They came for the “other fraudsters…”

Photo by Daniel Tausis on Unsplash

Heather Cox Richardson is an American historian and a Professor of History at Boston College where she teaches courses on the American Civil War, the Reconstruction Era, the American West, and the Plains Indians. She has written five books. A sixth book is due for publication in March 2020.  Recently, she started publishing “Letters from an American,” a nightly newsletter that chronicled the 2019 Trump–Ukraine scandal in the larger context of American history.

The impeachment proceedings are over, but Richardson is still distilling the news and writing her newsletter and lucky for us.  The newsletter is factual, full of relevant history and well written. Do subscribe.  Then, “read, mark, learn and inwardly digest.”

In her February 26 letter, she noted that the Department of Justice had created a new section to take citizenship away from naturalized citizens found to be “Terrorists, War Criminals, Sex Offenders, and Other Fraudsters.” Denaturalization per se is not new. After WWII former Nazis living in the U.S. who were proven guilty of war crimes lost the protection of American citizenship.

What IS new is that…

“the DOJ is creating a special section for this denaturalization, suggesting there will be widespread denaturalization occurring, and that they are including “Other Fraudsters…”

In other words, the Trump is getting ready to take citizenship away from lots of people, including “other fraudsters” — a category that is meaningless except that it can mean anyone who has annoyed Trump or a Trump loyalist.

To be continued…

Note: Shortly after this post, the pandemic and shutdown came to the US and then Americans took to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd.  This post presumed that Trump would escalate his efforts to dismantle the democracy at a much slower pace. His efforts have sped up, exponentially. To keep pace, I invite you to again to subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter. She helps us understand what’s happening to our democracy better than anyone else I’ve read.