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Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speak during a press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., April 4, 2019. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna are among the progressives condemning Senate Republicans for offering aid and comfort to President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud while coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates surge and wreak havoc in communities nationwide.
"Instead of fighting to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed over 242,000 Americans, the Trump administration is spending its final days in office fighting a bogus voter 'fraud' problem that does not exist," said Sanders on Thursday evening on social media. "Pathetic. The Biden-Harris Administration cannot come soon enough."
The senator repeated his demand for a package which includes far-reaching aid for Americans who are "facing economic devastation."
\u201cThe pandemic is surging, and tens of millions of Americans are facing economic devastation. The Senate needs to pass a real stimulus package NOW that provides $2,000 a month to the working class, $600 a week to the unemployed and expands Medicare to all.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1605229763
"Cases are at an all time high. Millions of families are agonizing over what to do for the holidays, how they're going to keep paying rent, or whether their business will survive the winter," tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). "We need a Covid relief deal now."
More than 163,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the U.S. on Thursday, yet when asked about the Republican Party's plans to pass legislation offering relief to people and small businesses, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters that he's interested only in a package of around $500 billion to target "residual problems" from the pandemic.
Despite McConnell's suggestion that the pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis are over, CNBCreported last month that as many as 35 million Americans could soon face eviction or have trouble paying their rent or mortgage payments. Hospitals in states including North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas are reporting that they are at or nearing capacity, and with one of the country's most severe outbreaks, North Dakota officials reported Wednesday that one in every 83 residents tested positive in the last week.
Amid the crisis, Trump, his administration officials, and congressional Republicans have embarked on an effort to call the election results into question, despite the fact that election and cybersecurity officials have said numerous times in the past week that Biden legitimately won both the popular vote and more than the 270 electoral votes needed to take over the federal government--with a coalition of federal, state, and local officials on Thursday saying the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history."
Multiple legal experts have said the lawsuits that Trump has filed in states including Pennsylvania and Arizona--where Biden was officially projected to be the winner on Friday--are meritless, but officials including McConnell, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said in recent days that the election has not yet been decided.
Other progressives echoed Sanders' and Khanna's disgust over the Republican Party's abandonment of the American people in the interest of enabling the president, whose false claims about "illegal votes" cast in the election led several historians to warn this week that Trump could soon incite violence by his supporters.
\u201cLeave it to the GOP to spend more time fighting nonexistent voter fraud than containing a virus that's killed 242,000 Americans and counting.\u201d— Robert Reich (@Robert Reich) 1605207269
\u201c@CitizenCohn This is much like a worse version of 2008. Back then the economy was collapsing but the president couldn't be bothered to do anything. Now we have the pandemic exploding, the economic stalling, and the president too busy crying over his election defeat.\u201d— Jonathan Cohn (@Jonathan Cohn) 1605275464
\u201cImagine if any fraction of this GOP energy to find phantom voter fraud had gone instead to preventing the spread of COVID.\u201d— Scott Hechinger (@Scott Hechinger) 1605183964
In a meeting this week, Biden and Democratic congressional leaders agreed that a coronavirus relief package should include expanded unemployment benefits and robust help for local and state governments, which are not included in the Republicans' plan.
"The McConnell approach is so disproportionate to the urgency of the crisis," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) toldThe Hill on Thursday. "We're still not seeing any indication that the Republican leadership is really looking at anything that is really in the ballpark."
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted that despite Republican claims that the crisis is in the past, more than 700,000 Americans filed jobless claims last week.
"Every day without a new Covid relief bill," said Ifill, "is an outrage beyond words."
Trump and Musk are on an unconstitutional rampage, aiming for virtually every corner of the federal government. These two right-wing billionaires are targeting nurses, scientists, teachers, daycare providers, judges, veterans, air traffic controllers, and nuclear safety inspectors. No one is safe. The food stamps program, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are next. It’s an unprecedented disaster and a five-alarm fire, but there will be a reckoning. The people did not vote for this. The American people do not want this dystopian hellscape that hides behind claims of “efficiency.” Still, in reality, it is all a giveaway to corporate interests and the libertarian dreams of far-right oligarchs like Musk. Common Dreams is playing a vital role by reporting day and night on this orgy of corruption and greed, as well as what everyday people can do to organize and fight back. As a people-powered nonprofit news outlet, we cover issues the corporate media never will, but we can only continue with our readers’ support. |
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna are among the progressives condemning Senate Republicans for offering aid and comfort to President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud while coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates surge and wreak havoc in communities nationwide.
"Instead of fighting to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed over 242,000 Americans, the Trump administration is spending its final days in office fighting a bogus voter 'fraud' problem that does not exist," said Sanders on Thursday evening on social media. "Pathetic. The Biden-Harris Administration cannot come soon enough."
The senator repeated his demand for a package which includes far-reaching aid for Americans who are "facing economic devastation."
\u201cThe pandemic is surging, and tens of millions of Americans are facing economic devastation. The Senate needs to pass a real stimulus package NOW that provides $2,000 a month to the working class, $600 a week to the unemployed and expands Medicare to all.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1605229763
"Cases are at an all time high. Millions of families are agonizing over what to do for the holidays, how they're going to keep paying rent, or whether their business will survive the winter," tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). "We need a Covid relief deal now."
More than 163,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the U.S. on Thursday, yet when asked about the Republican Party's plans to pass legislation offering relief to people and small businesses, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters that he's interested only in a package of around $500 billion to target "residual problems" from the pandemic.
Despite McConnell's suggestion that the pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis are over, CNBCreported last month that as many as 35 million Americans could soon face eviction or have trouble paying their rent or mortgage payments. Hospitals in states including North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas are reporting that they are at or nearing capacity, and with one of the country's most severe outbreaks, North Dakota officials reported Wednesday that one in every 83 residents tested positive in the last week.
Amid the crisis, Trump, his administration officials, and congressional Republicans have embarked on an effort to call the election results into question, despite the fact that election and cybersecurity officials have said numerous times in the past week that Biden legitimately won both the popular vote and more than the 270 electoral votes needed to take over the federal government--with a coalition of federal, state, and local officials on Thursday saying the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history."
Multiple legal experts have said the lawsuits that Trump has filed in states including Pennsylvania and Arizona--where Biden was officially projected to be the winner on Friday--are meritless, but officials including McConnell, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said in recent days that the election has not yet been decided.
Other progressives echoed Sanders' and Khanna's disgust over the Republican Party's abandonment of the American people in the interest of enabling the president, whose false claims about "illegal votes" cast in the election led several historians to warn this week that Trump could soon incite violence by his supporters.
\u201cLeave it to the GOP to spend more time fighting nonexistent voter fraud than containing a virus that's killed 242,000 Americans and counting.\u201d— Robert Reich (@Robert Reich) 1605207269
\u201c@CitizenCohn This is much like a worse version of 2008. Back then the economy was collapsing but the president couldn't be bothered to do anything. Now we have the pandemic exploding, the economic stalling, and the president too busy crying over his election defeat.\u201d— Jonathan Cohn (@Jonathan Cohn) 1605275464
\u201cImagine if any fraction of this GOP energy to find phantom voter fraud had gone instead to preventing the spread of COVID.\u201d— Scott Hechinger (@Scott Hechinger) 1605183964
In a meeting this week, Biden and Democratic congressional leaders agreed that a coronavirus relief package should include expanded unemployment benefits and robust help for local and state governments, which are not included in the Republicans' plan.
"The McConnell approach is so disproportionate to the urgency of the crisis," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) toldThe Hill on Thursday. "We're still not seeing any indication that the Republican leadership is really looking at anything that is really in the ballpark."
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted that despite Republican claims that the crisis is in the past, more than 700,000 Americans filed jobless claims last week.
"Every day without a new Covid relief bill," said Ifill, "is an outrage beyond words."
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna are among the progressives condemning Senate Republicans for offering aid and comfort to President Donald Trump's baseless claims of election fraud while coronavirus infection and hospitalization rates surge and wreak havoc in communities nationwide.
"Instead of fighting to defeat the Covid-19 pandemic that has killed over 242,000 Americans, the Trump administration is spending its final days in office fighting a bogus voter 'fraud' problem that does not exist," said Sanders on Thursday evening on social media. "Pathetic. The Biden-Harris Administration cannot come soon enough."
The senator repeated his demand for a package which includes far-reaching aid for Americans who are "facing economic devastation."
\u201cThe pandemic is surging, and tens of millions of Americans are facing economic devastation. The Senate needs to pass a real stimulus package NOW that provides $2,000 a month to the working class, $600 a week to the unemployed and expands Medicare to all.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1605229763
"Cases are at an all time high. Millions of families are agonizing over what to do for the holidays, how they're going to keep paying rent, or whether their business will survive the winter," tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.). "We need a Covid relief deal now."
More than 163,000 new cases of Covid-19 were reported in the U.S. on Thursday, yet when asked about the Republican Party's plans to pass legislation offering relief to people and small businesses, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters that he's interested only in a package of around $500 billion to target "residual problems" from the pandemic.
Despite McConnell's suggestion that the pandemic and the corresponding economic crisis are over, CNBCreported last month that as many as 35 million Americans could soon face eviction or have trouble paying their rent or mortgage payments. Hospitals in states including North Dakota, Wisconsin, and Texas are reporting that they are at or nearing capacity, and with one of the country's most severe outbreaks, North Dakota officials reported Wednesday that one in every 83 residents tested positive in the last week.
Amid the crisis, Trump, his administration officials, and congressional Republicans have embarked on an effort to call the election results into question, despite the fact that election and cybersecurity officials have said numerous times in the past week that Biden legitimately won both the popular vote and more than the 270 electoral votes needed to take over the federal government--with a coalition of federal, state, and local officials on Thursday saying the 2020 election was "the most secure in American history."
Multiple legal experts have said the lawsuits that Trump has filed in states including Pennsylvania and Arizona--where Biden was officially projected to be the winner on Friday--are meritless, but officials including McConnell, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have said in recent days that the election has not yet been decided.
Other progressives echoed Sanders' and Khanna's disgust over the Republican Party's abandonment of the American people in the interest of enabling the president, whose false claims about "illegal votes" cast in the election led several historians to warn this week that Trump could soon incite violence by his supporters.
\u201cLeave it to the GOP to spend more time fighting nonexistent voter fraud than containing a virus that's killed 242,000 Americans and counting.\u201d— Robert Reich (@Robert Reich) 1605207269
\u201c@CitizenCohn This is much like a worse version of 2008. Back then the economy was collapsing but the president couldn't be bothered to do anything. Now we have the pandemic exploding, the economic stalling, and the president too busy crying over his election defeat.\u201d— Jonathan Cohn (@Jonathan Cohn) 1605275464
\u201cImagine if any fraction of this GOP energy to find phantom voter fraud had gone instead to preventing the spread of COVID.\u201d— Scott Hechinger (@Scott Hechinger) 1605183964
In a meeting this week, Biden and Democratic congressional leaders agreed that a coronavirus relief package should include expanded unemployment benefits and robust help for local and state governments, which are not included in the Republicans' plan.
"The McConnell approach is so disproportionate to the urgency of the crisis," Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) toldThe Hill on Thursday. "We're still not seeing any indication that the Republican leadership is really looking at anything that is really in the ballpark."
Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, noted that despite Republican claims that the crisis is in the past, more than 700,000 Americans filed jobless claims last week.
"Every day without a new Covid relief bill," said Ifill, "is an outrage beyond words."
"You may not deport a U.S. citizen, period," said one legal expert.
With a deadline looming for the Trump administration to return a Maryland resident to the U.S. after expelling him along with hundreds of other people to an El Salvador detention center under a shadowy deal with the Central American country, U.S. President Donald Trump on Sunday stunned observers by expressing a desire to send U.S. citizens into El Salvador's prison system.
In a press briefing aboard Air Force One Sunday evening, Trump was asked by a reporter about an offer made by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele to accept prisoners sent by the U.S. from its federal prison population.
"I love that," Trump said. "If we could take some of our 20-time wise guys that push people into subways and hit people over the back of the head and purposely run people over in cars, if he would take them, I would be honored to give them."
"I don't know what the law says on that," he added. "I have suggested that, why should we stop at people who cross the border illegally?"
Podcaster and former Obama administration staffer Jon Favreau said Trump's remarks could be summed up as: "He wants to send American citizens to a foreign gulag."
Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which permits the U.S. government to detain and deport noncitizens during wartime, to expel 238 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, where they are being held in the country's Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). About two dozen people who were originally from El Salvador were also sent to the prison, including Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland man who had legal protected status, was not convicted of a crime, and had previously received a court order barring the U.S. from deporting him to his home country for fear of persecution and torture.
Trump said several times in his comments Sunday that he was unsure of the legality of sending U.S. federal prison inmates to a foreign prison system.
In February, after Bukele first offered to imprison U.S. citizens, Lee Gelernt of the ACLU told NPR that the idea was a "non-starter."
"You may not deport a U.S. citizen, period," Gelernt, deputy director of the group's Immigrants' Rights Project, told the outlet. "The courts have not allowed that, and they would not allow it... It would be blatantly unconstitutional to deport a U.S. citizen."
Secretary of State Marco Rubio also touted Bukele's offer at the time, calling it "an extraordinary gesture never before extended by any country."
Trump's remarks on potentially expanding his deal with the Salvadoran president to include U.S. citizens followed U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis's order mandating the return of Abrego Garcia to the U.S. with a deadline of 11:59 pm Monday.
Xinis on Sunday rejected the administration's request to lift the order, saying Abrego Garcia's expulsion had been "wholly lawless" and that the "risk of harm shocks the conscience."
On Monday, the administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block Xinis' order, saying her demand that the White House adhere to the Constitution was "district-court diplomacy" and accusing the judge of trying to "seize control over foreign relations."
The administration has attacked the district court in Washington, D.C. in recent days over the order, with homeland security adviser Stephen Miller calling on Congress last week to "step up" and abolish the panel by refusing to fund it.
The White House has called Abrego Garcia's expulsion and imprisonment in El Salvador an "administrative error" and claimed the Maryland father is no longer under U.S. jurisdiction, so the administration cannot order him to be returned.
"We suggest the judge contact President Bukele because we are unaware of the judge having jurisdiction or authority over the country of El Salvador," said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt last week.
Washington Monthly contributor David Atkins said that under the same logic, "there is also nothing that prevents them from shipping American citizens to a gulag in El Salvador and saying, 'Nothing we can do.'"
Hope people understand the trajectory that we’re on: if the executive is arguing that it has no recourse once people here end up in a prison in El Salvador, then that’s the precedent for there being no recourse when this starts happening to United States citizens.
[image or embed]
— Alexander Ross (@alexander-ross.bsky.social) April 4, 2025 at 7:03 PM
As Trump expressed interest in expelling U.S. citizens to a foreign prison system, Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council pointed out that the details of the White House's deal with Bukele have not been publicly disclosed.
"We literally know nothing about it, other than we're paying them $6 million," said Reichlin-Melnick. "No law in the United States authorizes us to pay another country to imprison people. And yet! They're doing it."
Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director for Detention Watch Network, told Newsweek Monday that the deal with Bukele is being used "as a tool of propaganda with the core objective to dehumanize and villainize people while carrying out their cruel mass detention and deportation agenda unchecked."
"Bottom line, Trump and Bukele's partnership deepens collaboration with authoritarian leaders," said Ghandehari, "further jeopardizing democratic values in the U.S. and around the world."
"The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia's repression playbook concerning Palestine."
In an op-ed dictated to his attorney from a detention facility in Louisiana, Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil late last week condemned the Ivy League institution's complicity in the Trump administration's targeting of Palestinian rights advocates and campus dissent more broadly.
Khalil, who has said he is a political prisoner, argued in the Friday op-ed that Columbia "laid the groundwork for my abduction" last month by U.S. Department of Homeland Security agents. The Trump administration's detention of and effort to deport Khalil—who helped lead student protests against Israel's assault on Gaza—have sparked widespread alarm and backlash, much of it directed at Columbia.
"The logic used by the federal government to target myself and my peers is a direct extension of Columbia's repression playbook concerning Palestine," Khalil wrote, pointing to the recent arrests of other international students who have spoken out in support of Palestinian rights.
Writing in the university's daily student newspaper, Khalil noted that "Columbia has suppressed student dissent under the auspices of combating antisemitism," an approach also taken by the Trump administration, which said the arrest of Khalil was carried out in alignment with the president's "executive orders prohibiting antisemitism."
"This institution's singular concern has always been the vitality of its financial profile, not the safety of Jewish students. This is why Columbia was all too happy to embrace a superficial progressive agenda while still disregarding Palestine, and this is why it will soon turn on you, too," he warned. "If there was any illusion left, it shattered last week when the board of trustees executed a historic maneuver to seize direct control of the presidency. Cutting out their middleman, the board appointed fellow trustee Claire Shipman to a position reserved for academic leadership. Who can still pretend this is an educational institution and not the 'Vichy on the Hudson'?"
"Faced with a movement for divestment they couldn't crush, your trustees opted to set fire to the institution they're entrusted with," Khalil continued. "It is incumbent upon each of you to reclaim the university and join the student movement to carry forward the work of the past year."
Khalil and his legal team are currently fighting the Trump administration's effort to remove him from the country. Earlier this month, a second federal judge rejected the Trump administration's request to transfer Khalil's case to Louisiana, a demand that civil liberties advocates decried as a ploy to "manipulate federal court jurisdiction" in order to receive a favorable ruling.
Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union—which is representing Khalil—stressed in an NBC News op-ed last week that Khalil "has never been accused, charged, or convicted of any crime."
"The Trump administration is sending a message to everyone in America: If you dare to disagree with the president, you will be punished," Lieberman wrote, alluding to a fight over federal funding. "Columbia was just the first target. Harvard and Princeton are now in danger of similar treatment. This is a full-scale attack on the system of free inquiry, discussion, and debate that is at the core of higher education, which is so crucial to the strength of our democracy."
Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy called President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs "a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
Analysts puzzling over the bizarre formula the Trump administration used to calculate its country-by-country tariff rates are wasting their time, U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in a response to the American president that has gone viral in recent days as global markets continue to nosedive.
"It's not economic policy, it's not trade policy," Murphy (D-Conn.) said in remarks recorded after Trump announced the sweeping tariffs last week. "It's a political weapon designed to collapse our democracy."
While President Donald Trump's universal tariffs on imports make no sense as an effort to rectify the failures of the status quo trade regime and bring back offshored U.S. jobs, they are comprehensible when viewed as "a tool to try to compel pledges of loyalty, this time from companies and industries in the United States," Murphy argued.
"You have to understand that everything Donald Trump is doing is in service of staying in power forever—either him or his family or his handpicked successors," the Democratic senator continued. "He's trying to destroy our democracy."
Murphy contended that the president designed the tariffs to be so widespread that corporations across private industry would have to come to the White House and "make an agreement with Trump in which he gives them tariff relief in exchange for a pledge of political loyalty."
"What could that pledge look like?" Murphy continued. "Well, maybe they agree to champion his economic policy publicly. Maybe they agree to make contributions to his political campaign. Maybe they agree to police their employees to make sure that nobody that works for that company works for the political opposition."
Politico reported late last week that businesses across corporate America "fear Trump's wrath" and are thus declining to criticize the president's tariff policies even as they wreak havoc worldwide and threaten to spark a devastating recession.
"There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration," one unnamed public affairs operative told Politico. "It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period."
"While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
Murphy is hardly alone in seeing Trump's tariffs as an instrument of power consolidation.
Robert Reich, the former U.S. labor secretary, wrote Monday that "we're turning into a dictatorship" as Trump conjures "fake national emergencies" to jack up tariffs, deport people en masse without due process, gut efforts to combat the climate crisis, and dismantle large swaths of the federal government.
"As Trump declares emergency after emergency to justify his reign of terror, he's simultaneously eliminating America's capacity to respond to real emergencies," Reich wrote. "Make no mistake about what’s really going on here. While the United States has plenty of real problems to deal with, Trump is ignoring them to manufacture the fake emergencies he needs to further enlarge and centralize his power."
One analyst, Zack Beauchamp of Vox, argued the tariffs are more a symptom of the decline of U.S. democracy rather than a cause of it.
"Trump's tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldn't have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes," Beauchamp wrote. "The fact that America isn't functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin."
"It's still possible that Trump steps back from the brink," he added. "But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: The long decay of America's democratic system means that we are all living under an axe. And if this isn't the moment it falls, there will surely be another."