Trump is Abandoning the (Non-White) World

Three months ago, I wrote about the depravity of the Trump Administration’s 2026 refugee proposal, which had been leaked to the press. They were originally planning to cap refugee admissions at 40,000: much lower than the average annual cap of 91,716, but not nearly as low as 2020’s cap of 18,000. It was reported that 30,000 of those slots (75%) would be exclusively reserved for white South Africans.

It turns out that the leaked proposal vastly oversold the Trump Administration’s humanitarian nature. According to a memorandum published on the Federal Register on Friday, the total refugee ceiling has been slashed from 40,000 to just 7,500. That’s an 81% decrease. We still don’t know what the regional ceilings look like, but “the admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa”.

The Trump Administration is still using the myth of “white genocide” to justify this unprecedented move, but that’s to be expected at this point. Just last week, New York Post journalist Miranda Devine interviewed Vice President JD Vance. During the interview, he repeated the same racist lie about Haitian immigrants that was debunked over a year ago:

Vance: So you blink your eyes in Springfield, Ohio, and you wake up, and literally a third of the population of your town is now Haitian immigrants.
Devine: Eating cats and dogs?
Vance: Eating cats and dogs.

Keep in mind, this is the same racist lie that emboldened neo-nazis to harass and intimidate his own constituents as Ohio’s then junior senator.

This finalized plan lays two things bare. First is the admittance that there aren’t anywhere near 30,000 Afrikaners to “rescue” from oppression in South Africa. Second is that their priorities clearly aren't guided by humanitarian concerns. The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) issued a press release in response to this refugee plan and pointed out that there are 2.5 million refugees in need of resettlement.

They also noted that “The White House published the refugee admissions goal without legally required Congressional consultations... The absence of the required Report to Congress leaves significant uncertainty about how the Administration intends to implement the program and prioritize admissions.”

It may seem quaint to harp on about procedural violations when we’re dealing with such a lawless regime, but according to the non-profit publication Lawfare, there are 233 active court cases challenging the Trump Administration. Every one of these cases is a speed bump slowing down their agenda.

We can’t euphemism our way out of fascism. We can’t ignore Trump’s obvious plans to run for a third term (violating the 22nd Amendment). Until the entire MAGA political project is dismantled, until every actor and enabler is held accountable, we need to treat every government action and every election like democracy hangs in the balance. Because it does.