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      This Mother’s Day, lets talk about why birth rates are really declining | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      Mother’s Day is here, and while Donald Trump may seem an unlikely celebrant of the occasion, his administration has recently floated several proposals to incentivize motherhood – or, more accurately, giving birth. There’s the $5,000 “baby bonus” for every American mother, free classes educating women on their menstrual cycles and a National Medal of Motherhood for moms who have at least six children. (Want to guess which regime also awarded such a medal?)As usual, the president has offered ridiculous solutions to a very real problem. He’s certainly right that every American should be able to afford to raise children, and that programs like social security depend on stable demographics. But of course, every other action he has taken to undermine gender equality would suggest that this sudden interest in the wellbeing of mothers is less than sincere. That’s exactly why progressives have an opening to break up what the Republican party believes to be its ideological monopoly on pro-family policies.The roots of the fertility crisis engage the bread-and-butter issues that have long been the domain of Democrats. US birthrates have hit a record low not because the nation has become “almost pathologically anti-child”, as JD Vance asserted to the New York Times. Instead, surveys have shown that would-be parents want to own a home, repay student debt and have money for childcare before starting a family. Yet the average age of a homebuyer has climbed to 56, almost double what it was 40 years ago. And 43% of young people currently carry student debt, compared with 28% in 1993. The problem isn’t lack of interest – it’s too much interest being paid on record high loans.But most of the Trump administration’s floated fixes are unoriginal swipes from the undemocratic leaders they admire. In 2017, Vladimir Putin declared a “Decade of Childhood in Russia”, an innocent name for a program that calls for everything from defending so-called family values to encouraging conjugal trysts during workplace coffee breaks to censoring “childfree propaganda”. Meanwhile, Viktor Orbán has dedicated 5% of Hungary’s GDP to pronatalist policies, which include nationalized IVF services and lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with three children. These men are carrying on an authoritarian tradition begun by the original strongman, Benito Mussolini, whose “Battle for Births” portended literal battles that decreased Europe’s population by 20 million people.That’s why those who really care about real solutions would be wise to start offering their own plans, and, in fact, some already have. What the Trump administration didn’t plagiarize from autocrats, they took from progressives, which is why “baby bonuses” sounds an awful lot like the “baby bonds” proposed in 2021 by Senators Tammy Baldwin and Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Pressley. The legislation would put $1,000 in a savings account at birth for every American child. The Biden-era American Rescue Plan also almost doubled the child tax credit, which nearly halved the child poverty rate. Though making that expansion permanent received bipartisan support, it was ultimately killed by the centrist triangulating of Joe Manchin.Four years later, Democrats have the chance to embrace a genuinely progressive agenda that doubles as a pro-family platform. Bernie Sanders has long called for cancelling all student debt, Elizabeth Warren has campaigned for universal childcare, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was among the first politicians on Capitol Hill to offer three months of paid parental leave to her entire staff. The Congressional Progressive caucus has also called for a whole raft of policies that would lower the cost of living, from expanding Medicaid to investing $250bn in affordable housing. They understand that real relief will come not from handing out medals but from having the mettle to fight for working families.Still, even if Democrats manage a progressive populist revival not seen since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it probably wouldn’t be enough to lift birthrates. In social democracies like Finland and Sweden – which offer 13 months of paid parental leave and cover 90% of preschool costs, respectively – fertility remains below replacement levels.Does that indicate the problem may be more fundamental? One sociologist, Dr Karen Benjamin Guzzo, has attributed this dilemma to apprehension: “People really need to feel confident about the future.” But whether it’s 60% of young people feeling very worried about the climate crisis, or 80% of new mothers feeling lonely, or 90% of voters feeling that American politics is broken, the state of the world doesn’t seem too conducive to domestic bliss. The right’s response to this anxiety is embodied by Elon Musk, who keeps siring children with women he meets on X to create a “legion-level” brood “before the apocalypse”.To help avert said apocalypse, what should be on offer are authentically family-friendly policies that benefit parents and non-parents alike. In doing so, there’s a chance to persuade Americans that the next generation still might have a brighter future than the last. Or, at the very least, that progressives have a more compelling vision for American families than the one whose budget is about to take billions from children’s education, food and healthcare.It’s one thing to incentivize giving birth. Americans deserve leaders who will fight for those kids after they’re born.

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

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      Mayor of Newark arrested for trespassing at Ice detention center

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      The mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, was arrested for trespass at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center in New Jersey on Friday as Democratic members of Congress also attempted to conduct what they say was a visit to the controversial facility to conduct “federal oversight”.News of Baraka’s arrest at Delaney Hall was reported on X by Alina Habba, the acting US attorney for the district of New Jersey, and a former personal attorney and adviser to Donald Trump.“The Mayor of Newark, Ras Baraka, committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon,” Habba wrote.“He has willingly chosen to disregard the law. That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody. No one is above the law.”Kabir Moss, spokesperson for the Baraka for Governor campaign, said in a statement that he was taken to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) office a few miles from the facility and remained in detention. Baraka is currently running for the Democratic nomination as New Jersey’s governor in a competitive race. The primary is scheduled for next month.“We are actively monitoring and will provide more details as they become available,” Moss said.The New Jersey Globe published a photograph of him being led away in handcuffs by officers in jackets marked “Police Ice”. The newspaper does not have a reporter at the scene, but said observers at Delaney Hall said there had been “a scuffle”.Baraka, who spoke out against Trump’s immigration policies in January after an immigration raid in Newark he said Ice agents conducted without a warrant, was at Delaney Hall with Democratic New Jersey Congress members Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez.The politicians have accused the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) of reopening the detention facility, in contravention of local ordinances and without the necessary permits.It is the largest such facility in the north-eastern US, and was the first to open after Trump’s second term of office began in January, according to the Ice website.Coleman, in a tweet, said the visit was an attempt to establish conditions inside. “We’ve heard stories of what it’s like in other Ice prisons. We’re exercising our oversight authority to see for ourselves,” she wrote.Coleman also told reporters at a press conference outside the facility that the lawmakers had traveled to the facility to see the conditions, according to the Independent.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Ice is out of control,” she said. “Ice thinks it can intimidate all of us. And it cannot intimidate any of us. And we the people will make sure that this administration adheres to the rules that separate us from dictatorships and other third world countries.”Menendez accused Ice agents of having “put their hands on” representatives Coleman and McIver, reported the New York Times. “They feel no restraint on what they should be doing, and that was shown in broad daylight today,” Menendez said at the news conference.Axios reports that Coleman’s office said that they “arrived at Delaney Hall today at about 1pm to exercise their oversight authority as prescribed by law. After a period of explaining the law to the officials at the site they were escorted in.”Video attached to the tweet shows the Congress members inside the grounds of the center talking to employees. Other clips show them being threatened with arrest for trespass by uniformed officials. More

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      Bernie Sanders urges Paramount not to ‘capitulate’ to Trump by settling 60 Minutes suit

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      The senator Bernie Sanders and his Democratic colleagues are urging Paramount Global not to settle Donald Trump’s $20bn lawsuit against 60 Minutes, saying such a decision would “capitulate to this dangerous move to authoritarianism”.In a letter co-signed by eight senators, Sanders urged controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and Paramount Global’s board to reconsider settling with Trump for as much as $75m to end his lawsuit against CBS News over its editing of last year’s 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris.Trump sued CBS News last November, alleging that the network’s interview with Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign was edited to frame her in a positive light and thus amounted to “election interference”.During the finalized interview, Harris was asked whether Benjamin Netanyahu listened to US advice. She replied of the Israeli prime minister: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States – to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”An alternative edit shown in pre-broadcast promotions showed Harris delivering a longer response.In Trump’s court filing, his lawyers alleged that “CBS and other legacy media organizations have gone into overdrive to get Kamala elected”.In Tuesday’s letter, Sanders, alongside the Democratic senators including Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse, Richard Blumenthal, Peter Welch, Chris Murphy, Jeffrey Merkley, Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey called Trump’s lawsuit “an attack on the United States Constitution and the First Amendment”.“It has absolutely no merit and it cannot stand,” they said, condemning Trump’s lawsuit as “a blatant attempt to intimidate the media and those who speak out against him”.The senators praised Paramount Global’s initial decision to file two motions to dismiss Trump’s case, which the company said “is without basis in law or fact”. However, the senators said that the company’s reported decision to settle with Trump is “unfortunately … a grave mistake”.“Rewarding Trump with tens of millions of dollars for filing this bogus lawsuit will not cause him to back down on his war against the media and a free press. It will only embolden him to shake down, extort and silence CBS and other media outlets that have the courage to report about issues that Trump may not like,” the senators wrote.“Stand up for freedom of the press and our democracy,” they added.Speaking to the Washington Post, a source familiar with the situation said that Redstone had recused herself from discussions about a potential settlement though she previously “shared her desire for some sort of resolution” with Paramount Global’s board.The senators’ letter comes as the Trump administration has escalated its attacks against US media, with the president denouncing CNN and MSNBC as “illegal” while ordering the US Agency for Global Media – the parent company of Voice of America – to be eliminated.Last week, Trump also signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service. In response to Trump’s accusations of the outlets’ having leftwing bias, NPR and PBS have both said they are looking at legal options. More

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      We can’t just be against Trump. It’s time for a bold, progressive populism | Robert Reich

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      Demonstrations against Donald Trump Trump are getting larger and louder. Good. This is absolutely essential.But at some point we’ll need to demonstrate not just against the president but also for the United States we want.Trump’s regressive populism – cruel, bigoted, tyrannical – must be met by a bold progressive populism that strengthens democracy and shares the wealth.We can’t simply return to the path we were on before Trump. Even then, big money was taking over our democracy and siphoning off most of the economy’s gains.Two of the country’s most respected political scientists – professors Martin Gilens of Princeton and Benjamin Page of Northwestern University – analyzed 1,799 policy issues decided between 1981 and 2002. They found that “the preferences of the average American appear to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”Instead, lawmakers responded to the demands of wealthy individuals (typically corporate executives and Wall Street moguls) and big corporations – those with the most lobbying prowess and deepest pockets to bankroll campaigns. And “when a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose.”Notably, Gilens and Page’s research data was gathered before the supreme court opened the floodgates to big money in Citizens United. After that, the voices of typical Americans were entirely drowned.In the election cycle of 2016, which first delivered the White House to Trump, the richest 100th of 1% of Americans accounted for a record-breaking 40% of all campaign donations. (By contrast, in 1980, the top 0.01% accounted for only 15% of all contributions.)The direction we were heading was unsustainable. Even before Trump’s first regime, trust in every major institution of society was plummeting – including Congress, the courts, corporations, Wall Street, universities, the legal establishment and the media.The entire system seemed rigged for the benefit of the establishment – and in many ways it was.The typical family’s inflation-adjusted income had barely risen for decades. Most of the economy’s gains had gone to the top.Wall Street got bailed out when its gambling addiction caused it humongous losses but homeowners who were underwater did not. Nor did people who lost their jobs and savings. And not a single top Wall Street executive went to jail.A populist – anti-establishment – revolution was inevitable. But it didn’t have to be a tyrannical one. It didn’t have to be regressive populism.Instead of putting the blame where it belonged – on big corporations, Wall Street and the billionaire class – Trump has blamed immigrants, the “deep state”, socialists, “coastal elites”, transgender people, “DEI” and “woke”.How has Trump gotten away with this while giving the super-rich large tax benefits and regulatory relief and surrounding himself (especially in his second term) with a record number of billionaires, including the richest person in the world?Largely because Democratic leaders – with the notable exceptions of Bernie Sanders (who is actually an independent), AOC and a handful of others – could not, and still cannot, bring themselves to enunciate a progressive version of populism that puts the blame squarely where it belongs.Too many have been eating from the same campaign buffet as the Republicans and dare not criticize the hands that feed them.This has left Trump’s regressive populism as the only version of anti-establishment politics available to Americans. It’s a tragedy. Anti-establishment fury remains at the heart of our politics, and for good reason.What would progressive populism entail?Strengthening democracy by busting up big corporations. Stopping Wall Street’s gambling (eg replicating the Glass-Steagall Act). Getting big money out of politics, even if this requires amending the constitution. Requiring big corporations to share their profits with their average workers. Strengthening unions. And raising taxes on the super-wealthy to finance a universal basic income, Medicare for all, and paid family leave.Hopefully, demonstrations against Trump’s regressive, tyrannical populism will continue to grow.But we must also be demonstrating for a better future beyond Trump – one that strengthens democracy and works on behalf of all Americans rather than a privileged few.

      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

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      Why are the Democrats greenlighting Trump’s crypto plans? | Corey Frayer

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      When Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) gained access to treasury payment systems in February, Democratic party leadership pledged to protect government payments from Donald Trump’s influence. Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries held a press conference announcing the Stop the Steal act that would prevent the takeover of critical government payment infrastructure. On that very same day, high-profile Democrats joined with Republicans to introduce legislation allowing for payments to be made in cryptocurrencies called stablecoins. The bill paves the way for the US president to require that all payments to and from the government are made with cryptocurrencies, which could include the one he has a business interest in.After making millions off a “memecoin”, the crypto-opportunist-in-chief recently entered the burgeoning crypto-payments market by launching a stablecoin. For the uninitiated, stablecoins are crypto products that allege to hold the value of a currency like the US dollar and are intended to be used as digital payments. In fact, stablecoins constantly fail to hold their value, aren’t subject to federal consumer protections, and aren’t backed by the full faith and credit of the government. If a consumer’s stablecoins are hacked, fraudulently or accidentally spent, or lost due to a misplaced password, stablecoin companies will not reverse or reimburse those payments like a credit card company would. If a stablecoin company fails, consumers are not protected by anything like federal deposit insurance. Stablecoins have also become the preferred cryptocurrency for illicit finance.In an awkwardly playful nod to Trump’s crypto interests, bipartisan stablecoin bills have been introduced in the House and Senate entitled “Stable” and “Genius”, respectively, following Trump’s 2018 assertion that he is a “stable genius”. Sponsors of legislation claim their bills protect consumers, guarantee stability and curb their use in illicit finance. Many academics and experts disagree with those assertions. As they point out, the bills give crypto businesses such as the president’s access to the same payment system that banks and credit card providers use while subjecting them to far weaker standards than their traditional counterparts.Almost unbelievably, gutting consumer protections and privatizing the dollar may be the least concerning outcomes of stablecoin legislation. On 25 March, Trump issued an executive order mandating adoption of digital payments to and from the US government. That may sound innocuous, but the government already makes 95% of its disbursements electronically. The order doesn’t intend to modernize an already-modernized system. Musk exposed the order’s true intent when his Doge team took over the payment system, to the aforementioned alarm of congressional Democrats. He endorsed putting those payments “on the blockchain” – and in so doing, make public payments with private stablecoins.It’s not a hypothetical. The administration has already floated issuing $3.3bn in the housing department’s community development block grants via stablecoins. USAID has been instructed to make disbursements in stablecoins. And the treasury payments Musk was referring to? That’s $5.45tn in government payments from social security to veterans’ pay and pensions, federal employee salaries and income tax refunds. Americans might be forced to adopt cryptocurrencies whether they like it or not.The president has demonstrated his willingness to use the power of his office to enrich his family and friends and to provide favors to crypto business partners. Under Trump, SEC lawsuits against his crypto business partners Justin Sun and Binance have been halted. Just last week, Trump’s World Liberty Financial announced an opaque $2bn deal with a firm in the United Arab Emirates that is chaired by the UAE’s national security adviser, who is the brother of the country’s president. It’s naive to think Trump would shy away from using his power to shovel profits to the politically influential crypto industry, and his own crypto venture in particular.Crypto’s ascendant political influence may explain Democrats’ confusing pledge to stop Trump profiting from the presidency with one hand while pushing stablecoin legislation with the other. Conflicts of interest or not, the Democrats’ campaign arm continues courting crypto, though it doesn’t accept donations in cryptocurrencies. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee chair, Kirsten Gillibrand, is a lead sponsor of the Genius bill. During the Senate banking committee consideration of Genius, news broke that Trump’s company was speaking with Binance about the launch of a stablecoin. It was as if the committee had called a recess for a word from its sponsor. Five Democrats still voted in support. House Democrats have sought amendments that would bar government officials from having a financial interest in such assets, but they’ve gotten little traction. This weekend, nine former Democratic supporters of the bill threatened to block further consideration unless concerns over issues ranging from money laundering to national security were addressed. But they said they remained “eager to continue working with our colleagues to address these issues”.The Democratic party has rightly pointed out that a sitting president’s conflicts of interest undermine the firmament of our democracy. Anyone, especially the president, who would use an office of public trust for personal benefit must be held accountable. Astoundingly, Democrats are poised to bless Trump’s crypto grift with the Genius act. If they do, it will be clear that, at least when it comes to crypto, they would rather endorse the president’s abuses than fight them.

      Corey Frayer is the director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America and a senior adviser on crypto markets to the former SEC chair Gary Gensler More

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      Democrats make long-shot effort to stop Trump cuts to Medicaid and Snap

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      House Democrats are making a long-shot attempt to stop Republicans from downsizing federal safety net programs including Medicaid to offset the costs of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown and tax cuts.The Democratic House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, on Tuesday announced that his lawmakers are circulating a petition which, should a majority of the chamber sign on to it, would force a vote on legislation preventing cuts to the Medicaid health insurance program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap).Known as a discharge petition, the effort faces long odds in the GOP-led chamber. Republican leaders have recently moved to stop such petitions, and while several Republican lawmakers have expressed concerns about some of the cuts being considered to pay for Trump’s agenda, they still generally support it.“House Republicans are determined to jam a reckless and extreme budget down the throats of the American people that will enact the largest cut to Medicaid and the largest cut to Snap in American history,” Jeffries told reporters.“All we need are four Republicans to do the right thing. Stand up for Medicaid and stand up for Snap, so they can stand up for the American people and we can stop the devastating cuts that Republicans are proposing.”Trump has called on Congress’s Republican majorities to send him what he has dubbed “one big, beautiful bill”, which is expected to extend tax cuts enacted during his first term, pay for the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and potentially address other campaign promises, such as ending the taxation of tips, overtime and social security payments.The GOP plans to pass the bill using Congress’s reconciliation procedure, which requires only simple majorities in both the House and Senate.Some Republicans have blanched at the possibility of deep cuts to Medicaid and Snap. Under a budget framework that applies to the House, the former program could lose as much as $880bn, while the latter could lose $220bn, both major cuts that are expected to have far-reaching effects.Democrats are hoping to seize on their discontent to attract the small number of Republican signatures needed for their petition to succeed.“All of this poses a question for those House Republicans who like to call themselves moderate,” said Katherine Clark, the Democratic whip of the House of Representatives.“Here’s a chance for you, your friends, your fellow moderates, to show you actually care for your constituents. It only takes a handful of Republicans to stop this, just a few to protect Medicaid and save working families from losing their healthcare and going hungry.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDischarge petitions rarely gather enough signatures, and when they do, House Republican leadership moves forcefully to render them moot.Last month, a small number of Republicans signed on with Democrats to a petition that forced a vote on a measure to allow new parents to vote by proxy in the House. Republican leaders inserted language into a must-pass procedural motion to stop the petition, prompting several GOP lawmakers to join with Democrats in voting down the motion, after which leadership recessed the chamber early. The matter was later resolved by a compromise between the House speaker, Mike Johnson, and Anna Paulina Luna, the Republican representative who was leading the petition.The discharge petition to protect Snap and Medicaid comes after the Democratic National Committee last week announced plans to hold town halls and rally voters in the districts of four Republican lawmakers, with the goal of encouraging them to vote against the forthcoming reconciliation bill.Seven of 11 House committees have written up their section of the bill, which Johnson said he hopes to pass through the chamber by the 26 May Memorial Day holiday. More

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      Top Democrat calls for investigation into ‘chaotic’ Newark airport delays

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      One of America’s most important airports continued to be hit by delays and cancellations on Monday as the Senate’s top Democrat called for an investigation into the chaotic crisis.The problems at Newark, a busy airport in New Jersey that acts as one of the main hubs for New York City and the surrounding region, have persisted since last week, causing serious issues for tens of thousands of travelers.Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, who is from New York, called for an investigation into the “chaos” that the Federal Aviation Authority says has been sparked by an air traffic controller shortage and thick cloud cover.“To say that there is just minor turbulence at Newark airport and the FAA would be the understatement of the year. We’re here because the FAA is really a mess. This mess needs a real forensic look, a deep look into it,” Schumer said. “So today I am demanding a full inspector general investigation as to what went on.”Schumer added: “The chaos at Newark very well could be a harbinger if issues like these aren’t fixed, and if the FAA can’t get real solutions off the ground.”Other politicians joined in.New Jersey’s Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, called the delays “completely and utterly unacceptable” in a post on X, and said he knows US transportation secretary Sean Duffy is “committed” to hiring more air traffic controllers.United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said in a letter to customers over the weekend that the technology used to manage planes at the New Jersey airport failed more than once in recent days.The flight delays, cancellations and diversions that the equipment problems caused were compounded when more than one-fifth of Newark’s traffic controllers “walked off the job”, Kirby said.Faulting the FAA’s alleged failure to address “long-simmering” challenges related to the air-traffic control system, United cut 35 daily flights from its Newark schedule starting on Saturday.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDuffy, the transportation secretary, last week announced a program to recruit new controllers and give existing ones incentives not to retire.The National Air Traffic Controllers Association, a workers’ union, said at the time that those moves could help address staffing shortages, but it also said the system is “long overdue for technology and infrastructure upgrades”.Meanwhile, the US army is pausing helicopter flights near a Washington DC airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon.The commander of the 12th Aviation Battalion directed the unit to pause helicopter flight operations around Ronald Reagan Washington national airport following Thursday’s close calls, two Army officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Monday. The pause comes after 67 people died in January when a passenger jet collided in midair with a Black Hawk helicopter at Reagan airport.Thursday’s close call involved a Delta Air Lines Airbus A319 and a Republic Airways Embraer E170, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. More

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      Trump’s tariffs get one thing right: capitalism is changing | Avram C Alpert

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      Trying to understand Donald Trump’s across-the-board tariffs based solely on economic theory won’t work. As the US president himself said: “Chronic trade deficits are no longer merely an economic problem, they’re a national emergency that threatens our security and our very way of life.” That may be why, as many economists have pointed out, there’s simply no good economic case for his plans.But few commentators have understood that facts and figures aren’t the whole point of the tariffs. As always, economics is part of a broader political vision. The tariffs help Trump make his claim that a way of life is under threat and he alone can protect it.Indeed, the political meaning of Trump’s tariffs is in the idea itself: “protectionism”. He is not just telling people that he’s going to improve the economy. He’s signaling that he’s going to protect a way of life, even – or especially – if it hurts others, by creating, in theory, good-paying factory jobs that could sustain local communities. (Never mind that the key to any industry’s ability to sustain communities are the practices of labor organizing Trump opposes.) On the campaign trail, he said: “Whether the women like it or not, I’m going to protect them.” He’s now saying the same thing to the country as a whole.Such non-economic justifications for economic policy are nothing new. They are part of what the sociologist Max Weber called “the spirit of capitalism”. Weber argued that capitalists had to justify a claim unique in human history: profit is good. For millennia before, philosophers had argued the opposite. Jesus, for example, told his disciples that it was likelier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to get into heaven.But with capitalism, the pursuit of profit became good. How did it justify this? Weber said that’s where “spirit” comes in. He pointed to notions of work as a holy value in Protestantism and Calvinist ideas about how monetary success proved you were among God’s chosen few. These spiritual views engendered a work ethic and made capitalist excess palatable. At least for a time.When capitalist greed becomes unpalatable, new spirits emerge. To understand Trump’s protectionist spirit, we have to understand this preceding history.After the Great Depression, people saw that they might lose everything no matter how hard they worked and so the work ethic spirit lost its power. In its place, social democratic states gave a new collectivist spirit to capitalism. Social democracy limited excess and provided a moral logic by offering stability to all through a linked system of jobs and life-long public services.This collectivist spirit began to break down in the 1960s under the pressures of stagflation, oil shocks, and criticisms of a conformist, consumerist lifestyle. In response, capitalism’s spirit transformed itself again. According to two scholars of this transitional period, Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, it did so by ingeniously incorporating the criticisms: it became about nomads, connections, flexibility, creativity.It was no longer the staid cubicle office man; it was now the exciting creative entrepreneur who knows no allegiances and is at home in the chaos of disruption. Hence Silicon Valley. Hence the destroyed manufacturing bases where jobs were converted to low-wage poverty traps and where Trump now finds many of his most loyal supporters. Hence his protectionist vision of a new spirit of capitalism.There is some merit in this desire to help those who lost out, but, as Weber noted, the spirits of capitalism can mask more sinister desires. By also pushing massive tax breaks for the wealthy, Trump is hoping that tariffs can provide rhetorical appeal without radically changing the social order.The tariffs say: we will protect your community by hurting those who profited off your pain and became rich through globalization. That’s why Trump blamed “globalists” for the dip in the stock market after the tariffs were announced: “A lot of [those selling stocks] are globalist countries and companies that won’t be doing as well … Because we’re taking back things that have been taken from us many years ago.” But that ignores the real ways in which jobs have been lost and communities upended. What the tariffs leave unsaid is that they won’t address the real issues underlying today’s economic pain: gutting welfare, failing to retrain workers, under-utilizing technology, and letting inequality rise relentlessly.Trump is right that capitalism, in a period of untrammeled greed and injustice, needs a new spirit to show it the way. But the trouble with a protectivist spirit is that it implies that some get protected while others get hurt. That will just create new cycles of dismay – as we are already seeing with the tariff whiplash and draconian immigration policies.What we need is a democratizing spirit, one that isn’t about protecting some and hurting others, but instead guides us to work collectively to ensure that all people can lead decent and meaningful lives even in a chaotic world. There are economic policies for this, such as fair trade, meaningful industrial policy, more worker representation on corporate boards, and more cooperatively owned businesses.But Democrats also need to learn from Trump and emphasize the spirit. They need to show that their democratic vision is not just technocratic, but as powerful and affirming as the feeling of being protected.The desire for this spirit may be why the rallies of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have drawn record crowds. Most attenders say they aren’t there to hear the policies, which they already know. They’re there for the “community”, and to experience the “closest thing to a version of America you actually want to live in”, one that works for all of us. If the Democratic party can catch that spirit, they will not only win elections; they might just bring an end to decades of destruction.

      Avram Alpert is a lecturer in the Princeton Writing Program. His most recent book is The Good-Enough Life More