Category: Politics

President Donald Trump is backing Florida state Sen. Joe Gruters to chair the Republican National Committee and replace Michael Whatley as he runs for Senate in North Carolina.

Trump announced his support Thursday in a Truth Social post about Whatley, who is expected to publicly announce his Senate candidacy in the coming days.

“Fortunately, I have somebody who will do a wonderful job as the Chairman of the RNC,” he wrote. “His name is, Joe Gruters, and he will have my Complete and Total Endorsement.”

The 48-year-old Florida lawmaker is the RNC treasurer and previously served as chair of the Florida Republican Party. Gruters had been expected to run to be the state’s chief financial officer against an ally backed by Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The governor had opposed his candidacy. “Joe Gruters has taken major positions that are totally contrary from what our voter base wants to do,” DeSantis said earlier this month.

​Politics

FDA Commissioner has ‘no preconceived plans’ for abortion pill policies | The Conversation

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​Politics

Carla Hayden, the 14th librarian of Congress, who has held the position since 2016, received an unexpected email on May 8, 2025.

“Carla, on behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as the Librarian of Congress is terminated effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” wrote Trent Morse, deputy director of presidential personnel at the White House.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt later explained that Hayden, who was the first woman, Black person and professionally trained librarian to oversee the Library of Congress, had done “quite concerning things,” on the job, including “putting inappropriate books in the library for children.”

Democratic politicians sharply criticized Hayden’s termination, saying the firing was unjust. It was actually about Trump punishing civil servants “who don’t bend to his every will,” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer said.

An information science scholar, I have written extensively about the history of libraries and archives, including the Library of Congress. To fully understand the role Hayden played for the past nine years, I think it is important to understand what the Library of Congress does, and the overlooked and underappreciated role it has played in American life.

The Library of Congress’ work

The Library of Congress is an agency that was first established, by an act of Congress, in 1800. The act provided for “the purchase of such books as may be necessary for the use of Congress at the said city of Washington, and for fitting up a suitable apartment for containing them.” Its chief librarian is appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The library has six buildings in Washington that hold a print and online collection of nearly 26 million books, as well as more than 136 million other items, including manuscripts, maps, sheet music and prints and photographs.

It also houses historic documents, like Thomas Jefferson’s rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and James Madison’s notes on the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

The library is the property of the American people. Anyone over the age of 16 with a government-issued photo identification can enter its buildings and read or view its materials on-site. The Library of Congress was partially designed as a research institution to suit the needs of members of Congress, and only Congress members can borrow items from the library and take them home.

The Library of Congress has an annual budget of about US$900 million, with a staff of 3,263. In 2024, the library’s staff helped acquire 1,437,832 million new items, issue nearly 69,000 library cards and answer more than 764,000 reference requests, among other tasks.

The library’s deep roots

The library has evolved alongside the U.S. itself. Five years before the Constitutional Convention of 1787, future president James Madison called for a library to provide materials to help inform Congress and its members. In 1800, President John Adams signed a bill that established the institution, which began with a $5,000 government appropriation, equivalent to more than $127,000 today.

The library’s first collection included 152 works in 740 volumes imported from England. It occupied a space in a Washington Senate office that measured just 22 feet by 34 feet.

The British army torched the infant library and its collection that had grown to 3,000 books in 1814, during the War of 1812. In response, former president Thomas Jefferson sold his personal collection of 6,479 books to the library, which he called “unquestionably the choicest collection of books in the U.S.”

Tragedy struck again in 1851, with a fire that incinerated two-thirds of the library’s 55,000 volumes, including most of Jefferson’s personal collection.

The organization rebounded in the next few years, as it purchased the 40,000-volume Smithsonian library in 1866, among other new acquisitions.

Ainsworth Spofford, the sixth librarian of Congress, boosted the library’s national image in the late 1800s when he tried to centralize the country’s patchwork copyright system.

Spofford also successfully lobbied Congress to pass the Copyright Act of 1870, which stipulated that any party registering a work for copyright needed to deposit two copies of that work with the library.

A growing place in American life

As its collections burgeoned in both scale and scope in the latter part of the 19th century, the library assumed an increasingly visible role and became known by some as “the nation’s library.” By 1900, it had nearly 1 million printed books and other materials.

The opening of a new library building in 1897, offering services to blind people with a designated reading room containing 500 raised character – or braille – books and music items, epitomized the library’s new status.

President Theodore Roosevelt said in 1901 that the library was “the one national library of the United States” and that was “a unique opportunity to render to the libraries of this country – to American scholarship – service of the highest importance.”

The library’s work, and global approach, continued to grow during the 20th century.

By the late 1900s, the library held materials in more than 450 languages.

It continued to add remarkable items to its collection, including a Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed in Europe from movable metal type, a kind of printing technology, in 1455.

Documenting the evolution of democracy, the library also assumed stewardship of 23 presidents’ official papers, from George Washington to Calvin Coolidge, during this time frame.

A public service

While primarily designated a research institution for Congress, the library has also catered to a diverse range of patrons, including by mail and telephone.

As one Science Digest writer noted in 1960, reference staff members fielded questions ranging from “What was the color of a mastodon’s eye?” to “How many words are there in the English language?” and “Could you suggest a name for twins?”

The library’s register of copyrights received similarly diverse and even humorous inquiries. One older woman seeking to publish her poetry wrote in 1954 to request “a poetic license” to ensure her work conformed to the law.

In the late 20th century, the library focused on a new democratic national and international mission, as it embraced a new role. Daniel Boorstin, the librarian from 1975 to 1987, termed that role a “multimedia encyclopedia.”

A congressional resolution marking the Library of Congress’s bicentennial in 2000 noted that it was “the largest and most inclusive library in human history,” as it digitized its collections to extend its reach still further with the growth of the internet.

As the library marks its 225th year, it continues to represent, as David Mearns, chief of the library’s manuscript division, said in 1947, “the American story.”

A library for all

Following Hayden’s dismissal, Trump appointed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, his former personal lawyer, as acting librarian of Congress.

Hayden has contended that her dismissal, which occurred alongside other firings of top civil servants, including the national archivist, represents a broad threat to people’s right to easily access free information.

“Democracies are not to be taken for granted,” Hayden said in June. She explained in an interview with CBS that she never had a problem with a presidential administration and is not sure why she was dismissed.

“And the institutions that support democracy should not be taken for granted,” Hayden added.

In her final annual report as librarian, Hayden characterized the institution as “truly, a library for all.” So far, even without her leadership, it remains just that.

Alex H. Poole does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Something unusual is happening in U.S. immigration courts. Government lawyers are refusing to give their names during public hearings.

In June 2025, Immigration Judge ShaSha Xu in New York City reportedly told lawyers in her courtroom: “We’re not really doing names publicly.” Only the government lawyers’ names were hidden – the immigrants’ attorneys had to give their names as usual. Xu cited privacy concerns, saying, “Things lately have changed.”

When one immigration lawyer objected that the court record would be incomplete without the government attorney’s name, Xu reportedly refused to provide it. In another case, New York immigration Judge James McCarthy in July referred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, attorney as merely “Department” throughout the hearing.

New York immigration Judge Shirley Lazare-Raphael told The Intercept that some ICE attorneys believe it is “dangerous to state their names publicly.” This follows a broader pattern of ICE agents wearing masks during arrests to hide their identities.

This secrecy violates a fundamental principle that has protected Americans for centuries: open courts. Here’s how those courts operate and why the principle governing them matters.

‘Presumption of openness’

The U.S. legal system is built on openness, with multiple layers of legal protection that guarantee public access to court proceedings.

This tradition of open courts developed as a direct rejection of secret judicial proceedings that had been used to abuse power in England. The notorious Star Chamber operated in secret from the 15th to 17th centuries, initially trying people “too powerful to be brought before ordinary common-law courts.”

But the Star Chamber eventually became a tool of oppression, using torture to obtain confessions and punishing jurors who ruled against the Crown. Parliament abolished it in 1641 after widespread abuses.

By the time American colonial courts were established, the reaction against the Star Chamber had already shaped English legal thinking toward openness. American courts adopted this principle of transparency from the beginning, rejecting the secretive proceedings that had enabled abuse.

Today, the term “star chamber” refers to any secret court proceeding that seems grossly unfair or is used to persecute individuals.

In the U.S., courts have repeatedly emphasized that “justice faces its gravest threat when courts dispense it secretly.” The First Amendment gives the public a right to observe judicial proceedings. The Supreme Court has ruled that “a presumption of openness inheres in the very nature of a criminal trial under our system of justice.”

Every federal appeals court has recognized that this constitutional right extends to civil cases too, with some exceptions such as protecting “the parties’ privacy, confidential business information, or trade secrets.” Federal court rules require that trials be “conducted in open court” and that witness testimony be “taken in open court unless otherwise provided.”

Many state constitutions also guarantee open courts – such as Oregon’s mandate that “no court shall be secret.”

While there’s no explicit law requiring attorneys to be publicly named, there’s also no policy allowing their names to be kept secret. The presumption is always toward openness.

In response to these recent developments, law professor Elissa Steglich said that she’d “never heard of someone in open court not being identified,” and that failing to identify an attorney could impair accountability “if there are unethical or professional concerns.”

Rules for anonymity

Courts sometimes allow anonymity, but only in specific circumstances.

Juries can be anonymous when there’s “substantial danger of harm or undue influence,” as legal expert Michael Crowell writes – like in high-profile organized crime cases or when defendants have tried to intimidate witnesses before. Even then, the lawyers still know the jurors’ names.

Similarly, parties to a lawsuit can sometimes use pseudonyms like “Jane Doe” when the case involves highly sensitive matters such as sexual abuse, or when there’s a real risk of physical retaliation.

But these rare exceptions require careful court review.

What’s happening with ICE attorneys is different. There’s no formal court ruling allowing it, no specific safety findings and no established legal process.

Immigration courts have fewer protections

Immigration courts operate differently from regular federal courts. They are so-called “administrative courts” that are part of the executive branch, not the judicial branch.

These courts decide claims involving an individual’s right to stay in the U.S., either when the government seeks to remove someone from the country for violating immigration law or when an individual seeks to stay in the country through the asylum process.

Immigration judges lack the lifetime job protections that regular federal judges have. As executive branch government employees, they can be hired and fired, just like other Department of Justice employees.

People in immigration court also have fewer procedural protections than criminal defendants. They have no right to court-appointed counsel and must represent themselves unless they can afford to hire an attorney. The majority of immigrants appear without an attorney. Outcomes are better for those who can afford to hire counsel.

Immigration court records are also less accessible to the public than other federal court proceedings.

For years, the Board of Immigration Appeals, the nation’s highest immigration court, made less than 1% of its opinions publicly available. A federal court ruled that public disclosure was required; the Board of Immigration Appeals now posts its decisions online.

However, lower immigration court decisions are rarely made public.

Because immigration courts operate with less oversight than regular federal courts, public observation becomes more critical.

Open courts aren’t just about legal procedure – they’re about democracy itself. When the public can observe how justice is administered, it builds confidence that the system is fair.

Court watching protects transparency

Court watching has become an important way for citizens to ensure due process is honored, especially in immigration cases.

Observers can monitor whether proper legal procedures are being followed. They can watch for signs that attorneys are prepared, treating people respectfully and following court rules – regardless of whether those attorneys identify themselves.

Observers help track trends such as lack of legal representation, language barriers or procedural unfairness that can inform advocacy for reforms. This kind of public oversight is especially important in immigration court, where people often don’t have lawyers and may not understand their rights.

When community members bear witness to these proceedings, it helps ensure the system operates fairly and transparently.

Professional ethics and accountability

As a law professor who runs a law school’s Center for Professional Ethics, I can say that while there’s no specific law forcing ICE attorneys to identify themselves, they are still bound by rules of professional conduct that require accountability and transparency.

State bar associations have clear standards about attorney conduct in court proceedings. The American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct emphasize that lawyers are “officers of the legal system” with duties to uphold its integrity.

Immigration judges, despite being government employees rather than lifetime-tenured federal judges, are also bound by judicial conduct codes that require them to uphold public confidence in the justice system. When judges allow or encourage anonymity without formal procedures or safety findings, they risk violating these ethical obligations.

Bar associations can investigate professional conduct violations and impose sanctions ranging from reprimands to suspension or disbarment. While enforcement against federal government lawyers has historically been uncommon, sustained documentation by court observers can provide the evidence needed for formal complaints.

While government attorneys, judges and other court personnel may face real safety concerns, hiding their identities in open court is unprecedented and breaks with centuries of legal tradition that requires accountability and transparency in our justice system.

As pressure mounts to process immigration cases quickly, courts are ethically and legally bound to ensure that speed doesn’t come at the expense of fundamental fairness and transparency.

Cassandra Burke Robertson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Roy Cooper is expected to announce his campaign for the North Carolina Senate as soon as Monday, according to two people directly familiar with the former governor’s decision.

The popular, former two-term governor’s entrance into the Senate race — for a seat Republican Sen. Thom Tillis is leaving open with his announcement last month that he won’t seek reelection — is expected to transform the Senate race into the most competitive of 2026. Democrats, facing a difficult path to seizing control of the Senate next year, landed their dream recruit with Cooper, who would enter the race as a favorite.

North Carolina represents one of the few offensive opportunities for Democrats, who are locked out of power at every level in Washington.

Lara Trump, President Donald Trump’s daughter-in-law, is considering her own bid for the seat, effectively freezing Republican recruitment. Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley, who served as the head of the state’s party, is also interested, but is deferring to Trump, POLITICO reported last month.

Tillis, who was first elected in 2014, denounced Trump’s tax-and-spend megabill in a fiery speech last month, warning that the drastic Medicaid cuts would “betray the promise Donald Trump made” to voters. He was one of two Republicans to vote against the legislation, drawing Trump’s threats to recruit a GOP primary challenger. The next day, Tillis announced he would not run for reelection.

Democrats are expected to use Tillis’ words — specifically that the megabill “will hurt people who are eligible and qualified for Medicaid” — against the eventual Republican nominee. Tillis’ criticisms, particularly on healthcare, will be a core part of Democrats’ midterm messaging across the country, as other congressional Republicans also pledged to not make cuts to Medicaid.

But the North Carolina Senate seat has eluded Democrats since 2008, even as Cooper and his successor, Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, held onto the governor’s mansion. Democrats hope that Cooper can crack the code with his aw-shucks demeanor, broad popularity and ability to raise big cash for his race.

Cooper was initially considered a top choice to be then-Vice President Kamala Harris’ running mate in 2024, but he pulled himself out of contention, citing concerns that North Carolina’s controversial Republican lieutenant governor would take over each time Cooper traveled out of state.

For now, Cooper still faces a potential primary. Former Rep. Wiley Nickel jumped into the race in April. He demurred earlier this month when asked if he would leave the primary should Cooper get in.

​Politics

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro has joined fellow Democrats in criticizing Zohran Mamdani, the progressive candidate for mayor of New York whose past comments on Israel have cost him support from within the party.

Mamdani has failed to condemn “blatantly antisemitic” rhetoric, Shapiro said in an interview with Jewish Insider published Wednesday.

“You have to speak and act with moral clarity, and when supporters of yours say things that are blatantly antisemitic, you can’t leave room for that to just sit there,” Shapiro said in the interview. “You’ve got to condemn that.”

The remarks from Shapiro, who is considered a likely Democratic candidate for president in 2028, are the latest sign that Mamdani still has work to do to win over some of the prominent figures in the party as he runs to unseat New York Mayor Eric Adams.

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who endorsed Mamdani after running against him in the Democratic primary, defended the nominee.

“Let’s be clear: Zohran Mamdani won the votes of a large majority of NYC Democrats, including thousands of proud Jews like me, inspired by his vision of a city everyone can afford and confident about his commitment to combating antisemitism and hate,” Lander said in a statement. “Josh Shapiro won’t help keep Jews safe in NYC or Pennsylvania by feeding Trump’s narrative about our Democratic nominee for mayor.”

Some Democrats have been hesitant to fully embrace Mamdani, with elected officials from battleground districts distancing themselves from his campaign’s anti-Israel rhetoric. He met with Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Friday but has still yet to secure his endorsement.

Mamdani faces opposition for his advocacy of economic plans he describes as socialist, including free buses and city-run grocery stores. He’s also faced attacks for his refusal to condemn use of the phrase “gloablize the intifada” by anti-Israel protesters — a Palestinian resistance slogan regarded by some as a call to violence against Jews.

Shapiro had some faint words of praise for Mamdani: “He seemed to run a campaign that excited New Yorkers,” the governor said, before discussing his criticism of the candidate’s refusal to condemn inflammatory rhetoric about Israel and the ongoing war in Gaza.

“He also seemed to run a campaign where he left open far too much space for extremists to either use his words or for him to not condemn the words of extremists that said some blatantly antisemitic things,” Shapiro said.

Republicans have sought to brand the mayoral candidate as their new Democratic boogeyman while members of his own party are still weighing what lessons to take away from the 33-year-old democratic socialist’s upset primary win. The New York race is also rippling through next year’s midterm elections and the lead-up to the presidential campaign, with figures like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — both seen as likely 2028 contenders — saying the party should consider Mamdani’s affordability-focused messaging.

​Politics

The first six months of President Donald Trump’s term have produced a cash cow of historic magnitude for the lobbying industry, with record-breaking demand for help navigating the administration’s constant stream of policy pronouncements — or trying to avoid becoming a pay-for in the GOP’s megabill.

The result is a new set of power brokerse in Trump’s swamp. Firms with strong ties to the White House have skyrocketed to the top of the pecking order of lobbying outfits in town, according to a POLITICO analysis of the latest quarterly lobbying disclosures filed this week.

No firm has benefitted more than Ballard Partners, which is led by Trump fundraiser Brian Ballard. The firm previously employed White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Attorney General Pam Bondi. Ballard brought in $20.6 million in lobbying revenues during the second quarter of the year from clients including Palantir, American Express, TikTok, Ripple Labs and UnitedHealth. Its haul is more than four times what the firm brought in during the second quarter of 2024.

But the gusher has benefited the entire lobbying industry, new firms and old, the analysis shows. Of the top 20 firms by revenue, only two saw their lobbying revenues decline last quarter compared to the same time a year ago. The lobbying figures reported this week don’t include revenue from public affairs or consulting work, or foreign agent work.

“The number of people who feel they need representation at this point is huge, and we’re really just getting into sort of the day-to-day of governing,” said Rich Gold, who heads up the public policy and regulation group at law and lobbying firm Holland & Knight. Gold’s firm, which ranked fifth among the top earners on K Street last quarter with $13.8 million in revenue, signed 57 new clients during the first half of the year, a record intake for the firm.

“The largest driver of business right now is the overarching trend of uncertainty and the need for C-suites to try to minimize uncertainty and political risk as much as possible,” he said. While specific legislation like the recently signed One Big Beautiful Bill Act has certainly drummed up lobbying business, “the number of people who needed political intelligence work and advocacy” in D.C. this year stretches far beyond that one law, Gold said.

As for Ballard, its blowout earnings were enough to dethrone Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck, which has topped the quarterly revenue rankings since 2021. Brownstein reported $18.5 million in lobbying revenues during Q2, setting the firm’s own quarterly record.

Ballard’s Trump-linked competitors are also cashing in. Miller Strategies, which is run by top GOP fundraiser Jeff Miller and employs several former Trump administration alumni, brought in nearly $13 million during the second quarter from clients like Zoom, OpenAI, Apple, Softbank, Crypto.com and Blackstone. That’s up almost 80 percent from the beginning of the year, and four times what it brought in during the second quarter of 2024.

Continental Strategy, whose staff includes former Trump appointee Carlos Trujillo as well as a former top aide to then Sen. Marco Rubio, reported $6.5 million in lobbying revenues last quarter, making it the 15th biggest firm by lobbying revenue in Q2. During the same time last year, Continental reported just $292,000 in lobbying fees.

Another firm that found itself knocking at the doorstep of D.C.’s most prestigious lobbying shops didn’t even exist in the nation’s capital a year ago.

North Carolina-based Checkmate Government Relations, which announced plans to open a D.C. office in December, brought in $4.5 million in lobbying fees in Q2, more than quadruple the $910,000 it reported at the beginning of 2025. Among its clients were Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk, UNC Chapel Hill, General Dynamics and Juul.

Checkmate’s president, Ches McDowell, is a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. and the brother of freshman Rep. Addison McDowell (R-N.C.). The firm also employs the son of Trump’s co-campaign manager and the nephew of Trump’s HHS secretary.

BGR Group, a bipartisan but Republican-heavy firm whose alumni include Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, posted its best quarter in its 35-year existence, said Loren Monroe, the co-head of the firm’s lobbying group.

BGR’s lobbyists include Trump adviser David Urban as well as Florida powerbroker Nick Iarossi, and the firm reported $17.7 million in lobbying fees in Q2 — which was third overall and marked a nearly 60 percent increase from the same time last year.

Mercury Public Affairs also posted a banner quarter, raking in almost $6.5 million from April through June, compared to $3.2 million in Q2 of 2024. Wiles served as a co-chair at the K Street mainstay before joining the White House this year, and the bipartisan firm also employs former Trump adviser Bryan Lanza, who’s signed dozens of new clients since the election.

Elsewhere on K Street, the all-Republican firm CGCN Group doubled its lobbying revenues compared to a year ago, and Michael Best Strategies, whose leadership includes Trump’s first White House chief of staff, Reince Priebus, and Trump’s 2024 co-campaign manager, Chris LaCivita, more than tripled its Q2 lobbying earnings.

Lobbyists anticipate the good times will last, at least for the foreseeable future, even after the signing of the megabill this month — though not everyone believes the Trump-driven realignment will remain.

“We’ve had sort of personality-based firms in town before,” said Gold. “They kind of come and go. I expect that to be the case here.”

In addition to ongoing trade policy disruptions, multiple lobbyists pointed to the various executive orders and presidential memoranda the White House has been churning out since day one as another key driver of business this year.

“The beginning of any new administration is a very busy time,” added Karishma Page, a partner at K&L Gates. “This, I think, is a high watermark.”

K&L Gates saw its lobbying revenue last quarter surge by 25 percent from the same period a year ago thanks to the flurry of activity on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“There seems to be an insatiable appetite” from clients for insight into the Trump administration, added Will Moschella, who co-leads the lobbying practice at Brownstein.

“A lot of those executive orders require departments and agencies to report back with policy proposals,” he said. “So they weren’t one time events — those are documents and directives that are going to drive further executive branch action.”

From an advocacy perspective, the fight over Republicans’ massive reconciliation package this spring and summer “is kind of like having your dessert,” Gold said. Those negotiations touched off lobbying by everyone from universities to business groups, hospitals, the renewable energy industry and beyond.

The day-to-day regulatory work at various agencies, which Gold compared to “eating your spinach,” is “really just gearing up,” he added.

There’s also the widespread uncertainty over Trump’s tariff policies, to say nothing of must-pass legislation to fund the government and reauthorize the nation’s farm and defense policies.

Those issues — while less sexy than things like crypto or AI policy — have been the focus of increased attention from clients, lobbyists said, thanks to Trump’s large-scale slashing of government funding across the country and the recissions bill passed by Congress this month.

“There is a need in the current moment to really be able to justify the work of an organization that may be a federal contractor or grantee,” Page argued.

That’s also the case for clients that have sought to avoid the president’s ire. “I think there was a sense at the beginning of the administration that maybe you could just duck and cover and just be left alone,” said Monroe. “The experience of the last six months suggests that the best defense is a strong offense … and telling your story, otherwise you risk it being told for you.”

​Politics

President Donald Trump promised Americans they would get tired of winning — for now, it appears they are getting tired of reading about him.

Trump’s first term saw books authored by prominent journalists sell hundreds of thousands of copies each as the public rushed to learn the inside details of Trump’s norm-shattering presidency.

But similar books aren’t exactly flying off the shelves in his second term, and the bar to getting onto the coveted New York Times bestseller list has been lowered as the overall nonfiction book market has dipped. In these tenuous times for the nonfiction political book market, industry insiders say there are fewer big advances being paid and narrower routes to success that rely on brand-name authors or a partisan perspective.

“Everyone is desperately looking for the next Michael Wolff or James Comey for next year, but it’s not clear there could ever be one again,” said one concerned publisher, referencing two of the authors with biggest book successes of Trump’s first term.

“There’s definitely a slump, and it’s across all of nonfiction,” added a book agent. “Part of it is that we were just actually tired of this, and we’re exhausted, and we don’t want to spend 30 bucks and six or eight hours of our time feeling worse.” (Publishing insiders and authors were granted anonymity for this story because they didn’t have authorization to speak from their employers or wanted to speak candidly about the state of the industry.)

The latest example is “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America,” by political journalists Josh Dawsey, Tyler Pager and Isaac Arnsdorf. “2024” sold roughly 6,000 hardcover copies in the first week of publication, according to data released last Wednesday from NPD BookScan. Yet even with that sales figure, it hit the New York Times bestseller list at No. 4. (The Times bestseller list does not disclose its data sources.)

It has become somewhat easier to get on to the Times bestseller list because it measures comparable sales across the board. One point of comparison: In a similar week in July 2017, the No. 4 book on the Times nonfiction list was former Sen. Al Franken’s book, which had been out for weeks and still sold almost 11,000 copies that week.

Dawsey and Pager referred a request for comment to a publicist for their publisher, who said she was “very happy” with sales, while Arnsdorf didn’t respond to a request for comment. Their agent Elyse Cheney said the numbers, including all formats, “far exceed” the BookScan figure but declined to give exact numbers. A person with direct knowledge of the sales said they were more than double 6,000 including all formats, and that e-book and audio sales were almost as high as print sales. (BookScan data is not a full account of a book’s success as it captures around 70 percent of hardcover sales and does not track e-book and audio uploads.)

“They are three great reporters, but they have a difficult time finding an audience, because at the end of the day, they play it pretty straight,” said another book agent. “A fundamental question in our divided politics, and it’s just as true for publishing — who are you marketing to? Are you selling a book to the MSNBC crowd or the Fox News crowd? There’s very little in between.”

To wit: “Butler: The Untold Story of the Near Assassination of Donald Trump and the Fight for America’s Heartland,” by conservative journalist Salena Zito, came out the same week as “2024” and sold about 23,000 hardcover copies, according to BookScan numbers, hitting No. 1 on the Times bestseller list. Zito said in a statement that she was “deeply humbled by this ranking” and “grateful to President Trump, who interviewed with me dozens of times for the book and generously encouraged people to read” it. Trump posted about the book on social media, including sharing a preorder link before its publication.

“That’s a book that’s being published to the MAGAs. So those books are always different in their numbers,” said a book agent.

This follows other second-term Trump books experiencing lackluster sales. “Trump in Exile,” by the Wall Street Journal’s Meridith McGraw, has sold roughly 2,000 copies since its release last August, according to BookScan. Axios’ Alex Isenstadt’s “Revenge: The Inside Story of Trump’s Return to Power,” published in March, has sold around 3,000 copies so far, according to BookScan. McGraw and Isenstadt declined to comment.

Author Michael Wolff became one of the masters of the Trump genre with 2018’s “Fire and Fury,” which sold more than 25,000 copies during its first week on sale in 2018 and went on to sell more than 900,000. But the writer sold only around 3,000 print copies during the equivalent first week publicity campaign for his latest installment “All or Nothing: How Trump Recaptured America,” published in March. (It has now sold around 11,000 copies, according to BookScan.)

As these books have posted middling sales figures, publishers are finding it hard to justify signing big advances for new Trump books. That’s made it more difficult for political journalists to get lucrative book deals.

“Editors are not spending anywhere near the amount of money that they did this time eight years ago,” said one of the book agents. “The days of just writing a book to write a book and checking the box for someone’s career — those days are over.”

“We are taking on fewer projects in the space because the ones that we do take on, they basically have to rise to a mid six- or seven-figure deal,” said the agent. The person said that they talk with publishers who speak of “a lot of fatigue in the market” and that there has to be “a clear path on either breaking news or a ‘wow factor’ for a book to get that kind of money today.”

The skepticism in the marketplace for political nonfiction, particularly Trump books, has led publishers and agents to try to get authors who are big brand names with built-in fan bases like Ezra Klein or Jake Tapper. Both have seen significant success this year with their books “Abundance” (co-written with Derek Thompson) and “Original Sin,” respectively. “Abundance” has sold roughly 146,000 copies since its publication in March, according to BookScan.

Tapper, one of the most prominent CNN anchors, was attached to Axios’ Alex Thompson’s Biden book project after his book deal had been cancelled. “Original Sin,” which focused more on the 46th president than the 47th, became a No. 1 Times bestseller for two weeks and was on the bestseller list for almost two months. It has sold about 97,000 copies since its publication in May, according to BookScan.

“You gotta have podcasts or TV, unfortunately, these days,” said one of the book agents.

Authors are well aware of readers’ news exhaustion after a decade of Trump dominating the political conversation. “Trump as an angry president yelling at clouds is not news anymore,” said one author of a recent political book. “News is what sells books.”

Trump’s first term saw multiple major sellers besides “Fire and Fury.” Bob Woodward’s “Fear” sold 1.1 million copies in all formats in its first week, and Simon and Schuster called it the bestselling book in company history. “The Room Where It Happened,” the explosive 2020 memoir by former national security adviser John Bolton, and “A Higher Loyalty,” by former FBI Director James Comey, each logged more than 600,000 sales within their first few years of publication.

“[Trump] is so familiar to everyone by now, and people are less shocked by new revelations because it enforces their own ideas about who he is or they just don’t care,” said an author of a recent Trump book.

There have been some other bright spots for the industry this year. NBC News’ Jonathan Allen and The Hill’s Amie Parnes registered success with their 2024 election book “Fight: Inside the Wildest Battle for the White House,” which entered the Times list at No. 1 and has been optioned to become a feature film. The authors said in a statement they “are proud of our unmatched behind-the-scenes reporting on the last three presidential elections and deeply humbled by the response” to their latest work.

Dawsey, Pager, Arnsdorf, McGraw, Isenstadt, Allen, Parnes and Alex Thompson all previously worked for POLITICO.

Still, the broader shift in the market’s appetite for Trump books is clear. During the Biden presidency, books by former Trump aides similarly failed to generate much interest. (Biden books didn’t tend to sell well, either.)

The author of the recent Trump book said they didn’t even ask their publisher how many copies it sold.

“I didn’t go into it being like, ‘I’m going to make a bunch of money off of it,’” said the author. “I had a good advance, and I went into it for the experience of it, and as a reporting exercise, and a chance to put a mark on a certain moment in time that I knew really well and covered really closely.”

​Politics

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz recently sparked controversy by comparing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to Nazi Germany’s notorious secret police, the Gestapo.

“Donald Trump’s modern-day Gestapo is scooping folks up off the streets,” Walz said during a May 2025 speech at the University of Minnesota Law School’s commencement ceremony.

“They’re in unmarked vans, wearing masks, being shipped off to foreign torture dungeons, no chance to mount a defense, not even a chance to kiss a loved one goodbye, just grabbed up by masked agents, shoved into those vans, and disappeared,” Walz added.

ICE, tasked with enforcing immigration policies, has dramatically increased the number of nationwide arrests of immigrants since President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025. ICE’s arrests of immigrants have more than doubled in 38 states since then.

In recent months, other Democratic politicians, including U.S Rep. Dan Goldman of New York, have also compared ICE to the Gestapo, or Adolf Hitler’s “secret police,” as Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts said in April.

But do ICE’s tactics actually resemble those of the Gestapo?

Because I am a scholar of modern Germany and the Holocaust, people regularly ask me if this analogy is accurate. The answer is complicated.

Understanding the Gestapo

The Nazi regime established the Gestapo, short for the German phrase Geheime Staatspolizei, meaning secret state police, soon after Hitler became chancellor of Germany in January 1933. Among other responsibilities, the Gestapo was tasked with investigating political crimes and monitoring opposition activity. It later enforced racial laws in Germany and across occupied Europe.

As part of its daily work, the Gestapo identified and monitored the regime’s political enemies. It arrested, interrogated, detained and tortured suspects and sent others to concentration camps. To identify suspects, it often relied on anonymous denunciations that came not only from zealous Nazis, but also from disgruntled neighbors or business competitors who tipped off the Gestapo to Jews and other people.

While the Gestapo was relatively small in terms of personnel, it projected an image of being, as one scholar wrote, “omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent.”

It enforced the regime’s will and suppressed dissent not through sheer manpower but by creating a pervasive sense of fear. This aura of menace and terror has long outlived the Nazi regime itself.

ICE’s operations

ICE, with around 21,000 officers and staff operating in a country of more than 340 million, is smaller both in absolute terms and on a per capita basis. At its height between 1943 and 1945, the Gestapo had between 40,000 and 50,000 personnel in a country of 79 million.

ICE is set to expand its work in the next few years with an additional US$75 billion in funding that Congress appropriated in July as part of Trump’s tax and spending bill.

And while ICE focuses on immigration, the Gestapo had a more expansive role. It was responsible for suppressing all forms of political dissent, not just violations of immigration law.

ICE operates with vastly more advanced technologies that did not exist in the 1940s, including facial recognition and social media monitoring.

There is technically more transparency around ICE’s work than the Gestapo’s, since ICE is a federal agency that is subject to its work and information being reviewed by politicians and the public alike. But in June 2020, the first Trump administration reclassified ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, as a “security/sensitive agency.” This designation makes it harder for people to request and receive information about ICE’s work through Freedom of Information Act records requests.

Like the Gestapo, ICE can seem performative in its work, like when it carried out a dramatic July raid of a cannabis farm in California in which balaclava-wearing officers used tear gas against protesters.

The Gestapo in today’s world

Since World War II and the fall of the Nazi regime, the term Gestapo has become shorthand in the United States to describe police repression.

Using the word Gestapo to describe the worst possible authoritarian oppression has been popularized in popular movies in everything from the 1943 film “Casablanca” and “The Black Gestapo” in 1975 to “Inglourious Basterds” in 2009 and “Jojo Rabbit” in 2019.

Walz’s remarks in May, though provocative, were also far from isolated in politics. Politicians from both sides of the aisle, as well as political observers, regularly use Gestapo and Nazi metaphors to attack their opponents.

In 2022, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia famously confused the term Gestapo with gazpacho soup in a gaffe that went viral. “Now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress,” she said.

In 2024, Trump accused President Joe Biden of running a “Gestapo administration” as the Justice Department prosecuted Trump for attempting to overturn the 2020 election.

Overall, mentions of the word Gestapo in social media increased by 184% between 2017 and 2024, according to the nonprofit group Foundation to Combat Antisemitism.

The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum is among the organizations that have condemned making comparisons to the Holocaust and the Nazis for many reasons, including their historical inaccuracy and because they are insulting to people whose families remain scarred by the Holocaust.

What historical comparisons really say

Analogies can be useful for clarifying complex ideas. But especially when they stretch across decades and vastly different political contexts, they risk oversimplifying and trivializing history.

I believe that comparing ICE to the Gestapo is less a historical judgment than a reflection of modern anxiety – a fear that the U.S. is veering toward authoritarianism reminiscent of 1930s Germany.

If politicians and other public figures are looking for historical comparisons to modern law enforcement agencies that use severe tactics, there is, unfortunately, no shortage of options: the Soviet Union’s secret police agencies NKVD and KGB, Iran’s former secret police and intelligence agency SAVAK or East Germany’s Stasi, to name just a few.
All of those organizations denied suspects due process and grossly violated human rights in order to protect political regimes – but they don’t necessarily easily compare to ICE, either.

Still, politicians and political observers alike most often turn to the Gestapo and other Nazi references instead.

Ultimately, the Gestapo, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust serve as a powerful, shared cultural reference point. The catastrophes of World War II epitomize the worst possible outcomes of evil left unchecked.

They have become the master moral paradigm and an ethical compass for the world today. In an age of polarization, World War II and the Holocaust remain the mirror in which Americans examine their present.

Daniel H. Magilow received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (although DOGE cancelled the grant in April 2025).

He serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, the journal of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies

​Politics + Society – The Conversation