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      Woman in Florida deported to Cuba says she was forced to leave baby daughter

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      A mother deported to Cuba reportedly had to hand over her 17-month-old daughter to a lawyer while her husband, a US citizen, stood outside unable to say goodbye.Heidy Sánchez was told she was being detained for deportation to Cuba when she turned up at her scheduled Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) check-in appointment in Tampa, Florida, last week.She was told her child, who has health problems and is still breastfeeding, had to stay in the US but could visit her in Cuba, NBC reported.The Trump administration is embroiled in controversy for removing children who are US citizens from the United States with a parent when the adult is deported. In this case, the child was reportedly not allowed to leave with her mother even though it was what both parents said they wanted.The administration’s anti-immigration crackdown has put many people in a difficult position because they risk being summarily detained and deported when turning up for routine Ice check-ins. Many people have followed this process without issue for years, and do not have a criminal record – but failing to turn up can bring an order for forcible removal from the US.“They never gave me the option to take my daughter,” Sánchez told NBC.Sánchez’s husband, Carlos Valle, is a US citizen. Both parents separately told NBC that their daughter is now crying all the time and calling for her mother, while Sánchez struggles to get wifi service in Cuba to sing her daughter to sleep.Valle was not allowed into the room where Sánchez was being interviewed by Ice agents with their daughter, attorneys told NBC. When told she was being deported, she was denied the chance to see her husband or hand over their daughter to him, with a lawyer having to fulfil that role instead.Claudia Cañizares, a Miami-based attorney for the family, said she tried to prevent the deportation but was given “the runaround” by the authorities. The Florida Democratic congresswoman Kathy Castor has said she is lobbying the administration on the family’s behalf.Ice did not respond to a request for comment from NBC. The Guardian has submitted a request for comment. More

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      Pam Bondi turning DoJ into Trump’s ‘personal law firm’, top experts warn

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      Donald Trump’s Department of Justice has taken radical steps to target his political foes, back a harsh agenda against undocumented immigrants and help business allies – steps which underscore its politicization under the attorney general Pam Bondi and undermine the rule of law, say ex-prosecutors and legal experts.Some even say that the department has in effect become Trump’s “personal law firm”.Since taking office a second time, Trump has relied on staunch loyalist Bondi and an elite group of justice department lawyers to investigate critics from his first administration plus political opponents and curb prosecutions of US business bribery overseas.Ex-prosecutors point to how Bondi and the department’s top lawyers have halted some major prosecutions, fired or forced out lawyers who didn’t meet Maga litmus tests, and were instructed by Trump to investigate a key Democratic fundraising vehicle as examples of how Trump and Bondi have politicized the justice department.Critics note that once Bondi became attorney general, she issued a memo establishing a “weaponization working group”, which pushed a false narrative that investigations by a special counsel into Trump’s efforts to overturn his 2020 election and his improperly retaining classified documents were politically motivated.The transformation of the Department of Justice under Bondi has put a premium for staff on “personal loyalty” to Trump, say ex-prosecutors, which has damaged the rule of law and provoked multiple rebukes from courts and the resignations or firings of veteran prosecutors.“The steps Trump and Bondi have taken using DoJ to punish enemies and reward allies while firing those who object radically transforms and politicizes DoJ in a way that not even the worst who have gone before them ever contemplated,” the former federal prosecutor Paul Rosenzweig said.“Trump’s transmuting DoJ into his personal law firm is, in effect, a rejection of the founding principle of the rule of law.”Other ex-prosecutors see the department marching in dangerous legal lockstep with Trump’s agenda and damaging its mission to protect the rule of law.“Bondi and DoJ lawyers have certainly tried to make personal loyalty to Trump the justice department’s guiding principle,” said the Columbia law professor and ex-federal prosecutor Daniel Richman.Critics note Bondi has also echoed Trump’s dangerous rhetorical blasts against judges who have ruled against his administration’s sweeping and haphazard drive to deport undocumented immigrants by labeling them “low-level leftist judges who are trying to dictate President Trump’s executive powers”.After the FBI arrested a Milwaukee judge for allegedly obstructing the arrest of an undocumented immigrant, Bondi went on Fox News to threaten other judges who may defy their agenda. “They’re deranged. I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not. We will come after you and we will prosecute you,” she said.Hundreds of lawyers and staff in the justice department’s civil rights division are now leaving the storied unit as its focus has shifted to Trump priorities such as pursuing cases against elite universities and student protesters, while curbing some civil and voting rights cases it has traditionally pursued, say critics.Other actions by the department under Bondi, an ex-Florida attorney general who later worked on Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial in 2020, and some elite justice department lawyers reflect its strong allegiance to Trump and have sparked strong criticism.They include an investigation of two officials, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who served in his first term and clashed with him for, respectively, not backing his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen and for voicing strong concerns in a 2018 New York Times op ed about how Trump threatened democracy.In another radical move, Trump issued an executive order in April telling the justice department to investigate unverified allegations that ActBlue, a major Democratic online fundraising vehicle, had engaged in improper fundraising schemes.Trump also reportedly prodded the Department of Justice to drop a five-count criminal fraud prosecution of the New York mayor, Eric Adams, that the elite justice department southern district had worked on for months, as Trump was eager to secure public support from Adams for his immigration agenda in the city.Some actions also appear aimed at helping allied business interests. In April, the justice department abruptly closed a cryptocurrency unit that was launched in 2022 and had successfully prosecuted dangerous criminal schemes involving North Korean hackers and other fraudsters, but which had come under fire from cryptocurrency leaders who helped fund Trump’s campaign last year.Trump’s justice department also has paused for six months prosecuting businesses that have been charged with violating the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), which bars paying bribes to win deals abroad.Other moves seem to reflect Trump’s enmity towards journalists who report critically about his administration. In a reversal of recent department policy, Bondi revoked journalists’ free-speech protections by greenlighting authorities to force journalists to reveal confidential sources in leak investigations. Meanwhile, Bondi also seems willing to protect political allies, such as when she declined to open an investigation into “Signalgate” despite extensive documentation that top national security officials had improperly shared classified information as an attack was imminent in Yemen against the Houthis.Ex-prosecutors say that Bondi and the justice department’s willingness to make personal loyalty to Trump paramount damages the rule of law.Critics note the justice department has been rebuked by federal courts for stonewalling court orders and questions about some of its deportation actions and for not bringing home a Maryland man originally from El Salvador who was sent to a notorious Salvadorian prison as a result of what Ice has called an “administrative error”.“Never in history has DoJ broken so defiantly from respecting, as it’s obligated to do, the decisions of federal courts,” said the former prosecutor Ty Cobb, who was a counsel in the White House during Trump’s first term. “This is a war that Trump and Bondi are waging against the rule of law.”Richman noted more broadly that “outside the immigration area, most of what Bondi has actually done so far, however, has been negative – like dropping the case against Mayor Adams and cases against FCPA defendants and firing prosecutors”.Richman added: “We will soon see how this administration fares when it actually seeks a result in court, even if it’s only defensive. As the proceedings in the recent Maryland deportation case highlighted, courts demand a candor and respect for law that the justice department’s leadership finds inconsistent with the loyalty it demands.”Some veteran prosecutors who quit the department after Trump and Bondi took office say that the pair’s first moves raised red flags that prompted their departures.“Bondi has made clear – before becoming attorney general, and since – that she wants the Department of Justice to support President Trump unconditionally,” said Mike Romano, who resigned from the department in late March.Before he quit, Romano spent almost four years working on the prosecutions of Trump allies who stormed Congress on 6 January 2021 in an effort to thwart Joe Biden’s certification by Congress.Romano said that the night Bondi was confirmed “she issued a memorandum to all justice department employees in which she threatened to fire employees who refuse to defend the Trump administration’s actions, advance its arguments or sign its briefs. She and her subordinates have made good on those threats by firing people and forcing them to resign.”Romano stressed that “some of my colleagues were fired, and others were demoted, because they prosecuted people who rioted at the Capitol. At the public integrity section, four of my managers resigned, in lieu of being fired, when they refused to sign a motion to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams. These actions send a clear message to people still at the department: if you want to keep your job, disagreement won’t be tolerated.”Similarly, Barbara McQuade, a former prosecutor for Michigan’s eastern district who now teaches law at the University of Michigan, warned that Bondi’s memo setting up a “weaponization working group” actually “weaponizes law enforcement and undermines public confidence in government” because it pushes a “false narrative” about the two investigations of Trump by the former special counsel Jack Smith.McQuade emphasized that “in fact federal grand juries returned indictments in both cases, meaning that they found probable cause that the crimes were committed. DoJ’s Principles of Federal Prosecution prohibit prosecutors from making charging decisions on the basis of partisan politics.”Pointing to a further symbol of the justice department’s politicization under Bondi, McQuade cited her statement that a federal judge “supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” and charged he “cannot be objective” because he issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportation of Venezuelan men to El Salvador without due process.“There is no evidence to suggest that the judge did anything other than apply the law to the case,” McQuade stressed. “He was applying the law to a highly suspect use of the Alien Enemies Act, a statute to be used during wartime.”Assessing Trump’s politicization of the Department of Justice, Rosenzweig said the department was betraying its historic mission to protect the rule of law.“DoJ isn’t just another department like agriculture or HHS. It has a unique place in the US government as the home of the ‘rule of law’ and the guardian of what makes America special,” he said.“Thomas Paine said: ‘In America, the law is king.’ Trump wants to make his word the law and himself the king.” More

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      Canada has long been seen as the cool cousin next door. Here’s the truth | Noel Ransome

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      Canada has been canonized – safely, predictably.It’s the great, grave story we’ve exported – retold in economic rankings, stitched into tourism ads, held up in classrooms and cable news panels. We’re the cooler, mellower cousin nextdoor. The country that has it figured out. Where healthcare is universal, democracy is calm and diversity is politely managed.This image has been shared like a TikTok meme for decades – forwarded, favourited, lightly interrogated. Over time, we’ve become more vibe than nation; contradictions, history and horrors flattened into brand energy. Place that flag in your Twitter bio, mention how “we’ll never become like America,” and you’ve bought into the sauce. You’re not the problem, you’re proof the problem lives somewhere else.This kind of deception has always been fundamental to our story. But we need only a glimpse at our neighbour’s constitutional preamble – “We the people of the United States” – to get a hint of the delusion. Canada’s constitutional language, by contrast, never used the populist “we”. From the start, there was no sweeping assertion of collective identity. Instead, the Constitution Act, 1867, opened with:
      Whereas the Provinces of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick have expressed their desire to be federally united into One Dominion under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland …
      Granted, Canada’s constitutional framework evolved. But from the beginning, the difference in language spoke to the shaping of our identity – through agreements, compromises, legal frameworks, not a people-centered vision. This historical nuance, while subtle, now echoes in modern politics.All that to say: times are spooky for the average Canadian forced to define and defend Canada’s sovereignty. Spooky in ways that can cause one to reflexively feed into a myth, rather than confront the truth of who we are. The gap between our negotiated past and our branded present has never been more plain. Our current leaders are no exception.To any Canadian progressive, it’s stating the obvious to say that Justin Trudeau, the figure most associated with Canada’s progressive identity, was more committed to feeding the myth than confronting it. With his well-timed, photogenic smile – post-blackface, naturally – Trudeau was the perfect mascot. Our self-image personified: tolerant, polished, unthreatening. But branding aside, his government sidestepped moral clarity at home – from pipeline expansions and broken promises to Indigenous communities, to a foreign policy on Gaza that rarely strayed from Washington’s script. In moments that demanded progressive definition, he was formless.It would have been naive to think many Canadians would take Donald Trump seriously when he half-jokingly suggested in November 2024 that Canada become the 51st state. After all, those words came from someone familiar to us – a man and a Maga movement forged in the belief that something sacred was always being stolen. The enemy, the fuel for his fervor, shifted with the news cycle: migrants, trans youth, teachers, climate scientists, Muslims, Black Americans, DEI initiatives, and the very idea of truth.But the speaker of those words wore the same jacket as Pierre Poilievre, who, just before Trump’s threat, was the undeniable favourite among Canadians to become the next prime minister.His rhetoric tapped into the same fears and scapegoating, presenting itself as the antidote to a broken system. Poilievre ticked off his own list of Trump-style grievances: DEI initiatives? “Garbage.” Trans women in women’s spaces? “No place at all.” Immigration policies? “Destroying” a system that requires caps over compassion to curb economic and social pressure. It’s as if he were part of the same tired flock – one that targets the marginalized while promising to fix what he claims is broken. The popular sentiments of a supposedly morally superior land.And this isn’t new. In 2008, as the country prepared to confront the brutal legacy of residential schools, Poilievre dismissed the moment sanctimoniously, arguing that Indigenous people needed to learn “the values of hard work” more than they needed compensation for past abuses. That’s who was in line to lead the country, as anointed by our polls.In the end, his opponent Mark Carney was victorious. But it should be clear that a shift toward the Liberal leader isn’t clarity about who we are, as much as it is a hedge against a man who seeks to claim us from afar.Carney is no antidote – just a bandage. Cutting ministries for gender equality and disability rights isn’t healing; it’s harm. His economic nationalism is safer than the far-right’s bluster, but it’s closer to US centrism than a remedy.As one union representing more than 80,000 educators put it, the move signals “an unwise change of direction” for a country where vulnerable groups are already living in fear. And while Carney served as an executive at Brookfield Asset Management, the company faced accusations of violating Indigenous rights.What Canadians and others need to confront is that the Trump machine wasn’t purely fueled by cultural resentment. It was powered, in no small part, by the United States’ historic desire to promote and believe the best of itself – even when the evidence said otherwise.For me, as a Black Canadian, home has rarely been the gentle myth so many sing about. Always polite and tolerant it wasn’t. I’ve seen just as much of the opposite: unmarked graves, flickers of grief, and then silence. I’ve seen headlines and acknowledgments of systematic racism turn to indifference: police brutality, missing Indigenous women, gone like breath during our winters. And yes, I’ve seen the Proud Boys, too. Their founder, Gavin McInnes? Canadian.Canada holds beauty, but it harbours moral rot just as much as the neighbour it claims to rise above. Myth-making can’t save us. If we want to hold onto our sovereignty in this moment, maybe it’s time we stop lying like them – to others, and most of all, to ourselves.

      Noel Ransome is a Toronto-based freelance writer More

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      The way universities can survive the Trump era? Band together in an alliance | David Kirp

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      Higher education is under attack from the person who inhabits the White House. Universities are being threatened with an array of punishments, including the cutoff of their federal contracts and grants, the loss of their nonprofit status and a tax on their endowment. The Trump administration is demanding a say in whom they admit, whom they hire and even what courses they teach.It’s a grim message – abandon your fundamental values, or else. The idea of an “existential moment” has become a cliche, but this situation warrants that grim description. Academic freedom, the lifeblood of higher education, is being threatened.How should these colleges and universities respond?Columbia University has learned the hard way that you can’t negotiate with an autocrat – give an inch and he’ll just come back for more. Harvard has been widely praised for saying “no” to Trump, and justifiably so. But Harvard couldn’t have done anything else. The demands were so outrageous that if the university had capitulated it might as well have closed its doors.The cutoff of $2.2bn in federal contracts and grants, as well as the threat to rescind the university’s tax-exempt status, will take a bite out of research, teaching and financial aid, if ultimately upheld by the courts. But Harvard is, far and away, the richest university in the world, with an endowment north of $50 billion. That’s larger than the gross domestic product of nearly 100 countries. With its deep pockets, it is uniquely situated to carry on, while its phalanx of best-in-the-nation lawyers do battle in the courtroom.Other schools in Trump’s sight include far less wealthy private universities like Northwestern, as well as flagship public universities like the University of California-Berkeley, which have a comparative pittance to draw on. If they say shut the door when Trump & Co. come calling, the consequences would doubtlessly be devastating. But the Columbia debacle shows that there is really no option.Universities compete on many fronts. They vie for contracts and grants, professors and students and endowment contributions. Because they fetishize prestige, they take aggressive action to boost their place in the US News pecking order.But in these desperate times such competition is a ruinous course. The only strategy with a prayer of succeeding is for universities – public and private, well-endowed and scraping by – to come together, making it crystal-clear that they won’t give in to assaults on academic freedom.That’s precisely what happened last week, when more than 200 college and university presidents signed a statement, issued by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, which forcefully condemns the federal government’s “political interference” and overreach” for “endangering higher education.”Stanford, Chicago and Dartmouth are among the top-ranking schools that didn’t sign on. Perhaps their presidents believe that “duck and cover” is their best strategy. As Columbia – which did sign – can tell them, good luck with that.Higher education has long rested on its laurels, confident that Americans appreciate its intrinsic value, but that hasn’t been true for years. The just-issued statement of principle should be coupled with a full-throated campaign to make their case—to demonstrate the importance of universities and colleges in preparing the coming generation to contribute to society as well as carrying out essential, cutting-edge research.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe AACU manifesto makes a great start, but more is needed to win this war. Well-off universities need to come to the aid of their financially weaker brethren, underwriting essential and expensive legal support, when the anti-university forces come calling.“Nato for higher education” – a mutual defense pact is a long-shot approach, but it might just convince the bully in the White House to back off. The tariff mess is just the latest example of how the Mister “Art of the Deal” turns tail when confronted with strong opposition.What’s more, colleges and universities have no viable option – to borrow a line from Benjamin Franklin, they can “hang together or hang separately.”

      David Kirp is professor emeritus at the University of California-Berkeley and the author of The College Dropout Scandal More

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      Trump 100 days: White House action plan makes Project 2025 look mild

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      When Donald Trump chose a Project 2025 author to lead a key federal agency that would carry out the underpinnings of the conservative manifesto’s aims, he solidified the project’s role in his second term.Shortly after he won re-election, the US president nominated Russ Vought to lead the office of management and budget. Vought wrote a chapter for Project 2025 about consolidating power in the executive branch and advances a theory that allows the president to withhold funds from agencies, even if Congress has allocated them. Consolidating power, in part through firing a supposed “deep state” and hiring loyalists, is a major plank of the project – and of Trump’s first 100 days.Trump tried, repeatedly, to distance himself from the project, led by the conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, on the campaign trail after the left used it as shorthand for the dismantling of government that would take place if he won. Since he’s taken office, the illusion that his ideas were drastically different from the project has fallen.“The whole distancing themselves from Project 2025 may have pulled some voters,” said Manisha Sinha, a history professor at the University of Connecticut, but “my sense is that they’re going to try and push all the items within Project 2025 as much as they can.”Many of Trump’s moves in his first 100 days come directly from Project 2025, which involved more than 100 conservative organizations and represented a sort of consensus among the Trumpist right about what he should do in a second term. In some instances, he has gone beyond the project’s suggestions. And in other cases, because the project was written in 2023, subsequent policy ideas from the Heritage Foundation have shaped his actions and goals.For instance, the project predated Elon Musk’s outsized role in the election and then in the Trump administration, but the goal to slash government programs using the so-called “department of government efficiency” fits the spirit of the project. It also predates the war in Gaza and the crackdown on speech in the US in the name of antisemitism, but Heritage’s Project Esther laid out a strategy to crack down on civil society groups that support Palestinian rights.Trump’s campaign once said people associated with the project wouldn’t get jobs in his administration. Instead, several hold prominent roles, in some cases now carrying out the plans they wrote about in the project.He chose Peter Navarro as a trade adviser; Navarro wrote a chapter for the project that advocates for increased tariffs and a restructuring of US trade, which Trump is now working on. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, appeared in training videos for Project 2025. Brendan Carr, Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Communications Commission, wrote the chapter on the FCC.The former director of the project, Paul Dans, stepped down from his role amid concerns that the project was derailing Trump’s re-election effort. Dans told Politico in March that Trump’s second term was “actually way beyond my wildest dreams”.“What we had hoped would happen has happened. So I can’t imagine how anything could end really any better,” Dans said.Will Dobbs-Allsopp, policy director of Governing for Impact, and James Goodwin, policy director at the Center for Progressive Reform, have publicly tracked the executive actions suggested for 20 different agencies in Project 2025 as Trump has carried some of them out. Of the 532 proposals in the project that fall under these actions, Trump has already proposed, attempted or completed 153 of them – about 29%.The belief that Trump was not fully prepared, and the broader conservative ecosystem was not aligned completely with his agenda, underpinned his first term. For his second term, conservative donors put major money into efforts to get the right on the same page and to come up with plans and personnel who would stand ready to implement these plans immediately if Trump won.While thinktanks often seek to influence policymakers, the project stands out for its focus on Trump.“Really, it was written for Trump or Trumpism,” Goodwin said. “There really was an audience of one in mind … Trump had as much gravitational pull on Project 2025 as Project 2025 hopes to have on Trump. It’s just a very unusual thinktank-policymaker relationship.”Where Trump has used the projectThe threads of Project 2025 are visible across the federal government in Trump’s second term.He is in the process of firing people disloyal to the Trump agenda, a first step in creating a government more beholden to him. An executive order signed in April called for tens of thousands more roles being listed as political appointments rather than career civil servants, a move Project 2025 promoted as a way to drive out the kinds of people who stood in the way of success in his first term.Project 2025 called for dismantling the Department of Education, which would require congressional action. Trump signed an executive order calling on the education secretary to start the dismantling process by shutting down major parts of the department’s work.The project wanted to scale back the US Agency for International Development. Trump axed it.“Libs are realizing that Project 2025 was the watered down version of this White House action plan,” Tyler Bowyer, a leader with conservative youth group Turning Point, said on X in early February.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe project said that programs related to climate change should be ended; Trump has ended a host of climate programs and has withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement.The Department of Justice should be reconfigured, ending a host of policies and enforcement that came during the Biden years, the project says. Trump has weaponized the department to achieve his goals and to go after his enemies.In nearly all agency recommendations, the project suggested scrapping any diversity efforts. Trump ended diversity, equity and inclusion programs government-wide. He has taken actions to prohibit transgender people in sports and in the military and limited access to gender-affirming care, which aligns with ideas in the project that seek to reinforce binary genders.The project recommended a host of ways to deport undocumented immigrants, end visa programs for people to come to the US legally, and restrict border crossings – a key part of Trump’s first 100 days, though the project didn’t suggest using the Alien Enemies Act, as Trump has, or going after birthright citizenship.Trump signed an executive order that would make states carry more of a burden for disaster relief, another idea suggested by Project 2025, which also said withholding disaster funds was one way to enforce immigration laws.The FCC, now led by a Project 2025 author appointed by Trump, is investigating National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting System and will potentially defund them, which Carr wrote about in the project.What could happen nextThe first wave of Project 2025-aligned actions has been conducted largely by executive orders. A second wave of recommendations requires the rulemaking process at agencies and others would require congressional action.“They’re only just now starting their kind of policy, deregulatory effort, rescinding regulations in earnest. They haven’t even really gotten there yet. They’ve been so focused on agency operations and personnel for the past few months,” Dobbs-Allsopp said. “We would expect that at six months or a year, they will be even further along.”Sinha predicted that the full-scale dismantling of the administrative state, if successful, could bring the US “back to the era of tainted meat and lead in hot water”.Project 2025 represented the extreme version of what the Republican party has been selling since the Nixon and Reagan years, she said. It mixes the anti-government rhetoric with demonizing immigrants, poor people and people of color. “The Republicans have trafficked on this for a very long time,” she said.“The people who hate government basically are running government,” she said. More

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      The case for American reindustrialisation | Dustin Guastella

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      A poll from the conservative Cato Institute recently went viral. It found that 80% of Americans think the country would be better off if more people worked in manufacturing. At the same time, only 25% of respondents said they themselves would be better off working in a factory. What should we make of the results?First, there’s nothing contradictory between these figures. It’s easy to see how it would be good for the country to reshore manufacturing jobs, even if it’s not good for you, personally, to work in a factory. Imagine a local pharmacist in an industrial town. He can see how his business would benefit from the expansion of a nearby plant. Yet he could also see that he would personally lose out on a lot of income if he gave up his trade and marched into the factory himself. The same can be said for any number of other workers. The reason so many people find appeals to reindustrialization attractive is because life was undoubtedly better when the old factories in their town were buzzing with activity than it is today, where they sit idle.Second, that 25% figure represents a lot of people. Across the political spectrum, libertarians at Reason Magazine, liberals at the Financial Times, mainstream conservatives, and even some on the far left have misread this figure. They think 25% indicates a woefully low ceiling for appeals to reindustrialization. Yet currently only 8% of Americans are directly employed in manufacturing. If we gave the people what they wanted, we would more than triple the amount of manufacturing jobs in the United States, an increase from about 12.7 million workers to more than 40 million. That is not small, it’s seismic. That a quarter of Americans think they would be personally better off with a factory job – jobs that are often dangerous and difficult – represents a scathing indictment of the so-called “knowledge economy” that promised prosperity but has often delivered devastation instead.Back in 1987, the economists Stephen Cohen and John Zysman warned:“Lose manufacturing and you will lose – not develop – high-wage service jobs.” How prescient they were. Everywhere factories have fled, social rot has followed. Since then, wage growth for most Americans has been stagnant. For those without a college degree it has declined. The promise of a “service economy” was built on the myth that jobs in services could simply replace jobs in manufacturing, without any real trade-off. But, as experience has shown, many service jobs have proved to be stubbornly low-waged. And there is good evidence that, all things being equal, jobs in manufacturing still offer pay advantages over jobs in services. Moreover, as developmental economists have long acknowledged, the health of a nation is tied to the health of its industrial heartlands. Just look at China’s explosive rise to see how important manufacturing is to a nation’s economic strength. Or, alternatively, look at the deindustrialization of the United States, and now Germany, for examples of the equal and opposite effect. A decline, especially a rapid one, in manufacturing is linked to a decline in the social and economic health of the country as a whole.Still, some argue that the only thing special about manufacturing jobs in the US was that the sector was highly unionized and that in a more pro-labor environment, service jobs would make just as much money as factory jobs. For instance, Matt Bruenig notes: “McDonald’s workers in Denmark make more than Honda workers in Alabama.” He’s right. Yet, as he knows, the Danish example doesn’t just show the power of unions, it actually helps make the case for a strong manufacturing sector. For one thing, Danish manufacturing workers make nearly twice the amount that Danish McDonald’s workers do. For another, Denmark employs nearly twice as many (15.7%) workers in manufacturing than does the United States (8%). And, according to the World Bank, manufacturing counts for a significantly larger portion of Denmark’s GDP (about 16%) than it does in the United States (about 10%). Ultimately, a major reason Danish McDonald’s workers can earn high wages is that, thanks to intelligent industrial policy, Denmark has retained its manufacturing sector. It is because blue-collar Danes earn high wages that McDonald’s can afford to pay high wages. The same can’t be said of the United States.While unionized service workers at say, Starbucks, may be able to win significant wage increases through union bargaining, they won’t be able to make anything close to the wages made by union auto workers. And that is not due to a lack of effort or heroism on the part of the baristas. It’s structural. Manufacturing jobs simply have greater wage potential than many jobs in services because they have more room for productivity growth and a higher degree of leverage to win wage demands.Increases in productivity, the amount of work accomplished by each worker in a set period of time, make firms more efficient and more profitable. As productivity increases, so do profits, which can translate to higher wages through bargaining. But service firms and factories have very different productivity curves. A Starbucks store can introduce more efficient espresso machines but ultimately the potential for increased productivity is limited by the nature of the business itself. Starbucks is selling a service, a consumer experience, and it’s hard to increase the per-worker output of an experience. This is a problem across the service sector where the rate of productivity growth remains low. By contrast, manufacturing firms can rapidly increase the output of each worker by introducing new techniques and technologies.As a result, these workers have a regular claim to corresponding wage increases – each year they get more productive, they make the company more money, and therefore the company can afford to pay their wage demands. Still, whether they can win those demands depends on leverage. Here too manufacturing workers have the advantage. A strike in a key auto plant can shut down all downstream operations, resulting in windfall losses quickly. Yet no strike at any given Starbucks store could have the same effect. Productivity and worker-leverage give manufacturing its unique high-wage potential, and for these reasons, a strong manufacturing sector has a salutary effect on the entire economy.Even for union baristas, manufacturing matters.Besides the pay advantages, there are other good reasons for reshoring manufacturing. As John Maynard Keynes argued, national self-sufficiency, the ability of a nation to provide its own industrial necessities, has all sorts of benefits. Including increased leverage in trade negotiations, more sovereignty over economic policy, and greater potential for robust social programs (remember, none of the famously generous Nordic states allowed their major industries to shrivel and die the way that Britain and the United States have). Put simply, if we want more social equality, we need a better economic balance. Consider that in 1960 almost 95% of the clothing worn by Americans was made in the US – today it is 2%. And unionized American garment workers made more then than Bangladeshi garment workers make now.Finally, reindustrialization is great politics. With the left struggling to reach working-class voters, an economic appeal that reaches some 80% of the country is a good way to win back favor. Donald Trump’s chaotic and contradictory policies won’t yield an industrial renaissance, and his fumbling of the economy could make it yet harder to do so, but while we are in the political wilderness the left should figure out the right mix of industrial policies that can bring back manufacturing jobs. We need to figure out an exit path from neoliberal globalization and that involves a wholesale rethinking of trade and industrial policy; immigration and labor market policies; monetary and fiscal policies.The good news is there is hope. As UAW’s president, Shawn Fain, notes, even a modest reorganization of economic policy can result in an instant boost in new manufacturing employment. By the union’s calculations more than 50,000 new jobs could be reshored simply by filling out the capacity of existing plants. That may not sound like a lot, and it’s far short of the 25% figure, but if you’re among those newly employed it could mean the difference between scraping by in a post-industrial town and having a living wage with union rights.Beyond the short term, US deindustrialization, ironically, could be an advantage for its industrial rebirth. After the second world war, Europe saw the most fantastic industrial turnaround ever recorded. Decimated economies such as France and Germany, where industrial towns were bombed to smithereens, suddenly emerged as manufacturing powerhouses. How? The destruction of their old factories gave them a fresh start. Industrial policy-makers didn’t have to deal with stubborn institutional inertia or outmoded infrastructure. While British firms struggled after the war, unwilling to build new plants, French and German manufacturers, with a clean slate upon which to build, surged ahead.Walking through America’s deindustrialized zones is a bit like walking through Dresden after 1945. Maybe then, with a clean slate, we can rebuild better than before.

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

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      Trump signs executive order to cut funding for public broadcasters

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      Donald Trump has signed an executive order seeking to cut public funding for the news outlets NPR and PBS, accusing them of being biased.NPR and PBS are only partly funded by the US taxpayer and rely heavily on private donations.The US president has long had an antagonistic relationship with most mainstream news media, previously describing them as the “enemy of the people”.A notable exception is the powerful conservative broadcaster Fox News, some of whose hosts have taken on leading roles in his administration.“National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) receive taxpayer funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB),” Trump said in his executive order. “I therefore instruct the CPB board of directors and all executive departments and agencies to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS.”He added that “neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to taxpaying citizens”.The CPB budget has already been approved by Congress through 2027, which raises questions about the scope of Trump’s order.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionMore than 40 million Americans listen to NPR public radio each week, and 36 million watch a local television station from the PBS network each month, according to their estimates.The NPR director, Katherine Maher, estimated in March that the radio station would receive about $120m (£102m) from the CPB in 2025, “less than 5% of its budget”.The media rights group RSF warned on Friday about “an alarming deterioration in press freedom” in the US under Trump and “unprecedented” difficulties for independent journalists around the world. More