People walk past a Heritage Foundation advertisement at the Milwaukee International Airport on July 12, 2024. Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
(TriceEdneyWire.com)—In many corners of the world, America is seen and respected as the greatest nation in the world. That level of respect doesn’t come only from being a nuclear or military power. Nor does it only come from its high political standing on the world stage. The respect, particularly in isolated parts of the world, comes from its commitment and concern for helping and improving the welfare of easily forgotten and ignored people.
It comes from its work in alleviating the suffering of those facing food and water shortages, malnutrition, lack of disease detection and treatment resources, and lack of vital public health services. It comes from its humanitarian work to maintain human dignity by ensuring that people have access to basic needs while being treated with respect. America is respected worldwide as a compassionate nation because of the lives saved each year. It is this compassion as a nation that makes America great.
For years, according to PBS News reporting, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was the backbone of the humanitarian response in northeastern Nigeria, helping non-government organizations (NGOs) provide food, shelter, and healthcare to millions of people. Earlier this year, the Trump administration cut over 90 percent of USAID’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall assistance worldwide. Programs serving children were devastated. Globally, 50 percent of the therapeutic foods for treating malnutrition in children were funded by USAID, and 40 percent of the supplies were produced in the United States, according to Shawn Baker, chief program officer at Helen Keller International and former chief nutritionist at USAID. Baker noted that the consequence could be 1 million children not receiving treatment for severe malnutrition. As a result, this could lead to 163,500 additional deaths per year. For Helen Keller International, its programs in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Nigeria have all been terminated. How can America be so compassionate on one side and then so cruel on the other?
This high level of cruelty is not new. It gets contained at times, but now it is unleashed relentlessly thanks to the rise in political power of the MAGA base and its elected lawmakers. Therefore, we must see them for who they are. MAGA’s base today is mostly rural White men and women who are a modern-day extension of the Confederacy and Jim Crow philosophy. Philosophically, they are aligned with the same individuals who committed unimaginable horrors associated with Black massacres during the Reconstruction period. MAGA believers are aligned with people who tried to preserve slavery by way of secession and the Civil War. They are the individuals who committed the cruelty and brutality associated with the forced displacement of thousands of Native Americans as part of the Trail of Tears. They align with the inhumane lynchings, beatings, and murders during the Civil Rights era. In their view, the basic ideas that inspired the fight for freedom and our nation’s founding are wrong: All men are not created equal and should not have equal rights under the law.
The cruelty is fueled by a deep-seated resentment by the MAGA base, who have a growing fear of losing power once the nation becomes a minority-majority nation. To many of them, White men with wealth should dominate all people of color, all economic classes, and women. To varying degrees, many of them hold disdain for non-White immigrants, the poor, people with disabilities, the elderly, and LGBTQ people. This is true even when many within the MAGA base are poor, women, disabled, and elderly. While the MAGA base and its elected leaders believe that God has sent President Donald Trump to make America great again, it is The Heritage Foundation that is the real power behind the cruelty.
The Heritage Foundation, one of the most powerful conservative think tanks in the United States, has wielded immense influence over public policy for decades. The three MAGA Supreme Court Justices (Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett) were on The Heritage Foundation’s list of potential nominees. The Heritage Foundation has built its legacy on advancing policies that frame and uphold a rigid vision of American identity meant to roll back progressive gains from Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and civil rights protection under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act.
It is an identity that often excludes immigrants, communities of color, and low-income people. Its advocacy for harsh immigration enforcement, the dismantling of affirmative action, the elimination of social safety nets, and “law and order” policing policies have translated into real suffering for millions of people. These policies are not hypothetical; they separate families, open the door to a new wave of racial discrimination, and, due to the cuts to USAID, will result in the loss of life—all of this at the hands of the pro-life and pro-family MAGA base.
As authors of Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation thrives in the shadows by cloaking its agenda in the patriotic language of “freedom” and constitutional values.” Beneath its public facade, it promotes policies designed to preserve White supremacy and corporate power. The threat to revoke birthright citizenship, effectively rendering American-born children of immigrants nationless, is a throwback to the darkest chapters of world history, where Nazi Germany passed a decree that denationalized German Jews, thereby stripping them of their property and later their lives. We should consistently make the connection that it is not only Trump behind the authoritarian and cruel agenda we currently live in but decades of work by the Heritage Foundation. Every politician who aligns with The Heritage Foundation’s agenda should be exposed and called out for the loss of lives and the suffering they have allowed.
(David W. Marshall is the founder of the faith-based organization TRB: The Reconciled Body and author of the book God Bless Our Divided America.)
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