No, Trump did not set a trap for Democrats with his false dilemma

During his State of the Union speech, President Trump offered something logicians call a "false dilemma," defined as "an informal fallacy based on a premise that erroneously limits what options are available." Here's what he said:

Tonight, I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.

Conservatives often use a false dilemma to make their point (ie, "America, love it or leave it" and "You're either with us or against us") because it reduces complex issues to simple either/or options and allows them to demonize those who disagree with them.

Because Democrats refused Trump's premise and remained seated, the White House and MAGA influencers claimed that the president set a trap and Democrats walked right into it. If dumbing down our politics is the goal, I suspect they have a point. But it is pretty easily refuted.

First of all, we need to ask a few questions about how the Trump administration is demonstrating that their first duty is to protect American citizens. What about Renee Good and Alex Pretti - American citizens that were murdered by ICE agents? How about the hundreds of American citizens who have been illegally detained by ICE? Just one example would be ChongLy "Scott" Thao.

ICE agents illegally broke into his house and dragged him outside in below zero temperatures in his underwear and slippers - only to release him hours later AFTER they reviewed his papers. 

Back in October 2025, ProPublica documented that more than 170 U.S. citizens had been detained by ICE. That number is much higher after the Metro Surge operation in Minnesota. 

So that's how the Trump administration demonstrates its duty to protect American citizens...murder them and/or lock them up.

Democrats want to ensure the safety of American citizens - especially when it comes to upholding the rights established by our Constitution. We also want a few things when it comes to the people Trump calls "illegal aliens?" I'd offer this list:

• Stop lying about immigrants being garbage and criminals 
• Provide due process and judicial warrants to enter private property (this is actually a protection for everyone - including U.S. citizens)
• Follow the law for those who are came here legally (ie, TPS, DACA, those with valid asylum claims, etc.)
• Stop racial profiling (another protection for everyone - including U.S. citizens)
• End arbitrary quotas for the number of people deported
• Stop rendition to prisons in other countries
• Stop lying about deporting the "worst of the worst" and actually make it a focus
• Affirm the constitutionality of birthright citizenship
• Allow a pathway to citizenship for those who have been contributing members of their community for years

As I've said before, Democrats have NEVER favored open borders via rhetoric or policy. We are in favor of protecting American citizens AND establishing a humane immigration system. There's nothing radical about that. The problem is that Trump and his MAGA enablers refuse to engage with us on these issues based on truth, the rule of law, and our Constitution.

Minnesota doesn't need lectures on accountability from the corrupt liars in the White House.

During his State of the Union speech, President Trump said this:

When it comes to the corruption that is plundering — really, it's plundering America. There's been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer...

This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn't believe. So, tonight, although it started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President, J.D. Vance. We'll get it done.

And if we're able to find enough of that fraud, we will actually have a balanced budget overnight. It'll go very quickly. That's the kind of money you're talking about.

As he does so often, the president pulled that $19 billion number out of thin air. The U.S. Attorney who had been responsible for prosecuting fraud in Minnesota (before he recently resigned) estimated $9 billion in potential fraud. But that number is also suspect. The Minnesota Star Tribune did the legwork and documented $218 million from court records so far. 

When it comes to balancing the budget via fraud, we'd all do well to remember that Elon Musk was going to cut federal spending by $2 trillion via the elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse. His DOGE efforts actually increased the deficit by $286 billion. 

But there's another problem with Trump's statement. The federal government spends about $600 billion on Medicaid per year (the program being targeted for fraud). The federal budget deficit is currently running at about $1.9 trillion per year. So even if the entire Medicaid program were eliminated, it wouldn't come close to balancing the budget. 

The real kicker is that the president (who was convicted on 34 counts of fraud) has appointed Vice President Vance as the so-called "fraud tzar" - the same guy that admittedly lied about immigrants eating our pets. 

It didn't take Vance long to get to work. On Wednesday, he announced that the Trump administration will pause $259 million in Medicaid payments to Minnesota. The vice president said that these payments would be paused "until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated against the American taxpayer."

It's really rich being lectured about obligations from an administration that is the most corrupt in this country's history with a president who has pardoned dozens of people who committed billions of dollars worth of fraud. But there you have it.

In light of that, it might be helpful to take a moment to document what Minnesota has actually done to combat fraud. Bullet points should suffice.

• The Minnesota Department of Human Services has conducted more than 3,000 investigations since 2020 and referred more than 500 cases to law enforcement.
• 94 defendants have faced criminal charges for fraud since 2021.
• Tim O'Malley was appointed as head of program integrity across state government (ie, state "fraud tzar'). He is a judge, former superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and former FBI agent.
• An outside firm was hired to audit payments to high-risk programs at the Department of Human Services and a specialized fraud-fighting law enforcement unit was created at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension. 
• Payments to providers in 14 Medicaid programs were paused while systems were audited.
• Housing Stabilization Services, which used Medicaid dollars to help people find and keep housing, was discontinued.
• The day before the president's State of the Union speech, Tim O'Malley released a nine-pillar overhaul on how Minnesota prevents, detects and responds to fraud.
• State Democratic leaders have proposed a dozen anti-fraud bills this session.
• As I write, Gov. Walz is introducing his own anti-fraud legislative package.

If you got through all of that - congratulations. Gov. Walz put it best, I think.

Detecting fraud is resource intensive and time consuming — especially when it comes to the federal Medicaid programs that have a complex interplay between private insurance companies and federal, state and county governments. Is it impossible? No. We have made significant progress. We have much more to do.

The one thing that isn't going to help is to get lectures on accountability from the corrupt liars in the White House.

What happened to Ilia Malinin?

I have always loved figure skating because it combines three of my favorite things: athleticism, music, and dance. So, of course, I've been keeping an eye on Ilia Malinin (aka, "The Quad God") recently. He has revolutionized the sport and taken it to a whole new level in a way that only a handful of athletes have ever done. 

When Malinin stepped onto Olympic ice on Friday in Milan, Italy, he led the field by five points. Beyond that, skaters from Japan and France - who were in second and third place - had skated poorly. Based on the technical merits of Ilia's program, it wouldn't have mattered if they had skated perfectly. A clean skate by the American would have given him the gold medal with lots of room to spare.

If you've been paying attention to the Olympics, you know that's not what happened. Malinin's program was a disaster - so much so that he wound up in 8th place overall. Like the rest of the world, I was in shock. 

Almost immediately, the recovering therapist in me began to try to construct what happened because it was obvious that the failure was a result of Ilia's mental game. In an interview immediately after his skate, he mentioned that perhaps he was overconfident and owned that he blew it. 

That's when I thought about his performance two months ago at the ISU Grand Prix Final in Japan. Ilia hadn't skated well in the short program and found himself in third place - a position he hadn't been in for quite some time. Under those circumstances, here's how he responded in the free skate. 

At the end of that program, Ilia almost looked like he was angry. He was fighting back and skating as if to prove something to himself and the audience. The result was a perfect skate that included a quadruple axel (something no other human has ever done in competition) and seven quad jumps (another feat no other human has ever accomplished). The announcers were absolutely speechless. Ilia's score for that skate was 238, a world record and 82 points higher than he earned Friday at the Olympics.

More than the pressure of the Olympics (which must have been epic for this young man), I'd suggest that the difference between his performance at the Grand Prix Final and the Olympics captures the biggest takeaway when we wonder WTH happened to Ilia. At the former, he had to go out and fight for it. When it came time for the Olympics, the gold medal was practically handed to him on a platter. 

This is part of Ilia's personality that he he's talked about before. For example, after placing second in the U.S. Nationals competition, he wasn't invited to be part of the 2022 U.S. Olympic team. He's said that it was his anger at that decision that pushed him to stretch and expand what is possible in the sport. Fighting back is what made him the phenomenon he became. 

On the one hand, this is an obstacle Ilia will have to figure out how to overcome. There's no going back on his talent and skills as the best figure skater in the world today. On the other hand, it will be fascinating to watch how this disastrous performance at the Olympics affects his skating going forward. I have a hunch that the next time he steps on the ice he will do so with a vengeance that could rock the figure skating world. It's likely to look something like this:

Struggling with the yin/yang of this moment

Every morning as I peruse the news I feel like I'm on an emotional roller coaster. I feel the rage/grief as I read headlines like "Immigrant whose skull was broken in 8 places during ICE arrest says beating was unprovoked." On the other hand, I feel hope/pride as I read ones like "Nearly 30,000 Minnesotans trained as constitutional observers."

I suspect that's precisely why these lines from the Charles Dickens book, "A Tale of Two Cities" are so often quoted.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

Dickens captured something important that flies in the face of much that we believe about the world. It is in moments of darkness that light shines its brightest. 

All of that is why today, I'm thinking a lot about the ancient taoist idea of Yin/Yang.  

Don't ask me what I mean by all of that because honestly, I don't know. It just seems like a truism we're living out on a daily basis right now. I suspect it's has something to do with embracing the fact that we're intensely experiencing both the dark/light and not getting caught up in denying either one. 

Or maybe it's about something that showed up on my Facebook feed a few days before the winter solstice.

This is how I see humanity most days. Right when it feels like everything is tightening. When empathy gets quieter, patience runs thin, and it seems easier for people to choose outrage over understanding. When it feels like we’re losing more ground than we’re gaining.

But that’s the trick of the season. The darkest stretch convinces you this is how it will stay.

We’re three days from gaining daylight again. Not because anyone fixed everything overnight, but because cycles still exist. Because even after all our noise, the planet keeps reminding us that contraction is not the end of the story.

The light doesn’t rush back. It returns slowly. A minute here. A breath there. And somehow, that’s enough to change the direction of everything.

Maybe humanity is there too. Not healed. Not solved. Just quietly turning back toward something better, whether we notice it yet or not.

One thing I DO know is that this is still my favorite Bruce Springsteen performance. 

Trump's organizing principle: racism

During a discussion with Chris Hayes, Adam Serwer offered a great response to Donald Trump's racist social media post about the Obamas. 

Adam Serwer: “Donald Trump is still psychically wounded by the election of Barack Obama.” @adamserwer.bsky.social

[image or embed]

— Barbara Kaskosz (@kaskosz.bsky.social) February 6, 2026 at 7:45 PM

Here's what Serwer said: 

What people have to understand is that people like Donald Trump think that they are better that other people, not because of something that they've done, but because they are white. And so when they are confronted with an example of Black genius - for example, the first Black President of the United States - they have this violent emotional reaction, because they feel like their place in the hierarchy has been disturbed. And so they have to put Black people back in their place...What's very clear is that Donald Trump is still psychically wounded by the election of Barack Obama and his ongoing popularity. 

Chris Hayes also noted that, for Trump, racism is "an organizing principle." He's right. And it doesn't just apply to the Obamas.

To demonstrate, let's go back a couple of months to late November when the New York Times published an article about welfare fraud in Minnesota. Then in December, right wing podcaster Nick Shirley released a video of lies about fraud in Minnesota daycare centers. For most of December, MAGA was on offense, having hit the trifecta of a way to undermine Democratic Governor Tim Walz, demonize immigrants, and trash the social safety net. Democrats were on their heels trying to figure out how to respond - leading Walz to drop out of the governor's race in Minnesota.

How did Trump respond to all of that? Did he send in teams of prosecutors to investigate and prosecute fraud? No. He called Somalis "garbage" and said he wanted to kick them all out of the country. Then on January 6th, DHS announced the launch of the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out, sending 2,000 agents to Minnesota. 

Last week Mark Mitchell, head pollster at the right wing firm Rasmussen, wrote something I agree with - but from the opposite perspective.

The discovery of rampant alleged fraud in Minnesota was a gift. It offered a rare opportunity to shift the national conversation away from Republican dysfunction and toward something Americans overwhelmingly agree on. Three-quarters of voters are angry about the level of waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government...

This was the moment for a full-scale, anti-blue-state fraud push. Follow the money. Subpoena everything. Make examples. Send every agency in, even the 80,000 armed IRS agents we should have fired. If fraud is that widespread, maybe austerity is not the answer. Maybe arrests are.

Instead, the focus shifted.

ICE was surged into Minneapolis. What could have been a systemic fraud investigation became a performative deportation spectacle. Predictable protests followed. Then escalation: more ICE presence, masks, tear gas, aggressive enforcement. Within days, the headlines were no longer about uncovering fraud. They were about clashes, optics, and ultimately the tragic shooting deaths of two protesters.

Donald Trump is so consumed with racism that he missed the opportunity to implement a "full-scale, anti-blue-state fraud push" and, instead, let his goons loose in Minnesota to terrorize people of color. The political backlash to the latter has been epic.

Meanwhile, when it comes to fraud, the administration's actions have resulted in a decimation of the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota, leading to a level of incompetence that is staggering.  

Trump's posting of the video of the Obamas demonstrates that, rather than learning from his mistakes, he is preparing to double-down on racism. I suspect that he is not capable of doing otherwise. His narcissistic ego is dependent on thinking he's better than other people because he's white.

The Big Lie of Trump's Second Term

During an interview with Megyn Kelly on Wednesday, VP Vance said that the Biden administration let in "20 million illegal aliens." On the same day, President Trump told NBC News anchor Tom Llamas that "We allowed in our country, I say, 25 million people with an open-border policy for four years under Biden" It's something that we hear consistently from this administration. Way too many people believe that those claims are true, so let's do a bit of a fact check.

First of all, what about those numbers? It is true that, during the Biden administration, the country saw a record number of people attempting to cross the border. Factors that led to that crisis include the reality that the U.S. recovered from the COVID crisis much faster than other countries as well as the fact that there was economic and political upheaval in places that led to an increase in the number of people fleeing their home countries. Here's what that looked like:

The claim is that Biden had an open border policy, allowing all of those migrants to enter the U.S. But with that increase in "illegal crossings" came an increase in the number of deportations, returns, and expulsions.

In terms of percentages, Trump removed 47% of border crossers during his first term, while Biden removed 51%.

The other way to fact check the claim about Biden allowing 20-25 million people to enter the country illegally is to take a look at how many undocumented immigrants are actually in the country. The most respected organization on that front is Pew Research. They documented that the number did grow sharply from 2021-2023, but nothing near the numbers we're hearing from MAGA.

Rather than an increase of 20-25 million, we see an increase of about 3.5 million. It's important to note that the increase during the Biden administration came almost exclusively from immigrants with some form of protection from deportation.

There are other actions that Biden took that give lie to the claims that he had an open border policy (not all of them supported by immigrant rights groups).

• The first bill he sent to Congress was the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 - a measure for immigration reform. It was rejected by Republicans.
• He kept Title 42 in place until its expiration on May 11, 2023.
• He sent 1,500 National Guard troops to the border and hired processing coordinators to free up Border Patrol agents to carry out expulsions.
• He increased US removal flights by 55 percent.
• In February 2024, he negotiated a bi-partisan border control bill that would have closed loopholes in the asylum process, limited the use of parole for migrants at the border and given the president new authority to effectively shut down the border to migrants when attempted crossings are high. Trump told Republicans to reject the bill and they complied.
• In June 2024, he shut down asylum requests once the average number of daily encounters reached 2,500 between official ports of entry.

That last bullet is one of the main reasons why so many of these data points stopped being compiled after 2023. As Pew reported, migrant encounters fell sharply in 2024.

It is important to recount this history because the lies about the number of undocumented immigrants and claims about Biden's open border policy form the basis of MAGA's complete embrace of the white nationalist great replacement theory. As an example, this video was recently reposted by Trump on social media.

WATCH: The Democrat Open Borders Plan to Entrench Single-Party Rule | Explained in Under Two Minutes pic.twitter.com/uWJxBiKive

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) March 19, 2024

Those lies have become so entrenched that this morning on CNBC Joe Kernan brought them up with Democratic Senator Chris Coons.

As Republicans attempt to pass voter suppression efforts like the SAVE Act and Trump talks about the federal government taking over state elections, these are the lies they'll rely on to go beyond terrorizing local communities and start attempting to control elections. It is important that we all stay armed with the facts.   

Stephen Miller and his pals want medicine to be racist again

While Stephen Miller is busy directing a terror campaign across America in an attempt to implement his white supremacist vision for the country, the law firm he founded - America First Legal - is working to inject racism back into medicine .Yes, you read that right. Here's the backstory.

For decades, the test used to determine whether a patient is eligible for a kidney transplant (GFR) was modified for Black people to artificially elevate their kidney function scores by 16-21% based on flawed assumptions about higher muscle mass. One study estimated that without that race correction, 3.3 million more Black Americans would have been diagnosed with a higher stage of chronic kidney disease. 

It wasn't until 2022 that UNOS, the organization that manages the kidney donor list, ordered hospitals to use only race-neutral test results in adding new patients to the kidney waiting list. But they took it a step further.

The transplant network gave hospitals a year to uncover which Black kidney candidates could have qualified for a new kidney sooner if not for the race-based test — and adjust their waiting time to make up for it...Between January 2023 and mid-March [2024], more than 14,300 Black kidney transplant candidates have had their wait times modified, by an average of two years.

It's that last part that has white supremacists lighting their hair on fire about DEI initiatives in the Biden administration.

Mr. Biden’s health czars discovered “systemic racism” everywhere they turned, and their remedy for this malady was to impose reparations. They granted preferential treatment to certain ethnic groups when they needed an operation to replace their kidneys...this meant paying less attention to the 40,000 white men and women who are just as desperate for the chance to stay alive.

“With thousands of Americans dying on transplant waitlists each year, the public has a right to full transparency into how this program was created, because discrimination has no place in medicine,” AFL attorney Megan Redshaw said in a statement.

Did you catch that? What they're suggesting is that any attempt to remedy discrimination is, in fact, discrimination. As I wrote previously, "They aren't just attempting to roll back civil rights protections. They're claiming that any move to enforce civil rights is discrimination" against white men. A simpler way of putting it would be to say "they're using the concept of civil rights to enforce white supremacy." Stephen Miller and his pals at AFL want medicine to be racist again.