August 7 Friday roundup

In the latest podcast episode, I walk listeners through a timeline of the major initiatives the Trump administration has used to target immigrants since January 2025—and the many ways they’ve been foiled. You can watch it on YouTube or listen on Apple, Spotify, and elsewhere. If you’d like to check out the links in the written version, you can read Tuesday’s post.

As I mentioned on Tuesday, both Degenerate Art and Next Comes What will be on hiatus next week while I go on vacation. But we’ll be back on a regular schedule after that, starting with an August 18 Tuesday post.

Last night, I was thinking about the executive orders issued by the Trump administration yesterday, in which the president tries to limit who actually gets birthright citizenship. The new rules he’s trying to set, with the guidance of Stephen Miller, are part of the larger project to ethnically purge the United States of nonwhite people.

The Constitution lays out that those born in the U.S. are citizens at birth. But Trump is now trying to insert legal caveats that would refuse citizenship to children of mothers whom the administration claims come here for “birth tourism,”, to children of those the White House deems terrorists or enemy aliens, and the children of foreigners in the U.S. who work for other governments.

Every time there’s some new manufactured outrage over who belongs in the U.S. and who gets the full protections of citizenship, it reminds me of the Rohingya Muslim community in Myanmar, and the way that their government slowly removed their citizenship and related rights over decades.

Trump’s executive orders don’t directly mirror what happened in Myanmar, because the two countries have very different histories. But there are parallels between what Trump is trying to do today and the slow erosion of Rohingya citizenship overseas. Trump aspires to do with his executive power what Myanmar has already done.

More than a hundred different ethnicities are recognized for citizenship purposes in Myanmar. Yet despite a history going back centuries in the country, the Rohingya are now excluded—due in part to the country’s tortured past. As in many colonies, British imperial rule from the 1820s through the mid-twentieth century pitted different minority communities against one another, maintaining control by preferential treatment of some groups. This practice encouraged gaps in education, money, and status between ethnicities, destabilizing the larger society.

I’ll condense a complicated history into just a few paragraphs: At independence in 1948, ideals of inclusion prevailed. All groups deemed present in the country in 1823, before the beginning of British rule, had the rights of citizenship, including the Rohingya. But democracy and inclusion alike were shattered in 1962 with a military coup, leaving in power generals who rejected the Rohingya as foreigners, claiming this particular Muslim minority had not actually existed in Myanmar before British rule. A piece-by-piece dismantling of Rohingya rights began.

A tremendous escalation in tactics took place in 1978, as hundreds of thousands of Rohingya living in Myanmar were forced out of Rakhine state and across the western border, fleeing into Bangladesh. After international pressure to reverse the exodus, many returned the following year, but others did not. The situation remained volatile. In 1982, a new citizenship law was put into place, and the Rohingya were deliberately excluded, now by formal statute.

The community, however, continued to be politically useful as a target. They were officially stateless, and portrayed as illegal aliens. Burmese nationalist politicians, as well as extremist Buddhist movements, and a variety of other actors demonized the Rohingya regularly through dehumanizing rhetoric and threats—the kind of language used against Muslims in the U.S. after the 9/11 attacks.

Further purges forced them out of the country again. Over time, thousands crossed the border again and again, becoming itinerant due to recurrent threats of violence. In a circular argument, being forced out and then absent was depicted as proof that the Rohingya were not really from Myanmar and should not be allowed to return.

For those who stayed or came back to Rakhine state, conditions disintegrated. In 2012 after intracommunal local violence, the Rohingya were forced out of Sittwe (the capital city of Rakhine state) in a massive purge. Under threat of death, they fled or were transported out to the countryside, where they were left on their own. Eventually camps were set up for them, and they were barred from returning to everyday life in the city. A few Rohingya were allowed to stay in one section of town, Aung Mingalar, but barriers were erected to transform that quarter into an isolated ghetto.

After years of political resistance by activists in Myanmar who demanded a return to democracy, the country held actual elections in 2015. Yet even that gain was undercut by some provisions barring groups of voters and others tilting the electoral system toward continued military influence. The civilian opposition nevertheless prevailed, and it seemed like there was a chance democracy might triumph—if only a small one.

But with the deck stacked against them, civilian political leaders held power only tenuously, and did not adopt the cause of reintegrating the Rohingya. In 2016 and early 2017, despite civilian rule at the time, massive violence was unleashed in Rakhine state, with tens of thousands of Rohingya executed and hundreds of villages burned. Rape, torture, and murder were widespread.

Conditions in the region remained atrocious even before the military seized power again in 2021 coup. Since then, the genocide in Rakhine state has continued.

The dissolution of rights and violence in this arc of persecution is reflected in the official paperwork Rohingya individuals carried over time. After independence, the Rohingya had the same identification cards held by other citizens of the country. Then the Rohingya were issued green cards as identification that still guaranteed some rights, but not full citizenship. Later, white cards replaced the green cards.

When I went to Myanmar in 2015 and visited Aung Mingalar and two Rohingya camps, the government was deep into the process of recalling all the white cards. The year before my visit, Rohingya Muslims could still vote and run for political office. And months before my arrival, the government announced the Rohingya would be able to vote in the fall election. But officials reversed that decision the next day, after outrage by extremists. It was also clear that Rohingya candidates, even those already serving in the national legislature, would not be allowed to run again.

The government then replaced the white cards with National Verification Cards (NVCs). Rohingya residents of Myanmar who were born in the country and whose families have lived in it for generations could only get an NVC if they accepted a racial categorization of “Bengali” and illegal-alien status. NVCs were the only kind of official identification the Rohingya could get, leaving them utterly dependent.

This, then, was the administrative face of the larger genocide that unfolded across the country decade after decade, slowly until suddenly it wasn’t.

Could you prove your family’s legal presence in the U.S.? Not just through obituaries or photos, but using legal documents? When these things get contested, the government sets the rules and has all the leverage. Bit by bit, the requirements change, and fewer and fewer people can get over all the hurdles. And then, imagine that your whole community is locked down into a ghetto or run out outside town under threat of into camps without warning. What proof would you have with you?

In the end, it wouldn’t matter. Because if the valid paperwork can be changed or revoked by an authoritarian, and made to exclude those who had been included, bit by bit, the status of vulnerable groups is erased and undone (much as Temporary Protected Status for Haitians was recently revoked). The ability to exist legally in society is removed. And once the paperwork side of things has been taken care of, it’s just a matter of time until the background violence escalates into something much more lethal.

We are not yet where Myanmar is. But make no mistake: with these executive orders, Trump and Miller are using similar tactics with similar goals. And without resistance blocking their agenda, we will end up a similar place. Being able to vote in elections is a critical tool! But in and of itself, it will not guarantee an end to the harm that the administration intends to do—and in many cases is already doing.

The good news is that in the U.S., unlike Myanmar, the aspiring tyrant’s control over information and free speech is much more limited. We have many ways to push back. But we have to actually do it.

To close on on another small, good note: I saw that a judge dismissed the case against former Olympian David Hearn, who was facing a felony charge of vandalizing the reflecting pool on the National Mall. It had been apparent from the beginning that the charges were garbage, and the White House’s version of events entirely invented, with the scraps of synthetic material floating loose in the water due to a poor installation of a new lining by Trump’s preferred contractor. Even Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District, backed off the case last week in the face of actual evidence.

But it’s always good when the simple facts of reality are asserted in a binding way against the delusions and bad-faith arguments that the corrupt and powerful are currently trying to impose on the country and the world. May all those who are currently persecuted likewise see vindication.

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