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Canada, Democracy under attack, Donald Trump, Erasing history, Greenland, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), NATO, Stephen Golub, USAID

Stephen Golub: This Is Happening Now in America

Springsteen punch

The Benicia Herald, July 12, 2026,  by Stephen Golub 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

During Bruce Springsteen’s recently completed “Land of Hope and Dreams” concert tour, his “This Is Happening Now” speech in the middle of each show packed as much punch as his music. He delivered it just before his song, “My City of Ruins” – which, despite its title, is distinguished by its hopeful refrain: “Rise up!”

It’s in that spirit that I share the core of a Reddit post that quotes most of Springsteen’s speech (as delivered at his April 20 Newark concert). Following almost every quote, you’ll find italicized commentary by the post’s author, Chris Jordan of The Asbury Park Press. Jordan’s illuminating remarks back up Bruce’s statements with relevant documentation.

In a few instances, I supplement Jordan’s commentary with my own remarks, in brackets.

For me, the power of the speech culminates in Springsteen’s concluding message. It’s as uplifting as most of his songs.

Here’s what Springsteen said, then, along with Jordan’s explanatory comments (again, in italics) and my additional remarks (in brackets):

Bruce: “Our young men and women’s lives are at risk in an unwise and illegal war. This is happening now.”

The Iran war has been called illegal by members of Congress who say the action was unprovoked and a violation of international law as there was no imminent threat, and no Congressional approval was sought.

Bruce: “There are immigrants being held in for-profit detention centers around the country and being deported without due process of law to alien countries and foreign prisons. This is happening now.“

A U.S. District Judge ruled in February that the Department of Homeland Security deporting immigrants who arrived here illegally to “third countries” is “not fine, nor is it legal.” The deportees should not be sent to where their “life or freedom would be threatened” because of their “race, religion, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

The two largest private prison corporations reported profits of more than a billion dollars in total for second quarter, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

[As articulated by principled conservative authors in The Bulwark’s “A Season of Death and Fear” online post, two of the many other manifestations of current immigration policy can be found in the highly questionable shooting death (and apparent coverup) by ICE agents of a 35-year US resident in Texas and the possibly imminent deportation of a hard-working immigrant community in Ohio that has lived in America legally for years.]

Bruce: “Our Justice Department has thrown away its independence, and it takes its orders directly from a corrupt White House. They prosecute our president’s perceived enemies, they cover up for his misdeeds and protect his powerful friends. This is happening now.”

DOJ lawyers have lost credibility in the courts after ignoring court orders, misrepresented facts and made arguments with no basis in the law, said Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, an advocacy group for former DOJ workers. More than 3,300 attorneys left the Justice Department between Trump’s first day back in office and February 2026, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Meanwhile, only about 800 attorneys have been hired.

Bruce: “The richest men in America have abandoned the world’s poorest children to death and disease, by dismantling USAID. It’s not on the front pages anymore but it’s happening now. People are dying.“

More than 757,000 people, the majority of them children, have died from the funding cuts to USAID, according to ImpactCounter, which tracks the effect of USAID cuts, as reported by the Health Policy Watch. There are also almost a million more malaria cases, over 700,000 affecting children.

The budget for USAID was slashed by Elon Musk, former head of the Department of Government Efficacy, last year.

[A leading medical journal, The Lancet, estimates that within four years the USAID cuts could yield over 14 million deaths worldwide, 4.5 million of them children under five.]

Bruce: “We undermined NATO, the world order that’s kept us safe and at global peace for 80 years. This is happening now.”

President Donald Trump has said that NATO, a defense alliance created after World War II, was a “paper tiger” and that he’s considering withdrawing America from the alliance.

[In contrast, as summarized by the online site Politico, he has repeatedly praised the authoritarian leaders of China, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and even totalitarian North Korea.]

Bruce: “We threaten our good neighbors and our allies whose sons and daughters have fought alongside us in American wars, Canada and (Denmark), we threaten them with predatory annexation of their land. This is happening now.”

Trump has repeatedly said Canada should be the 51st state and launched tariffs against our neighbor to the north, which has resulted in fewer Canadians visiting the Jersey Shore than in recent years, and also secured a political victory for the ruling Liberal Party, which was fading in the polls until Trump’s rhetoric reversed its fortunes. Meanwhile, Mette Frederiksen, Denmark’s prime minister, said that Trump is “very serious” about acquiring Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish island off North America.

[At this past week’s NATO summit, Trump doubled down on his Greenland threat against Denmark, which lost more soldiers per capita as America’s ally in Afghanistan than the United States itself did.]

Bruce: “Our museums are being told to whitewash American history of any unpleasant or inconvenient facts, like the full history of the brutality of slavery. You want to talk about snowflakes? We have a president who can’t handle the truth. This is happening now.”

Trump’s declarations and executive orders have led to the altering and dismantling of slavery exhibits, such as one at the site of George Washington’s house in Philadelphia when he was president, the restoration of Confederate statues and other initiatives, say civil rights advocates, according to Reuters.

Bruce: “While working Americans struggle, our president and his family enrich themselves by billions of dollars trading on the people’s office in corruption unmatched in American history. This is happening now.”

Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, raised $2 billion from the Saudi Arabia government’s Public Investment Fund for his private equity fund and has collected more than $110 million in management fees from the Saudi government, according to Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Congressman Robert Garcia (D-CA). He’s currently in negotiations with Iran, a neighbor of Saudi Arabia, to settle the war.

[Departing from past presidents’ practice of separating themselves from previous financial interests, Trump’s own businesses made an unprecedented $2.2 billion in 2025 alone, including from Saudi Arabian real estate deals, a massive crypto-currency venture with a criminal he pardoned and other crypto deals. Through June 2026, nearly a million people (that is, most of his crypto investors) lost over $3.8 billion on such deals.]

The sum of these transgressions is undermining America, Springsteen says:

“This White House is destroying the American idea and our reputation around the world. To many, we are no longer looked upon as an often imperfect but strong defender of democracy standing for the global good. We are no longer the land of the free and the home of the brave. We are now, to many, America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration and this president’s legacy. This is happening now,” Springsteen said.

“Honesty, honor, humility, truth, compassion, humanity, thoughtfulness, morality, true strength and decency — don’t let anybody tell you that these things don’t matter anymore — they do. They are at the heart of the kind of men and women we are, the kind of citizens we want to be, the kind of country we’ll be leaving to our children. So many of our elected leaders have failed us that this American tragedy can only be stopped by the American people — by you. So join us and let’s fight for the America that we love.”

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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Erasing history, Slavery, Stephen Golub

Stephen Golub: Slavery, Philly and 1984 in 2026

Park Service and Justice Department – Erasing select portions of our American history

The Benicia Herald, [Updated May 19, 2026],  by Stephen Golub 

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub

Illuminating History

The Trump administration is engaged in a multipronged attempt to rewrite history. During a recent trip to Philadelphia, I visited one example of that effort’s egregious excesses.

Inaugurated in 2010, the central Philly “President’s House” is an open-air exhibition that documents George and Martha Washington’s roles as slaveholders. It’s situated where  our first First Couple lived, from 1790 to 1797. Though the abode itself is long gone, the site is anchored by an excavation of their home’s slave quarters.

In other words, America’s first “White House” housed slaves.

The exhibition’s informational panels, displays and videos movingly portray the context and cruelty of the Washingtons’ actions, including the lives of the nine persons considered their “property.”  A loophole-ridden Pennsylvania law ostensibly allowed slaves belonging to other states’ residents (such as the Washingtons, who were Virginians) to free themselves after six months in Pennsylvania. But this was easily evaded by “rotating” the enslaved out of the state, however briefly.

The site is not entirely negative. It describes Ben Franklin’s advocacy for abolition. In a bit more depth, it also tells the story of Oney Judge, Martha’s personal slave. As described elsewhere, she  escaped during a two-day “rotation” to Trenton, New Jersey. Judge made her way to live freely (and eventually pass away) in New Hampshire. George repeatedly but unsuccessfully sought to compel her return, including via a foiled kidnapping attempt in 1798.

All in all, then, the modest several-hundred-foot exhibition has educated visitors about an element of Washington’s identity and our history that typically is not taught in schools. Situated right next door to the Liberty Bell Center and surrounded by numerous other historical monuments, the President’s House serves as an illuminating counterpoint to those other  sites’ legitimately positive themes. As I heard one father explain to his ten(?)-year-old son, “Our country has done some bad things.”

More Bad Things…

Out of the blue, however, on January 22 the U.S. Park Service dismantled the site. Quickly challenged by a City of Philadelphia lawsuit, the Department of Justice contended that the exhibition “inappropriately disparage[d] Americans” as part of an effort to promote “corrosive ideology.”

In deciding the case, Federal Judge Cynthia M. Rufe strenuously disagreed. The George W. Bush appointee prefaced her decision to restore the exhibition by quoting George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984:

“All history was…scraped clean and reinscribed exactly as often as was necessary. In no case would it have been possible, once the deed was done, to prove that any falsification had taken place.”

As she further explained in her ruling, “It is not disputed that President Washington owned slaves…And yet, in its argument, the government claims it alone has the power to erase, alter, remove and hide historical accounts on taxpayer and local government-funded monuments within its control.”

Likening the Trump administration’s  argument to 1984, she continued, “The government here likewise asserts truth is no longer self-evident, but rather the property of the elected chief magistrate and his appointees and delegees, at his whim to be scraped clean, hidden, or overwritten… And why? Solely because, as Defendants [the government] state, it has the power.”

Judge Rufe accordingly ordered the reinstatement of the exhibition. But an April appeals court interim ruling froze that reinstatement about half-way through the process.

That’s where the matter stands, pending full consideration by that court. Supplemented by hand-made signs, the displays again enable some basic education about slavery and Washington’s roles in it. Those roles included signing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793, which permitted slaveholders or their agents to cross state lines to capture escaped slaves, and his own attempts to use the law to seize Ona Judge.

Erasing History

The Trump administration’s planned, whitewashed (so to speak) replacement for the anti-slavery exhibition erases such facts or buries them in supposed context. It lavishes Washington with praise, while relegating his conduct to a few lines explaining  that he considered freeing his slaves, let them “explore the city” and otherwise treated them better than some other slaveholders. It also notes that Washington’s will provided for freeing his own slaves (though Martha’s remained in bondage); with the exception of one man’s wife and children, however, the text  is very vague about who was freed.

I’m by no means saying that we should deny Washington’s great contributions to our country by removing his name from schools and institutions or otherwise dishonoring him. He was a product of his time – though let’s bear in mind that, like Ben Franklin, many in his time in America and abroad opposed slavery. Regardless, in a sense we dishonor him by denying the truth about him; we certainly dishonor those enslaved by him and so many other people pummeled for their entire lives by slavery’s savagery.

The administration’s official efforts to cancel history involve far more than attempts to cover up aspects of such bondage. They certainly embrace recent history: We’re witnessing endless attempts by Trump and his sycophants to deny the 2020 presidential election results, with many such attempts geared toward manipulating the 2026 and 2028 contests. He’s pardoned the January 6 insurrectionists, painted them as heroes and even established a $1.776 billion federal fund that could feature compensation for them and other Trump allies who were supposedly “unjustly” targeted for prosecution by the Biden administration.

We’ve also seen Trump almost literally echo 1984’s “War is Peace” declaration with his claims that the Iran ceasefire is in effect even as missiles fly and people die

Nor am I asserting that America in 2026 is anywhere near Orwell’s 1984. But we do have  a president for whom the novel’s totalitarian catchphrases provide more of a model than an admonition:

War is Peace.

Ignorance is Strength.

Freedom is Slavery.

[Hat tip to Pat Loeb, a superb journalist (and old friend) who is currently City Hall Bureau Chief for KYW Newsradio in Philadelphia and who acquainted me with the President’s House exhibition and this evolving story.]

Benicia resident and author Stephen Golub, A Promised Land

Stephen Golub writes about democracy and politics, both in America and abroad, at A Promised Land: America as a Developing Country.

…and… here’s more Golub on the Benicia Independent

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