https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/business/economy/trump-irs-college-nonprofits.html
Trump Moves to Strip Tax Exemption From Schools That Aid Minority Students
The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.
Listen · 8:25 minutes
Trump Moves to Strip Tax Exemption From Schools That Aid Minority Students
The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.
Listen · 8:25 minutes
Schools like Harvard could be at risk of losing their tax-exempt status under the new rules. Credit: Sophie Park for The New York Times
by Andrew Duehren and Michael C. Bender
September 3, 2026
New York Times
[Andrew Duehren covers tax policy, and Michael C. Bender writes about the Trump administration’s education policy.]
The Trump administration released new rules that could revoke tax-exempt status from any school offering targeted support to Black or other minority students, a sweeping change that opens another front in the president’s campaign to reshape American education.
The proposed regulations, which the Treasury Department published on Thursday, would add another element to the guidelines that schools and other organizations must follow to qualify for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. The rules would deny tax-exempt status to any school, including secondary schools and universities, if it has any policy or program, including admissions and scholarships, that the I.R.S. finds to be racially discriminatory.
Such a change would thrust the I.R.S. into the center of the Trump administration’s push to pressure schools to abandon initiatives aimed at supporting Black and other minority students, efforts meant to address the nation’s long history of racial discrimination and segregation. Trump officials, however, view such programs as a form of discrimination against white and Asian Americans, and federal civil rights lawyers have opened investigations on those grounds into admissions policies at Harvard, Yale and other schools.
The threat of losing tax-exempt status would tighten the financial squeeze the administration has applied to higher education by withholding federal research funding. Last year, President Trump called for the I.R.S. to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status, which experts said would be contrary to a federal law prohibiting the I.R.S. from carrying out politically directed audits.
While schools may still not owe much in federal income taxes even if they lost their tax-exempt status, the exemption is valuable because it allows donors to deduct donations they make directly to the school, helping fund-raising efforts. The rules will take effect after May 31 and apply to as many as 18,000 schools, the Treasury said.
Education groups indicated they would challenge the new rules. Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said the group will oppose the rule during the Treasury Department’s public comment period. The rule is likely to face a legal challenge from the American Association of University Professors, one senior official said.
“Weaponizing the I.R.S. to attack colleges and universities that uphold and expand civil rights is outrageous,” said Todd Wolfson, president of A.A.U.P., which led a successful lawsuit against the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This is blatantly racist political coercion intended to deny minority students reparative opportunities to further their education.”
Beyond education, the Trump administration has more broadly sought to push the I.R.S. to be more aggressive in investigating left-leaning nonprofits, including those that Trump officials accuse of supporting terrorism. I.R.S. officials have in recent weeks discussed creating a faster process for revoking tax-exempt status from nonprofits, according to people familiar with the conversations.
“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Today’s Treasury and I.R.S. proposed regulations establish a clear standard, and the institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status.”
The Trump administration said the tax regulations would draw on a 1983 Supreme Court case that found an organization could not receive tax-exempt status if it was in opposition to a “fundamental public policy.” In that case, the I.R.S. revoked the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school, because the school had a policy banning interracial relationships. The Supreme Court upheld the I.R.S. decision because “racial discrimination in education violates a fundamental public policy.”
But what counts as a fundamental public policy has otherwise been left largely undefined, and the standard has been rarely used to deny a group’s tax exemption. The Trump administration first said last year that it would develop guidelines on the application of the fundamental public policy concept. In June, the Treasury Department submitted regulations on the topic to a White House regulatory office, which approved them last month.
Based on how the Trump administration had described its plans for the regulations, nonprofit experts had expected they will state that giving a preference to Black or other minority applicants in admissions runs counter to fundamental public policy. The administration said it would rely on a 2023 Supreme Court ruling, in the Students for Fair Admissions case, to set a standard for what counts as a fundamental public policy.
In the majority opinion in that case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declared that any applicant “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.” He also said, though, that the court’s opinion should not be “construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”
University officials have said that the ruling allows schools to consider race as part of a broader review of an applicant’s character. But the Trump administration has adopted a narrow view of the ruling, dismissing holistic reviews of applicants as workarounds for universities to pursue diversity goals.
“They will state that what we used to call affirmative action is now a violation of fundamental public policy,” said Darryll K. Jones, a law professor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. “They have announced that they are going to use the new regulations to implement Students for Fair Admissions as far and as wide as possible.”
But Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, was skeptical of whether courts would agree with how the Trump administration defines a fundamental public policy.
“Fundamental public policy is not something that the I.R.S. can just go and grab; it needs to be something that is deeply anchored,” he said. “Clearly, we are quite divided on this issue right now, there is nowhere close to overwhelming agreement.”
The proposed regulations themselves do not provide much detail into how the I.R.S. might evaluate what policies or school activities it considers to be racially discriminatory. The Treasury said the final rules “would further define race-based action for the purpose of ameliorating societal discrimination as a form of discrimination” and delete previous I.R.S. guidance allowing schools to favor minorities in admissions, programs and financial assistance as part of an effort to create a more equitable campus.
The Treasury also said programs targeting students from specific geographic areas or socioeconomic backgrounds could continue, an alternative way that, the department said, donors and schools could, in effect, still support minority students.
The Treasury’s proposed regulations will be subject to a potentially lengthy public comment period that could result in changes. Once the rules are final, their enforcement is likely to involve I.R.S. audits of the schools and universities to determine whether they were impermissibly considering race.
Such audits could go on for months and give a university the opportunity to challenge any revocation of tax-exempt status in court, where a judge could strike down the Treasury’s regulations.
“If a new administration is ever in position, I would think they would revoke these regs, but in the meantime a lot of damage can be done because people are running scared,” said Ellen Aprill, an expert in nonprofit taxes at the University of California, Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Andrew Duehren covers tax policy for The Times from Washington.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 4, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Targets University Aid For Minorities. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
See more on: U.S. Politics, Harvard University, Treasury Securities, John G. Roberts Jr., Edward Blum
The Latest on the Trump Administration:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/opinion/trump-fantasty-reality-politics.html
Opinion
The President Can’t Handle the Truth
Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times
by Andrew Duehren and Michael C. Bender
September 3, 2026
New York Times
[Andrew Duehren covers tax policy, and Michael C. Bender writes about the Trump administration’s education policy.]
The Trump administration released new rules that could revoke tax-exempt status from any school offering targeted support to Black or other minority students, a sweeping change that opens another front in the president’s campaign to reshape American education.
The proposed regulations, which the Treasury Department published on Thursday, would add another element to the guidelines that schools and other organizations must follow to qualify for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. The rules would deny tax-exempt status to any school, including secondary schools and universities, if it has any policy or program, including admissions and scholarships, that the I.R.S. finds to be racially discriminatory.
Such a change would thrust the I.R.S. into the center of the Trump administration’s push to pressure schools to abandon initiatives aimed at supporting Black and other minority students, efforts meant to address the nation’s long history of racial discrimination and segregation. Trump officials, however, view such programs as a form of discrimination against white and Asian Americans, and federal civil rights lawyers have opened investigations on those grounds into admissions policies at Harvard, Yale and other schools.
The threat of losing tax-exempt status would tighten the financial squeeze the administration has applied to higher education by withholding federal research funding. Last year, President Trump called for the I.R.S. to strip Harvard of its tax-exempt status, which experts said would be contrary to a federal law prohibiting the I.R.S. from carrying out politically directed audits.
While schools may still not owe much in federal income taxes even if they lost their tax-exempt status, the exemption is valuable because it allows donors to deduct donations they make directly to the school, helping fund-raising efforts. The rules will take effect after May 31 and apply to as many as 18,000 schools, the Treasury said.
Education groups indicated they would challenge the new rules. Ted Mitchell, the president of the American Council on Education, said the group will oppose the rule during the Treasury Department’s public comment period. The rule is likely to face a legal challenge from the American Association of University Professors, one senior official said.
“Weaponizing the I.R.S. to attack colleges and universities that uphold and expand civil rights is outrageous,” said Todd Wolfson, president of A.A.U.P., which led a successful lawsuit against the Trump administration’s cuts to research funding at the University of California, Los Angeles. “This is blatantly racist political coercion intended to deny minority students reparative opportunities to further their education.”
Beyond education, the Trump administration has more broadly sought to push the I.R.S. to be more aggressive in investigating left-leaning nonprofits, including those that Trump officials accuse of supporting terrorism. I.R.S. officials have in recent weeks discussed creating a faster process for revoking tax-exempt status from nonprofits, according to people familiar with the conversations.
“Schools rebranding race-based preferences as equitable, inclusive or diversity-enhancing does not change their discriminatory nature,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “Today’s Treasury and I.R.S. proposed regulations establish a clear standard, and the institutions that continue to use discriminatory practices will no longer receive the benefits of federal tax-exempt status.”
The Trump administration said the tax regulations would draw on a 1983 Supreme Court case that found an organization could not receive tax-exempt status if it was in opposition to a “fundamental public policy.” In that case, the I.R.S. revoked the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school, because the school had a policy banning interracial relationships. The Supreme Court upheld the I.R.S. decision because “racial discrimination in education violates a fundamental public policy.”
But what counts as a fundamental public policy has otherwise been left largely undefined, and the standard has been rarely used to deny a group’s tax exemption. The Trump administration first said last year that it would develop guidelines on the application of the fundamental public policy concept. In June, the Treasury Department submitted regulations on the topic to a White House regulatory office, which approved them last month.
Based on how the Trump administration had described its plans for the regulations, nonprofit experts had expected they will state that giving a preference to Black or other minority applicants in admissions runs counter to fundamental public policy. The administration said it would rely on a 2023 Supreme Court ruling, in the Students for Fair Admissions case, to set a standard for what counts as a fundamental public policy.
In the majority opinion in that case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. declared that any applicant “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.” He also said, though, that the court’s opinion should not be “construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.”
University officials have said that the ruling allows schools to consider race as part of a broader review of an applicant’s character. But the Trump administration has adopted a narrow view of the ruling, dismissing holistic reviews of applicants as workarounds for universities to pursue diversity goals.
“They will state that what we used to call affirmative action is now a violation of fundamental public policy,” said Darryll K. Jones, a law professor at Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. “They have announced that they are going to use the new regulations to implement Students for Fair Admissions as far and as wide as possible.”
But Phil Hackney, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, was skeptical of whether courts would agree with how the Trump administration defines a fundamental public policy.
“Fundamental public policy is not something that the I.R.S. can just go and grab; it needs to be something that is deeply anchored,” he said. “Clearly, we are quite divided on this issue right now, there is nowhere close to overwhelming agreement.”
The proposed regulations themselves do not provide much detail into how the I.R.S. might evaluate what policies or school activities it considers to be racially discriminatory. The Treasury said the final rules “would further define race-based action for the purpose of ameliorating societal discrimination as a form of discrimination” and delete previous I.R.S. guidance allowing schools to favor minorities in admissions, programs and financial assistance as part of an effort to create a more equitable campus.
The Treasury also said programs targeting students from specific geographic areas or socioeconomic backgrounds could continue, an alternative way that, the department said, donors and schools could, in effect, still support minority students.
The Treasury’s proposed regulations will be subject to a potentially lengthy public comment period that could result in changes. Once the rules are final, their enforcement is likely to involve I.R.S. audits of the schools and universities to determine whether they were impermissibly considering race.
Such audits could go on for months and give a university the opportunity to challenge any revocation of tax-exempt status in court, where a judge could strike down the Treasury’s regulations.
“If a new administration is ever in position, I would think they would revoke these regs, but in the meantime a lot of damage can be done because people are running scared,” said Ellen Aprill, an expert in nonprofit taxes at the University of California, Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Andrew Duehren covers tax policy for The Times from Washington.
Michael C. Bender is a Times correspondent in Washington.
A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 4, 2026, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Trump Targets University Aid For Minorities. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper
See more on: U.S. Politics, Harvard University, Treasury Securities, John G. Roberts Jr., Edward Blum
The Latest on the Trump Administration:
- Revoking Tax-Exempt Status for Schools: The Treasury Department released rules that would prevent schools with race-based programs from qualifying for tax-exempt status, a threat to both higher education and other private schools.
- Suing Over Transition Treatment: Twenty-one states led by Democrats sued to block a Trump administration plan to bar federal payments from Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program for gender-transition medication and surgery to transgender adolescents.
- Hunt for Voter Fraud: Election fraud is exceedingly rare, but President Trump has fixated on rooting it out this year, claiming without evidence that tens of thousands of noncitizens are registered to vote.
- Beef Prices: The Agriculture Department offered new initiatives for ranchers after Trump said he would import more beef. The moves aren’t a quick fix.
- Patagonia Sues Trump: The outdoor apparel maker joined environmental and Native American groups in challenging Trump’s reduction of Bears Ears National Monument in Utah.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/02/opinion/trump-fantasty-reality-politics.html
Opinion
The President Can’t Handle the Truth
Credit: Damon Winter/The New York Times
Listen · 6:37 minutes
by Jamelle Bouie
September 3, 2026
New York Times
Listen · 6:37 minutes
Can President Trump distinguish truth from fiction? Does he know what is real and what is the product of a computer program?
One wants to believe that the president of the United States, cloaked in immense power, would understand the difference between reality and fantasy. One would hope, given the terrible stakes of his decision-making, that he had the capacity to understand and internalize objective reality, even if he did not like it.
But then consider the past week of presidential activity. Last Friday, the president announced a “historic” deal with the interim government of Venezuela to give the United States direct control over a huge portion of the nation’s proven oil reserves.
“At my direction, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, working closely with Highly Respected Interim President of Venezuela, Delcy Rodriguez, and, through a partnership with private business, have secured majority U.S. control of more than 65 BILLION BARRELS of proven Oil Reserves in Venezuela, at no cost to the American Taxpayer,” the president wrote on Truth Social. Trump contends that this will lead immediately to low gas prices.
Except, of course, that it won’t.
Behind the boast lies a murky arrangement that leaves us with a host of unanswered questions. Venezuela’s oil infrastructure is in disrepair — who will restore the nation’s actual capacity to extract and refine oil? Who will pay for it? And given the current instability of Venezuelan politics, including the uncertain role of the United States as imperial caretaker after it deposed President Nicolás Maduro, what are the odds that this deal lasts beyond Trump’s time in office? Will American companies risk billions on the hope that this arrangement will outlast his administration? And perhaps most relevant to the president’s political standing, when, if ever, will this deal lower the price at the pump?
These are basic concerns. There is no indication they have ever reached Trump’s mind. And even if someone did raise these issues, his effusive and ebullient announcement suggests that he paid little attention to those concerns. He wants the deal to be great, and so it is — the power of positive thinking. (And Norman Vincent Peale was, in fact, a major and formative influence on Trump.)
Even more unsettling, on the question of the president’s interest in objective reality, is his use of artificial intelligence.
On Sunday, the president posted an A.I.-generated video of the destruction of Kharg Island, an Iranian stronghold. “Kharg Island being blown to smithereens!!!” he wrote. The post came shortly after the United States military resumed its attacks on Iranian forces. We also know that Trump does not like to receive traditional briefings about American operations in the region. Instead, he is shown a brief highlight reel of destruction, what one official described as “stuff blowing up.” For the record, the most recent Kharg Island bombing was in April.
One would like to assume that Trump can distinguish between footage of actual combat and A.I.-generated propaganda. But can he? For his part, Trump shared the Kharg Island video as if it were real. And it is not as if the president has ever acknowledged the reality of his war in Iran. For six months now, he has said the same thing: that the Iranian military has been destroyed, that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz, that Iran’s surrender is just over the horizon and that both peace and American victory are imminent.
Are these lies, or does he believe them the same way he believed that the crowd at his first inauguration was larger than the one in 2009? Or is he, again, trying to change reality through the power of positive thinking?
There is one other recent set of moves that raises similar questions about the president’s ability to grasp objective reality: his strategy for the upcoming midterm elections. By any measure, Trump is brutally unpopular. His average approval rating has sunk to the mid-to-low 30s, he is underwater on virtually every issue — including immigration and inflation, the ones that brought him to office a second time — and the public disapproves of most of his schemes and stunts, such as his pathetic move to rename Lake Ontario to spite Canadian leaders. He has dragged down Republicans in the House, who are projected to lose their majority, and is dragging them down in the Senate as well, where a once favorable map has turned sideways, as Democrats make headway in Republican-led states such as Texas, Alaska and Ohio.
In these circumstances, the typical president would keep his distance from his co-partisans in the legislature, mindful of the way his presence might harm their odds. Not Donald Trump. He is practically forcing them to stand by his side at a “midterm convention,” where they will defend him and his record to the country at large. This is pure political malpractice. But Trump can’t see it. He is one of the most toxic people in American politics right now, but he is behaving as if he is on the brink of a landslide victory granted to his party by voters grateful for a productive and successful administration.
His White House ballroom, now rubber-stamped by the Supreme Court, and his proposed monuments — even his commemorative coin — all reflect the same belief: that he is the greatest and most popular person to ever serve as president, maybe the most popular person to ever live. (It is not hard to imagine Trump telling the world that he is “more popular than Jesus.” He’s practically said as much.) He even shared an image ranking himself above George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, among others, as the greatest president of all time.
Trump exists in a world where he can do no wrong. Where he is loved by the people and feared by his enemies. His deals never fail, his wars are overwhelming victories and his party is on the march to another majority.
It is, again, the power of positive thinking.
The problem is that this relentless — almost religious — positivity leaves you ill-prepared to deal with crisis. And the presidency is a job defined by crisis, either sudden or of your own making. Trump’s unusual relationship to the objective world leaves him dangerously unable to pivot, shift gears or change course. It is not that he thinks he can steer around the iceberg, it’s that he doesn’t believe it is there in the first place, even when it is staring him in the face.
Taken all together, it adds up to a mounting political disaster for the president and his allies — and an actual, material disaster for the rest of us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Jamelle Bouie became a New York Times Opinion columnist in 2019. Before that he was the chief political correspondent for Slate magazine. He is based in Charlottesville, Va.
https://www.thenation.com/article/this-study-of-american-fascism-published-in-1990-is-appallingly-relevant-today/
“What’s Past is Prologue…”
The following article was originally published on June 23, 2016:
The Right
Fascism
Back Issues
This Study of American Fascism, Published in 1990, Is Appallingly Relevant Today
Donald Trump and neo-Nazis exist along a racist continuum on which it is difficult to draw any lines.
by Elinor Langer
The Nation
In July of 1990, The Nation devoted an entire issue to a report by the journalist Elinor Langer, “The American Neo-Nazi Movement Today.” Twenty-six years later, it makes for a bracing read.
Anyone writing on Nazis or anything connected with Nazis is invariably asked the one question everyone always wonders about, the dread question, the Sinclair Lewis question, “Can it happen here?” and in being confronted with this several times in the course of this work, I came to see that the key word in the question is obviously “it.” If “it” means another Hitler, the answer is probably no, if only because history does not literally repeat. But there are subtler forms of repetition. In a period of declining national authority manifested everywhere from our weakening social structure to our worsening economic position, a movement is stirring that explains it all, and people are starting to listen.
Rereading the piece today, Langer finds herself “appalled by its relevance.”
The important question for Langer, as she argues in a Nation forum published today, is not whether Donald Trump himself resembles this or that fascist leader of the past but the extent to which the movement supporting him draws strength from, and at the same time strengthens, America’s own openly and proudly fascist movement. As she wrote in 1990, “The neo-Nazis’ ideology and activities are certainly ‘extreme,’ but they exist along a racist continuum on which it is difficult to draw a line.” Over the last quarter-century, Langer says, “The movement has only grown and deepened, coming closer to the mainstream on a lot of issues, especially immigration.” Indeed, Trump is now embraced by both white nationalists and, despite his issuing what the speaker of the House of Representatives calls a “textbook example of a racist comment,” by the current leadership of the GOP.
The introduction to Langer’s report is excerpted below, and the entirety of “The American Neo-Nazi Movement Today” can be read below that as a PDF. Langer later expanded her research into a book, A Hundred Little Hitlers: The Death of a Black Man, the Trial of a White Racist, and the Rise of the Neo-Nazi Movement in America, which was published in 2003.
—Richard Kreitner
* * *
The story you are about to read is an ugly one. If it were a film, it would be rated “R.” On television, a solicitous commentator would warn parents to urge children from the room. It is the story of something secret becoming public; of something forbidden becoming permitted; of the long, slow re-emergence of racial thinking in the United States from its retreat after World War II to the point where it can once again energize action; of the gradual, tentative crystallization of a political movement openly aimed at white hegemony. The problems of understanding this phenomenon are many. Composed of elements ranging from the Ku Klux Klan of Connecticut to the skinheads of California, the racial movement is scattered and diverse, and on matters as important as its relationship to American society in general and American racism in particular, observers disagree.
I want to make it plain from the outset that I am not an authority on the neo-Nazi movement. I live in Portland, Oregon, where in November 1988 three skinheads murdered an Ethiopian man, and like many of my friends and neighbors, I was startled to see how—literally—close to home it had come. The murder took place in a neighborhood very near where my husband and I had lived when we first moved to Portland years before. Of the three assailants, one was a neighbor, living a few blocks away in a building in which I had just considered taking an office; the second was a rock musician and all-round counterculture personage who moved in circles close to those of our baby sitter as well as, at some points, close to mine; and the third was a recent homecoming king of a local high school with some of whose friends and schoolmates my own acquaintances also overlapped.
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Louis Michael Seidman, Ted Gup and Elinor Langer
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Gary Younge
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Bob Dreyfuss
Originally, the boys were to have been tried jointly and, my attention having been caught, I arranged to write about the trial for this magazine. It then transpired that the cases were severed, and ultimately, because the defendants all pleaded guilty, there were no trials at all. But in the meantime, as you will see, the trail had led directly from the Portland skinheads, members of a local gang called East Side White Pride, to a California-based neo-Nazi organization called White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and to its youth arm, the Aryan Youth Movement (A.Y.M.), headed, respectively, by a man named Tom Metzger and his son, John, and my article on the Portland case had become this special issue of The Nation on the movement as a whole.
In introducing to Nation readers a subject that until recently I knew little about, I feel a certain diffidence; my chief comfort in doing so is that one of the things I have realized during this period is how little is generally known. Unlikely as it seems, there appears to be only a handful of scholars at work on specialized aspects of the movement, and as far as I have been able to learn there is no ongoing research of a general sociological nature. The books that are available have been written mostly by journalists, invariably as a result of having covered some local occurrence, but these, though useful, tend to suffer from an excess of anecdote and an absence of documentation. There are organizations that at first glance appear to know everything and without which no one looking at the neo-Nazi movement would get very far, but their interests also are specialized, and it soon becomes apparent that though their facts are indispensable their assumptions are arguable, and it is necessary to weigh their interpretations against one’s own.
In writing about a subject that carries with it the automatic weight of its association with Nazi Germany, I find myself uncomfortable for another reason, suspended between caution and alarm. Especially about a movement as underreported as this one, you do not write, in the first place, merely to observe “This too will pass away”; you write to sound an alert. At the same time, you know that the tests of time are different and that historians of another generation will consider the evidence and say either that it was all simply part of another “Brown Scare” in which people, as usual, lost their heads, and some their civil liberties, or that a dangerous movement was on the rise and that we failed to discern it early enough and help stamp it out. I do not know where along that spectrum the truth of the neo-Nazi movement lies. I do know that it is among us, that it is violent and mean, and that it is time to open up the subject for further investigation and discussion so that out of a broader base of information and a variety of perspectives there can possibly be fashioned a sound response.
“The American Neo-Nazi Movement Today,” by Elinor Langer:
https://www.scribd.com/doc/316464150/The-American-Neo-Nazi-Movement-Today-by-Elinor-Langer
ROY COHN was Donald Trump's major political and legal mentor and advisor, one of the most criminally reprehensible public figures of the 20th century...
ROY COHN 1927-1986
https://www.nytimes.com/…/polit…/donald-trump-roy-cohn.html…
https://www.washingtonpost.com/…/e9f44f20-2bf3-11e6-9b37-42…
http://www.politico.com/…/donald-trump-roy-cohn-mentor-jose…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn
https://www.democracynow.org/…/trumps_greatest_mentor_was_r…
http://www.salon.com/…/trumps_disgusting_attacks_on_obama_…/
"What's Past is Prologue..."
[NOTE: The following video interview was originally posted on February 7, 2019]
“Where’s My Roy Cohn?”: Film Explores How Joseph McCarthy’s Ex-Aide Mentored Trump & Roger Stone
Democracy Now!
Published on January 28, 2019:
https://democracynow.org
Former Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone, who was arrested on Friday, January 25 and Donald Trump share a unique history: Both were heavily influenced by the infamous attorney Roy Cohn, who served as a chief counsel to Senator Joseph McCarthy during the Red Scare in the 1950s and would later become a leading mob attorney. Cohn represented Trump for years and once claimed he considered Trump to be his best friend. Cohn is the subject of a new documentary at the Sundance Film Festival titled “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” We speak to the film’s director, Matt Tyrnauer.
Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs weekdays on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET:
VIDEO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9f8x999cUw
American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn's Dark Journey from Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump
by Kai Bird
Scribner 2026
[Publication date: September 1, 2026]
by Kai Bird
Scribner 2026
[Publication date: September 1, 2026]
“A narrative masterwork. Bird vividly creates the sinister web of charm and deceit that Cohn was able to spin through his decades at the very center of power.” —Marie Brenner, award-winning writer-at-large for Vanity Fair and coproducer of the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?
From the Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of American Prometheus, inspiration for the box-office sensation Oppenheimer, a penetrating biography of super-lawyer and political fixer Roy Cohn, whose shocking exploits over four decades have shaped the modern political era, most prominently the ascent of Donald Trump.
From the 1950s to the 1980s, the many dramas of American political life had one common denominator: Roy Cohn. In his twenties, the infamous young prosecutor sent Julius and Ethel Rosenberg to the electric chair, and as the chief aide to Senator Joe McCarthy became the baby-faced symbol of ruthless communist-hunting. By his thirties, Cohn had begun working as the Mafia’s hired legal gun. In his forties, he was an informal adviser to Richard Nixon. In his fifties, he partied with the glitterati at Studio 54 and visited the Reagan White House where he traded gossip with the first lady. Perhaps most significant, Cohn mentored the young Donald Trump, who telephoned the older man daily and studiously emulated not only his mannerisms but core philosophies.
Years after his death in 1986 from AIDS-related complications, Cohn emerged as a central figure in Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer Prize–winning play Angels in America. Cohn’s feistiness, his surly defiance—and, yes, his charm—were frequently flourished to conceal vast insecurities, particularly regarding his closeted sexuality.
A street fighter, self-promoting hustler, and a true Zelig of the dark side, Cohn was a nefarious actor in a startling number of history-shaping events whose influence resonates to the present day.
REVIEWS:
“An astonishing biography…The book excels as a masterful dissection of Cohn’s strange, contradictory, and immoral character…It adds up to an extraordinary portrait of a singular American figure whose callousness and brazenness continue to mar the country 40 years after his death.”
—Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
“The venality and corruption, blackmail and sheer brazenness of the public lying Bird portrays is eye-popping, infuriating, disgusting—yet also, at times, darkly comic.…If you want to understand Donald Trump, read this book.”
—The Bookseller
“A comprehensive portrait of a truculent lawyer who shot to infamy in the 1950s and remained a scandalous figure until his death…A thorough, deeply reported life story of the gleefully villainous lawyer who molded a U.S. president.”
—Kirkus (Starred Review)
“This deeply researched, admirably balanced, and propulsively paced biography is key to understanding the current political culture.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“A PROPULSIVE, MIND BOGGLING READ… Kai Bird pins this alternate moral universe to the page brilliantly and even-handedly.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Cleopatra: A Life and The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
“POWERFUL AND ILLUMINATING…Roy Cohn is emblematic of dark and perennial forces in our national life…Bird has delivered a vital volume.”
—Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
“THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON ROY COHN…Cohn’s influence on our time is incalculable and we are living in the long shadow of his legacy….American Scoundrel is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand Donald Trump’s America.”
—Jeremy Strong, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Tony-winning actor, and Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice
“AN EXTRAORDINARY, UP-CLOSE VIEW OF COHN’S INTERNAL WIRING…A brilliantly reported and vividly written biography that will mesmerize readers from its opening pages.”
—Ken Auletta, longtime contributor to The New Yorker and bestselling author of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
“A MUST-READ FOR THESE DARK DAYS. To understand the president who has hurled this country into chaos, we must tap the root—get to the source. American Scoundrel does just that by detailing the life of Roy Cohn. It is, in the end, a thorough and poignant account of a moral monster.”
—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries
“A NARRATIVE MASTERWORK. With a scholar’s rigor and a novelist’s sense of drama, Bird vividly creates the sinister web of charm and deceit that Cohn was able to spin through his decades at the very center of power.”
—Marie Brenner, award-winning writer-at-large for Vanity Fair, author of The Desperate Hours, and coproducer of the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?
“KAI BIRD DOES THE IMPOSSIBLE. He tells the story of one of America's arch villains, with new evidence of his mendacity, contempt for the law, megalomania, and cruelty, but does so without descending into caricature.”
—David Nasaw, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Patriarch
“A MUST-READ FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND NOT JUST THE DARK ROLE PLAYED BY ROY COHN IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POLITICS, BUT THE MAN’S LASTING INFLUENCE INTO THIS CENTURY….There is, it turns out, a direct line from the malign influence of McCarthyism to that of Trumpism, and Roy Cohn is it.”
—Susan Glasser, staff writer for The New Yorker and bestselling coauthor of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021
“GRIPPING…If you want to understand America today, you (sadly!) need to understand Donald Trump. And if you want to understand Trump, you need to understand Roy Cohn. This book is invaluable for that task.”
—William Kristol, formerly Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States and founder of The Weekly Standard; currently, editor-at-large of The Bulwark
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Kai Bird is an acclaimed biographer and journalist. With Martin J. Sherwin, he won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award–winning Best Picture, Oppenheimer. Bird is Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize for History and is the recipient of numerous fellowships. His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He is an elected member of the prestigious Society of American Historians.
Susan Goldmark, Kai Bird’s wife and chief researcher, has worked in over seventy-five countries—in consulting, for nonprofits, and at the World Bank. She was a World Bank Country Director in Nepal and later in Latin America. She holds a BA from Carleton College and a graduate degree in development economics from Princeton University. Susan has been Kai’s muse for decades and led the research for American Scoundrel.
“A PROPULSIVE, MIND BOGGLING READ… Kai Bird pins this alternate moral universe to the page brilliantly and even-handedly.”
—Stacy Schiff, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Cleopatra: A Life and The Revolutionary: Samuel Adams
“POWERFUL AND ILLUMINATING…Roy Cohn is emblematic of dark and perennial forces in our national life…Bird has delivered a vital volume.”
—Jon Meacham, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels
“THE DEFINITIVE BOOK ON ROY COHN…Cohn’s influence on our time is incalculable and we are living in the long shadow of his legacy….American Scoundrel is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand Donald Trump’s America.”
—Jeremy Strong, Emmy, Golden Globe, and Tony-winning actor, and Academy Award nominee for his portrayal of Roy Cohn in The Apprentice
“AN EXTRAORDINARY, UP-CLOSE VIEW OF COHN’S INTERNAL WIRING…A brilliantly reported and vividly written biography that will mesmerize readers from its opening pages.”
—Ken Auletta, longtime contributor to The New Yorker and bestselling author of Googled: The End of the World as We Know It
“A MUST-READ FOR THESE DARK DAYS. To understand the president who has hurled this country into chaos, we must tap the root—get to the source. American Scoundrel does just that by detailing the life of Roy Cohn. It is, in the end, a thorough and poignant account of a moral monster.”
—Eddie S. Glaude, Jr., author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries
“A NARRATIVE MASTERWORK. With a scholar’s rigor and a novelist’s sense of drama, Bird vividly creates the sinister web of charm and deceit that Cohn was able to spin through his decades at the very center of power.”
—Marie Brenner, award-winning writer-at-large for Vanity Fair, author of The Desperate Hours, and coproducer of the documentary Where’s My Roy Cohn?
“KAI BIRD DOES THE IMPOSSIBLE. He tells the story of one of America's arch villains, with new evidence of his mendacity, contempt for the law, megalomania, and cruelty, but does so without descending into caricature.”
—David Nasaw, two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and bestselling author of The Patriarch
“A MUST-READ FOR ANYONE WHO WANTS TO UNDERSTAND NOT JUST THE DARK ROLE PLAYED BY ROY COHN IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICAN POLITICS, BUT THE MAN’S LASTING INFLUENCE INTO THIS CENTURY….There is, it turns out, a direct line from the malign influence of McCarthyism to that of Trumpism, and Roy Cohn is it.”
—Susan Glasser, staff writer for The New Yorker and bestselling coauthor of The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021
“GRIPPING…If you want to understand America today, you (sadly!) need to understand Donald Trump. And if you want to understand Trump, you need to understand Roy Cohn. This book is invaluable for that task.”
—William Kristol, formerly Chief of Staff to the Vice President of the United States and founder of The Weekly Standard; currently, editor-at-large of The Bulwark
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Kai Bird is an acclaimed biographer and journalist. With Martin J. Sherwin, he won the Pulitzer Prize for biography for American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, which was the inspiration for Christopher Nolan’s Academy Award–winning Best Picture, Oppenheimer. Bird is Executive Director of the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. He has won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Duff Cooper Prize for History and is the recipient of numerous fellowships. His work includes critical writings on the Vietnam War, Hiroshima, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and the CIA. He is an elected member of the prestigious Society of American Historians.
Susan Goldmark, Kai Bird’s wife and chief researcher, has worked in over seventy-five countries—in consulting, for nonprofits, and at the World Bank. She was a World Bank Country Director in Nepal and later in Latin America. She holds a BA from Carleton College and a graduate degree in development economics from Princeton University. Susan has been Kai’s muse for decades and led the research for American Scoundrel.
