Something to Know - 31 December

Robert Reich knows a bit about economics and politics.   You can learn from him on how to become a multi-Billionaire.  The easiest way for 99% of us is to buy a Powerball ticket and figure out your mathematical chance and hope.   However, the 1% need about 20-25 Million already on hand to be in competition.   Of course, the more money you have, the easier your chances might be.  With all the wealth needed to put down the ante to influence your chances, you can follow along with Dr. Reich's formulas.  Of course the big stick is being tight with the L.I.C. - Lobbyist Industrial Complex, which is not anywhere near the Adam Smith formula for Capitalism.

Robert Reich	Dec 29, 2025, 1:03 AM (1 day ago)
to me

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Five ways to make more than a billion dollars None have anything to do with "free market" capitalism Robert Reich Dec 29   READ IN APP   Friends, One of the most notable characteristics of 2025 has been the shamelessness of the billionaire class and the conspicuousness of its corruption. For many years, whenever I've warned that an increasing portion of the nation's wealth is falling into the hands of an ever-smaller number of people, the moneyed interests have responded: "But that's just the free market," or "the free market has decided they deserve it." Rubbish. There's no such thing as a "free market" to begin with. Today's so-called "free market" is the outcome of political decisions over monopolization, labor organization, private property, finance, trade, taxes, and much more. Who's behind these political decisions? Increasingly, the same small number of ultra-rich who have gained disproportionate influence over our politics. They've created five ways for themselves to accumulate a billion dollars or more. 1. First, exploit a monopoly. Does Jeff Bezos deserve his billions because he founded and built Amazon? No. Amazon is a monopolist with nearly 40 percent of all e-commerce retail sales in America. In addition, Amazon is protected by a slew of patents granted by the U.S. government. In 2023, the U.S. government — through the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states— charged Amazon with illegally maintaining a monopoly by crushing competition, inflating prices, and harming consumers through anticompetitive practices like punishing sellers who offer lower prices elsewhere. (The trial is currently scheduled to begin in 2027.) If the government fully enforced anti-monopoly (antitrust) laws and didn't give Amazon such broad patents, Bezos would be worth far less. If anti-monopoly laws were enforced, other titans of high tech would be worth far less, too — among them, Elon Musk, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, Apple's Tim Cook, and Oracle's Larry Ellison. 2. A second way to make more than a billion is to get insider information that's unavailable to other investors. Billionaire Steven A. Cohen headed up a hedge fund firm in which, according to a criminal complaint filed by the Justice Department, insider trading was "substantial, pervasive, and on a scale without known precedent in the hedge fund industry." Nine of Cohen's present or former employees pleaded guilty or were convicted. Cohen got off with a fine, changed the name of his firm, and apparently is back at the game. Former billionaire investor Bill Hwang was convicted in late 2024 and sentenced to 18 years for fraud related to the collapse of his Archegos Capital Management. The charges focused on his trading on insider information, market manipulation, and fraud. The crypto market often experiences sharp volatility linked to policy announcements by the Trump regime. Moments after Trump announced new tariffs on China, one inside trader became $150 million richer from a leveraged short position. Insider trading is endemic in C-suites. SEC researchers have found that corporate executives are twice as likely to sell their stock on the days following their own stock buyback announcements, when their stock prices soar, as they are in the days leading up to the announcements. If government cracked down on insider trading, hedge fund mavens and top corporate executives wouldn't be raking in nearly as much money. 3. A third way to make more than a billion is to buy off politicians who will change the rules of the "free market" in your favor. The first Trump tax cut has saved Charles Koch and Koch Industries an estimated $1 to $1.4 billion a year, not even counting tax savings on profits stored offshore and a shrunken estate tax. The second Trump tax cut saved the Kochs even more. They and their affiliated groups spent some $20 million lobbying for the Trump tax cut and $550 million seeking to get Trump elected in 2024. Not a bad return on investment. Elon Musk, the richest person in the world, sank a quarter of a billion dollars into getting Trump elected in 2024 and is on the way to spending as much if not more trying to keep the House and Senate under Republican control. What does Musk get out of it? Lower taxes on himself and his businesses, rollbacks of regulations that limit his profits, and federal contracts that make him even richer. Trump and his own family have also reaped big rewards by changing the economy's rules in their favor. By the end of 2025, they had cleared at least $1.2 billion through their crypto investments — whose value has ballooned in large part because of Trump's decisions to deregulate crypto and encourage its use. The value of their crypto investments also rose with Trump's pardon of Changpeng "CZ" Zhao — the billionaire co-founder of the Binance crypto exchange who pleaded guilty to money laundering charges. Binance was closely tied to World Liberty Financial, actively managed by Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. Earlier this year, a state-controlled United Arab Emirates firm bought $100 million of cryptocurrency issued by World Liberty Financial — essentially a huge deposit for World Liberty, which could then generate returns in the tens of millions of dollars each year. Trump's wealth soared again in mid-December on news that Trump Media & Technology Group, the publicly traded company whose biggest shareholder is Trump, is merging with TAE Technologies, a privately held fusion technology company. The additional wealth was the consequence of more self-dealing by Trump: His Department of Energy had created an Office of Fusion to support the commercialization of fusion. The family company of billionaire Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has also been making a bundle off political influence. Lutnick's company helped raise capital for Toby Neugebauer, a billionaire who's building one of the giant data centers that will power the next generation of AI, banking millions in fees in the process. Lutnick has also been twisting the arms of American allies and dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects that have given his family's clients access to foreign capital. If we had tough anti-corruption laws preventing such political payoffs and self-dealing, the Kochs, Musks, Trumps, Lutnicks, and other high-rollers wouldn't get the spoils of their political influence: tax breaks, regulatory rollbacks, and government subsidies that have enlarged their fortunes. 4. The fourth way to make more than a billion is to extort big investors. Adam Neumann conned J.P.Morgan, SoftBank, and other investors to sink hundreds of millions into WeWork, an office-sharing startup. Neumann used some of the money to buy buildings he leased back to WeWork and to enjoy a lifestyle that included a $60 million private jet. WeWork never made a nickel of profit. After Neumann was forced to disclose his personal conflicts of interest, WeWork's initial public offering fell apart, and the company's estimated value plummeted. To salvage what they could, investors paid him over $1 billion to exit the board and give up his voting rights. Most other WeWork employees were left holding near-worthless stock options. Thousands were set to be laid off. A few wealthy fraudsters have been found guilty and forced to disgorge their ill-gotten gains (in 2024, Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the FTX cryptocurrency exchange, whose net worth reached an estimated $26 billion, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for defrauding customers and investors of nearly $10 billion). But many have not. If we had tougher anti-fraud laws and better enforcement, Neumann and others like him wouldn't be billionaires. 5. The fifth way to make more than a billion is to get the money from rich parents or relatives. A new UBS report finds that a record number — 91 people — became billionaires in 2025 through inheritance. Their total bounty was almost $300 billion. It's the beginning of what's expected to be the largest inter-generational wealth transfer in history, during which heirs will inherit at least $5.9 trillion over the next 15 years. An estimated 45 percent of all wealth in America is inherited. That's because, under U.S. tax law — which is itself largely a product of lobbying by the wealthy — the capital gains of one generation are wiped out when those assets are transferred to the next. As Mitt Romney (remember him?) recently pointed out, had Elon Musk purchased his Tesla stock for, say, $1 billion and held it until his death, and if it were then worth $500 billion, he would never pay the 24 percent federal capital gains tax on the $499 billion profit. Under the current tax code, when Musk's heirs inherit his stock, the assets will be treated as if the heirs purchased it for $500 billion. So no one will ever pay taxes on the $499 billion capital gain. If unearned income were treated the same as earned income under the tax code, America's non-working rich wouldn't be billionaires. And if capital gains weren't eliminated at death, many heirs wouldn't be, either. The good news is that Americans are becoming increasingly alarmed about the harms billionaires are inflicting on our system. A Harris poll released last month finds that over half of Americans (53 percent) believe that billionaires are threatening democracy. In addition, a significant 71 percent of Americans believe there should be a wealth tax. And a majority believe there should be a cap on how much wealth a person can accumulate. These schemes also threaten capitalism itself. The system doesn't work when monopolies, insider trading, political payoffs, fraud, and large amounts of inherited wealth are rigging it. As the system loses public trust, it begins to unravel. When and if sane and honest people ever again control the U.S. government, one of the first things they should do is enact a tax on large accumulations of wealth. Also an end to the current rule that allows all capital gains to be erased when the owners of the capital die, thereby enabling heirs to inherit all the accumulated wealth tax-free. Not the least, we must get big money out of politics — to end the bribes and corruption that have distorted capitalism for the benefit of a handful of people at the top. (Here's a way to do it.)

--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC

Something to Know - 30 December

Here is an article that does not focus entirely on Trump.   Trump is the main force in this matter, yes, but he is not the one who created the matter.   What we are talking about is Project 2025.   This is the plan that Trump "knew nothing about".   It is the pet project of the Heritage Foundation, which is the think tank for very right-wing ideas.   The ultra-rich 4,000 Americans reflect about 4,000 of the wealthy voters, which is the top 1%, and own 90% of the wealth of this nation.   The rest of us voting Americans own only 10% of the wealth.   The Heritage Foundation attracts massive amounts of cash to support political candidates who favor their financial issues.   Trump is the buffoon who they pull strings on to get their way,  Money buys influence in so many ways.  Trump likes the 2025 Plan because it gives him power to rule like a king and his financial backers like him because they get to be obscenely wealthy at the expense of those on the bottom.    Project 2025 is already having some problems, and will face even more in 2026.  As the harm of the project 2025 becomes more aware to all, and as the approval base for Trump weakens,  we need to do what is necessary to prevent Martial Law ordered by Trump, or defeat the Republicans at the ballot box in the midterm election, whichever comes first.

The Atlantic Daily

The Plan That Foretold Trump's 2025

Reviewing Project 2025's year of successes and shortcomings

By David A. Graham

A year ago, no one knew for sure whether Project 2025 would prove to be influential or if it would fall by the wayside, like so many plans in President Donald Trump's first term. Today, it stands as the single most successful policy initiative of the entire Trump era.

Project 2025, which was convened by the Heritage Foundation during the Trump interregnum, was not just one thing: It was a policy white paper, an implementation plan, a recruitment database, and a worldview, all rolled into one. As I wrote in my book this past spring, the authors sought to create an agenda for the next right-wing president that would allow him to empower the executive branch, sideline Congress, and attack the civil service. The resulting politicized, quasi-monarchical government would enact policies that would move the United States toward a traditionalist Christian society.

In the roughly 11 months since he took office, Trump has closely followed many parts of Project 2025, finally embracing it by name in October. Both Trump and the plan's architects have benefited: His second administration has been far more effective at achieving its goals than his first, and the thinkers behind Project 2025 have achieved what Paul Dans, one of its leaders, described as "way beyond" his "wildest dreams."

Project 2025's biggest victory has been an extraordinary presidential power grab, which has allowed Trump to act in ways that previous presidents have only fantasized about, and to act with fewer restraints. He has laid off tens of thousands of federal employees, sometimes in defiance of laws. More than 315,000 federal employees had left the government by mid-November, according to the Office of Personnel Management. Entire agencies, such as USAID, have been effectively shut down, and the Education Department may be next.

Elsewhere, the administration has slashed environmental regulations, withdrawn from a major international climate agreement, undermined renewable energy, and worked to encourage oil and gas drilling on public land. It has discarded key civil-rights-enforcement methods, dismantled anything that might be construed as DEI, and set the agenda for aggressive immigration policies, not just closing the border to many foreign nationals and deporting unauthorized immigrants but also cracking down on valid-visa holders and seeking to denaturalize citizens.

This is not small-government conservatism—it's an effort to concentrate federal power and turn it into a political weapon. Long-standing guardrails against presidential interference in the Justice Department have been demolished. The White House has fired line prosecutors, and Trump has illegally appointed his own former personal attorneys to lead U.S. Attorney's Offices. These prosecutors have brought charges against many of Trump's political foes, including former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and Representative LaMonica McIver; others have been placed under investigation. (Judges have thrown out indictments against Comey and James, though the DOJ is appealing those dismissals. McIver, who was indicted in June for allegedly impeding federal agents and interfering with an arrest, denies wrongdoing and has pleaded not guilty.)

The administration has dabbled in impounding funds appropriated by Congress, despite a law barring this. It has also mounted a major assault on the independence of regulatory agencies, as established by Congress; Trump has fired multiple appointees, sometimes in apparent violation of law, but the Supreme Court has allowed him to proceed. Earlier this month, the justices heard arguments in a case that could overturn or severely narrow the 1935 precedent that safeguards agency independence. We already have a glimpse of what a fully politicized regulatory environment might look like: Chairman Brendan Carr, a Project 2025 author, has used his position at the Federal Communications Commission to pressure CBS News and ABC, even trying to get the late-night host Jimmy Kimmel fired earlier this year.

Trump's presidential power grab will allow his administration to achieve more of Project 2025's ambitions in the coming year and beyond. All of this has been enabled by a Republican-dominated Congress, which has with few exceptions allowed the president to seize legislative prerogatives, and by the Supreme Court, which has repeatedly allowed Trump to move forward on his expansion of power using the so-called shadow docket.

But Project 2025 has not been a complete success. One key belief of the authors was that Trump's first administration was undercut by bad appointments and by failures to fill other roles. To that end, Project 2025 created a huge database of potential appointees and offered training courses. Although Trump has managed to find more aides loyal to him than in his first term, his pace of confirmation for top jobs trails the pace of most recent presidents. He has also seen a historic high in nominations withdrawn in the first year of a presidency.

More fundamentally, the Christian nationalism that courses through Project 2025 has been somewhat eclipsed by other priorities. The Trump administration has made few major moves to restrict access to abortion or to enact pronatalist policies, and the conservative Catholic writer Ross Douthat recently argued that Christianity seems to be window dressing in the administration's policy rather than a real ideological driver of decision making. Big Tech was a notable boogeyman for the authors, who view smartphones and social media as a danger to traditional religious values, but major Silicon Valley figures have become hugely influential in the White House.

For the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025 has been a somewhat Pyrrhic victory. Although its policy ideas are steering the administration, the think tank finds itself on the outside—a product, it seems, of Trump's displeasure that coverage of Project 2025 complicated his campaign last year. Heritage is also fighting an intramural battle over how to handle the racist and anti-Semitic strains of the right.

Another, larger question looms. For decades, American conservatives have argued for restraints on government, in part out of fear of how progressives have used power to enact their policies. Project 2025 threw that out, embracing right-wing big government. Its unpopular ideas are one reason that Republicans are facing a daunting election environment in 2026 and perhaps 2028. If Project 2025's authors felt, as Russell Vought once said, that America was "in the late stages of a complete Marxist takeover" before Trump returned to office, they may find the situation even more apocalyptic if a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028—and inherits the sweeping powers they have handed to the White House.--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC

Something to Know - 29 December

As the year 2025 comes to an end, newsletters try to assimilate all the past news into one column for your reading pleasure.   Well, there is nothing pleasurable this past year.  The slime has gone from 2 feet to 4 feet in elevation.   Mary Geddry does about as well as you can in describing the closing of Trump's first year.    Odds are he won't be closing out the end of 2026.   Maybe I am too optimistic, but we should concentrate on his replacement, or better yet, the end of authoritarian governance.   Splashing his name over all kinds of buildings, and co-opting the icons and symbols our American democracy Trump has proven that corruption, moral indecency, and lack of compassion for anything that breathes is an insult to all that we believe,

Geddry's Newsletter a Publication of nGenium <marygeddry@substack.com>  Unsubscribe	6:53 AM (1 hour ago)
to me

	Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more Welcome. You're on the front lines with us. You'll get access to public posts, breaking news, and essential updates, enough to stay informed and stay loud. No algorithms, no noise, just clarity, context, and community. Geddry's Newsletter is a publication of nGenium, LLC Very Close to Something, Very Far From the Truth Trump negotiates wars by vibe, DHS steals Norman Rockwell, electricity gets more expensive, and the Epstein files somehow get "lost" again. Mary Geddry Dec 29   READ IN APP   Good morning! We limped into the last weekend of the year thinking we might get a few quiet days to metabolize 2025, and then Donald Trump popped up at Mar-a-Lago like a jump-scare in a haunted house, announcing, between compliments about the catering and a nostalgic detour through his personal mythology, that he's "very close" to ending the deadliest war since World War II. Very close, ninety-five percent close, or maybe 90. Or maybe "somebody would say 95." The important thing is that it's close enough for him to take a victory lap before anybody has actually won anything except the right to keep negotiating. Trump hosted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at Mar-a-Lago and performed the familiar routine: the indispensable dealmaker, the lone savior, the only adult in the room, the man who could end wars in a day if everyone would simply stop being so rude and start appreciating his genius. Zelenskyy, meanwhile, did what he has had to all year: show up, be grateful, keep Ukraine's spine intact, and try not to get publicly shoved into a corner while the cameras roll. The public messaging was "progress." The subtext was "land." Trump said it plainly: some territory has been taken, and if you wait, more might be taken, so you're better off making a deal now. That isn't a negotiating stance so much as a shrug in a suit: the battlefield decides, and Ukraine should hurry up and accept the new reality before reality gets worse. Zelenskyy did not endorse that framing. He repeated the basics any sovereign leader must repeat when an ally starts talking like the map is a casual suggestion: Ukraine's position on territory is anchored in law and in the will of its people. The plan under discussion is reportedly about 90% agreed in broad strokes, with security guarantees described as the keystone, and those guarantees are the whole story, even when Trump tries to bury it under percentages and self-congratulations. Here's the Kyiv version, which is less of a press conference and more of a reality check delivered in measured tones: Zelenskyy is asking for U.S. security guarantees not for a cute election cycle, not for a "we'll see how it goes," but for decades. Thirty, forty, fifty years. He's telling Trump, in essence, that Russia's aggression has already lasted long enough to outlive the promises politicians like to make, and Ukraine isn't signing anything that simply resets the clock for the next invasion. The White House, according to Kyiv's view, is offering something like fifteen years with a "maybe" attached, plus a warning that if Ukraine doesn't take the deal now, the guarantees might vanish. It's the diplomatic equivalent of a used-car salesman tapping the hood and saying, "I've got three other buyers, so you'd better decide today." And then there's the sequencing that should make everyone's stomach flip a little: Trump spoke with Putin first. Zelenskyy confirmed Trump went point-by-point through the "20-point plan" with the Kremlin before meeting Ukraine's president. That's the power dynamic in one sentence. Trump treats Putin's input as foundational, Zelenskyy's as negotiable. The whole weekend had that vibe: the press gets a quick peek, then the door closes, and we're told to trust the process, by the same man who thinks "process" is something you do to the truth. Steven Beschloss summed up the weekend better than any official statement could: "Zelenskyy really loves his country. How else could he endure dealing with Trump, his lies, subservience to Putin and profound ignorance?" While all this was happening, Beijing provided a different year-end message: not words, but live-fire zones. China launched its largest-ever war drills around Taiwan by area, explicitly designed to demonstrate its ability to encircle the island, blockade ports, and cut Taiwan off from outside support. Seven zones, closer than before. One zone activated without warning near the island's eastern waters, because what's international stability without a little surprise drill to spice it up? The obvious point was psychological pressure, logistical disruption, and alliance-testing. Over 100,000 international air passengers are expected to be affected, domestic flights canceled, shipping routes strained, and everyone in the region forced to practice the grim arithmetic of "how quickly can this turn into something real." Taiwan mobilized. It showcased its U.S.-made HIMARS, basically reminding Beijing that the island isn't a prop and Fujian is within range. Markets shrugged, because markets always shrug until they don't. And analysts warned again that these drills blur the line between routine and rehearsal, turning constant provocation into normal weather. It's a hell of a tableau: Trump narrating peace in Florida while autocrats elsewhere demonstrate, in real time, what peace looks like when you don't have it. Back home, the economy continues its tradition of being the plotline nobody can skip. Electricity bills are rising, and the experts are telling Americans to prepare for more pain ahead. Data centers get blamed because it's comforting to have a single villain, but the truth is uglier and more structural: hurricanes, wildfires, grid replacement, fuel-price swings, and the cost of rebuilding infrastructure in an era where infrastructure keeps getting chewed up by climate and time. Rates are projected to rise again next year, and the politics of electricity is getting loud. People are skipping Christmas lights because power has become a luxury purchase. And utilities are planning trillions in investments that, one way or another, will land on someone's bill. At the same time, there is a sliver of wage news that feels like someone opened a window in a stuffy room: minimum wage increases kick in January 1 in 19 states, with more than 8 million workers getting a raise directly or indirectly as wage ladders adjust. We've reached the moment labor advocates once demanded like it was radical, where $15 is common enough that more workers live under state floors at or above $15 than under the federal $7.25, which has been collecting dust since 2009. That's real progress. It's also an indictment of how long it took to get here. Here comes the part where we do the math and everyone gets mad at math for being accurate. A family of four trying to live "just above poverty" in the official federal sense could scrape by on paper with one $15/hour job working a punishing number of hours. But you didn't ask for paper. You asked for reality, housing, food, transportation, and the small matter of not dying if someone gets sick. When you price in basic needs, $15/hour does not equal "stability." It equals "two adults working full-time and still budgeting like a disaster is imminent," because it usually is. Which brings us to Max from UNFTR, who showed up with a brutally coherent overview of the economy heading into the new year and asked the obvious question: what exactly is the Trump team's plan, besides lying louder? Trump keeps promising "tariff dividends" as if tariffs are a magical money tree that pays Americans to suffer. The numbers, inconveniently, refuse to cooperate. So Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has pivoted to hyping tax refunds as economic rocket fuel, $100 to $150 billion, he claims, delivering maybe $1,000 to $2,000 per household. The catch, as Max points out, is that this isn't new money at all, and it's not even generous by recent standards. Under Biden's final two years, Americans received roughly $290 billion a year in refunds, averaging about $3,100 per filer. In other words, Trump's big "boost" is smaller than what people were already getting, now rebranded as a breakthrough. It's like declaring you've invented fire and then triumphantly handing everyone a damp match. Max's broader point is that the messaging is unraveling because the policy is unraveling. A Fed governor aligned with Trump's worldview got boxed into admitting the quiet part out loud: under Biden, the economy was recovering, jobs were strong, demand was growing. That doesn't mean everything was great, Max is the first to note that Democrats failed to deliver the kind of immediate, tangible relief that would have changed daily life, but it does mean the current narrative that everything is Biden's fault is getting harder to perform with a straight face. What we're living with now looks less like an inherited curse and more like the predictable result of tariff-driven inflation expectations, a weakened dollar, and a political class that treats working people as props in a marketing exercise rather than participants in an economy. And then, because 2025 refuses to end without one last grotesque flourish, we arrive at the Epstein files, now starring Todd Blanche, Pam Bondi, and the Department of Justice's increasingly surreal relationship with the public record. Allison Gill's latest reporting frames Blanche's "we found a million never-before-seen Epstein documents" claim as a story that collapses the moment you look at the timeline. The core allegation, presented through letters, internal communications, and sources familiar with earlier redaction work, is that the government already knew about major volumes of Epstein materials, already demanded them, already moved them, and already ran intensive review and redaction operations earlier in 2025. Either these documents aren't "new," or they were "lost" in a way that would require superhuman incompetence or deliberate concealment, pick your poison, neither makes the DOJ look like an institution you'd trust with your library card. And the redaction angle is where the whole thing turns from suspicious to openly cynical. Gill warns that "national security" is becoming the universal solvent for transparency: if the administration doesn't want to disclose something, it waves the magic words and expects everyone to sit down and shut up. Meanwhile, the release becomes a slow-rolling production, dragging the scandal forward month after month, into election season, keeping survivors stuck in limbo and keeping the administration's narrative machine fed. It's less "justice" and more "content strategy," except the content is other people's trauma. So that's the Monday tableau: a Florida peace theater where the land question hangs like a guillotine over Ukraine's sovereignty, a Taiwan blockade rehearsal with live-fire zones and disrupted skies, an American grid buckling under climate and infrastructure reality, minimum wage gains that are real but still far too small, and a federal government that wants you to believe it accidentally misplaced a mountain of Epstein evidence while insisting you shouldn't care that much anyway. And just in case anyone still wondered how deep the rot goes, the Department of Homeland Security spent the holidays stealing Norman Rockwell paintings to sell authoritarian nostalgia. In a quietly devastating interview on Bulwark Takes, writer and artist Daisy Rockwell, Norman Rockwell's granddaughter, explained how DHS has been using her grandfather's copyrighted work without permission to promote its anti-immigrant messaging. Think wholesome white families, Boy Scouts, Santa Claus, and flags, paired with slogans about "protecting our American way of life." It's propaganda, and it fundamentally misunderstands both the art and the man. Rockwell, she reminded, was not the cartoon patriot DHS wants him to be. Yes, his early work captured an idealized, overwhelmingly white vision of small-town America, often more fantasy than autobiography, given that he was a city kid. But in the 1960s, Rockwell did something far more radical than coasting on fame: he turned his art toward civil rights, painting some of the most enduring images of desegregation and moral courage in American history. The Problem We All Live With didn't flatter the country. It confronted it. That legacy is exactly what DHS is trying to erase. The Rockwell family wrote an op-ed condemning the misuse of his work, explaining that Norman Rockwell believed compassion, inclusiveness, and justice were the real American values. DHS ignored them, and then posted another image anyway. According to Daisy, that told her everything she needed to know. There was no legal ambiguity here, she said, just contempt. Fair use allows parody and critique. What DHS is doing is appropriation, laundering white nationalist aesthetics through a familiar American brand, hoping nostalgia will do the work that arguments can't. Asked what she would say if she could speak to Donald Trump, Daisy Rockwell didn't hesitate. She wouldn't bother. "I don't think anything would stick." The line landed not as flippancy, but as weary realism, a recognition that some people aren't persuadable because they aren't listening, they're marketing. Her deeper point was more unsettling, and more hopeful at the same time. Norman Rockwell made his strongest, most morally explicit work late in life, when he could have played it safe. Which is why watching his art conscripted by a federal agency engaged in family separation, mass detention, and immigrant demonization feels less like irony and more like theft. Not just of images, but of memory. In an era when the government lies about wars, about prices, about documents, and about who belongs, even the past isn't safe from being rewritten. And sometimes the clearest resistance comes not from a policy paper or a court filing, but from a granddaughter saying, calmly and publicly: no, this is not what America was, and it's not what it's for. If you're feeling whiplash, that's because you're conscious. The people running this circus are counting on numbness. Don't give it to them.

--

****

Juan Matute

CCRC