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Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Jan 2, 2024

This evening, President Joe Biden awarded twenty Americans the Presidential Citizens Medal, which is given to those “who have performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.” Biden chose these particular individuals because he “believes these Americans are bonded by their common decency and commitment to serving others” and that “[t]he country is better because of their dedication and sacrifice.”

Those twenty included civil rights leaders who fought to end racial segregation, promote Black voting, restore rights for Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II, legalize same-sex marriage, and defend women’s rights to equality, and reformers who advanced tax reform and the reform of financial markets, moved forward childcare policies, advanced commonsense gun safety regulations, and promoted women’s health.

They included military personnel who perfected trauma care, ensured that female service members received the recognition they deserve, and worked to repair the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam; a war correspondent who recorded the experience of battle; a photographer and philanthropist who has advanced teacher training and microenterprise in developing countries’ an educator who has guided students toward the arts.

The recipients included both Democrats and Republicans, with Biden honoring Senator Nancy Kassebaum (R-KS) for example, for supporting abortion rights. “[S]he stood up for what she believed in even if it meant standing alone,” he said, “and she reached across the aisle to do what she believed was right.”

And the recipients included the chair and vice chair of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, informally known as the January 6th Committee, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS) and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY). Biden praised Thompson for “defending the rule of law with unwavering integrity and a steadfast commitment to truth.” He praised Cheney for raising her voice and reaching across the aisle “to defend our Nation and the ideals we stand for: Freedom. Dignity. And decency.” He added: “Her integrity and intrepidness remind us all what is possible if we work together.”

Biden also offered a public message today in response to the horrific New Year’s Eve attack in New Orleans in which Shamsud-Din Jabbar, an American citizen and Army veteran from Texas, drove a truck into a crowd in the French Quarter, killing 14 people and wounding 30 others.

Before today’s Sugar Bowl playoff between Georgia and Notre Dame in New Orleans, Biden addressed the nation: “Today all America stands with the people of New Orleans. We pray for those killed and injured in yesterday’s attack. We are grateful… for the brave first responders who raced to save lives. We’re glad the game is back on for today, but I’m not surprised, because the spirit of New Orleans can never be kept down. That’s also true of the spirit of America. We just have to remember who we are. We’re the United States of America. There’s nothing, nothing, beyond our capacity if we do it together. God bless New Orleans, and God protect our troops.”

While Biden focuses on protecting civil rights and making progress together in a unified America, Trump and Elon Musk are doubling down on dividing Americans. Over the holiday, the fight between the original MAGA and the new tech billionaires taking over the Trump White House continued, and Trump and Musk appear to be trying to heal that rift by returning to culture war themes.

The fight began over immigration, which MAGA opposes and Musk champions for skilled workers, but spread as the Musk faction attacked the American culture MAGA celebrates. After rising to prominence by attacking immigrants, Trump sided with the Musk faction.

On New Year’s Eve, as President-elect Trump set out for a party at Mar-a-Lago, a reporter asked him why he had changed his mind on the H-1B visas that enable employers to bring skilled workers to the U.S. “I didn’t change my mind,” Trump answered. “I always felt we have to have the most competent people in our country. We need competent people. We need smart people coming into our country. We need a lot of people coming in.”

This is a dramatic change from Trump’s previous positions. On March 4, 2016, for example, Trump’s social media account posted: “The H-1B program is neither high-skilled nor immigration: these are temporary foreign workers, imported from abroad, for the explicit purpose of substituting for American workers at lower pay…. I will end forever the use of the H-1B as a cheap labor program, and institute an absolute requirement to hire American workers first…. No exceptions.” It is this stand on immigration that Trump’s MAGA base supports.

For his part, last Friday Musk told those opposed to H-1B visas to “[t]ake a big step back and F*CK YOURSELF in the face.” He said: “I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” But MAGA news sites Breitbart and Newsmax didn’t back down, reporting a story by Fred Lambert of Electrek, a site that follows the changeover from fossil-fuel to green vehicles, pointing out that Musk’s Tesla is a major user of H-1B visa workers and that it requested more than 2,400 such workers at the same time it was laying off U.S. workers early in 2024.

On New Year’s Eve, Musk changed his name on X to the name of a meme coin, a cryptocurrency based on an online meme, and changed his avatar to one using symbols favored by the far right. Some of his supporters saw the changes as a signal of his true beliefs, especially as he is strongly supporting the right-wing AfD party in Germany.

Trump also seemed to swing back to his MAGA base when he returned to his attacks on immigrants by echoing a mistaken report by the Fox News Channel. Trump falsely linked the New Orleans attack to “criminals coming in” from other countries and claimed that the U.S. has “open borders,” although in fact, encounters at the border have fallen to a four-year low, lower now than when Trump left office.

The abrupt elevation of culture wars echoes the formula Republicans have used for the past forty years to distract from the reality that between 1981 and 2021 their embrace of so-called supply-side economics moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. Distracting voters with outrage over “welfare queens,” “Libtards,” and so on, kept the country focused on cultural issues rather than economic ones.

As Musk and Trump appear to be making up for their defense of immigration by courting the far right again, Anthony Adragna of Politico reported today that incoming House Republicans are also relying on culture wars to hold their coalition together. Adragna reports they are planning to make trans rights their “marquee fight” of 2025.

That focus is likely intended to distract Republican voters from the reality that Trump has promised to swing the country away from Biden’s investment in rebuilding the middle class. Biden’s focus on employment meant that unemployment dropped dramatically during his term, more people got access to affordable health care, labor unions showed historic growth, and real wages went up so much that according to economist David Doney, workers now have the highest real hourly wages since the 1960s.

Good news for workers was good news for everyone: the country’s economic growth was more than double that of any other country in the Group of 7 (G7) economically advanced democracies.

But Trump has been very clear that he rejects this system and intends to take the country back to supply-side economics, in which the government encourages the concentration of wealth at the top of the economy. Those who embrace this theory argue that wealthy investors will use their money more efficiently than they could under government regulation.

Trump has promised to fill his cabinet with billionaires, and top donors have been donating as much as $2 million to his inauguration fund (those at that level can get up to six tickets to events of the inaugural weekend). According to Jeanna Smialek and Ana Swanson of the New York Times, Trump’s promise to back Wall Street investors and corporate boardrooms has given them high hopes for the Trump administration.

And, of course, Musk, the world’s richest man, has eclipsed Vice President–elect J.D. Vance and sometimes even Trump himself as the face of the incoming administration.

Trump’s very public embrace of billionaires comes just weeks after the December 4, 2024, shooting of United Healthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson revealed a large American population that is desperately angry at wealthy and powerful executives. Across social media, posts have been defending and even praising Thompson’s alleged murderer since the shooting. Even those who avoided championing the shooter took exception to the fact that those defending Thompson’s industry and deploring his murder had little to say about those people who died after insurance companies denied their claims.

For decades now, Republicans have been able to keep class tensions at bay by hammering constantly on culture wars, and they appear to be trying that again to smooth over the fight between MAGA and the billionaires. But it is possible that the rumbling anger that flashed to the surface over the killing of an insurance CEO will reinforce the MAGA wing and keep class, rather than culture, uppermost.

If Trump does not bring down prices, as he promised and now has downplayed, if he imposes tariffs that will force poorer and middle-class Americans to pay for the tax cuts he has promised to the wealthy and corporations, if Republicans cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid to balance the budget; all while Musk continues to pull down billions of dollars in taxpayer money, the rhetorical formula that worked for so long might finally break.

Heather Cox Richardson | Letters from an American

Dec 31, 2024

The fight between MAGA and DOGE continues. Original MAGAs who want the government to expel immigrants and elevate white evangelical Christian men are facing off against the new DOGE MAGAs who disdain original MAGA culture and want the government to turn the tech billionaires loose from regulations and taxes to create their own global oligarchy.

The fight has taken shape over H-1B visas that allow companies to hire foreign workers for skilled positions. MAGA opposes all immigration and relied on Trump’s promise to deport 11 to 20 million immigrants; DOGE wants more H-1B visas, arguing that America is not producing enough skilled engineers because of the misguided culture that Americans like MAGAs embrace. On Friday, billionaire Elon Musk, who has been very close to Trump since bankrolling his election, agreed with MAGA influencer Ian Miles Cheong, who has more than a million followers on X, when Cheong posted: “Much of the anger being driven toward Elon Musk today is simply disappointment being projected by the ‘ret*rded right’ that’s on the fringes of the conservative movement, against Musk, whom they wish was an unrepentant racist like they are.”

Late on Friday night, Musk defended H-1B visas again, posting on X: “The reason I’m in America along with so many critical people who built SpaceX, Tesla and hundreds of other companies that made America strong is because of H1B.” He continued: “Take a big step back and F*CK YOURSELF in the face. I will go to war on this issue the likes of which you cannot possibly comprehend.” According to Forbes, Musk’s Tesla was among the leading employers of those holding H-1B visas in 2024.

Meanwhile, original MAGA influencer Steve Bannon used Musk’s apparent throwing MAGA critics off X as a route to attack the entire DOGE faction. “They’re trying to dump people off the platforms like that’s going to matter?” he said to influencer Jack Posobiec. “You can’t stop us, we’re relentless…. We’re never going to quit…. We’re a thousand times tougher than you guys are…. Keep coming after American citizens like you’re coming and you’re going to find out exactly how tough we are. We’re not going to tolerate this. Your trashing of the MAGA movement…. How dare you…. I don’t care how big a check you wrote.”

Today, Bannon doubled down: “We’re gonna get H-1B visas out, root and stem, and all the workers you brought in. Just like we’re deporting 15 million here, we want them deported, out…. And give those jobs to American citizens today…we demand they get reparations. You stole from them.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out on Saturday that what many of us have been calling a civil war in the MAGA movement is not the best way to look at the MAGA fight. Marshall points out that the 2024–2025 MAGA was mostly just an electoral machine built around Trump. In the past, he notes, MAGA never really had policies. Mostly, it was a vehicle for Trump’s grievance about the investigation into the ties between his 2016 campaign and Russian operatives, and after his first impeachment, it became about retribution. But now, as Marshall notes, Trump is “tired and on the way out,” and he never really cared about policy anyway: he ran for president for the purpose of staying out of jail and “lording it over his foes.”

What is going on now, Marshall says, is less a civil war than “a battle over the steering wheel.” Trump absorbed groups into his coalition with the promise he would work for them, but their policies have always been contradictory. Now that it’s time for their payoff, not everyone can be appeased. So, will the Trump machine work for the MAGAs or the DOGEs…or even the Robert F. Kennedy “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) faction—which, as Marshall says, was “grafted on to the movement in the last months of the final stretch of the campaign for narrowly electoral reasons.” Today, Nathaniel Weixel of The Hill outlined how the MAHA faction is itself bitterly divided over issues like drugs to treat obesity.

Marshall concludes that, in any case, “[t]here’s little sign Trump cares. He’s already gotten what he wants.”

On Saturday, in an interview with the New York Post, President-elect Donald Trump threw his MAGA supporters under the bus and sided with Musk and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy on H-1B visas. “I’ve always liked the visas, I have always been in favor of the visas. That’s why we have them,” Trump said, referring to the H-1B visas that permit companies to hire foreign workers in skilled occupations. “I have many H-1B visas on my properties. I’ve been a believer in H-1B. I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

Trump appeared to be confusing H-1B visas with H-2A and H-2B visas, which cover temporary agricultural workers and seasonal workers in tourism, hospitality, and landscaping. In fact, as Leah McElrath pointed out, Trump said in 2016 that the H-1B program shouldn’t exist. And as Judd Legum pointed out, on June 22, 2020, Trump issued an executive order suspending H-1B visas because he said they were taking jobs from Americans.

The fight within MAGA is only part of the larger fight within the Republican Party, whose leadership needs to organize the newly elected members of the House of Representatives as soon as they get back to Washington, D.C., and come into session on Friday, January 3. The House should have a speaker in place before Congress counts electoral votes on January 6.

Even if Trump no longer needs MAGA voters, extremist MAGAs in the House do, and they are angry at current House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) for his willingness to work with less extreme Republicans and Democrats to keep the government operating. Members of the far right want to shut it down until it stops spending more money than it takes in and stops supporting policies they oppose.

This is turning into a fight over the House speaker. Extreme MAGA Republicans say they will not support Johnson for speaker this time around, putting his election in jeopardy because the party’s majority is so thin Johnson cannot lose more than two votes. Trump was angry at Johnson for passing a continuing resolution to fund the government without getting rid of the debt ceiling but, perhaps looking at the tight congressional schedule, endorsed him today with a social media post.

The Republican factions made the Congress that is just ending one of the least productive in history, and that chaos seems likely to get worse. With the 2023 Fiscal Responsibility Act, Congress suspended the U.S. debt ceiling until January 1, 2025, this Wednesday. The debt ceiling establishes a limit to how much the treasury can borrow to fulfill the country’s financial obligations, “including Social Security and Medicare benefits, military salaries, interest on the national debt, tax refunds, and other payments,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explained.

Last Friday, December 27, Yellen warned Congress that the country will likely hit the debt ceiling between January 14 and January 23. The Treasury can resort to extraordinary measures to pay obligations, but if it is to keep the country functioning, the incoming Congress must raise the debt ceiling. That will not be easy.

Trump wants to cut taxes for billionaires and corporations, a plan that the Congressional Budget Office estimates will add $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next ten years. After years of complaining about Democratic spending on social welfare programs, he is now demanding that Congress get rid of the debt ceiling altogether. Republican lawmakers have said they will raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion, but only in exchange for $2.5 trillion in cuts to mandatory spending over ten years.

This would require cuts to popular programs, putting the Republicans in the position of cutting benefits to poor and middle-class Americans in order to give tax cuts to the rich. The party has gone a long way from the 1860s, when party members invented the income tax to guarantee both that the nation’s bills got paid and that the burden would fall “not upon each man an equal amount,” as Senator Justin Smith Morrill (R-VT) put it then, “but a tax proportionate to his ability to pay.”

There is also an international dimension of the fight for control of the U.S. government. Musk followed up on last week’s X post supporting the far-right German political party Alternative for Germany (AfD), criticized as a neo-Nazi group. On Saturday in Welt am Sonntag, Musk wrote that AfD is the “last spark of hope” for Germany. He claimed the right to speak out about Europe’s largest economy because of his “significant investments” in the country. The editor of the newspaper’s opinion section resigned in protest.

Conservative lawyer George Conway posted: “So the world’s richest man, who grew up under apartheid in South Africa and now pulls the mentally deteriorating incoming U.S. president’s strings, has written an op-ed urging Germans to elect a new-Nazi government. Got that?” He added: “Concerning.”

Jens Spahn, the State Secretary of the German Ministry of Finance and a Member of the German Bundestag, Germany’s top federal legislative body, saw an even bigger picture. He pointed out that AdF wants Germany to leave the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and is anti-U.S. and pro-Putin and pro-Russia. “Is that what the USA wants?” Spahn asked. “A Germany that turns towards Russia and away from the USA?” German president Frank-Walter Steinmeier called Musk’s interference with the German elections—whether it’s hidden or open, as on X—a threat to democracy.

Over the weekend, Trump’s team appeared to be backing Trump’s threats against Greenland, which is a self-governing territory of Denmark. Those threats seem deliberately designed to destroy NATO. Denmark is a U.S. ally and a member of NATO. The U.S. already has a military base there, the Pituffik Space Base, as part of a mutual defense agreement between the U.S. and Denmark.

If the U.S. is concerned about foreign threats to Greenland, it does not have to take over the island. It could simply work with Denmark to increase the U.S. presence there. But Trump’s former national security adviser Robert C. O’Brien posted yesterday on X that Trump is “100% right” to demand the U.S. take possession of Greenland.

“We love the Danes but a couple of additional drones, dogsled teams & inspection ships are not enough to defend Greenland against the Russians & Chinese Communists. [Greenland] needs anti-aircraft, counter UAV (drone) & anti-ship missile systems. It also requires at least one frigate on full time patrol & a squadron of fighters. If our great ally Denmark can’t commit to defending the Island, the US will have to step in, as POTUS 47 said.”

CNN anchor and chief national security analyst Jim Sciutto answered: “To be clear, are you saying the Trump administration will deploy US forces on the territory of a NATO [ally] without that ally’s consent?” Former representative Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) was more direct in his response to O’Brien. He posted: “When did you become insane?”

When viewed next to the statements of Russian pundits that a few powerful leaders should divide the world according to spheres of influence, there is perhaps logic to Trump’s demands. Trump is not threatening our rivals, but rather is threatening our own allies in the area around the U.S. And now Musk is supporting an anti-NATO, pro-Russia party in Germany. It could be that what we are seeing is an attempt to throw away NATO and America’s influence across the globe in order to carve up the world into spheres, with Trump offering to abandon Europe to Russia while the U.S., run by the DOGE faction of the Republican Party, officially takes control of a U.S.-centric sphere.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration today stood firm on maintaining the position the United States has held since World War II. President Biden announced nearly $2.5 billion in military aid to Ukraine, “as the Ukrainian people continue to defend their independence and freedom from Russian aggression.” In addition, Treasury Secretary Yellen announced $3.4 billion in economic assistance to enable Ukraine to pay its healthcare workers, teachers, and first responders. “At my direction, the United States will continue to work relentlessly to strengthen Ukraine’s position in this war over the remainder of my time in office,” Biden said.