Dear Progressive Reader,

The assault by the Trump Administration and the shock troops of DOGE continues at a rapid pace. The tariffs announced on Wednesday April 2 (conveniently just after the elections in Wisconsin and Florida that were viewed as a referendum on Donald Trump and Elon Musk). The following two days of stock market decline appear to indicate that the business community is not viewing these tariffs as a good idea for either short-term or long-term gain. Meanwhile, almost as if on cue, in the wee hours of this morning the Senate moved forward on a framework for tax cuts for billionaires. It is a key component of what Trump has repeatedly termed a “big beautiful bill.”

At the same time, Trump and his allies continue their attacks on Higher Education, with Vice President J.D. Vance saying in a 2021 speech that “The Universities are the enemy.” The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) responded by explaining, shortly after Vance was picked for the V.P. slot, that “Professors are not the enemy. Fascists are.”—citing Vance’s praise of Hungary’s authoritarian leader Victor Orbán. As Brianna Nargiso notes on our website this week, “The Trump Administration’s unprecedented actions [are pushing] public and private universities to choose between academic freedom and compliance to authoritarianism.”

The President has not yet been in office for 100 days, but the damage that he and his unelected billionaire companion Elon Musk have already done is monumental. Firings and layoffs of more than 60,000 federal employees (as of April 1), plus about 75,000 more who have taken buy-outs, amount to a little less than half of the anticipated cuts according to an analysis by The New York Times. Some agencies have been totally shuttered and dismantled, others have removed (and potentially lost) significant data sets and website information for the public. In the Ancient World, there are many stories of conquering armies sowing salt into fields in order to prevent a community from rebuilding after it was crushed in a conquest. While some of these tales (most famously the destruction of Carthage in 146 B.C.E. by Roman general Scipio Aemilianus) may be apocryphal, the imagery is strong and resonates today.

While global attention has rightly focussed on cuts to U.S.A.I.D. and the Voice of America’s broadcast services, in some ways the depth of this salt-sowing may be most easily seen in the small examples in local communities. Cuts to local telephone services for mental health and substance abuse sufferers, and the elimination of funding for humanities programs in states from Wisconsin to Mississippi to Idaho are just some of the less publicized examples of the deep impacts of federal cuts. One local group that provided support for farmers and access to fresh food for low-income households lost its already awarded three-year-federal grant—perhaps merely because the program included the word “equitable” in its project title. And yesterday, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the green light to a Trump Administration freeze on funds for teacher training programs across the country. More than 1,100 rallies spreading across all fifty states are scheduled to take place today in protest of these cuts and other actions by Trump and Musk and their allies in Congress. A complete list of these is available at: Hands Off 2025 on the web.

Elsewhere on our website this week, Jessica Wakeman provides a look at the potential impacts of funding cuts on North Carolinians still recovering from Hurricane Helene, Glenn Daigon examines the use of price-fixing algorithms by landlords; Isabel Rodriguez looks at the new “Faith Office” established in a recent Executive Order; and John McAulay reports on how Trump’s acquiescence is contributing to a continued Israeli occupation of parts of Syria. Also, Ed Rampell interviews longtime activist and writer Harvey Wasserman about his role in the new documentary film chronicling a late-1960s activist commune and its legacy today; Bill Lueders reviews a new book about one prisoner’s response to the cruelty of the death penalty; and Brianna Nargiso writes about the midwives and doulas who are working to combat racial disparities in pregnancy and birth care. Plus Shuhanee Mitagotri and Scott Weiner pen an op-ed on the importance of Naloxone education in saving lives; Jill Sharkey opines on the need for trauma-informed practices in schools; and, for the first time ever, The Progressive provides a Spanish-language companion to John Gibler’s recent story about preparations in Virginia for potential ICE raids on the local immigrant community.

Please keep reading, and we will keep bringing you important articles on these and other issues of our time.

Sincerely,

Norman Stockwell
Publisher

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