Jacobin weekly editorial digest

View in Browser OCT. 19 It won’t stop with Ilhan Omar Up until now, the Donald Trump–J. D. Vance administration has been busy weaponizing the US immigration system against fairly low-level political opponents: college students protesting US support for Israel’s genocide, independent journalists applying scrutiny to government policies, and random tourists who happened to be critical of the president and his lackeys. Now it’s taking the unprecedented step of turning it against a sitting member of Congress. The federal raid on Squad member Rep. Ilhan Omar’s home carried out earlier this week has now all but officially been confirmed to be an immigration-related investigation trying to strip her of US citizenship and deport her, as sources separately relayed to Fox News, the New York Post, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal. It is just the latest and most extreme case of Trump and his people using the US immigration system and the massive bureaucracy that exists to enforce it as a vehicle for political repression based on a thinly veiled excuse. There’s little doubt this is politically motivated. It’s not just that Omar has already been investigated for this with no charges to show for it, that this immigration history has been a right-wing media obsession for years, or that Trump and his underlings — who have turned the Department of Justice into the president’s personal vehicle for score-settling on his many grudges — have singled out Omar as a target for the better part of a decade, often by flinging around wild and unproven accusations about her immigration history and repeatedly threatening to deport her. It’s clearly politically motivated because they’ve been openly saying they would do exactly what is happening now. Besides Trump’s constant threats to deport her, the wife of one of Trump’s top advisers, Stephen Miller, reacted to the news of the raid by tweeting, “Promise made, promise kept,” before swiftly deleting it. Vice President Vance declared seven months ago that Omar “definitely committed immigration fraud.” Keep reading Jacobin is now on Substack. You can read us here. Here’s the latest… Donald Trump and J. D. Vance have called France’s protests the work of Muslim and Third World invaders. Ignoring the movement’s roots in high schooler demonstrations, they are using violent episodes to paint a dark picture of racial conflict. Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning is a sequel to The Social Network that insists it isn’t one and a political film that insists it has no politics. Audiences have noticed, and they’re staying home. Rick Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church was a smash hit among evangelical Christians in the 1990s. It’s about how to build growing, vibrant churches. But it can also be read by socialists today to figure out how to grow our movement. Order American Socialist: The Life and Legacy of Eugene V. Debs — only a few copies left! Order for $29.95 Written by Jacobin editor Shawn Gude, American Socialist is the first popular biography of Eugene Debs, the railroad worker turned radical visionary whose leadership helped elect more than a thousand socialists across the country during the Progressive Era and inspired generations of Americans to fight back against the power of the rich over our politics and our lives. After cofounding the Socialist Party of America, Debs would spend the rest of his life striving to convince his countrymen that being an American and a socialist was the most natural thing in the world. A rousing, poignant, intimately human tale of struggle against the odds, American Socialist is a stunning portrait of one man’s radicalization — and of the country he radicalized in turn. Order a copy for $29.95 Jacobin Radio: Uprisings in France and Spain with Sebastian Budgen From Madrid to Paris, tenants and teenagers are forcing their crises onto the agenda. We talk with Agustín Santos Maraver, Spain’s former UN ambassador and Sumar MP, who explains how the evi