8 The Nation. October 28/November 4, 2019
from its previous champions Stalin, Mao, and Hitler.
The journalistic values and professionalism that Baron
and Baker describe and Baquet embodies are no doubt
admirable, but they were forged in another era under
different circumstances. And while there are good reasons
not to want to scare off conservative readers or make ac-
cusations about a leader with whom one disagrees, there
is also danger in complacency. No doubt coincidentally,
one is reminded of the reporting of The New York Times,
which reassured readers in 1922 that “several reliable,
well-informed sources confirmed the idea that Hitler’s
anti-Semitism was not so genuine or violent as it sounded”
and was just a political ploy “to catch masses of followersand keep them aroused, enthusiastic, and in line.” Again,
Trump is not Hitler, and the United States of today bears
little resemblance to the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s.
Even so, history’s warnings can be suggestive.
What’s crucial to keep in mind was put nicely in a tweet
by Times columnist Paul Krugman. After Trump suggested
that House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff
be tried for treason, Krugman wrote, “Trump consistently
manages to be worse than you could possibly have imag-
ined, even taking into account your knowledge that he will
be worse than you could possibly have imagined.” Shame
on any journalist or outlet that fears the consequences of
revealing the truth about this dangerous, evil man. QWhile there are
good reasons
not to make
accusations
about a leader
with whom one
disagrees, there
is also danger in
complacency.
threatening to withhold billions of federal
highway dollars from California because of
its poor air quality.
Adding insult to injury, Trump’s EPA
has been busy rolling back prohibitions on
a range of particularly harmful pesticides,
an end run around the efforts of California,
New York, and other states to better regulate
these deadly chemicals.
Trump’s war on California doesn’t stop
there. The president journeyed to the state
in late September and spent much of his
time bashing California for its homeless
population. Yes, the problem has reached
catastrophic proportions—but Trump used
the crisis only to posture. He didn’t go
offering money to build houses or fund
social services to tackle mental illness, drug
addiction, or the lack of opportunities faced
by ex-prisoners. Instead, he declared that
skid rows in Los Angeles, San Francisco,
and elsewhere were nuisances and urged ex-
traordinarily coercive, illegal responses, such
as rounding up the homeless wholesale and
forcibly detaining them in federal facilities.While he rants about California’s home-
lessness crisis, Trump has been trying to
neuter the Affordable Care Act and roll
back SNAP, the food stamp program. If
implemented, both of these attacks on the
social safety net would disproportionately
hit California, which has been particularly
effective in recent years in using expansions
in federal benefits to deliver services more
effectively to its most vulnerable residents. If,
at Trump’s urging, the courts rule the ACA
unconstitutional, California would lose bil-
lions of federal dollars overnight, and many
of the state’s most vulnerable residents would
be pushed further into destitution.
In a recent letter to California Governor
Gavin Newsom, Trump’s EPA administra-
tor claimed that San Francisco’s toleration
of homelessness was contributing to water
pollution, citing reports of streets filled
with needles, human feces, and other toxic
waste. While it’s true that homeless en-
campments have been linked to unhealthy
levels of E. coli in some rivers, it’s also the
case that California is among just a handful
of states that have enacted legislation guar-
anteeing access to safe drinking water as a
human right. Given this, there is more than
a whiff of hypocrisy to the EPA’s threat to
sanction California.
None of this is the ordinary back-and-
forth that routinely occurs between the
states and the federal government. This
is mob-style politics, the politics of the
strong arm and the iron fist, of blackmail
and protection rackets. No matter where
we live, we all have a dog in this fight. For
if California is forced to bend to Trump’s
will, the country as a whole will pay the
long-term costs. SASHA ABRAMSKYSasha Abramsky, whose “Signal:Noise” column
can be found at TheNation.com twice weekly,
is the author, most recently, of Jumping at Shad-
ows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the
American Dream.COMIX NATION JEN SORENSEN
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