.Musk is clearly attempting to emulate Trump’s governing style. But Trump has consistently proven a more effective huckster than head of state. On the campaign trail, he was a Rorschach test: voters projected their grievances and aspirations on to his concepts of a plan. But a record is concrete. Soon enough, reality will sharpen into undeniable focus, one bad bromance at a time.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times More

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      ‘We create gods because the world is chaos’: Ralph Fiennes, John Lithgow and Stanley Tucci on celebrity, sin and papal thriller Conclave

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      Faith, death and vengeful vaping: of all the Oscar contenders this year, Conclave is the one that best combines chewy religious inquiry and lavish side-eye. Adapted by Wolf Hall screenwriter Peter Straughan from the Robert Harris novel, Conclave has been directed by All Quiet on the Western Front’s Edward Berger as a heavy-breathing battle for hearts, minds and power.Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence, who, after the sudden death of the pope, must park his own religious doubts to wrangle the 113 cardinals who have descended on the Vatican. These men will be sequestered until they can elect one of their number as the new pontiff. Among them are the gentle progressive Bellini (Stanley Tucci) and smooth traditionalist Tremblay (John Lithgow). Both have secrets. But are they as lethal as those of their friends – and rivals?The film was shot in Rome 20 months ago; triangulating the actors’ schedules for a reunion seemed to take almost as long. Fiennes is completing work on a new Alan Bennett adaptation and zombie follow-up 28 Years Later; Tucci shooting the Russo brothers’ latest and promoting his new memoir; Lithgow stars at the Royal Court in new play Giant, as Roald Dahl, railing against accusations of antisemitism.In the end, they all dialled in early one morning from different parts of London. Fiennes was in a tasteful kitchen and vast cardie, Tucci his home office, teetering with books and sketches, while Lithgow beamed from a creamy Chelsea rental.View image in fullscreenCatherine Shoard: Did any of you find or renounce God while making the film?John Lithgow: No. But we were in Rome, so taking a warm bath in Renaissance Italian art, which is as Christian as you can get. And we were working on something that really felt worthy. So it was a spiritual experience.Stanley Tucci: I was raised Catholic but broke with the church. It just never made sense to me. It was a myth I had great difficulty believing. But as John said, being in Rome is always incredibly moving. I remember as a kid living in Italy and being profoundly moved by the experience of going into a church, simply because of the art and the amount of time and energy that was devoted to creating it – and sustaining the myth. But it didn’t sway me one way or the other.Ralph Fiennes: I feel a bit differently. My mother was a committed Catholic, but quite enlightened. She had brothers and a great uncle who had been priests. My great uncle, Sebastian Moore, is quite a well-known theologian. So God was not unfamiliar to me. Questions about faith were something I grew up with.I rebelled against my upbringing when I was 13. I said to my mother: “I’m not going to mass.” I didn’t like the heaviness. There was a very claustrophobic, dominant feeling from the church in Ireland, where we then were living, in the early 70s. I hated the sense of compulsion and constriction.I don’t think of myself as a practising anything, but I’ve never stopped having a curiosity about what it is to have faith. I’m also very moved by what we can encounter with the art the church has produced. Not just the Catholic church. I was in Thessaloniki recently and went to a museum of icons there, which was profoundly moving. What is it that makes us want to build these churches and shrines? Faith is a huge, potent thing that mankind seems to want to have, even if the forces of logic and science and reason go against it. I’m curious about that energy.CS: Why are people drawn to faith?RF: It’s about looking for answers. Life is messy. Life is shitty. Life is unpredictable. I think human beings want a sense of coherence in their inner selves. And often faith does contain helpful guidances or moral rulings. Of course, the Catholic church has done terrible things. It’s full of twisted and dark corners, but all power structures will go that way. I think the precept of a faith brings people together and gives communities a sense of coherence.Christ was teaching at a time when tiny communities were held together by messengers on horseback or on ships, taking letters or preaching vocally. They didn’t have mass communication. So in a small community, how you cohered was really important. I have some experience with visiting Inuit peoples in northern Canada, where they worship animals and have a real respect for the elements. Their communities have been totally shattered and wounded by encounters with the Christian churches. But they have their stories which help them survive and cohere.ST: I think that this sense of camaraderie and community is something we all long for and there’s no question that the church does that. But we create these ideas of God, or gods, because the world is chaos. It’s to dispel our fears. We have no control over our lives and that causes anxiety. Fear of death is the most potent; we’ve created all these constructs to make ourselves feel better about when we or a loved one dies.View image in fullscreenEach society has their own construct to dampen those fears, to make it OK. If we think about religion as making order out of chaos, it’s exactly the same thing that art does. And yet so much art has been created by the church. Of course all of these incredible artists could only paint religious subjects. I have faith, I have faith in art. That’s where my faith lies.JL: What they said! It’s such a deeply thought-out film. What’s fascinating about telling a story like this is the context of a political event – the election of a new pope – and examining the electorate. The college of cardinals are all men who’ve been drawn to religion by a longing to commit their lives to faith. And so wholeheartedly that they are at the top of the food chain of a great big religious construct.But when it comes right down to it, they all have to vote and compete. There are rivalries and betrayals and deceptions and jealousies and ambitions and aspirations, all of which go counter to the entire reason they’re there: a devotion to Christ and the idea of the Catholic church. Any story with that tension between virtue and sin is automatically great. I think that’s why people are responding so fervently to this film. They see these tensions: men who went into something for deep personal reasons that have gradually been eroded by ambition.CS: Do you think there’s anything unhelpful about the drama of elections? Are we addicted to horserace narratives?JL: It’s inevitable when a leader is chosen that it’s going to get political. But it’s just an incredibly interesting moment for this film to arrive. While we were shooting the film, there was the great fight in the US House of Representatives for the House speaker. There were 15 ballots before Kevin McCarthy finally survived the process – it was just like what we were acting out.View image in fullscreenThat was uncanny event No 1 – the second is what happened two weeks ago. Had the only voters in that been the cast and crew of Conclave, there would’ve been the opposite result. There’s a great liberal tradition in film – and the great example is Mr Smith Goes to Washington. The forces of corruption and money in politics fail at the end and the simple man prevails. That’s very much the movie paradigm. And Conclave basically follows those rules. It’s just amazing the tide has turned so much in the last few weeks. It makes our movie into a kind of wish-fulfilment story – which I think is another reason people have been attracted to it.ST: The film does follow a certain trope, in a way, as the book did. But it’s a fascinating one – and not an easy one. So often movies are made just to make us feel better. That’s why there are so many happy endings in movies, because there are so many unhappy endings in life.CS: In the film someone pointedly says that the papacy is a heavy burden for an older man. Should there be an upper age limit on positions of power? Or even voting for them? In real life, cardinals can’t vote once they’re over 80.RF: It would be a great guideline in the current US government: 80 as a signoff. We’d have two years of Trump but not four.JL: I don’t think it would pass Congress at the moment.RF: But maybe that’s a good idea, to have an age limit on any electoral governmental ruling system. I’m sure that’s smart, but who decides whether it’s 75, 80, 70? There are plenty of people with alert minds working vigorously into their early 80s. But the patriarchal element seems to me one of the looming themes, that begs all kinds of questions. Stanley’s character, Cardinal Bellini, articulates the very, very vital issues of how the church should go forward in relation to gender and sexual identity and diversity. Mostly the film has been well-reviewed. Some people seem to think it’s a bit simplistic, but I think it puts on the table quite coherently and intelligently big themes that could be discussed without it being an attack on the church.View image in fullscreenThe Catholic church is riven with it. That’s why it’s very frustrating to read Saint Paul: he preaches love, but his strictures on women are just horrendous. It’s so conflicted. It needs a good clean out. And yet these patterns of behaviour do seem to appeal to all the world. People love the ritual. They love the tradition. It’s kind of a conundrum, isn’t it? The church is so potent. Clearly it does good. It does lots for suffering peoples and the poor, but it’s also got this other side where it’s so backwards in its conventions and thinking. Its traditions are holding it back.CS: What can the church do to change?ST: Priests should be able to get married. That changes everything. And nuns. Why can’t you be devoted to God and love someone at the same time? I don’t understand that. Priests used to be married many years ago but the Catholic church stopped that. The excuse was that priests needed to devote themselves to God. But really it was because when they died, everything went to their wives. It wasn’t about devotion but money. And I think that’s a problem. Priests being able to be married would ground them in reality and only enhance their spirituality. Let’s just start with that.CS: Yet in the US the democratic process recently embraced a return to patriarchy. Why are people drawn to institutions and leaders who seek to roll things back?View image in fullscreenRF: I think it comes back to a story and how it’s put out. Trump told a story. The way he described the problem with America and what he could do, was a story. He has a remarkable gift for talking and accessing people’s deeper gut feelings. And the story in its simplicity appealed. Whatever you think of the horror of the language and the racism and sexism that we all identify on the liberal side, it speaks to people. He’s the man in the bar who says: “I’ll get rid of this shit. We’ll make your lives better.” His win was a visceral response to a man saying: “I’m going to sort it for you.” Basically, his story won. It’s not my country, but it seems to me that the Democrats were increasingly perceived as a sort of removed elite. Theirs wasn’t a story that I think was put across very strongly. Trump told the best story, whether you like it or not.JL: He also told the story of the Democrats. He dominated the narrative with a much bolder, louder voice, and with the support of a huge amount of the media. Story is a very potent word in in this conversation. The Democrats couldn’t get their story out, or whatever was persuasive and compelling about their story couldn’t rise above all the noise.ST: By simplifying everything, he distilled it down to ideas that were very easy for people to grasp.JL: And that’s how tyranny operates.ST: He just played on everyone’s fears and he did what so many fascistic-minded people do, which is find a scapegoat: immigrants. It’s always the other. So people go: that’s why I have no money, because of that guy. It’s not true, at all. But it works. It’s worked before and it worked again.RF: It seems the rate of inflation in America has wrong-footed a lot of people; the price level people are used to dealing with suddenly went up.JL: Well, there was a simple story to tell there that never got articulated: inflation was substantially a result of the huge crisis of Covid and it had been coming down steadily for months. The Biden administration was doing a very good job at handling an inflation crisis, but that story never got told. And it doesn’t matter how many graphs you see in a newspaper, it still feels like prices are too high. But prices are too high because the country suffered a traumatic economic episode. It was being handled. God knows what’s gonna happen now, with tariffs being the new go-to solution. They’re gonna create inflation.ST: How are tariffs gonna help? I don’t know.CS: Conclave is a very theatrical film. Does all the smoke and bling and the costumes attract certain people to the pulpit? Someone like Trump – embraced by the religious right – is used to being immediately judged on his performance.View image in fullscreenRF: The spoken word in the space to a body of people is the business we’re all in. There’s John every night embodying Roald Dahl with extremely toxic views. In a way that’s a pulpitian provocation. That’s what the theatre does – and Giant is a fascinating, compelling play. As actors, when we speak on a stage and we have our audience, that’s a potent thing that’s created. I don’t know that people are drawn to the church so that they can always be speaking, but clearly if you are a priest, there is that moment when you get up and you deliver your homily for the week. You have to put across a view or a lesson or a teaching or an idea that is meant to send your community out with, hopefully, questions to improve their moral wellbeing or the way they engage with life.My memory of listening to homilies is that they are sort of provocations based in the religious text that say: think about this or think about that. How we listen as a congregation is fascinating. That’s why I love what the theatre is.JL: There’s something in all of us three – actors, not men of the cloth – that is mainly interested in impact. We just wanna reach people, and we’re playing roles and we’re telling stories that are not our personal stories. But the three of us have had hundreds of experiences of reaching people, throttling them with theatrics, making them laugh or cry or scream out in horror.RF: Or go to sleep.JL: Our great ambition is to wake them up and to startle them and get huge rounds of applause. There are two major, beautifully written speeches in our film that have an extraordinary impact on the college of cardinals. That’s why we are in the game. We understand the thrill of succeeding at making an impact.RF: And we understand that crushing disappointment when you realise you haven’t made the impact you’d hoped.JL: Oh, it’s awful!CS: The characters you play are trying to emulate God and falling short. As actors who are public figures, are you more conscious of being treated like quasi-gods – and of your own failings coming under more scrutiny?JL: Different types of actors are treated very differently. I’m a strange actor who’s gone off and done extremely peculiar roles. I’m the go-to psychopath or hypocrite or villain from time to time. I guess all three of us are character actors in a sense. My whole game is surprising people. I have a sort of perverse enthusiasm for upending people’s expectations of me. People don’t go to me for political wisdom. I come off very pretentious if I get anywhere near that kind of talk. But my acting is completely surprising and sometimes revolting. I just go for it.View image in fullscreenST: These people are trying to emulate God and yet they created God. So that’s weird. But without question, people in the public eye are always under more scrutiny. You’re larger than life. But I think that’s changed over the years. You used to see actors on stage, from a distance, in a proscenium. Then you saw them in movies, but still in this big rectangle. Everybody was big and what they did was big. Over the years things got smaller and smaller and now you can put me in your pocket.That changes the way we look at people. It used to be only posthumously that you’d find out somebody in Hollywood was a sexual deviant or a terrible drinker or whatever. In life, it was like: let’s just leave them alone. And everybody did. Television altered how much access to people you were allowed. But now, you can watch me on like your wristwatch and that changes the way you look at me. So people realise that yes, actors are just people. But they still want them not to have these faults. Yet they can’t wait to find out about them.JL: It’s interesting to hear you talk about this, Stanley, because of the three of us people have come to know you the best.ST: Because I made that food show.JL: But that food show is very much the Stanley show and the world has got to know you so well and like you so much. In Rome you were virtually worshipped in that wine shop.View image in fullscreenST: That was really funny. I remember when we went to a grocery store. You were always able to hide behind a persona or a character. So it’s odd because it’s the first time I’ve ever just been myself. And I was very uncomfortable with it at first, even though it was my idea. I don’t know what I was thinking, and now I’m more comfortable with it. I know the idea of connecting through food makes people so happy, so that makes me happy. I just think it’s a nice thing. But I’m never eating Italian food again …RF: I don’t know if priests are emulating God. I think they’re meant to be conduits or shepherds for the message. We’re all sinners – even priests. I think priests or nuns are mostly just answering a calling to preach the message. But of course, if you are preaching the message and you’re in the pulpit, naturally people will expect that you are going to be an example. Cinema is very potent in how it puts an actor’s face on screen. We are conduits for a playwright or a character, we’re not there necessarily preaching a religion or political idea or any kind of philosophy. We’re just drawn to roles. We’re drawn to the drama. The workings of cinema are so keyed into key myths that we want to keep telling ourselves. So audiences will project on to actors huge things, and the media massages the sense of projection. So you suddenly can feel very exposed. People in all forms of entertainment can suddenly realise that there’s an expectation of them as a private person. I think that’s troubling.CS: There are two lines in the film I want to ask your opinion on. The first is: “Things fall apart. The abyss calls out.” Which is a warning from one cardinal about what will happen if the church embraces liberalism. Where do you see the church in 50 years’ time? The second is Stanley’s character’s line that to not know yourself at his age is shameful. Is it, and do you?ST: I’m still learning about myself and trying to make myself better. I don’t always succeed. Sometimes we know ourselves and sometimes we just don’t. I don’t fully know myself. I worry that I’m going to have an epiphany about myself on my deathbed. Then I’ll just die sad.CS: What might it be?ST: Suddenly it’ll occur to me that I really just don’t like myself at all. And then it’ll be over. I’d have no time to rectify it.View image in fullscreenJL: You’d have time for a phone call, Stanley.ST: But I’d wanna go back and change things and make things better and I’ll just be dead.JL: By now, I have settled into a strong sense of myself as a good actor. I wouldn’t work all the time if I weren’t good at it. What I love about the profession is also what makes me feel a little guilty: it seems the most irresponsible thing you can do. Your lines are written for you. Everyone takes good care of you lest you miss a performance or lose a shooting day. You’re treated like a much bigger deal than you actually are. But I think the more you are content with that self-image, the better off you are.RF: I would like to think the church will evolve by dialogue within itself. That it can be a force for good. But I think the evolution of the church is going to be difficult and hard. Our journey through life is a constant evolution with relation to ourselves and in relation to others with whom we connect. There are always traps for us as individuals with our egos and our sense of anxiety. The best of the church or any faith, or any structure, or just your therapist, is in helping each other deal with the world.View image in fullscreenThe acting community at its best is wonderful at supporting each other. The experience where I thought this, at its best, is a fantastic profession to be in, was a production of King John, directed by Deborah Warner at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1988. The sense of ensemble and community was so fantastic in that production. Everyone flowered in their parts and within themselves as a group. The best the church can be is as a fantastic group. And the energy and the positivity of the group reaches out, and groups everywhere are wonderfully self-supportive of each other.ST: That’s the ideal, but I worry that this right-leaning ideology that’s taking over so much of the world will once again make the church retreat. And that’s really scary.RF: But at the end of our film, the group celebrates the person who seems to me to carry the spiritual depth and coherence and integrity that is needed. Going forward in the world now, we’re very frightened of what might come at us because of what’s happened. But we mustn’t lose sight of the power of what we can have. We must keep intact our aspiration to an ideal. More