Donald Trump was already in the classroom when Brown vs. Board of Education desegregated schools in 1954. He was about 30 before women were able to obtain their own credit cards, in his 40s before a Black man led a Fortune 500 company, and in his 60s before the election of President Obama.

Trump is among the eldest of the baby boomers, born in 1946.

By 2030, every person from his generation will officially be a senior citizen. That’s more than 70 million Americans who lived through the civil rights movement and women’s liberation and witnessed the last vestiges of Jim Crow die off. That’s also more than 70 million eligible for Medicare and Social Security.

These two data points might appear unrelated, but in their own ways they are driving Trump’s supporters: Many don’t like the changes America has seen in Trump’s lifetime and would love to turn back the clock to 1946. A handful of his wealthiest supporters, meanwhile, are more interested in ensuring that the needs of 70 million baby boomers don’t get in the way of tax cuts.

During Trump’s presidency, a bloc of conservatives was focused on “making America great again” by attacking diversity and vilifying drag queens. While his base was distracted by his constant chaos and scapegoating, Trump was busy trying to cut entitlements such as Social Security each year he was in the White House.

Now he’s back at it: Asylum seekers and migrants are a favorite bogeyman for Trump this election cycle, and his followers are in a frenzy over diversity. While he has MAGA focused on Haitians and Puerto Ricans, his sights are set on cutting the very programs that baby boomers need. Make no mistake: Under Trump, the working class and middle class would suffer again as they did during his first administration.

One of the former president’s most prominent supporters, Elon Musk, reportedly would lead a “government efficiency commission” if Trump were elected — and you can bet he would find “inefficiency” wherever the government is using tax dollars in the interests of average Americans. Acknowledging that Trumponomics would hurt most people, Musk used the phrase “temporary hardships” to describe what Americans can expect should Trump get back in the White House. And he gave the former president more than $70 million to get there.

Like Trump, Musk grew up in a segregated society — in his case, apartheid South Africa. The world’s richest man spent his formative years in a country in which white men received preferential treatment and in which white people were largely shielded from seeing how Black people were treated by the government. Like Trump, Musk despises diversity efforts. Both are prone to promote misinformation, conspiracy theories and racism.

Oh, and they both pay a much lower tax rate than the average American — the people Musk warns should brace for “temporary hardships.”

On the campaign trail, Trump is promising to eliminate taxes on overtime pay. What he doesn’t tell you is that Project 2025, the blueprint for the next Republican administration to reshape the federal government, would eliminate overtime pay. Both he and Musk are anti-union and talk lovingly about finding ways to pay employees less. Trump has a reputation for not paying contractors at all.

What exactly about this candidate screams “compassionate conservative”?

For nearly five decades that phrase, along with “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” and “Reagan Democrats” has provided cover for white voters who want all of the tax cuts promised on the campaign trail and none of the racism those cuts are wrapped in. Charismatic boomers like Trump have long pitched policies in America under the guise that such a dynamic was possible — but it’s a thin veil, when they use rhetoric such as “welfare queens” and “they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the dogs.” It’s no different from when white Southerners try to defend displaying the Confederate flag as “heritage not hate” while electing officials who want to ban books that paint a realistic portrait of that heritage. Inventing “welfare queens” was never just about saving tax dollars, and the Confederate flag has never been a simple symbol of anything noble.

Millennials have displaced boomers as the largest adult generation, and yet the needs of boomers are guaranteed to be among the nation’s top priorities for years to come, because they’ll be straining the social safety net.

We have got to find a way to have conversations about the future of Medicare, Social Security and other programs without charlatans like Trump and Musk mucking up policy discussions with yesteryear’s racism. It’s tiresome and counterproductive, and the stakes are too high: 70 million Americans are depending on the rest of us to get our act together.

The nation is not only getting more diverse; it’s also getting older. The solutions will not come in the form of prejudice disguised as policy. That’s the world Trump and Musk grew up in, and that’s what they’re offering more of.

@LZGranderson

Can creative stickers help get voters to the polls? What if they featured a spider-like creature or a werewolf ripping its shirt off? Election officials across the United States are hoping so.

Traditional red, white and blue “I Voted” stickers are being replaced by designs that range from tradition-oriented to totally offbeat. Some states commission artists to come up with new stickers, while others open it up to competitions. But they all cultivate regional pride.

Sarah Copeland Hanzas, the secretary of state for Vermont, said hosting a sticker design competition helped voters feel included.

“It just became clear over the years that so many people either don’t know how the system works, so they don’t want to engage and they just see that as something that other people do, or they feel disenfranchised,” she said. “We wanted to make it a focus of ours to break through that, and in particular, breaking through that with young people.”

Test your knowledge of stickers across the country.

Many of these stickers feature scenes, landmarks and animals for which the place is known.

Another common approach is to use the state’s outline in its sticker design.

To preserve some of the challenge, we’ll hide these shapes and offer clues within the questions.

Some sticker designs don’t rock the boat.

If not for their text, it might be hard to tell these creative designs have anything to do with the voting process.

FIRST ON FOX: More than a dozen financial officers from 15 states are sending a letter to public pension fund fiduciaries, urging them to cut ties with China-based investments due to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) control over some firms.

“Trustees of state funds have a duty to investigate investments and a duty to monitor investments and divest from imprudent investments, in order to ensure that those funds grow and are protected for future beneficiaries,” the letter from 18 state treasurers stated to public pension fund fiduciaries, who include anyone managing a public pension fund. “The time has come to divest from China.”

The 18 financial officers – who include some state treasurers – are from Alabama, Arkansas, Alaska, Arizona, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Wyoming.

ELON MUSK WANTS PEOPLE TO SUBMIT THEIR MEDICAL SCANS TO GROK, HIS AI CHATBOT

Financial officers cited a crackdown by the CCP on due diligence firms, which has compromised the reliability of financial audits. They also pointed to CCP interference in stock and bond markets, where efforts to hide foreign investment outflows have been observed.

The CCP maintains extensive control over Chinese companies, including the placement of military and intelligence personnel within them, the letter also states, and keeps the legality of Variable Interest Entities (VIEs) hidden.

CHINA WILL DOUBLE ITS NUCLEAR ARSENAL TO OVER 1,000 WARHEADS BY 2030, ACCORDING TO US INTELLIGENCE

Spectators wave Chinese flags as military vehicles carrying DF-41 nuclear ballistic missiles roll during a parade to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Communist China in Beijing on Oct. 1, 2019.  (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)

These VIEs are offshore shell companies that are often seen as illegal under Chinese law, yet they represent the most common form of investment available to U.S. investors in China. The SEC has warned that the CCP could abruptly declare VIEs illegal, creating significant risks for those who invest in them.

Geopolitical tensions, such as China’s potential invasion of Taiwan, are also of concern to investors. 

MILLIONS OF VOTERS HAVE ALREADY CAST BALLOTS FOR NOV. 5 ELECTION

The national flags of the United States and China flutter at the Fairmont Peace Hotel on April 25, 2024, in Shanghai, China. (Photo by Wang Gang/VCG via Getty Images)

Moreover, there has been a notable decline in foreign investment in China, leading to substantial outflows from its markets, the officers warned. This trend has prompted other fiduciaries, including those from states like Florida Indiana, and Missouri, to reconsider their China-based investments.

“Many fiduciaries, including state pension plans, failed to recognize similar warning signs before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a result, states lost billions of dollars in value that was held in trust for retirees,” the letter states. “Pension boards should learn from the past, or they will be doomed to repeat it. As state financial officers, we urge public pension boards to analyze these issues, to identify China-based investments, and to divest from those investments in line with their fiduciary duties.”

The bipartisan House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the CCP released a report earlier this year detailing how asset managers and index providers facilitated investment of more than $6.5 billion to 63 companies in China that have been blacklisted or red-flagged by the U.S. government.

Under current law, U.S. government agencies maintain a variety of blacklists and red-flag lists that serve a range of purposes, from barring exports to covered foreign firms and blocking imports due to connections with the use of forced labor, to restricting purchases of equipment that poses a national security risk and more. 

Most of these lists do not restrict U.S. asset managers or investors from investing in listed companies. One list that does restrict U.S. investment in listed firms, the Treasury Department’s NS-CMIC list, blocks investment only in listed firms but excludes those companies’ subsidiaries, allowing them to receive U.S. capital.

Fox Business’ Eric Revell contributed to this report.