In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
Podcast: On democracy's doomsayers
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U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem on January 7, 2026 in Brownsville, Texas.
(Photo by Michael Gonzalez/Getty Images)
From “Alternative Facts” to Outright Lies
Jan 16, 2026
The Trump administration has always treated truth as an inconvenience. Nearly a decade ago, Kellyanne Conway gave the country a phrase that instantly became shorthand for the administration’s worldview: “alternative facts.” She used it to defend false claims about the size of Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd, insisting that the White House was simply offering a different version of reality despite clear photographic evidence to the contrary.
That moment was a blueprint.
It signaled that this administration would not merely spin or shade the truth—it would replace it. And today, as the country reels from the killing of Renee Nicole Good by ICE agent Jonathan Ross in Minneapolis, we are watching the full evolution of that blueprint in action.
Just over two hours after Good was shot, the Department of Homeland Security—under Secretary Kristi Noem—issued a statement defending the agent and labeling Good a “domestic terrorist.” This was before any independent investigation, before the release of full footage, and before the public had any verified facts.
In a tense, nearly 20‑minute interview on CNN, Jake Tapper pressed Noem repeatedly on how she could justify such a definitive accusation so quickly. Noem doubled down, claiming DHS had “unpublished video evidence” and insisting, “We all saw what happened,” even though the available footage raised more questions than answers.
Ross’s own cell phone video captured him calling Good a “f***ing b****” moments after firing into her vehicle as it appeared to turn away. Whether he was struck by the car remains unclear. Yet the administration’s narrative was locked in place within hours.
This is not fact‑finding. This is fact‑dictating.
Conway’s “alternative facts” were widely mocked at the time, but they were also a warning. The phrase normalized the idea that truth is optional—something a government can curate, edit, or discard. It was an early form of political gaslighting, a strategy that critics noted was designed to control public discussion by blurring the line between fact and fiction.
That strategy has hardened into something more dangerous: a government willing to prejudge a dead woman within hours of her killing, while demanding patience and deference for the armed agent who shot her.
Noem’s insistence that Good’s death was “absolutely” what DHS claimed it to be—despite the absence of an independent investigation—shows how deeply the administration’s contempt for factual rigor has become embedded in its governing style.
When a government decides that truth is negotiable, accountability becomes impossible.
Labeling Good a “domestic terrorist” before investigators have even reconstructed the scene is not just reckless—it is a message. It tells federal agents that the administration will protect them before knowing what happened. It tells grieving families that their loved ones’ reputations are expendable. And it tells the public that the government’s version of events will always outrank the evidence.
This is the logical endpoint of “alternative facts”: a state that does not wait for the truth because it does not need the truth.
Why This Moment Matters
The protests erupting across the country are not only about the shooting itself. They are about a government that has abandoned the basic democratic expectation that facts come before conclusions. They are about a pattern that began with something as seemingly trivial as lying about crowd size and has now escalated into preemptively criminalizing a dead woman to justify a shooting.
The Trump administration has spent years eroding the public’s ability to trust what it sees, hears, and knows. Conway gave the country the vocabulary. Noem is giving it the consequences.
A democracy cannot function when its leaders treat truth as a political tool. And the American public should not accept a government that decides guilt or innocence before the facts are known—especially when a life has been taken.
If the Trump administration wants to restore trust, it must start with something radical: telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But that would require abandoning the very strategy that has defined it from the beginning.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his wife Rama Duwaji wave after his ceremonial inauguration as mayor at City Hall on Jan. 1, 2026, in New York.
(Spencer Platt/Getty Images/TNS)
Zohran Mamdani’s call for warm ‘collectivism’ is dead on arrival
Jan 15, 2026
The day before the Trump administration captured and extradited Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, many on the right (including yours truly) had a field day mocking something the newly minted mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, said during his inaugural address.
The proud member of the Democratic Socialists of America proclaimed: “We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”
The phrase “warmth of collectivism” offended many of us because “collectivism” is widely understood as a generic label for extreme left-wing political systems.
Understandably, the following night’s big news — the socialist dictator of Venezuela, itself a shining example of “warm collectivism,” being removed at the point of a gun(boat) — quieted the ideological brouhaha.
But I think it’s worth returning to something else Mamdani said in his inaugural address, and in that same sentence: “rugged individualism.”
The term “rugged individualism” was coined by President Hoover in 1928. But we have Democrats to thank for its immortality because Democrats — and democratic socialists — have been running against it, and against Hoover, ever since. FDR campaigned in 1932 by denouncing Hoover’s “doctrine of American individualism” and never really stopped suggesting that Hoover and his party were fanatically anti-government, favoring “devil take the hindmost” capitalism.
The attacks on Hoover and conservatives generally as libertarian zealots remain ingrained in the popular, journalistic and academic imagination to this day. And they were unfair from the start. A progressive Republican who’d served in the Wilson administration, Hoover was never the heartless advocate of do-nothing austerity his opponents painted. Indeed, government spending during Hoover’s four years in office nearly doubled in real terms (and, yes, Republicans controlled Congress).
For generations the hard left has framed every debate as between frigid rapacious capitalism and nurturing, warm government help. The right often offers the mirror image of the American dream and free enterprise versus sinister un-American collectivism in one form or another.
This framing fuels political dysfunction and popular distrust because it renders political combatants blind to the reality of the status quo: America is neither a free market utopia nor a free market dystopia. Indeed, as an actual free market fanboy myself, I cringe when people call Trump a champion of unfettered capitalism. State capitalism, maybe. But protectionism and industrial policy is not the capitalism of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek.
The suggestion that capitalism in America has no fetters is hard to square with the existence of a vast apparatus of regulatory agencies — FCC, SEC, EPA, OSHA, FHA, etc. — or the fact that roughly half of all federal spending goes to entitlement programs, chiefly Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
It is flatly preposterous to look at New York City in 2026 — or in 1986, or even 1936 — and see devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism at work. The city budget Mamdani inherited spends $19.26 billion on public assistance. That money sits atop billions more in state and federal spending. There is a vast network of social workers, health and safety inspectors, sanitation workers and educators among its more than 300,000 employees. Maybe they don’t have enough. But that’s not a regime of “rugged individualism” either.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, who spoke at the Mamdani ceremony last week, repeated his refrain about the need for the rich to pay their “fair share.” In 2022, millionaires in NYC made up less than 1% of tax filers, yet they paid 40% of city income taxes. Is that a “fair share”? People can disagree, but it ain’t nothing.
Maybe it’s bad that the top 10% of American tax filers make nearly half of the income in America — and provide three-quarters of the income tax revenues. Maybe it’s good that the average wage earner will receive more in entitlements than they paid in. Maybe it’s right that the poorest 20% of Americans receive roughly $6 from the government for every dollar they pay in taxes. Perhaps we should be ashamed that we spend less than France on social welfare programs but more than Switzerland and the Netherlands. Reasonable people will differ.
But that’s the point. Talking about an America that doesn’t exist is unreasonable. It makes it harder to offer reasonable proposals for government action in any ideological direction. If people believe that the status quo is wild west capitalism, then even attempts to cut red tape or reform public assistance sound cruel and unnecessary. And if the existing safety net counts as “rugged individualism” to politicians like Mamdani, you can’t — or at least I can’t — blame critics for fearing his vision of “warm collectivism.”
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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Police tape surrounds a vehicle suspected to be involved in a shooting by an ICE agent during federal law enforcement operations on January 07, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
(Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
The Lie of “Safe” State Violence in America: Montgomery Then, Minneapolis Now
Jan 14, 2026
Once again, the nation watched in horror as a 37-year-old woman was shot and killed by an ICE agent in Minneapolis. The incident was caught on video. Neighbors saw it happen, their disbelief clear. The story has been widely reported, but hearing it again does not make it any less violent. Video suggest, there was a confrontation. The woman tried to drive away. An agent stepped in front of her car. Multiple shots went through the windshield. Witnesses told reporters that a physician at the scene attempted to provide aid but was prevented from approaching the vehicle, a claim that federal authorities have not publicly addressed. That fact, if accurate, should trouble us most.
What happened on that street was more than just a tragic mistake. It was a moral challenge to our society, asking for more than just shock or sadness. This moment makes us ask: what kind of nation have we created, and what violence have we come to see as normal? We need to admit our shared responsibility, knowing that our daily choices and silence help create a culture where this violence is accepted. Including ourselves in this 'we' makes us care more deeply and pushes us to act, not just reflect.
More than 60 years ago, Vernon Johns, the Black Baptist preacher whose 1957 sermon “It Is Safe to Murder Negroes in Montgomery” stunned his contemporaries, named this condition plainly. His sermon, "It Is Safe to Murder Negroes in Montgomery," did not court provocation. He named the routine devaluation of Black life, the normalization of racial violence cloaked in law, and the moral rot of a society that witnesses brutality, regrets, and returns to business as usual. “When you stand by and watch your brothers and sisters being lynched,” he warned, “it is as if you stood by while Christ was crucified.”
Civil rights scholars and historians have long argued that state violence rarely turns on individual error alone, but on systems that normalize force against certain populations. It comes from systems that treat some lives as less valuable. Whether it is a sheriff, police officer, or federal agent, calling this violence 'safe' points to both personal responsibility and the larger system that allows, excuses, and overlooks these acts. Legal doctrines such as qualified immunity, which courts have repeatedly upheld, often make it difficult to hold law enforcement officers accountable even when the use of force is contested. Federal use-of-force rules can also make actions seem legitimate when they need more scrutiny. Seeing this structure is key to understanding why this violence keeps happening.
The killing occurred during a period of intensified federal immigration enforcement, according to statements from the Department of Homeland Security. It is part of a long history in America, from the Jim Crow South to Ferguson and now Minneapolis. I remember sitting in a church basement years ago, hearing phrases like 'public safety' and 'law and order' used as justifications, just in different forms. The words change, but they still numb us, passing from one generation to the next. The pattern stays the same: Authority acts, a life is lost, a community grieves, and the nation moves on.
I am not a distant observer. I serve as visiting professor at Luther Seminary in Minneapolis. Also, I do not write as a distant observer. As a pastor, I stood with a community through curfews, funerals, protests, and the long exhaustion of being told that what people saw with their own eyes was not real. I witnessed mothers bury their children and people surrender hope not only in institutions but in the country’s honesty. Those days taught me that a 'moment' can reveal the truth. The crisis did not start or end in Ferguson; it was brought into the open. That exposure is happening again.
For years, I have called for an ethic of humaneness, a moral standard that requires public life to respect every person’s full humanity. This ethic is not easy. It says that democracy is measured not only by elections or courts, but by how power is used against the most vulnerable. It asks what kind of society we build when the state’s main answer to fear, disobedience, or running away is deadly force.
This is not just a mere political issue. It is also a spiritual one. Many faith traditions teach the importance of justice and compassion in leadership. For example, the Bible says to 'let justice roll down like waters,' urging us to take real action, not just talk. The Jewish idea of 'tikkun olam,' or repairing the world, calls us to fix social injustices through real civic involvement. These spiritual lessons can help us build a society where civic duty and moral responsibility go hand in hand.
I agree with Eddie Claude: America’s real crisis is dishonesty, not division. One myth that keeps this dishonesty alive is the idea of 'color-blind enforcement,' which claims the law is fair to everyone, while ignoring the real biases and injustices that still shape how laws are enforced. Our problem is not that we disagree, but that we refuse to face our history and how it affects us now. In the Black prophetic tradition, redemption is not easy. Healing requires honesty. A nation must face the truth about its violence to be healed.
Seen this way, the killing in Minneapolis is not just a bad policy or a mistake. It reveals the weakness of our moral values and how easily we let legality take the place of justice. Officials have described the killing as a “tragedy,” language that suggests inevitability rather than accountability. Instead, we should use words like "breach" or "violation," which highlight responsibility and the choices and systems that led to this. Right appropriation of our language helps us see the problem more clearly and push us toward real change.
There will be investigations, official statements, and maybe calls for healing. But these things alone are not enough. Vernon Johns said that moments like this call for repentance, a real change from old ways to justice. Repentance means seeing silence as agreement and refusing to believe anyone is just a bystander. We will speak out against injustice wherever we see it. We will hold ourselves responsible by acting—through peaceful protest, voting, or supporting laws that demand change. We will question the stories that let injustice continue. Our voices will be heard, and our actions will show our commitment to justice.
John knew that details matter. He named the city, the year, and the pattern. When we speak in general terms, it lets people avoid responsibility. As historians of racial violence have noted, episodes like this echo a long American pattern, from the Jim Crow South to Ferguson and now Minneapolis.
So what is required of us now?
Will we, as a society, choose to break down the systems that allow this violence, or will we keep ignoring the calls for justice? First, we must stop keeping our distance. This killing is not just about policy or one agent; it is about America’s promise. State violence happens in our name. Being a citizen in a democracy means taking part, not just watching.
Second, we must commit to an ethic of humaneness that can truly change public life. This means demanding real accountability, creating systems that care for people instead of controlling them, and rejecting political stories that make us see our neighbors as threats instead of people with dignity.
Finally, we must have the courage to speak and act with honesty. Prophetic language is often seen as anger, but it is really an act of love. It keeps society from lying to itself and losing its moral way. Vernon Johns spoke out not because he hated America, but because he believed it could be better. That belief still inspires people who want a more just democracy.
The blood shed in Minneapolis calls out, as it has in the past. It does not call for shock, but for real change. The question is not whether we are sad, but whether we will change the conditions that allowed this to happen. Allowance for 'safe' murder must end. We need disciplined, unconditional love, not just pious words. Our democracy and our souls depend on it.
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Screenshot from a video moments before US forces struck a boat in international waters off Venezuela, September 2.
Screenshot from a video moments before US forces struck a boat in international waters off Venezuela, September 2.
Washington Loves Blaming Latin America for Drugs — While Ignoring the American Appetite That Fuels the Trade
Jan 13, 2026
For decades, the United States has perfected a familiar political ritual: condemn Latin American governments for the flow of narcotics northward, demand crackdowns, and frame the crisis as something done to America rather than something America helps create. It is a narrative that travels well in press conferences and campaign rallies. It is also a distortion — one that obscures the central truth of the hemispheric drug trade: the U.S. market exists because Americans keep buying.
Yet Washington continues to treat Latin America as the culprit rather than the supplier responding to a demand created on U.S. soil. The result is a policy posture that is both ineffective and deeply hypocritical.
The U.S. government’s latest wave of criticism comes amid a renewed militarized approach to drug enforcement in the region. President Donald Trump has framed narcotics as “the number-one public enemy” and has escalated operations across the Caribbean and Pacific, including airstrikes on vessels suspected of trafficking drugs. These actions have been paired with sweeping rhetoric that casts Latin American nations as negligent or complicit — a framing that conveniently ignores the structural forces driving the trade.
But the evidence shows that supply is not the root of the crisis. Demand is.
U.S. consumption patterns have shifted dramatically over the past decade, with Americans turning increasingly to opioids, fentanyl, and methamphetamine. According to an analysis of the evolving drug trade, the U.S. opioid epidemic has been fueled by unprecedented levels of domestic consumption, with more than 72,000 overdose deaths recorded in 2017 alone. As demand for synthetic drugs surged, Mexican criminal groups adapted to meet the market — not because Mexico “wanted” to poison Americans, but because the U.S. market signaled what it was willing to buy.
This is not a moral absolution of cartels. It is a recognition of basic economics: if Americans were not consuming narcotics at such staggering levels, the trade would not exist at its current scale.
Yet U.S. political leaders continue to focus almost exclusively on supply-side enforcement. The United States has sharply increased military operations targeting alleged traffickers, launching strikes across the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. These actions have been condemned by regional governments and human rights groups, who argue they amount to extrajudicial killings and risk destabilizing already fragile areas.
Meanwhile, the structural drivers of American drug consumption — economic despair, untreated mental health conditions, lack of access to healthcare, and the pharmaceutical industry’s legacy of overprescribing — remain under-addressed. The U.S. government’s own data shows that the crisis is fueled by domestic vulnerabilities, not foreign malice. But acknowledging that would require political courage and policy investment. Blaming Latin America is easier.
This dynamic has played out for decades. Hardline security responses in Latin America have “not pacified the region’s cartels” and have in some cases “exacerbated violence,” according to Oxford Analytica’s assessment of anti-drug strategies. The United States continues to push these same strategies, even though they have repeatedly failed to produce lasting results.
Washington externalizes blame, militarizes the response, and avoids confronting the American demand that sustains the trade.
This approach is ineffective. It strains diplomatic relationships, fuels violence in Latin America, and distracts from the urgent need for domestic solutions. It also reinforces a paternalistic narrative in which the United States positions itself as a victim of foreign dysfunction rather than a co-architect of the crisis.
If the U.S. government is serious about reducing the flow of narcotics, it must start by looking inward. That means investing in addiction treatment, regulating pharmaceutical practices, addressing economic despair, and confronting the social conditions that make narcotics appealing in the first place. It means acknowledging that the drug trade is a hemispheric system — one in which the United States is not merely the endpoint, but the engine.
Until Washington is willing to confront the American appetite for narcotics, its criticism of Latin America will remain what it has long been: a convenient distraction from an uncomfortable truth.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
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