Category: Politics

The burying ground looks like an abandoned lot.

Holding the remains of upward of 22,000 enslaved and free people of color, the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground in Richmond, Virginia, established in 1816, sits amid highways and surface roads. Above the expanse of unmarked graves loom a deserted auto shop, a power substation, a massive billboard. The bare ground of the cemetery is strewn with weeds.

In contrast, across the way sits Shockoe Hill Cemetery. Established in 1822, it remains a peaceful cemetery with grass, large trees and bright marble headstones. This cemetery was created for white Christians.

I am an archaeologist who studies how the past shapes public life. Several years ago, I wrote with colleagues about the legacies of stolen human remains of African Americans in museums. During this time, I learned more about how African Americans often had to bury their dead in unsanctioned spaces that received few protections.

As I dug into this history, what struck me the most was that the different treatment of African Americans in death paralleled their long mistreatment in life. Places like Shockoe have not been accidentally forgotten.

Although its purpose has endured and graves survive, Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground, the largest burial ground for enslaved and free people of color in the United States, has witnessed deliberate acts of violence. As the historian Ryan K. Smith writes, Shockoe “was not, as some would say, abandoned – it was actively destroyed.”

African burying grounds found and lost

This issue of protecting Black cemeteries first came to popular attention in 1991, when the African Burial Ground in downtown New York City was rediscovered and nearly obliterated by a construction project. It was preserved only through the valiant efforts of African American leaders and scientists.

In recent years, similar threats to Black cemeteries and questions about preservation have been reported at the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana, the Morningstar Tabernacle No. 88 in Maryland and a rediscovered graveyard in Florida, among many others.

Like these other cemeteries, the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground has long faced constant perils, from grave robbing to construction projects.

Lenora McQueen, whose ancestor Kitty Cary was buried there in 1857, has been leading the effort to protect the cemetery. McQueen’s tireless work – like the efforts needed at any disregarded Black cemetery in the country – has ranged from collaborating with city officials to purchase part of the site, establishing a marker and mural, and assembling a team to earn the burying ground the recognition of the National Register of Historic Places.

Smith has detailed how, ever since Richmond’s founding in the 1730s, people of European and African descent in the city lived divided lives. By the early 1800s, officials formalized different cemeteries for Richmond’s different ethnic and racial communities.

A 1-acre cemetery for free Black people and another one for enslaved people were situated near the city poorhouse and gunpowder depot. Yet, these grounds were hallowed to the African American community. Burial rituals included long processions, biblical-inflected homilies, spirituals and public displays of grief.

However, the violations of these graves were easy enough. The cemetery was neither fenced nor formally tended. In the 1830s, medical schools began robbing the burying ground for cadavers. At the close of the Civil War, retreating Confederates exploded the gunpowder magazine, reportedly destroying a section of the cemetery.

City officials formally closed the cemetery in 1879, and the site’s systematic destruction began, despite constant objections of Black residents. Road and construction projects cut through the burial grounds. An African American editor at the time denounced the “people who profited by the desecration of the burial ground … when graves were dug into, bones scattered, coffins exposed and the hearts of the surviving families made to bleed by the desecration of the remains of their loved ones.”

In the years that followed, a railroad track and an elevated highway were built on portions of the cemetery. In 1960, Richmond city officials sold a portion of the burying ground to Shell, and a gas station was built atop the remains of human beings.

The struggle to preserve Shockoe

In 2011, the Virginia Department of Historic Resources conducted a survey to determine the eligibility of the deserted auto shop for the National Register of Historic Places. It did not even consider the history of the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground beneath and around the building as part of the site’s evaluation.

Six years later, McQueen learned that her ancestor was interred at the burying ground. Horrified by the cemetery’s state of disarray, she became its leading advocate. Eventually, McQueen put together a team of scholars and preservationists to pursue their own study of the site’s eligibility for the national register. They found the cultural landscape – the traces of human activity that give a place its history and meaning – to be highly significant.

Additionally, the site’s history of destruction was a vital record of the unequal treatment shown toward Black burying grounds in the U.S. The team formally pursued its own nomination to the National Register of Historic places.

In 2022, Shockoe Hill Burying Ground Historic District was successfully listed is on the national register.

Even with this success, the threats continue. Being listed on the national register provides prestige, grant opportunities and reviews for federal projects, but few guaranteed protections. In the same year Shockoe was listed on the national register, utility lines were installed in the area without consulting heritage officials.

A high-speed rail project, if implemented as planned, could violate the cemetery’s historical landscape. Designs for a memorial, while well intentioned, might further harm the site and threaten its national register status if it is not treated as a cemetery with graves.

What the Shockoe Hill African Burying Ground reveals is the need for the U.S. to provide dignity to all its citizens, in life and in death. A cemetery does not need famous inhabitants or marble tombstones to be significant.

As McQueen has said of her ancestor’s eternal resting ground, “Burial spaces are sacred.”

I have sat in on some meetings about the burial ground’s preservation as a heritage expert, at the request of the descendant Lenora McQueen.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

In the Marshall Islands, where the land averages only 7 feet (2 meters) above sea level, people are acutely aware of climate change.

Their ancestors have lived on this string of Pacific islands for thousands of years. But as sea level rises, storms more easily flood communities and farmland with saltwater. Warming ocean water has triggered mass coral-bleaching events, harming habitats that are important for both tourism and fish that the islands’ economy relies on.

If the world fails to rein in the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change, studies suggest low-lying islands like these could be uninhabitable within decades.

Climate change isn’t just a problem for islands. Countries worldwide are experiencing intensifying storms, dangerous heat waves and rising seas as global temperatures rise.

Yet, after 30 years of international climate talks, 10 years of a global treaty promising to keep temperatures in check, and trillions of dollars in damage, the world is still not on track to stop rising global temperatures. Greenhouse gas emissions were at record highs in 2024, and it was Earth’s hottest year on record.

I study the dynamics of global environmental politics, including the United Nations climate negotiations. And I and my lab have been tracking countries’ latest climate pledges – known as nationally determined contributions, or NDCs – to see which countries have stepped up their efforts, which have slid back and who has ideas that can deliver a safer world for everyone.

While the Trump administration has been pressuring countries to back away from their climate commitments – and succeeded in delaying an International Maritime Organization vote on a global plan to tax greenhouse gas emissions from shipping after threatening other counties with sanctions, visa restrictions and port fees if they supported it – many countries are still pressing ahead.

Trump agitates, but many countries are steadfast

U.S. President Donald Trump, whose administration came into office vowing to eliminate climate regulations and boost the fossil fuel industry, derided concerns about climate change in his Sept. 23, 2025, speech to the U.N. General Assembly. He called climate change the “greatest con job ever perpetuated” and ridiculed green energy and climate science.

Trump’s language no longer surprises world leaders, though. More than 100 other countries announced new climate commitments during a high-level summit a few days later.

China, currently the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter, was lauded for hitting its green energy targets five years early. Its rapid expansion of low-cost renewable energy and electric vehicle manufacturing has reduced pollution in Chinese cities while also boosting its economy and expanding the government’s influence around the world.

Chinese President Xi Jinping announced the country’s first absolute emissions reduction goal at the summit, committing to cut its net greenhouse gas emissions by 7% to 10% from peak levels by 2035. China also committed to nearly triple its solar and wind power capacity and expand reforestation efforts.

While advocates and other governments had hoped for a stronger announcement from China, the new goals mark an important shift from the country’s earlier carbon intensity targets, which aimed to decrease the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of economic output but still allowed emissions to grow over time.

The European Union has yet to submit its new commitments, but the group of 27 European countries delivered a letter of intent, saying it would commit to a 66% to 72% collective decrease in net greenhouse gas emissions by 2035 compared with 1990 levels. Europe has seen a swift rise in renewable energy, up sharply since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine put the continent’s natural gas supplies in jeopardy.

The EU has also made waves by extending its carbon pricing rules beyond its borders.

The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, scheduled to begin in January 2026, will be the first system to charge for the climate impact of imported goods coming into Europe from countries that don’t have carbon prices similar to the EU’s. The measure, meant to even the playing field for EU industries, sets a global precedent for linking carbon emissions to trade.

However, the EU’s climate plans are also facing some headwinds. Its parliament is moving toward softening new corporate sustainability requirements after pressure from companies. And it may face calls from some member countries to delay a new carbon market meant to cut emissions from road transportation and buildings, Politico reported.

The EU has pledged to mobilize up to 300 billion Euros (about US$350 billion) to support the global clean energy transition in developing countries.

The United Kingdom, Japan and Australia submitted their most ambitious targets to date. All three put them on track to reach net-zero emissions by 2050, meaning any greenhouse gases they emit will be offset by projects that avoid carbon emissions or remove carbon from the atmosphere.

In Australia, Queensland’s recent announcement that it would extend existing coal power plant use to the 2030s and 2040s may slow national progress. But Queensland also supports scaling up renewable energy and is still aiming for net-zero emissions by 2050.

Norway committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by at least 70% by 2035 compared with 1990 levels, which would align with the Paris Agreement goal to keep global emissions below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). However, it plans to remain a major oil and gas exporter.

Notably, many developing countries also stepped up their commitments.

Brazil pledged a net emissions reduction of 59% to 67% by 2035 and is maintaining its 2050 net-zero target. The government also drew criticism for approving plans for oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon River.

Free riding and taking cover behind the US

However, while some new climate commitments signal important momentum in the fight against climate change, the tug-of-war between global ambition to slow climate change and strategic self-interests was palpable at the New York summit. The responses to Trump’s remarks revealed both veiled critiques and deceleration of climate action by some governments.

China criticized backsliding by some countries, without naming names.

Brazil used the summit to call out countries that were late in submitting their updated climate commitments. Only about a third had submitted their updated pledges at that point.

While it is difficult to parse out individual country motivations – economic stress, wars and political influence can all play a role – many scholars worry that U.S. backsliding will lead other countries to reduce their climate commitments, and some recent pledges appear to back this up.

Many petroleum-producing countries missed the U.N. pledge deadline. Qatar, which recently gifted the U.S. a jet plane for Trump’s use and has an economy largely bolstered by the oil and gas industry, has not updated its pledge since 2021. The six-member Gulf Cooperation Council’s average emissions reduction target is even lower than Qatar’s, at around 21.6% by 2030.

Similarly, Argentina, among the world’s top holders of shale oil and gas reserves, has not released its updated commitments. Progress on its previous commitment has been undermined by political shifts since President Javier Milei’s election in 2023.

Milei initially vowed to abandon the 2030 agenda entirely and withdraw from the Paris Agreement, though his administration later backtracked. His dismissal of climate change as a “socialist lie” has aligned Argentina closely with Trump, culminating in a recently planned US$20 billion aid package from the U.S. to Argentina and raising questions about whether Argentina’s climate stance reflects genuine policy or geopolitical strategy.

Also noticeably absent are commitments from India, Mexico, South Africa and Saudi Arabia. Angola weakened its climate pledge, citing lack of international funding.

A new way to make climate commitments?

While many countries are promising progress to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the commitments formally submitted as of Oct. 20 were still far below the level needed to keep global temperatures from rising by 2 C (3.6 F), let alone 1.5 C.

To help boost national efforts and accountability, Brazil has proposed a new approach it calls a globally determined contribution. Unlike the 1997 Kyoto Protocol framework, which set fixed, country-specific emission reduction targets based on historical baselines, or the 2015 Paris Agreement’s pledge-as-you-can system, it would establish global targets aligned with the Paris Agreement’s temperature goals.

So, a globally determined contribution might state, for example, that the world will triple its renewable energy production and reverse deforestation by 2030. A target like that gives countries a clearer path of action. The new format would also allow city and state actions to be counted separately, increasing incentives for them to act.

As the host of the COP30 climate talks Nov. 10-21, 2025, Brazil is uniquely positioned to champion this concept. In the absence of U.S. leadership, the proposal could offer a rare opportunity for countries to collectively strengthen commitments and reshape treaty language in a way never seen before – leaving open the possibility for progress.

Wila Mannella, a research assistant and graduate student in environmental studies at USC, contributed to this article.

Shannon Gibson 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

If you’re confused about what the law does and doesn’t allow the president to do with the National Guard, that’s understandable.

As National Guard troops landed in Portland, Oregon, in late September 2025, the state’s lawyers argued that the deployment was a “direct intrusion on its sovereign police power.”

Days before, President Donald Trump, calling the city “a war zone,” had invoked a federal law allowing the government to call up the Guard during national emergencies or when state authorities cannot maintain order.

The conflict throws into relief a question as old as the Constitution itself: Where does federal power end and state authority begin?

One answer seems to appear in the 10th Amendment’s straightforward language: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” This text is considered to be the constitutional “hook” for federalism in our democracy.

The founders, responding to anti-Federalist anxieties about an overbearing central government, added this language to emphasize that the new government possessed only limited powers. Everything else – including the broad “police power” to regulate health, safety, morals and general welfare – remained with the states.

Yet from the beginning, the text has generated plenty of confusion. Is the 10th Amendment merely a “truism,” as Justice Harlan Fiske Stone wrote in 1941 in United States v. Darby, restating the Constitution’s structure of limited powers? Or does it describe concrete powers held by the states?

Turns out, there’s no simple answer, not even from the nation’s highest court. Over the years, the Supreme Court has treated the 10th Amendment like the proverbial magician’s hat, sometimes pulling robust state powers from its depths, other times finding it empty.

10th Amendment’s broad range

The arguments over the 10th Amendment for almost 200 years have applied not only to the National Guard but to questions about how the federal and state governments share powers over everything from taxation to government salaries, law enforcement and regulation of the economy.

For much of the 19th century, the 10th Amendment remained dormant. The federal government’s weakness and limited ambitions, especially on the slavery question, meant that boundaries were rarely tested before the courts.

The New Deal era brought this equilibrium crashing down.

The Supreme Court initially resisted the expansion of federal power, striking down laws banning child labor in Hammer v. Dagenhart in 1918, setting a federal minimum wage in 1923 in Adkins v. Children’s Hospital, and offering farmers subsidies in U.S. v. Butler in 1937. All these decisions were based on the 10th Amendment.

But this resistance wore down in the face of economic crisis and political pressure. By the time of the Darby case in 1941, which concerned the Fair Labor Standards Act and Congress’ power to regulate many aspects of employment, the court had relegated the 10th Amendment to “truism” status: The Amendment, wrote Stone, did nothing more than restate the relationship between the national and state governments as it had been established by the Constitution before the amendment.

The 1970s marked an unexpected revival. In the 1976 decision in National League of Cities v. Usery, a dispute over whether Congress could directly exercise control over minimum wage and overtime pay for state and local government employees, the court held that Congress could not use its commerce power to regulate state governments.

But that principle was abandoned nine years later, with the court doubling back on its position. Now, if the states wanted protection from federal overreach, they would have to seek it through the political process, not judicial intervention.

Yet less than a decade later, the court reversed course again. The modern federalism renaissance began in the ’90s with a pair of divided opinions stating that the federal government cannot force the states to enforce federal regulatory programs: this was the “anti-commandeering principle.”

The 10th Amendment’s meandering path

In recent decades, the court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, has invoked the amendment to protect state power in varied, even surprising contexts: states’ entitlement to federal Medicaid spending; state authority over running elections, despite patterns of voter exclusion; even legalization of sports gambling.

On the other hand, in 2024, Colorado was barred by the court from excluding Trump from the presidential ballot as part of its power to administer elections.

That brings us back to the present, where Trump has deployed National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell protests against immigration enforcement, and bids to send them to Portland and Chicago as well.

From the point of view of federalism, two factors lend this conflict some constitutional complexity.

One is the National Guard’s dual state-federal character. Most Guard mobilizations, including disaster relief, take place under Title 32 of the U.S. Code, which maintains state control of troops with federal funding.

By contrast, Title 10 allows the president to assert federal control over Guard units in case of “a rebellion or danger of a rebellion” against the government or where “the President is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”

The other factor is political.

Since World War II, the National Guard has been deployed only 10 times by presidents, mostly in support of racial desegregation and the protection of civil rights. All but one of these mobilizations came at the governor’s request – the lone exception, pre-Trump, being President Dwight Eisenhower’s 1957 mobilization of the Arkansas National Guard to desegregate schools in Little Rock over the wishes of Gov. Orval Faubus.

In sharp contrast, Trump has now attempted three times to send troops to large cities over the explicit objection of Democratic governors. Such is the case in Portland.

National Guard deployments and constitutional stakes

Oregon’s lawsuit argues that there is no national emergency in the city, and that deploying Guard troops to the state without Gov. Tina Kotek’s consent – indeed, over her explicit objection – and absent the extraordinary circumstances that might justify Title 10 federalization, is illegal. The National Guard, asserts the lawsuit, remains a state institution that federal authorities cannot commandeer.

The two deployments, in Oregon and Illinois, are making their way through the federal courts, and the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene to authorize the deployments. What the court will do, if the cases reach it, is uncertain. Roberts has proved willing to invoke state sovereignty in some contexts while rejecting it in others.

For now, the court has upheld several Trump administration actions while constraining others, suggesting a jurisprudence driven more by specific contexts than categorical rules.

Whether Oregon’s challenge succeeds may depend less on the long and changing history of 10th Amendment doctrine than on how the court views immigration enforcement, presidential authority and the consequences of Trump’s frequent invocations of emergency power for American democracy.

Andrea Katz 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

Political attacks on teaching about gender in colleges and universities are about more than just gender: They are part of a grander project of eroding civil and human rights, limiting personal freedoms and undermining democracy in the name of “traditional” values.

On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order declaring there are two sexes determined solely by the kind of reproductive cells the body makes, and that the federal government would recognize nothing else. The order claims to protect the “freedom to express the binary nature of sex” and bans the use of federal funds to “promote gender ideology.” Legal experts have criticized the directive as unconstitutional and are challenging it in the courts.

Yet the order has provided fuel for conservatives, right-wing politicians and activists trying to remove so-called gender ideology from many places in American society, including classrooms. Right-wing activists are pushing for censorship of educational curricula in K-12 schools and in colleges and universities, and they have succeeded in Texas, Florida and other red states.

Why are conservative politicians so determined to control how Americans define sex and understand gender?

As sociologists who research and teach about gender, we know that gender across disciplines is understood to be a complex topic of study, not an ideology. The study of gender represents the kind of free inquiry that allows people to decide for themselves how to live, free of coercion or government control.

What is ‘gender ideology’?

“Gender ideology” is a catch-all term conservative Catholics initially promoted in the 1990s in response to the United Nations’ promotion of women’s equality.

In 2004, pushing back on the global women’s and gay rights movements, the Vatican declared in a letter to bishops that men and women are different by nature “not only on the physical level, but also on the psychological and spiritual.” The letter stated that the idea of gender “inspired ideologies” that sanction alternatives to the traditional two-parent family headed by men and treated homosexuality on par with heterosexuality.

Over the following decades, evangelical groups and far-right parties across the globe – from Hungary and Russia to Peru, Brazil and Ghana – have used the language of combating “gender ideology” to counter a host of social policies, including sex education in schools, the legalization of gay marriage and same-sex adoption, reproductive rights and transgender rights.

The anti-gender movement is no longer fringe but rather well funded, organized and transnational. For example, 40 countries have signed the Geneva Consensus Declaration, an international pact proposed by the first Trump administration and supported by anti-gender campaigners as a way to deny abortion rights internationally.

In the U.S., where the majority of Americans support gay marriage and abortion rights, targeting trans rights has become one of the conservative movement’s galvanizing issues. A flood of state bills not only ban books and discussions of gender, sexuality and race in schools but also criminalize abortion, ban gender-affirming health care and legalize discrimination in housing and employment on religious grounds.

What we talk about when we talk about gender

How gender is researched and taught in universities has become a key target of anti-gender campaigns across the globe, in part because the study of gender raises questions about the universality of traditional social roles and the inequalities that can result from them.

Gender is a focus of inquiry not only in gender studies classes but in literature, sociology, law, government, history, anthropology and cultural geography, among many other fields.

Anti-gender campaigners argue there is nothing to understand about it because gender is given by nature or God. For them, gender is equivalent to sex, which is taken to be straightforward and without exception male or female.

Scientific evidence suggests, however, that sex is not always binary. In biology, sex refers to genes, reproductive organs, hormone systems and observable physical characteristics; different combinations of these lead to variations in sex. Far from straightforward, then, sex is complicated.

And a person’s assigned sex at birth does not always align with their deeply held sense of self – their gender identity.

Gender is both a feature of individual people and a mode of organizing social life. At the individual level, people have a subjective sense of and embody their gender by dressing and behaving in ways that encourage other people to see them as they want to be seen. A man might wear a tie at the office to convey masculinity. People will interact differently with a woman when she is wearing high heels and makeup than when she goes barefaced or dons a swimsuit. Someone who is gender fluid may appear more masculine or feminine at different times and experience prejudice and discrimination.

Gender shapes societies through norms and rules on everything from what you wear to how families operate, whom you are allowed to partner with and what jobs you are likely to hold. Whether in the spheres of culture, family, economic or civic life, gender roles and norms intersect with class, race and other social differences and shift across cultures and historical eras. Indigenous societies across the globe have long recognized more than two gender categories, and historical and contemporary examples of gender diversity abound.

A ban on learning about gender would sweep aside all this variation in favor of a homogeneous worldview that deliberately ignores biology, history and lived experience. Denying the diversity of gender makes it easier to impose a conservative worldview and roll back rights.

Education as a political target

Anti-gender campaigners view education as a major battleground in the fight over societal values. In the U.S., conservative efforts to ban the study of gender and sexuality initially centered on K-12 education, exemplified in bills such as Florida’s 2022 “Don’t Say Gay” law. But the movement has also affected colleges and universities.

Texas A&M’s president fired a professor in September 2025 after a student recorded her confrontation with her for discussing gender diversity in a literature course. The student alleged the course was “not legal” because it contradicted “our president’s laws” and her own religious beliefs. The university president also later resigned under pressure.

The same month, the chancellor of the Texas Tech University system, citing Trump’s executive order on “gender ideology,” banned all faculty members across its five universities from recognizing “more than two sexes” in any course or classroom.

As the Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors reminds its members, faculty have a constitutional right to teach and discuss “all matters related to the subject matter of a class” without interference from administrators, politicians or government officials. Despite this, states led by conservative lawmakers have used a range of tactics to eliminate gender studies programs or curriculum from colleges.

These attacks on universities are attempts to control thought, subdue social movements advocating for change and promote an orthodoxy that upholds those in power.

Restricting rights, eroding democracy

These attacks on education are not only academic matters. They disempower women and marginalized groups that have achieved some legal protection or rights in recent decades. And they contribute to the erosion of democracy.

Authoritarian approaches to governing rely on scapegoating people, policing thought and speech, and punishing dissent. This is true whether it’s Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Donald Trump’s United States. By prohibiting questions and challenges, autocrats gain the power to limit how people think and control their bodies.

Victoria Pitts-Taylor is a member of the American Association of University Professors and the National Women’s Studies Association.

Elizabeth Anne Wood a senior strategist with the Woodhull Freedom Foundation. This is a volunteer position.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

A grim-faced President Donald J. Trump looks out at the reader,
under the headline “LAW AND ORDER.” Graffiti pictured in the corner of the White House Facebook post reads “Death to ICE.” Beneath that, a photo of protesters, choking on tear gas. And underneath it all, a smaller headline: “President Trump Deploys 2,000 National Guard After ICE Agents Attacked, No Mercy for Lawless Riots and Looters.”

The official communication from the White House appeared on Facebook in June 2025, after Trump sent in troops to quell protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Los Angeles. Visually, it is melodramatic, almost campy, resembling a TV promotion.

The post is not an outlier.

In the Trump administration, White House social media posts often blur the lines between politics and entertainment, and between reality and illusion.

The White House has released AI images of Trump as the pope, as Superman and as a Star Wars Jedi, ready to do battle with “Radical Left Lunatics” who would bring “Murderers, Drug Lords … & well-known MS-13 Gang Members” into the country.

Most recently, on the weekend of the No Kings protests, both Trump and the White House released a video of the president wearing a crown and piloting a fighter jet, from which he dispenses feces onto a crowd of protesters below.

Underpinning it all is a calculated political strategy: an appeal to Trump’s political base – largely white, working-class, rural or small-town, evangelical and culturally conservative.

As scholars who study communication in politics and the media, we believe the White House’s rhetoric and style is part of a broader global change often found in countries experiencing increased polarization and democratic backsliding.

White House style

In the past, national leaders generally favored a professional tone, whether on social or traditional media. Their language was neutral and polished, laced with political jargon.

While populist political communication has become more common along with the proliferation of social media, the communication norms are further altered in Trump White House social media posts.

They are partisan, theatrical and exaggerated. Their tone is almost circuslike. The process of governing is portrayed as a reality TV show, in which political roles are performed with little regard for real-world consequences. Vivid color schemes and stylized imagery convert political messaging into visual spectacle. The language is colloquial, down-to-earth.

Just as other influencers in a variety of domains might create an emotional bond by tailoring social media messages, content, products and services to the needs and likes of individual customers, the White House tailors its content to the beliefs, language and worldview of Trump’s political base.

In doing so, the White House echoes a broad, growing trend in political communication, portraying Trump as “a champion of the people” and using direct and informal communication that appeals to fear and resentment.

Trump White House social media makes no effort to promote social unity or constructive dialogue, or reduce polarization – and often heightens it. Undocumented immigrants, for example, are often portrayed as inherently evil. White House social media amplifies dramatic, emotionally charged content.

In one video, Trump recites a poem about a kind woman who takes in a snake, a stand-in for an immigrant who in reality is a dangerous serpent. “Instead of saying thanks, that snake gave her a vicious bite,” Trump recites.

Talking to the base

While some scholars have called the White House social media style “amateurish,” that hasn’t resulted in change.

The lack of response to negative feedback is partially explained by the strategic goal of these communications: to appeal to the frustrations of Trump’s deeply disaffected political base, which seems to revel in the White House social media style.

Scholars identify a large number of these voters as “the precariat,” a group whose once-stable, union-protected jobs have been outsourced or replaced with low-wage, insecure service work. These workers, many former Democrats, can no longer count on a regular paycheck, benefits or work they can identify with.

As a result, they are more likely to support political candidates whom they believe will respond to their economic instability.

In addition, many of these voters blame a breakdown in what they perceive as the racial pecking order for a loss of social status, especially when compared with more highly educated workers. Many of these workers distrust the media and other elite institutions they feel have failed them. Research shows that they are highly receptive to messages that confirm their grievances and that many regard Trump as their champion.

Trump and the White House social media play to this audience.

On social media, the president is free to violate norms that anger his critics but have little effect on his supporters, who view the current political system as flawed. One example: A White House Valentine’s Day communication that said “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally, and we’ll deport you.”

In addition, Trump and the White House social media use the president’s status as a celebrity, coupled with comedy and spectacle, to immunize the administration from fallout, even among some of its critics.

Trump’s exaggerated gestures, over-the-top language, his lampooning of opponents and his use of caricature to ridicule whole categories of people – including Democrats, the disabled, Muslims, Mexicans and women – is read by his political base as a playful and entertaining take down of political correctness. It may form a sturdy pillar of his support.

But prioritizing entertainment over facts has long-term significance.

Trump’s communication strategies are already setting a global precedent, encouraging other politicians to adopt similar theatrical and polarizing tactics that distort or deny facts.

These methods may energize some audiences but risk alienating others. Informed political engagement is reduced, and democratic backsliding is increasingly a reality.

Although the communication style of the White House is playful and irreverent, it has a serious goal: the diffusion of ideological messages whose intent is to create a sense of strength and righteousness among its supporters.

In simple terms, this is propaganda designed to persuade citizens that the government is strong, its enemies evil and that fellow citizens – “real Americans” – think the same way.

Scholars observe that the White House projection of the often comical images of authority echoes the visual style of authoritarian governments. Both seek to be seen as in control of the social and political order and thereby to discourage dissent.

The chief difference between the two is that in a deeply polarized democracy such as the U.S., citizens interpret these displays of authority in sharply different ways: They build opposition among Trump opponents but support among supporters.

The rising intolerance that results erodes social cohesion, undermines support for democratic norms and weakens trust in institutions. And that opens the door to democratic backsliding.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Democratic Maine Senate hopeful Graham Platner expressed regret over getting a tattoo that appears similar to a Nazi symbol nearly two decades ago and plans to have it removed, his latest mea culpa after a week of damning headlines over resurfaced social media posts.

Platner’s campaign sought to front-run opposition research about his tattoo — which resembles a Nazi skull and crossbones — during an appearance on the liberal podcast Pod Save America on Monday, with his campaign sharing a video of him dancing shirtless. Platner said he had no idea of any Nazi link when he got the tattoo.

“It was not until I started hearing from reporters and DC insiders that I realized this tattoo resembled a Nazi symbol,” Platner said in a statement to POLITICO on Tuesday. “I absolutely would not have gone through life having this on my chest if I knew that — and to insinuate that I did is disgusting. I am already planning to get this removed.”

Platner reiterated that he got the tattoo while out drinking with fellow Marines in Croatia, choosing the skull and crossbones off a wall at the tattoo parlor. He said the similarity to Nazi iconography never came up, including when he underwent physical exams mandated by the U.S. Army, which prohibits tattoos of identified hate symbols.

“In the nearly 20 years since, this hasn’t come up,” Platner said. “I enlisted in the Army which involved a full physical that examines tattoos for hate symbols. I also passed a full background check to receive a security clearance to join the Ambassador to Afghanistan’s security detail.”

Platner’s statement that he would get the tattoo removed came after questions were raised, including from a former top campaign staffer, about how he could have been unaware of the tattoo’s connotations.

“Maybe he didn’t know it when he got it, but he got it years ago and he should have had it covered up because he knows damn well what it means,” Platner’s former political director, Genevieve McDonald, wrote on Facebook.

McDonald, a former Democratic state lawmaker, resigned from the campaign last week after revelations about Platner’s numerous controversial posts on Reddit.

Jewish Insider also reported on Tuesday that an acquaintance of Platner recalled him referring to the tattoo as “my Totenkopf,” though POLITICO has not independently verified the reporting.

“Totenkopf” is a German word typically referring to an image of a skull and crossbones. During the Nazi era, one form of the image was adopted by the Nazi police, leading to a lasting association with Nazism and continued use by white supremacists, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Platner’s campaign did not specifically answer whether he had ever used that term.

The tattoo revelation came after Platner apologized last week for a series of offensive Reddit posts, which he said came during a period in his life when he was disillusioned and disconnected from his community following his military service. Those include a 2013 post downplaying sexual assault in the military and a since-deleted 2018 post suggesting violence is necessary to enact social change. In a video last week, Platner, 41, said he regretted the comments and said they did not reflect the life he has now built.

Platner, previously a political unknown, has made a splash in Maine’s Senate race as several Democrats vie to take on Republican Sen. Susan Collins. His candidacy led some Senate Democrats to question whether Gov. Janet Mills should enter the race at all — although she did earlier this month.

One of Platner’s strongest supporters on the Hill was not wavering on him on Tuesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who rallied with Platner in Maine last month and has endorsed his campaign, defended the oysterman when asked about the tattoo on Tuesday.

“Look, I understand this whole platoon — I don’t know too much about it — got inebriated,” Sanders said. “He went through a dark period. He’s not the only one in America who has gone through a dark period. People go through that, he has apologized for the stupid remarks, the hurtful remarks that he made, and I’m confident that he’s going to run a great campaign and that he’s going to win.”

Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.

​Politics

Republicans have recruited a Sununu to run for Senate in New Hampshire after all.

Former Sen. John E. Sununu said Wednesday that he is running to reclaim the seat he held for a single term before Democrat Jeanne Shaheen ousted him in 2008. Shaheen is retiring next year.

“Maybe you’re surprised to hear that I’m running for the Senate again. I’m a bit surprised myself. Why would anyone subject themselves to everything going on there right now?” Sununu said in a launch video posted online Wednesday morning. “Well, somebody has to step up and lower the temperature. Somebody has to get things done.”

The scion of a prominent GOP political dynasty, Sununu, 61, likely gives Republicans their best chance of flipping the seat after his brother, former Gov. Chris Sununu, rejected the party’s recruitment efforts for another cycle.

John E. Sununu brings access to his family’s fundraising machine and boasts close relationships with members of Senate GOP leadership, including Majority Leader John Thune. National and state Republicans consider him a strong candidate. Early polls put him ahead in the GOP primary and show him as the most competitive Republican against the Democratic front-runner, Rep. Chris Pappas.

Sununu has been in talks with the White House about his campaign and will soon meet with President Donald Trump about it, POLITICO first reported. Trump’s endorsement would be critical in the GOP primary, even though the state’s broader electorate thrice rejected him for president.

But Sununu’s path to securing Trump’s nod — and the GOP nomination — is not clear.

Sununu has long opposed Trump, serving as a national co-chair of former Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s 2016 presidential campaign and backing former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for president in 2024. He penned an op-ed lambasting Trump as a “loser” ahead of New Hampshire’s presidential primary last year (Trump went on to win by 11 points). He later derided Trump’s 2020 election conspiracies as “completely inappropriate” through his position with the Democracy Defense Project, a bipartisan group focused on restoring public trust in election security.

And Sununu faces another former senator, Scott Brown, who represented Massachusetts before moving to New Hampshire and mounting an unsuccessful bid to unseat Shaheen in 2014. Brown was the president’s first-term ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa and is now seeking his own political comeback by positioning himself as the more Trump-aligned candidate in the race. Another GOP candidate, state Sen. Dan Innis, has already dropped his bid and backed Sununu. He’s called on Brown to do the same, but the former ambassador is battling on.

“Anyone who thinks that a never Trump, corporate lobbyist who hasn’t won an election in a quarter century will resonate with today’s GOP primary voters is living in a different universe,” Brown said in a statement.

Sununu, who is also the son of former Gov. and White House chief of staff John H. Sununu, served three terms in the House before defeating then-Gov. Shaheen to win his Senate seat in 2002.

He pledged in his launch video to focus on the economy and “making our lives more affordable.” He also called to “protect Medicare” and “really tackle our health care costs” as expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies take center stage in the government shutdown now spilling into a third week. WMUR was first to report on his official campaign launch.

Sununu starts with a polling advantage in the GOP primary. A University of New Hampshire survey from late September had him leading Brown 42 percent to 19 percent, with 28 percent undecided.

Early surveys also show him within striking distance of Pappas. The Democrat leads Sununu 49 percent to 43 percent in the UNH poll’s hypothetical general-election matchup; Pappas leads Brown by a wider margin of 52 percent to 37 percent. A survey from GOP-aligned co/efficient had Pappas leading Sununu by 3 percentage points and Brown by 10 points.

Sununu began publicly exploring a bid in September, after conversations with Thune and former Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner, then the chair of the GOP super PAC Senate Leadership Fund. Among those involved in his latest campaign is Paul Collins, a longtime adviser to the Sununu family.

Alex Latcham, Senate Leadership Fund’s executive director, said in a statement that Sununu’s candidacy “instantly expands the Senate map and puts the Granite State in play for Republicans.”

His candidacy has also generated instant excitement in the Granite State. A group of prominent New Hampshire GOP donors and business leaders — including Phil Taub, Joe Faro, Al Letizio Jr., Nick Vailas and Kelly Cohen — will host a fundraiser for Sununu in Bedford on Nov. 3, POLITICO has learned first.

Still, Sununu could face challenges in his attempted comeback. While his family’s brand remains strong in New Hampshire, Sununu largely faded from elective politics after his 2008 defeat, ceding the spotlight to his younger brother. His post-congressional work on corporate boards has drawn him early fire from his opponents on both sides of the aisle. The state Democratic Party already has a website attacking Sununu for “selling out to corporations.” Pappas hammered Sununu for “cashing in … working for special interests” in a statement Wednesday responding to his launch.

And his past opposition to Trump could prove difficult to reconcile with the MAGA base, even though it could win him support among independents who can pull ballots in the GOP primary.

Sununu downplayed Trump’s importance in the Senate race in a WMUR interview last month, saying the contest “is going to be about New Hampshire.”

But Brown is working to weaponize Sununu’s repeated rejections of the president, even as he faces his own MAGA image problem after saying in 2021 that Trump “bears responsibility” for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

​Politics

The bloody mob war that is the focus of the new Netflix series “Mob War: Philadelphia vs. The Mafia,” which premieres Oct. 22, 2025, is full of the murder and mayhem, treachery and deceit that have been the hallmarks of the nation’s Cosa Nostra family conflicts.

What was different in Philadelphia was that the FBI had it all wired for sound.

Electronic surveillance has been a major tool in the government’s highly successful war against the Mafia nationwide, but nowhere has its impact been felt more dramatically than in Philadelphia.

As a reporter for The Philadelphia Inquirer, I covered this mob war in real time from 1994 through 2000. Now I teach a course at Rowan University on the history of organized crime, using the war as a case study, and I was a consultant on the Netflix series.

The war pitted one faction of the Philadelphia mob, headed by Sicilian-born John Stanfa, against a rival faction led by Joseph “Skinny Joey” Merlino. The issues were control of all illegal operations in the underworld – gambling, loan-sharking, drug-dealing and extortion. Money was the bottom line, but there also was a cultural and generational divide that had Stanfa and, for the most part, his group of older wiseguys facing off against Merlino and his crew of young South Philadelphia-born mobsters.

But only after indictments were handed down and evidence was introduced at trials did the extent of the electronic surveillance operation become known.

‘Goodfellas kill goodfellas’

Mobsters, speaking in unguarded moments and unaware that the feds were listening, buried themselves.

So here was mob boss Stanfa discussing with an associate plans to lure Merlino and two of his two lieutenants to a meeting where they would be killed:

“See, you no gotta give a chance,” the Sicilian-born Stanfa said in his halting English. “Bam, bam … Over here is best, behind the ear.”

Or here was Salvatore Profaci, a New York mobster brought in to quietly settle a dispute that had gone public after mob lawyer Salvatore Avena filed a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against his mobbed-up business partner in a trash-hauling business.

“Goodfellas don’t sue goodfellas,” Profaci said in a line that couldn’t have been written any better by “The Godfather” author Mario Puzo or delivered more effectively by the award-winning actor Robert De Niro. “Goodfellas kill goodfellas.”

The most staggering piece of the investigation, which was made known only after Stanfa and more than 20 of his associates had been indicted and arrested, was that the FBI had received court authorization to plant listening devices in the Camden, New Jersey, law offices of Salvatore Avena, Stanfa’s defense attorney.

A judge approved the highly unusual authorization after the feds argued that Stanfa was using the shield of attorney-client privilege to conduct mob meetings in Avena’s office while a mob war raged on the streets of South Philadelphia.

More than 2,000 conversations were recorded during the two-year electronic surveillance operation, with FBI agents and an assistant U.S. attorney manning a listening post in the basement of the federal courthouse a block away from Avena’s office. Whenever Stanfa and his associates got together, the feds were listening. Many of those conversations were then introduced as evidence at the racketeering trials that followed.

The conversations proved to be a treasure trove not only for investigators but also for journalists who covered the story as it unfolded and later got access to the tapes that were made public when the cases went to trial.

Blood in the streets

Two of the books I’ve written about the Philadelphia mob, “The Last Gangster” in 2004 and “The Goodfella Tapes” in 1998, are built around those tapes and the investigations they spawned.

Anyone who has written true crime knows that part of the problem with nonfiction storytelling is coming up with dialogue. In writing books about the Philadelphia mob wars that are the focus of the new Netflix series, that was never a problem.

Mobsters from Philadelphia, South Jersey, New York and the Scanton-Wilkes Barre area of Pennsylvania ended up on the recordings, which offered not only details about the war but also included philosophical ramblings and personal asides that provided a glimpse into the world of organized crime as good as or better than any fictionalized story line from “The Godfather” or “The Sopranos.”

Throughout the conflict, as bodies piled up and blood ran in the streets of the City of Brotherly Love, Stanfa and several of his associates were picked up plotting murder and mayhem, bemoaning the loss of honor and loyalty that had once been the hallmark of Cosa Nostra, and belittling their street-corner rivals, the “little Americans” who hadn’t a clue about what it meant to be a real mafioso.

“When you’re a dwarf they could put you on a high mountain, you’re still a dwarf,” Avena told Stanfa in one of several conversations mocking Merlino and his associates.

“I was born and raised in this thing (Cosa Nostra) and I’m gonna die in this thing,” said Stanfa at another point, bemoaning the state of the Philadelphia mob. “But with the right people. Over here is like kindergarten.”

‘You can’t cross-examine a tape’

Electronic surveillance was used again and again in racketeering trials in which the feds not only dismantled but judicially eviscerated the Philadelphia crime family.

Stanfa is currently serving life in prison. Several of his top associates were jailed for more than 20 years. In a second prosecution, Merlino and most of his top associates were convicted of racketeering and jailed for sentences ranging from seven to 14 years.

Dozens of conversations were played for the juries that sat in judgment during the racketeering trials that followed. Again and again the mobster’s own words were turned against them.

Another highlight was an FBI surveillance video of a mob hit picked up on a hidden camera as it occurred. A surveillance camera located across the street from a deli run by then-Stanfa underboss Joseph Ciancaglini Jr. picked up the early morning shooting in which four shadowy figures burst into the deli and opened fire. An audio bug hidden inside the deli provided the sound effects – gunshots, shouting and the screams of a waitress. The shooting occurred shortly after 6 a.m. and just moments after Ciancaglini and his waitress had arrived and begun setting up for business.

Cooperating witnesses were also part of the trial, but defense attorneys frequently undermined their testimony by providing a litany of the crimes – often including murders – that the witnesses had admitted to as part of their plea deals.

You can attack the credibility of a cooperating witness by focusing on his own crimes and his need to say whatever the government wants in order to win a lenient sentence, a defense attorney once explained to me. What you can’t do, he said, “is cross-examine a tape.”

Jurors got to hear mobsters in their own words discussing the mob war. And there was nothing the defense could do to counterattack the impact of those words.

One classic discussion underscored the mobsters’ concern about electronic surveillance and demonstrated their inability to do much about it.

Stanfa consigliere Anthony Piccolo was talking with Avena about the problem with cooperators and phone taps. Both men agreed it was important to be cautious. Avena then told Piccolo that he’d had an electronic anti-bugging expert come into his office over the weekend and had swept the rooms. It had cost him $500, Avena said.

“It’s money well spent,” said Piccolo as the undetected FBI listening device beamed the conversation back to the listening post.

Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.

George Anastasia is the owner of G&A Media LLC, the company through which he served as consultant for the series and through which he was paid, .

​Politics + Society – The Conversation