Politics
Commentary: The anti-Latino agenda behind Trump wanting Americans to have more kids
This is the Year of the Fire Horse in the Chinese zodiac — but for the White House, it’s more like the Year of Babies.
No, not the ones in the Trump administration. Actual babies.
Parents can take advantage of a larger child tax credit. July 5 will see the launch of $1,000 stock investments funded by the Treasury Department for children born in this country during President Trump’s reign. He has mulled offering $5,000 “baby bonuses” and creating a “National Medal of Motherhood” for women who have six or more children.
All this is happening even as birthrates have plummeted in this country for decades, reaching their lowest point ever in 2024. A reduced population tends to relegate countries to economic and demographic doom — look at Japan and Russia. That’s why one of Trump’s big campaign promises was to Make America Fertile Again.
“I’ll be known as the fertilization president and that’s OK,” he boasted last spring during a women’s history event at the White House.
But even as this administration urges families to grow and single people to marry and welcome little ones into their lives, it’s persecuting children in the name of Trump’s deportation deluge.
While the president told a crowd last October, “We want more babies, to put it nicely” while announcing cheaper in vitro fertilization drugs, the New York Times found his administration was keeping an average of 175 children a day in immigration detention — a 700% increase from the end of the Biden administration.
As Vice President JD Vance bragged during a March for Life rally in January that he “practices what he preaches” by expecting a fourth child this year, 5-year-old U.S. citizen Génesis Ester Gutiérrez Castellanos was adjusting to life in Honduras along with her deported mother.
On the same day last month that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy posted on social media, “My greatest job is being a dad to my nine kids and family will always come first,” a federal judge ordered the release of 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, an Ecuadorean preschooler grabbed outside his Minneapolis home along with his father in what the jurist described as a “perfidious lust for unbridled power.”
Just last week, Alaska resident Sonia Espinoza Arriaga and her sons, ages 5 and 16, were dumped in Tijuana by la migra even though the family had an active case to determine whether they qualified for asylum. And Trump’s campaign against undocumented children is just beginning on multiple fronts.
Ayaan Moledina protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they march toward the South Texas Family Residential Center on Jan. 28 in Dilley, Texas.
(Joel Angel Juarez / Getty Images)
The Supreme Court has scheduled hearings in April for Trump’s lawsuit seeking to end birthright citizenship for people born to parents who aren’t citizens or permanent residents. U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi is suing to end policies that protect immigrant children in custody.
Thousands more agents are expected to storm our streets in the coming weeks while the Department of Homeland Security spends billions of dollars to build or retrofit warehouses to stuff with the people they grab. Reports are already emerging from the South Texas Family Residential Center an hour south of San Antonio, which ICE uses to house children slated for removal from this country, of rancid food and overcrowded cells.
Trump’s apologists will claim there’s nothing racist or heartless about removing youngsters in this country illegally — or if their parents are in the U.S. without documentation — while asking citizens to have bigger families, even as the main proponents of the so-called pronatalist movement are white conservatives while nearly all of the kids la migra are booting are Latinos.
But an administration that can’t treat these children humanely shouldn’t be trusted with taking care of even American-born children. And one can’t separate Trump’s supposed pro-baby policies from what this country has historically inflicted on Latino families.
American authorities forced U.S.-born children to leave for Mexico with their parents during the Great Depression, arguing they would become a welfare burden at the expense of white children. Doctors were sterilizing Latinas without their consent in the name of population control as recently as the 1970s. Popular culture ridiculed large Latino families as backward and destined for poverty.
I grew up in a California where politicians railed against Mexican American kids like myself for supposedly overwhelming schools, parks, medical clinics and streets with our numbers. We were supposedly the ground troops in a nefarious conspiracy called Reconquista that sought to return the American Southwest to Mexico.
By the time I reached high school in the 1990s, voters began to pass laws that sought to make life miserable for undocumented immigrants like my father and other relatives, with a special punitive focus on their progeny. The infamous Prop. 187, which passed in 1994, would’ve banned undocumented children from attending California public schools from kindergarten to higher education. Five years later, the Anaheim Union High School District, whose schools I attended, passed a resolution seeking to sue Mexico for $50 million for educating the children of undocumented immigrants.
Board president Harald Martin — who migrated to this country from Austria as a 2-year-old — appeared on NPR to justify his actions by comparing the students he was in charge of to Tribbles, furry little aliens that starred in a famous “Star Trek” episode when they bred in such numbers that the Starship Enterprise was overwhelmed.
“They were so cute and fluffy, nice little things when there were four or five of them,” Martin said. “Then it got to the point down the road when it wasn’t so nice. They were getting in the way because there now were thousands of them on the ship.”
Martin’s example was not only wildly racist, it ignored the reality that Latinos were on the same road to assimilation as other previous immigrant groups ridiculed for their large families. While a March of Dimes study released last year shows Latinas had more children than any other ethnic group in this country as of 2023, the Latina birthrate declined by a third since 2003 — by far the largest drop of those groups.
I’ve seen this play out in my own family. I have 16 aunts and uncles who lived to adulthood and am the oldest of four children born to my parents — but my dad has just one grandchild and probably isn’t getting any more. I agree with Trump, Vance and the rest of them that children bring magic and vitality to communities — but what Latino family would want to raise a family where everything is far more expensive and the threat of deportation is never far away?
In this photo released by U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), Adrian Conejo Arias and his son, 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, are seen in San Antonio on Jan. 31 after being released from the Dilley detention center.
(U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro)
Fatherhood wasn’t in the cards for me, but I love being Tío Guti to my nephew and the children of my friends. That’s why my heart breaks when I hear them say that their classmates left the United States and my blood boils when I hear Vance, Trump and others urge Americans to have more kids. Trumpworld isn’t looking to increase the number of people who look like my loved ones — and that’s something that should frighten us all.
All 435 seats in the House of Representatives are up for election in November, but fewer than a tenth of those races are likely to be competitive. And that number has been dwindling.
One culprit? The nationwide redistricting battles, in which Republicans and Democrats across the country have resorted to creative cartography to draw as many safe seats as possible as they fight for control of Congress.
Based on 2024 presidential vote margin
Competitive districts lost with recent redistricting
Competitive districts — where a candidate leads a challenger by fewer than 10 percentage points — are increasingly rare. That is partly because many voters choose to live in communities with like-minded people, making many areas more politically homogenous and less competitive. And it is partly because parties are able to draw gerrymandered House maps, whittling down the number of swing districts even further.
“It’s a mutually reinforcing process,” said Eric Schickler, a political science professor at U.C. Berkeley.
Presidential candidates won about 28 percent of congressional districts with fewer than 10 percentage points in 2008. In 2024, that decreased to 20 percent.
Four swing districts vanished after Florida’s latest round of redistricting in April. Republicans redrew the state’s congressional maps. The new map retained only one district that would have been considered competitive in the 2024 presidential election.
Nearly 20 years ago, Florida had 14 competitive districts.
Florida
2024 presidential vote margin
2024 districts: 5 competitive
New districts: 1 competitive
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
Texas’ new maps shifted seats in favor of Republicans and in the process wiped out the only two districts that would have been considered competitive in 2024.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20 +20 or more Trump
Texas
2024 districts: 2 competitive
New districts: 0 competitive
Democrats have taken a similar route. Three swing districts disappeared in California when lawmakers redrew its map so Democrats could pick up seats.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
California
2024 districts: 14 competitive
New districts: 11 competitive
Using presidential election results to analyze House races is far from a perfect forecast for the 2026 midterms. For one, voters don’t always cast ballots along party lines. And while voters overwhelmingly turned out for Republican candidates in 2024, the political environment in this year’s midterms is expected to favor Democrats.
But presidential results are a useful lens because of their high turnout and ability to offer a clearer view of partisan trends than congressional elections, which can be highly influenced by incumbency.
The lack of competition is bad for democracy, experts say. Voters have less of a reason to participate if races are not close, and they have fewer ways to force out leaders with whom they are unhappy.
“If you do away with competitive seats, you’re just going to get much less of a response when voters are dissatisfied,” Mr. Shickler said.
House members who occupy safe seats have fewer incentives to compromise or work across the aisle. Many can win by appealing to their party’s base, who are often more likely to vote in primaries.
That increases polarization and can lead to gridlock in Congress, according to experts. “We see that pretty well in our politics already,” said Asher Hildebrand, a professor of public policy at Duke University. “And we’re only going to see more of that as swing districts disappear.”
Mr. Hildebrand points to his home state of North Carolina, which went through two rounds of mid-decade redistricting within two years. Its legislature passed new maps in 2023 that left just two competitive districts. The latest map passed in October shifts one of those districts, currently represented by Don Davis, a Democrat, from one which Mr. Trump won by three percentage points in 2024 to one that he would have won by 12.
2024 presidential vote margin
+20 or more Harris
+10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump +10–20
+20 or more Trump
North Carolina
2024 districts: 2 competitive
New districts: 1 competitive
About half of voters in North Carolina voted for Kamala Harris in 2024. But only about a quarter of the state’s delegates are Democrats.
After the Supreme Court weakened the Voting Rights Act, and with encouragement from the Trump administration, Republicans in several Southern states — Louisiana, Tennessee, Alabama and South Carolina — have moved quickly to redraw maps in their favor. Democrats have threatened to do the same in blue states.
Use the dropdown below to explore how districts’ 2024 presidential election results have shifted in each state that has passed new maps.
+20 or more Harris +10–20
Less than +10 Harris
Less than +10 Trump
+10–20
+20 or more Trump
Note: A court has not yet approved Alabama’s use of a new map.
2024 districts: 1 competitive
New districts: 0 competitive
Politics
Dem who welcomed socialist mayor’s ‘change’ now sounding alarm over billionaire exodus: ‘Gravely concerned’
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A Democratic city council member who once welcomed the “change” from socialist Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson is now admitting he is “gravely concerned” about the business exodus affecting the major American city.
This comes as blue states like Washington and New York face a business exodus in favor of more market-friendly red states. Starbucks, a major player in Seattle’s business scene, recently announced a major expansion into Nashville while simultaneously cutting Seattle-based corporate jobs, a move that has intensified concerns about Seattle’s business climate and economic competitiveness.
Wilson, a self-proclaimed socialist, recently went viral for laughing off the exodus of billionaires and business leaders from her city, saying, “I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are super overblown,” and adding, “the ones that leave? Like, bye.”
Now, less than five months into Wilson’s term, Seattle Democratic Councilmember Rob Saka admitted to the New York Times, “I am gravely concerned,” telling the outlet, “This is real.”
BISHOP BARRON SLAMS ‘BORDERLINE COMMUNISTS’ SANDERS, MAMDANI AHEAD OF TRUMP PRAYER EVENT: ‘ECONOMY THAT KILLS’
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson declared last year at a barista picket line, “I am not buying Starbucks, and you should not either.’” (David Ryder/Reuters)
Saka previously welcomed Wilson after she defeated incumbent Bruce Harrell, saying in a statement, “The voters have spoken, calling for change and a renewed focus on affordability, community, and fighting back against a resurgent Trump agenda.”
He praised the “energy she brings to leadership,” and said he was “look[ing] forward to partnering with her to build a thriving, inclusive Seattle that uplifts working families, expands universal preschool for all, ends food deserts, and creates safer, more connected neighborhoods across our city.”
Starbucks recently announced it will shift 2,000 corporate jobs, primarily in IT and supply chain management, to a new regional headquarters in Nashville. Last week, KOMO News reported Starbucks laid off an additional 61 employees as part of a reorganization of its technology department at its corporate headquarters.
State leaders in Washington have also faced criticism for recently passing the “millionaires tax,” which Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson signed on March 30. The measure has been described as the state’s first-ever income tax, backed by progressives and socialists and opposed by conservatives.
The new tax will impose a 9.9% income tax on households earning more than $1 million each year.
WHY STARBUCKS PICKED NASHVILLE OVER SEATTLE FOR EXPANSION, ACCORDING TO LOCAL BUSINESS REPORTER
Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson said the Seattle Police Department will be required to investigate, verify, and document any reports of immigration enforcement activity. (Katie Wilson for Seattle)
Starbucks is not the only business impacted by the state’s economic policies. The Columbia Tower Club, an iconic business club atop Seattle’s tallest skyscraper, closed last month after more than four decades. Long considered a hub for executives, developers and civic leaders, the club cited declining office traffic and downtown business activity tied to remote work and high vacancy rates. Critics quickly pointed to the closure as another sign of weakening business confidence in Seattle.
On Monday, the Washington State Republican Party ripped into both Wilson and the city council, posting on X, “Marxist @MayorofSeattle Katie Wilson is more concerned about toilet ribbon-cutting photo opps than massive capital flight in downtown #Seattle all the while @SeattleCouncil stands idle as a once iconic city crumbles.”
The jab refers to a recent Wilson event promoting new downtown public restrooms, which critics mocked amid concerns about Seattle’s economy and business climate.
Though Wilson’s now-infamous “like, bye” line drew laughs and applause from her audience, it immediately sparked backlash on social media from conservatives criticizing her economic policy.
“Seattle’s Socialist Mayor responds to exodus of wealth from Washington State by saying ‘BYE’… then laughing. We’re doomed,” wrote Brandi Kruse.
SOCIALIST MAYOR’S BLUNT 1-WORD MESSAGE TO FLEEING MILLIONAIRES SPARKS OUTRAGE: ‘WE’RE DOOMED’
The Space Needle stands over the Seattle skyline with Mt. Rainier visible in the background in Seattle, Wash., on March 13, 2022. The observation tower was built in 1962 for the World’s Fair and remains a popular tourist attraction despite recent challenges with homelessness and crime in the city. (John Moore/Getty Images)
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“This clip will live in infamy,” the Washington State Republican Party posted on X. “@MayorofSeattle Katie Wilson is not only unfit to be mayor, she lacks grace and gratitude. Perhaps, she’s the one who should leave #Seattle.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Saka and Wilson for additional comment.
Fox News Digital’s Rachel del Guidice, Joshua Q. Nelson and Andrew Mark Miller contributed to this report.
Politics
Trump DOJ creates $1.7-billion fund for victims of legal ‘weaponization,’ prompting outrage
WASHINGTON — Shortly after attorneys for President Trump moved Monday to dismiss his $10-billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over claims it had leaked his personal tax returns, the Justice Department announced that a settlement in the case would be used to create a $1.776-billion fund for other victims of “weaponization and lawfare.”
“The machinery of government should never be weaponized against any American, and it is this Department’s intention to make right the wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens again,” Acting Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said in a statement.
Trump has long claimed that the federal government under President Biden went after him and his political allies without justification and in violation of the law.
He has pardoned all of his supporters charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, along with other political allies, while pressuring the Justice Department to bring cases against his political opponents.
His lawsuit against the IRS had been challenged by Democratic lawmakers, former IRS and Justice Department officials and outside progressive organizations as a blatantly unlawful move by a deeply conflicted president.
It raised questions from the federal judge overseeing it — who had demanded answers this week on whether Trump and his own government were essentially colluding to reach a mutually beneficial agreement in a case in which Trump stood on both sides.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, called the potential deal “a stunning act of corruption. … If he follows through, it will be the most brazen theft and abuse of taxpayer dollars by any president in American history.”
Blanche defended the settlement Monday as similar to one reached during the Obama administration to address claims that the U.S. Department of Agriculture had systematically discriminated against Native American ranchers and farmers for decades.
However, experts said the creation of a fund for Trump’s political allies, as part of a deal to settle a lawsuit he had personally brought against his own government, was completely unprecedented — and concerning.
“Essentially the president is on both sides of the ‘vs.’ [in the lawsuit], and has control over the very agency that is responsible for offering the funds, in settlement of a lawsuit that he has brought in his own personal capacity, along with members of this family,” said Bhattacharyya, legal director at the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown Law. “That has never, ever, ever happened before. No former president of the United States would have been so brazen.”
The lawsuit is one of numerous legal attacks by Trump and his administration against a wide range of the president’s perceived enemies, including universities, media outlets and law firms. A number of those cases were settled with promised payments to a future Trump presidential library, funds sent to the federal government, cash for workforce development programs and free legal work.
The Justice Department said the new “weaponization” fund will be paid for out of the federal Judgment Fund, which is a permanent appropriation by Congress and administered by the U.S. Treasury. It was created to ensure that settlements by and judgments against the government could be paid out without individual appropriations being made each time.
The Justice Department said the fund will cease processing claims no later than Dec. 1, 2028 — shortly before Trump is set to leave office — and that the fund will consist of five members appointed by the attorney general, with the president having removal power.
In a separate court filing Monday in the case, 93 Democrat House members also blasted the potential IRS deal.
“Should this lawsuit achieve Plaintiffs’ desired ends, it would result in the improper and unconstitutional transfer of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of the President, his family, and his allies,” the filing reads.
The initial complaint, brought by Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, and the Trump Organization, focused on leaks by a former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, to the New York Times and ProPublica of tax information for Trump and other wealthy individuals.
Littlejohn pleaded guilty to the unauthorized disclosure of tax information and was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024.
Progressive legal organizations and former IRS and Justice Department officials have also spoken out against the president’s lawsuit and the looming settlement.
The progressive legal organization Democracy Forward had previously filed a brief in court challenging Trump’s lawsuit as raising serious legal concerns. The February brief was filed on behalf of two other groups — Common Cause and the Project on Government Oversight — as well as four former federal officials, including former IRS Commissioner John Koskinen.
The brief argued that the lawsuit was significantly flawed and barred by a statute of limitation, but also raised “serious concerns about collusive litigation tactics,” and that the court “should exercise its inherent authority to proactively manage” it.
“This case is extraordinary because the President controls both sides of the litigation, which raises the prospect of collusive litigation tactics. Collusive litigation threatens the integrity of the judicial process by risking the Court’s entanglement in an illegitimate proceeding,” the filing said.
The complaint “was filed too late, against the wrong party, and for an unsupported and excessive sum of damages,” the filing said.
Last week, Brandon DeBot, a senior attorney advisor and policy director at the Tax Law Center at New York University Law, and Dave Hubbert, a senior fellow at the center, wrote that the lawsuit was “absurd,” and that a settlement — particularly one in which the IRS would agree to drop any audits of Trump, his family and their businesses — would be “deeply concerning.”
They wrote that the Justice Department has no authority to negotiate any such terms, and that “negotiations involving the President and White House officials to end audits of the President, his family, and his businesses risk violating laws protecting against political interference in tax administration.”
They noted that Congress had “strengthened the tax code’s protections against political interference on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis following public revelation of President Nixon’s failed attempts to use the IRS to target political enemies,” and that any moves by anyone in the White House to “directly or indirectly” request an audit of the president be suspended would violate the law.
Bhattacharyya, who previously oversaw complex settlement cases at the Justice Department, said the “mechanism” by which any such settlement could be used to facilitate payments directly to Trump’s allies would seem to “deviate” from guidelines for the disbursement of settlements to third parties not part of the initial litigation.
Bhattacharyya said such third-party disbursements were banned under Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions during Trump’s first term, allowed under very narrow circumstances in environmental and pollution cases under Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland during the Biden administration, and then barred again by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in Trump’s second term, before her recent ouster.
A settlement in Trump’s IRS case being distributed to his supporters “would seem to deviate from all of those guidelines,” she said. “It would violate all of them.”
Trump’s legal maneuverings against the IRS come amid wider concerns about mismanagement at the agency and a wider battle over its providing the sensitive data of other taxpayers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, at the Trump administration’s direction.
Trump removed IRS Commissioner Billy Long in August 2025, allowed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to serve as acting commissioner for a time and then created the new position of IRS “CEO,” which congressional Democrats have railed against as a “fake” position designed to avoid congressional oversight while the agency falls into “chaos.”
Congressional Democrats have also demanded answers about the release of taxpayer data to ICE, ostensibly for the purposes of deporting taxpayers who lack proper documentation to be in the country as part of Trump’s massive deportation campaign.
“The IRS now admits that this system led to exactly the kinds of grave mistakes our taxpayer privacy laws were designed to prevent,” Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and several other senators wrote in February.
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