Survey Says is a weekly series rounding up the most important polling trends or data points you need to know about, plus a vibe check on a trend that’s driving politics.
About a week ago, as his breakup with President Donald Trump went supernova, multibillionaire Elon Musk hit on a favorite idea among political dilettantes: “A new political party is needed in America to represent the 80% in the middle!”
Musk is no centrist, and his highest-profile policy moves have been widely unpopular, so who knows what kind of party he’s imagining. But the general idea—a party that appeals to a so-called middle majority—has recently been promoted by TV-friendly businessman Mark Cuban, presidential also-ran Andrew Yang, and the enervate political organization No Labels.
But these elites are all missing the same crucial fact: A political party that focuses on broadly popular policies already exists.
It’s the Democratic Party.
It was either going to be that or the X Party. Not sure which is worse.
Musk’s “80% in the middle” dream demonstrates his extreme political naivete. Eighty percent of Americans agree on only a handful of policies, like having the Food and Drug Administration inspect food or requiring car companies to submit accident data on self-driving vehicles—and Musk is adamantly against the latter. But when it comes to more expansive party-defining policies, like those around abortion rights or health care, an 80% consensus very rarely exists.
But let’s be generous to this man who does not deserve it and say he basically means “a decisive majority of Americans”—say, 60%. After all, that’s about the share of Americans (58%) who want a viable third party to exist, according to Gallup. So what would a party of the 60% believe?
Students and supporters gather to protest gun violence during the opening day of the Iowa legislature, in January 2024, in reaction to a school shooting in Perry, Iowa, in which a 17-year-old killed a sixth-grade student and wounded seven other people.
Sound familiar? All of these policies are supported by at least 60% of respondents, and virtually all of them are parts of the Democratic Party’s platform—and reviled by the Republican Party.
But what about immigration, which is arguably Trump’s signature issue?
Last summer, 55% of Americans wanted to decrease the number of immigrants coming into the U.S. And this past January, a majority (53%) supported “arresting and deporting millions of illegal immigrants,” according to a YouGov/Economist poll. (Notably, both figures are less than 60%.)
However, when asked more detailed questions, the public is more liberal. For instance, 61% of Americans oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who are longtime U.S. residents and haven’t committed a crime, according to a new YouGov poll for The Economist. Majorities of Americans also oppose deporting undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as kids (61%), who are married to a U.S. citizen (66%), or who have young children who are U.S. citizens (54%).
The same poll doesn’t even find majority support for deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of nonviolent crimes. Only 47% support such deportations. (Of course, as research consistently shows, undocumented immigrants are less likely than U.S. citizens to commit crimes.)
Other polling shows that majorities oppose deportation raids at funerals, weddings, churches, schools, playgrounds, and other sensitive areas. And only 15% of Americans who support “some” deportations for undocumented immigrants would kick out those who have a job, according to the Pew Research Center.
When faced with the details, Americans end up being pretty sympathetic toward undocumented migrants—and closer to Democrats’ stance than the deport-them-all position pushed by Republicans. After all, 64% of Americans say that undocumented immigrants should be able to stay if they meet certain requirements, like passing a background check or having a job. And 61% support providing such immigrants with a pathway to citizenship.
These “we need a third party” elites are simply out of touch, unable or unwilling to see that a big-tent party already exists. The Democratic Party often comes across as disjointed—or, dare I say, in disarray—but that’s because it’s the party of the 60%. If only the 60% realized that.
Any updates?
As some House Republicans’ support for Trump’s cruel tax bill is waffling, the public appears to be starkly against it. Fifty-three percent of voters oppose the legislation, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll. However, the really bad sign for Trump is that just 27% support the bill, with the remaining 20% unsure. In fact, only 2 in 3 Republican voters (67%) support the bill. Seems bad!
Trump has called in the National Guard and Marine Corps to assist federal agents in a brutal immigration crackdown in Los Angeles, and early polling found Americans were widely skeptical of the military deployments. Additional polling confirms that response: 44% of Americans are opposed to the deployments, while 41% support them, according to a new poll from The Washington Post/Schar School. Among Californians, 58% oppose the deployments, and just 32% support them.
Though Musk may have deluded himself into believing his hard-right politics are shared by “80%” of Americans, the public itself isn’t too hot on his brief tenure in the Trump administration.
Pluralities of Americans think Musk had “too much” influence in Trump’s White House (49%) and that his work in the government did more harm than good (46%), according to new data from YouGov.
On top of that, as of Friday, only 37.1% of the public has a favorable view of Musk, while 55.2% has a negative view, according to election analyst Nate Silver’s polling average.
In mid-April, President Donald Trump sat down in the Oval Office with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to celebrate a new partnership. They had recently negotiated an extraordinary deal in which El Salvador agreed to incarcerate in a maximum security prison hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants that the Trump administration had labeled as violent criminals, though few had been convicted of such crimes. The U.S. also sent back accused members of the notorious Salvadoran gang MS-13 — which both the U.S. and El Salvador have designated as a terrorist organization.
Bukele’s presidency has been defined by his successful crackdown against MS-13. He has jailed tens of thousands of alleged gang members, transforming one of the hemisphere’s most dangerous nations into one of its safest. Although human rights groups have criticized his tactics, Bukele remains extremely popular in El Salvador.
During their meeting at the White House, Trump praised his guest as “one hell of a president.” He shook Bukele’s hand, saying, “We appreciate working with you because you want to stop crime and so do we.”
A long-running U.S. investigation of MS-13 has uncovered evidence at odds with Bukele’s reputation as a crime fighter. The inquiry, which began as an effort to dismantle the gang’s leadership, expanded to focus on whether the Bukele government cut a secret deal with MS-13 in the early years of his presidency.
New reporting on that investigation by ProPublica shows that senior officials in Bukele’s government repeatedly impeded the work of a U.S. task force as it pursued evidence of possible wrongdoing by the Salvadoran president and his inner circle.
Bukele’s allies secretly blocked extraditions of gang leaders whom U.S. agents viewed as potential witnesses to the negotiations and persecuted Salvadoran law enforcement officials who helped the task force, according to exclusive interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials, newly obtained internal documents and court records from both countries.
In a previously unreported development, federal agents came to suspect that Bukele and members of his inner circle had diverted U.S. aid funds to the gang as part of the alleged deal to provide it with money and power in exchange for votes and reduced homicide rates. In 2021, agents drew up a request to review U.S. bank accounts held by Salvadoran political figures to look for evidence of money laundering related to the suspected diversion of U.S. funds. The list of names assembled by the agents included Bukele, senior officials and their relatives, according to documents viewed by ProPublica.
“Information obtained through investigation has revealed that the individuals contained within this submission are heavily engaged with MS-13 and are laundering funds from illicit business where MS-13 are involved,” the agents wrote. The people on the list “are also believed to have been funding MS-13 to support political campaigns and MS-13 have received political funds.”
The outcome of the request is not known, but its existence shows that the U.S. investigation had widened to examine suspected corruption at high levels of the Bukele government.
The investigation was led by Joint Task Force Vulcan, a multiagency law enforcement team created at Trump’s request in 2019. Agents found evidence that the Bukele government tried to cover up the pact by preventing the extraditions of gang leaders who faced U.S. charges that include ordering the murders of U.S. citizens and plotting to assassinate an FBI agent.
In addition, U.S. officials helped at least eight of their counterparts in Salvadoran law enforcement flee the country and resettle in the United States or elsewhere because they feared retaliation by their own government, current and former U.S. officials said.
It has been clear from the beginning what Trump wants from El Salvador: an ally who would accept, and even imprison, deportees. Less clear has been what Bukele might want from the United States. In striking the deal with the Salvadoran president, Trump has effectively undercut the Vulcan investigation and shielded Bukele from further scrutiny, current and former U.S. officials said.
Veterans of the Vulcan team are “concerned that all their work, the millions of dollars that were spent, going all over the United States, El Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, that it will be weakened for political reasons,” said a U.S. official familiar with the investigation.
The task force worked closely with the Salvadoran attorney general’s office, whose prosecutors shared evidence from their own investigation of the gang negotiations and suspected graft in the Bukele government, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.
“There was good information on corruption between the gang and the Bukele administration,” Christopher Musto, a former senior official at Homeland Security Investigations, or HSI, who worked on Vulcan, said about the Salvadoran investigation. “It was a great case.”
In May 2021, Bukele’s legislative majority in Congress ousted the attorney general and justices of the Supreme Court, which oversees extradition requests. Within seven months, newly installed justices reversed or halted six requests for senior gang leaders wanted in the U.S., according to interviews and documents.
“Bukele’s people were coming to the Supreme Court and saying under no circumstances are we extraditing the MS-13 leaders,” said the U.S. official familiar with the investigation. “‘Delay, interfere, undermine, do what you have to do.’”
Senior Bukele officials helped an MS-13 leader with a pending extradition order escape from prison, according to court records, U.S. officials and Salvadoran news reports. At least three other top gang leaders were released from Salvadoran custody after the U.S. filed extradition requests for them, according to Justice Department documents.
Donald Trump meets with El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance listen in the Oval Office of the White House on April 14.
Published accountsin the United States and El Salvador have reported allegations that Bukele also pushed for the return of MS-13 leaders to prevent them from testifying in U.S. courts about the pact. Despite his government’s refusal to extradite gang bosses to the United States, the Trump administration in March deported one MS-13 leader accused of terrorism. The Justice Department is now seeking to dismiss charges against a second leader, which would allow him to be sent back to El Salvador, according to recent court filings.
The Justice Department declined to comment in response to questions sent by ProPublica. The State Department referred questions to the Justice Department.
A White House spokesperson did not respond to detailed questions.
“President Trump is committed to keeping his promises to the American people and removing dangerous criminals and terrorist illegals who pose a threat to the American public,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson. “We are grateful for President Bukele’s partnership.”
Bukele, the Salvadoran Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Salvadoran Supreme Court did not respond to lists of questions. Bukele has repeatedly denied making any agreement with MS-13. The Trump administration’s deportation of MS-13 members to El Salvador,he said in a post on X, will enable security forces to dismantle the gang.
“This will help us finalize intelligence gathering and go after the last remnants of MS-13, including its former and new members, money, weapons, drugs, hideouts, collaborators, and sponsors,” the post said.
“Just Fear”
Bukele was elected president of El Salvador in February 2019, promising to fight the country’s ingrained political corruption and pervasive gang violence, which he called “one of the greatest challenges” facing the nation.
During his first term, Trump also made MS-13 a high-profile foe, calling it “probably the meanest, worst gang in the world.” In August 2019, Attorney General William P. Barr created the Vulcan task force, teaming federal prosecutors with agents of the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, Drug Enforcement Administration and other agencies. The goal: Eradicate MS-13.
For decades, MS-13 has bedeviled law enforcement in the Americas with its vast reach, extreme violence and complex culture. The initials stand for “Mara Salvatrucha.” “Mara” means a swarm, while “salvatrucha” has been said to refer to a clever Salvadoran, according to interviews and anacademic study. The number represents the 13th letter of the alphabet, M, in homage to the Mexican Mafia, the powerful Southern California prison gang.
MS-13 emerged in the 1980s in Los Angeles among Salvadoran youths whose families had fled a bloody civil war. The gang expanded throughout the diaspora and, as the U.S. deported planeloads of ex-convicts starting in the 1990s, took root in El Salvador. Although most of the leaders were serving sentences in El Salvador, a jailhouse council of 14 bosses, known as the “Ranfla,” used cellphones to micromanage criminal activities in U.S. cities thousands of miles away.
The gang developed a reputation for torturing, brutalizing and dismembering its victims. Barr has called it “a death cult” in which violence is more important than riches.
“It was like a very violent mom-and-pop operation where the cousins and second cousins all want to be a part of it,” said Carlos Ortiz, who served as the HSI attaché in El Salvador from 2018 to 2024. “Minimal money, compared to others. Even though it’s an organization, a lot of it is just fear. Fear of the high-ranking bosses among the rest of the gang, that’s what drives it.”
Trained with military weapons, MS-13 warred with security forces in El Salvador, took over neighborhoods and generated one of the world’s worst homicide rates, driving an exodus of immigrants reminiscent of the 1980s. The Salvadoran Supreme Court designated the gang as a terrorist organization in 2015.
The Vulcan task force had about 30 members, including prosecutors, agents and analysts. Its director, John J. Durham, was a federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York who had spent a decade pursuing MS-13 cliques on Long Island. Members of the task force worked from bases around the country and traveled to Mexico and Central America.
One of the founding investigators, Newark FBI agent Daniel Brunner, spoke fluent Spanish and had worked gangs for seven years. He became a roving specialist providing expertise, communications intelligence and court transcripts, sometimes in person and sometimes from a distance.
“Our idea was that Vulcan was like a SEAL Team 6, going in to help the different districts build cases,” Brunner, who is now retired, said in an interview.
Vulcan built on the longtime U.S. presence and extensive influence in El Salvador, where the embassy has long funded and trained law enforcement agencies. FBI agents and others were embedded as advisers in police anti-gang and homicide units and worked with prosecution teams led by Attorney General Raúl Melara.
The U.S. task force modeled its strategy on the ones used against Mexican cartels and Colombian narcoguerrillas: Break the power of the MS-13 bosses by extraditing them to face trial and prison in the United States.
On Jan. 14, 2021, six days before the end of the Trump administration, Durham and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray joined acting Attorney General Jeffrey A. Rosen whenhe announced“the highest-reaching and most sweeping indictment targeting MS-13 and its command and control structure in U.S. history.”
Prosecutors charged the 14 members of the leadership council with major crimes including conspiracy to support and finance narcoterrorism. For more than two decades, the Ranfla ran a criminal network in the United States, Mexico and Central America that sanctioned the murders of Americans and trafficked drugs and arms, the indictment alleged.
The indictment contained a stunning charge: MS-13 bosses had taken the extraordinary step of giving an order, or “green light,” to assassinate an FBI agent working with local investigators in El Salvador. Embassy officials learned of the threat and evacuated the agent, according to interviews.
It is highly unusual for Latin American criminal groups to target a U.S. agent — they have learned that it invites an overwhelming law enforcement response. The assassination plot was a sign that the U.S. crackdown had rattled the gang chiefs, current and former officials said.
Vulcan on the Hunt
In conversations with American officials as president-elect, Bukele promised cooperation and welcomed their support against gangs and graft, even in his own Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. officials.
At apress eventabout the Vulcan task force in 2020, Trump asserted that in the past El Salvador “did not cooperate with the United States at all,” but now it had become a strong law enforcement partner.
Already, though, there had beennews accountsalleging that Bukele had cut deals with gangs when he was mayor of San Salvador. Vulcan investigators quickly found evidence that top aides to the new president were negotiating a new pact with gang chiefs, according to interviews.
For more than a decade, MS-13’s control of the streets had made it a political force. It could deliver votes, ignite mayhem or impose order. A series of politicians had held talks with gang leaders to seek electoral support and reductions in violence in return for improved prison conditions and perks such as prostitutes and big-screen televisions.
Marco Rubio meets with Nayib Bukele at his residence at Lake Coatepeque in El Salvador on Feb. 3.
The Bukele government adopted a more sophisticated bargaining strategy, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. During secret meetings in prisons and other sites, the president’s emissaries offered MS-13 leaders political power and financial incentives if they lowered the homicide rate and marshaled support for the Nuevas Ideas party, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and court documents.
The chief negotiator was Carlos Marroquín, a former rap artist and confidant of the president. Bukele had appointed him the director of a new Justice Ministry program known as “Reconstruction of the Social Fabric” that operated in impoverished communities.
Marroquín promised the Ranfla a central role in developing the program, control of neighborhood youth centers, power over urban turf and other financial and political benefits, according to current and former U.S. officials, court documents and Treasury Department sanctions. Informants and communications intercepts indicated that some of the resources going to MS-13 came from U.S. government aid, a violation of U.S. law, according to interviews and documents.
“Money was going from us, from USAID, through to this social fabric group,” a former federal law enforcement official said. “They’re supposed to be building things and getting skills and learning. It was funding the gangs.”
Vulcan also gained information from two highly placed Salvadoran officials involved in the talks with MS-13. The officials provided inside information to U.S. agents about the negotiations, which they said Bukele directed, according to interviews.
The accumulating evidence about the gang pact and the suspected misuse of U.S. funds spurred the task force to broaden its initial focus and target alleged corruption in the Bukele government, current and former U.S. officials said.
In April 2021, federal agents prepared a list of powerful Salvadorans for a financial review by the U.S. Treasury Department. Bukele was one of the 15 names. So were Marroquín; Osiris Luna, the director of the national prison system and another alleged organizer of the gang talks; Martha Carolina Recinos, the president’s chief of staff; and other political figures and their relatives. The request asked the Treasury Department to search for possible illicit transactions in any bank accounts held in the United States by those on the list, according to documents seen by ProPublica.
The Vulcan task force was seeking evidence in U.S. banks of money laundering tied to the diversion of USAID funding through the gang pact, the documents showed. Agents explained that the task force had “uncovered information that MS-13 members are in close contact with politically exposed persons in El Salvador,” referring to prominent government figures.
“The USAID funding is believed to have been laundered by the individuals submitted in this request,” who were suspected of “facilitating, supporting and promoting MS-13 through their official positions,” said the request, which was viewed by ProPublica.
Made under section 314A of the USA Patriot Act, the request for a canvass of U.S. banks requires that investigators show reasonable suspicion rather than probable cause, which is a higher standard. The outcome of the request is unknown. The Treasury Department declined to comment. U.S. prosecutors have not publicly accused Bukele and the others of crimes related to USAID funds.
As U.S. investigators advanced in this political direction, they gained valuable information from the Salvadoran prosecutors who were pressing their own investigation of the gangs and the Bukele administration.
Known in English asOperation Cathedral, their probe was as ambitious and sensitive as the U.S. one. Investigators had documented the secret jailhouse deals with MS-13 and the official attempts to cover them up. They also pursued leads that revealed alleged widespread corruption involving the country’s COVID-19 relief programs, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials and documents. Political tensions increased as the Salvadoran prosecutors targeted the president’s inner circle and raided government offices, clashing with police who tried to stop them from searching the Health Ministry inone incident.
April 2021 was also when a delegation led by Attorney General Melara came to Washington to meet with leaders of Vulcan and other senior U.S. officials. The prosecutors laid out their case against prominent figures in the Bukele government. The “impressive” presentation, a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said, cited videos, phone intercepts and other evidence showing that Marroquín, prisons director Luna and others had clandestinely arranged for government negotiators and gang leaders to enter and leave prisons, smuggled in phones and destroyed logs of prison visits.
“Melara was very nervous because of the very high level of the people he was investigating,” a former U.S. federal law enforcement official said.
Melara declined to comment, saying he does not discuss his work as attorney general.
Interference
On May 1, 2021 — soon after Melara and his team met with U.S. investigators — the Salvadoran Legislature, controlled by Bukele, voted to expel the attorney general and five justices on the Supreme Court.
The purge was a decisive step by Bukele to centralize power. It drew international condemnation. In El Salvador, critics denounced the president’s actions as a “self-coup.” On his Twitter page, Bukele began calling himself “the world’s coolest dictator.”
For Vulcan, the expulsions marked a dramatic shift in its investigation. The Supreme Court justices had signaled their willingness to sign off on some extraditions. Melara had been a helpful ally who reportedly pledged to do “everything necessary” to extradite the Ranfla members, many of whom were in custody in El Salvador. But it soon became clear that the government was no longer interested in handing over senior gang leaders.
“The next prosecutors were not willing to work with us,” said Musto, the former HSI official. “We were not closed out, but all these things that we had in place that we were moving to getting people back here slowed down to a snail’s pace.”
The first clash came over Armando Melgar Diaz, an alleged MS-13 leader who acted as a middleman between gangs in the United States and senior leaders in El Salvador. Melgar, known as “Blue,” had ordered thekidnappingof a family in Oklahoma that owed the gangs $145,000, collected money from adrug ringoperating out of restaurants in Maryland and Virginia and was involved withkillingsin the U.S., according toan indictmentand interviews with U.S. officials. He was the first MS-13 member to be accused under terrorism laws.
The newly constituted Supreme Courtvoted to approveMelgar’s extradition but thenreversed its decision, announcing that the matter needed further study. Later, Bukele’s new attorney generalasked for a halt to the extradition. The reason: The United States had failed to guarantee that it would not seek the death penalty or life in prison, sentences not allowed under Salvadoran law.
The rationale made no sense to Vulcan prosecutors. The Justice Department had already promised that it would not pursue such punishments against Melgar, according to records and interviews. U.S. and Salvadoran officials attributed the sudden reversal to fear that Melgar could link Bukele and his government to the pact with MS-13.
“Melgar Diaz was going to be the test case,” Musto said. “It was going to be an easy win for Vulcan.”
Information obtained by U.S. agents included allegations that Bukele’s judicial adviser, Conan Castro-Ramírez, had called one of the new Supreme Court justices and told him to find ways to stop the extradition of Melgar, according to interviews. When the justice objected, saying that the extradition had already been approved, Castro allegedly ordered him to reverse it. “That’s why we put you there,” he said, according to the interviews.
The State DepartmentsanctionedCastro for his role in assisting in the “inappropriate removal” of the Supreme Court justices and the attorney general. Castro did not respond to attempts to contact him.
A Salvadoran courtsentencedMelgar to 39 years in prison for conspiracy to commit homicide, among other crimes. He was the first MS-13 leader whose extradition was blocked. Soon after, the U.S. extradition requests for other gang chiefs ran into opposition.
“Bukele and his government are using the entire state apparatus to prevent these people from being extradited,” a person with knowledge of the Salvadoran judicial system said in a recent interview.
Miguel Ángel Flores Durel, a newly appointed Supreme Court justice whoreportedlyhad served as a lawyer for a top MS-13 leader, made sure that the requests were never granted, according to the person with knowledge of El Salvador’s judicial system. Flores instructed colleagues “do not work on extraditions at all,” the person said.
In July 2022, El Salvador agreed to extradite two lower-ranking MS-13 members charged with the murders of Salvadoran immigrants in Long Island in2016and2017in which victims were butchered with axes and machetes. The Supreme Courtalso approvedthe return of Salvadorans not affiliated with the gang who were accused in the U.S. of crimes such as murder.
This was a deliberate strategy, the person said. Flores said that El Salvador needed to continue some extraditions in order to “calm” U.S. officials, who were complaining about the lack of cooperation with Vulcan, the person said. (Flores died in 2023.)
It didn’t work. The extradition of other criminals by the Bukele-aligned Supreme Court only emphasized the lack of cooperation on requests for the senior MS-13 leaders.
“We were never told officially that it wouldn’t happen, but it became impossible,” said Brunner, the former FBI agent.
In October 2022, Bukele’s new attorney general announced that criminals would first have to serve their sentence in El Salvador before being sent to the U.S. — an interpretation of the country’s extradition treaty that differed from the previous Supreme Court.
“We aren’t going to be sending Salvadorans without them first paying for the crimes they have committed” in El Salvador, Rodolfo Delgadosaid.
Threats and Roadblocks
The Bukele government’s interference with the U.S. investigation went beyond blocking extraditions, U.S. officials said.
Senior Bukele allies also waged a campaign of harassment and intimidation against the Salvadoran officials who had investigated corruption and assisted the Vulcan task force, according to interviews with current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials.
The government threatened officials with arrest and sent police patrols to their homes, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials. At least eight senior Salvadoran law enforcement and judicial officials fled El Salvador for the United States and elsewhere. Vulcan provided them with travel money, language classes, housing and help gaining legal immigration status and finding jobs. In one instance, a U.S. Embassy official escorted a Salvadoran prosecutor out of the country because American officials believed his life was in danger, according to an official familiar with the incident.
The Salvadoran government also weakened special “vetted units” of the police that had worked with the FBI and other U.S. agencies, according to current and former U.S. officials.
Donald Trump meets with Nayib Bukele at the InterContinental Barclay New York hotel during the United Nations General Assembly in Sept. 2019.
Bukele’s allies didn’t stop there. They allegedly helped the escape or release from prison of at least four members of the MS-13 leadership council sought by Vulcan for alleged crimes in the U.S., according to interviews, court documents and press reports.
Elmer Canales-Rivera, alias “Crook de Hollywood,” was one of the most wanted of the Ranfla members. He had been imprisoned for several murders in El Salvador, including a case in which hereportedlyhelped suffocate and drown in insecticide a gang member who violated orders. In the United States, prosecutors had accused him of orchestrating murders and kidnapping across the nation for more than 20 years.
In November 2021, Canales escaped from prison. El Faro, a prominent investigative news outlet, and other Salvadoran media published stories thatdetailed howMarroquín had escorted Canales from the prison. The articles featuredtaped callsbetween gang members and a person identified as Marroquín discussing his role in the escape, along with photos of officials apparently attempting toremove jail logsto conceal their presence at the prison.
Canales was caught in Mexico and turned over to U.S. authorities. Currently in prison awaiting trial, he has pleaded not guilty.
Over the next several months, three other MS-13 leaders disappeared from Salvadoran prisons, causing Durham, the head of the task force, to express his concern ina letter to the judgein New York overseeing the cases. At the time the Bukele administration had received extradition requests and Interpol notices, he wrote, the leaders had been in custody. Salvadoran medialater reportedthat the country’s Supreme Court had formally denied the extradition requests for the three men.
The purge of the Supreme Court and prosecutors, the blocked extraditions and the disappearance of the MS-13 gang members marked a significant deterioration in relations between Bukele and the administration of President Joe Biden. Agencies across the government began looking for ways to push El Salvador to cooperate.
Acting U.S. Ambassador Jean Manes announced a “pause” in relations with El Salvador and left the country. A veteran diplomat who had previously served in El Salvador, Manes had pressured Bukele in public and private, criticizing the extradition delays and his increasingly authoritarian rule, according to State Department officials.
“What are we seeing now? It is a decline in democracy,”Manes saidshortly before her departure.
In December 2021, the Treasury Departmentissued sanctionsagainst Bukele aides Luna, Marroquín andRecinos, blocking them from conducting financial transactions in the United States because of alleged corruption. None of them responded to questions sent to a Bukele spokesperson.
Nonetheless, former members of the task force said they felt that the Biden administration treated Vulcan as a lower priority and cut its resources. They said Biden officials saw the task force as a Trump initiative and wanted to focus on other law enforcement targets, such as human trafficking.
“As soon as the Biden administration came in, we were slowed down,” Brunner said. “There was a lot more red tape we had to go through.” Former Biden officials denied this was the case.
Whatever truce had existed between the Salvadoran government and MS-13 collapsed in March 2022. The country descended into chaos. Over one three-day period, some 80 people were killed in gang-related violence.
Bukele reacted forcefully. He declared a nationwide “state of exception” that suspended constitutional protections. Police began rounding up thousands of accused gang members and others. He announced the construction of the megaprison known as CECOT.
The policies proved tremendously popular. Murder rates dropped dramatically, though human rights advocates criticized the loss of civil liberties. Bukele dismissed their complaints.
“Some say we have put thousands in prison, but the reality is that we have set millions free,” he has said, an assertion he repeated to Trump in the Oval Office.
The Turnaround
Despite the harsh treatment of gang members — an estimated 14,500 people are now held in CECOT — one thing did not change: The Bukele government continued to refuse to extradite senior MS-13 leaders to the United States.
The reasons for Bukele’s alleged protection of the gang leadership versus his relentless pursuit of the rank and file are the subject of speculation in both the United States and El Salvador. One possible explanation, according to current and former U.S. and Salvadoran officials: Bukele is aware that Vulcan was gathering evidence that could lead to criminal charges and political damage. The imprisoned leaders are potential witnesses to his alleged deal with MS-13, while El Salvador’s street-level gangsters are not.
In February 2023, the Justice Department unsealed an indictment for another group of leaders, most of whom operated a tier below the Ranfla, relaying its directives to gangsters on the streets. The 13 defendants were accused of terrorism and drug smuggling, among other charges.
The U.S. announced it would “explore options for their extradition with the government of El Salvador.” The Justice Department declined to say whether any such requests had been made.
In filing the charges, prosecutors made their strongest public accusations yet about deals between the Bukele government and the gangs. Without naming the president or his allies,prosecutors allegedthat MS-13 leaders agreed to use their vast political influence to turn out votes for candidates belonging to Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party in legislative elections in 2021.
The gang bosses also “agreed to reduce the number of public murders in El Salvador, which politically benefited the government of El Salvador, by creating the perception that the government was reducing the murder rate,” the indictment said.
As part of the arrangement, the senior MS-13 leaders demanded that the Bukele government refuse to extradite them, the indictment said. The alleged condition appears to be in effect. To date, none of the extradition requests for more than a dozen high-ranking gang members has been approved.
In the face of obstacles, Vulcan relied increasingly on the Mexican government for help. During the past four years, Mexican authorities have captured nine of the 27 MS-13 leaders named in the indictments and deported them to the United States, where they were arrested. This year, prosecutors obtained guilty pleas to terrorism charges from two lower-ranking bosses, including one who prosecutors said had helped implement the deal between the Bukele administration and the gang. Sentencing for the men is pending.
Since Trump took office this year, his administration has redirected Vulcan’s mission to also target Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the president has put in the spotlight.
There has been a remarkable recent development related to MS-13, however. After more than five years leading the Vulcan task force, Durham wrote letters asking the judge overseeing the cases to dismiss charges against two gang leaders in U.S. custody, allowing them to be deported to El Salvador. The letters were datedMarch 11andApril 1, weeks after the Trump administration began negotiating the mass deportation deal with Bukele’s government.
César Humberto López Larios, a member of the Ranfla known as “Greñas,” had his charges dismissed and was returned to El Salvador withmore than 250Venezuelans and Salvadorans sent to CECOT as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation of migrants on March 15. López,identified in media reports, is featured in a slickly produced videoposted by Bukele on X, kneeling in the prison, his head shaved. He had pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.
Then, in April, Durham asked for the dismissal of terrorism charges against a lower-ranking MS-13 prisoner, Vladimir Antonio Arevalo-Chavez, alias “Vampiro,” according to recently unsealed court records. His defense lawyers are seeking to stall the request to give them time to fight his deportation to El Salvador. He has pleaded not guilty.
Durham acknowledged in his letters to the judge that the evidence against the two men is “strong.” After millions spent on an operation involving investigators and prosecutors from the U.S., El Salvador and other countries, Vulcan had amassed a trove of evidence aimed at incarcerating the MS-13 leaders who had overseen the killings, rapes and beatings of Americans. Prosecutorstold defense attorneysthey had more than 92,903 pages of discovery, including 600 pages of transcribed phone intercepts, 21 boxes of documents from prosecutors in El Salvador and 11 gigabytes of audio files.
Durham said prosecutors were dropping their pursuit of the cases “due to geopolitical and national security concerns.”
It was like a reverse extradition. Trump was giving Bukele the kind of high-level criminals that the United States had never received from El Salvador.
During the negotiations over the use of El Salvador’s prison, Trump officials agreed to pay some $6 million to house the deported men and acceded to an additional demand.
Bukele had one specific request, according to Milena Mayorga, his ambassador to the United States.
“I want you to send me the gang leaders who are in the United States,” she quoted Bukele as telling U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The Trump administration’s authoritarian regime has intensified over the week as we’ve approached President Donald Trump’s dictator-style birthday military parade on Saturday.
After launching a federal invasion of Los Angeles, Trump and his cronies threatened critics with prosecution and prison. And after a week of struggling before congressional committees, it seems Trump’s cabinet of cosplayers would rather physically attack a sitting senator than provide any answers.
Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California was manhandled by law enforcement officers on Thursday after he attempted to ask Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question during a news conference in Los Angeles.
Before he could finish his question, he was forcibly removed, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed.
It took House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries just one explosive minute to spotlight the Trump administration’sfailure to deliver on any of the president’s campaign promises while branding critics and protesters of his heinous deportation policies as “insurrectionists.”
A day after offering up tough talk on how Democratic officials should be arrested for impeding agents who areattempting to abduct immigrants in Los Angeles, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan retreated after California Gov. Gavin Newsom called his bluff.
Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware was forced to give Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a history and foreign policy lesson on Wednesday.
During a Senate budget subcommittee hearing, Hegseth dismissively downplayed the contributions of European allies in past wars, using Afghanistan—wherehe served—as an example.
Needless to say, Coons was not impressed by the former Fox News contributor’s retelling of history.
During an immigration hearing on Thursday, GOP Rep. Brandon Gill of Texas pivoted into a bizarre attack on transgender rights. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, who was testifying at the time, quickly called out Gill, castigating him for his bigoted political stunt.
Things did not go smoothly on Wednesday for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee, when asked about the nature of privacy sharing between the Treasury Department and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday, Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California did not mince words as he slammed a renewed GOP effort torepeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which has protected abortion providers and people seeking abortions for more than three decades.
It’s been yet another chaotic week of Republican incompetence, and unfortunately there are no signs that they’ll learn from their mistakes anytime soon.
Congressional Cowards is a weekly series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol Hill, who refuse to criticize him—no matter how disgraceful or lawless his actions.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said it was "necessary" for President Donald Trump to send the Marines to L.A., and refused to break with the president after he called for California Gov. Gavin Newsom to be arrested.
And when asked at a news conference if there was any red line for House Republicans when it comes to Trump's use of the military against civilians, Johnson refused to answer.
"Look, I'm not going to engage in hypotheticals," Johnson said on Tuesday.
Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin also voiced support for sending in the Guard.
“I'm concerned about the violence and lawlessness that we saw last night in the community of LA,” Steil told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “I think what all of us would like to see is the reestablishment of public safety immediately. The failure of LAPD to be able to get that under control last night, I actually think, speaks volumes about the need to make sure that there's additional human capital at the disposal to make sure that we are able to reestablish public safety.”
Over on the Senate side of the Capitol, Arkansas Republican Tom Cotton wrote an entire op-ed in The Wall Street Journal saying that deploying the National Guard to Los Angeles—even though the city's own police department chief said it wasn't necessary—was the right move.
"At the risk of again sending liberals to their fainting couches, it may indeed be time to send in the troops," Cotton wrote, adding that there needs to be "an overwhelming show of force to end the riots"—even though the protests were not riots and the LAPD said they didn't need help.
“I think he needs to restore order,” Cornyn told The Bulwark. “I’m mainly concerned about public safety and the president has clearly got authority in his federal capacity to deal with the National Guard. So, plenty of precedent.”
Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told The Bulwark that Trump had to send in the military, even though neither the LAPD nor Newsom said it was necessary.
A protester shouts at a line of California National Guard members protecting a federal building in downtown Los Angeles on June 9.
“I don’t think that the president had any choice,” Kennedy said. “These weren’t just protests—these were riots. And it was clear that the governor and the mayor—the mayor’s idea of containment was to give them a hug and a cup of hot cocoa. And the president did what he had to do.”
Even the Republicans who are criticizing Trump's authoritarian actions are doing so in a tepid way.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said he backed sending in the National Guard, but deploying the Marines was a step too far.
"You really don't want to send in the U.S. military. You've got, I think, plenty of National Guard troops. If the governors use them," Johnson told a local Wisconsin radio show. "I think that is what President Trump is trying to do. Put a little spine into these governors."
Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska gave a perfunctory "Yes" when asked by a reporter on Capitol Hill if she had concerns with Trump's use of the military to control protests, then jumped into a closing elevator without elaborating.
Some parents in the district — which includes an estimated 30,000 immigrant students — plan to sit out commencements over immigration enforcement concerns.
What was supposed to be a day of celebration for students at Gratts Learning Academy for Young Scholars turned into one of chaos as immigration enforcement in and around Los Angeles — along with subsequent protests and attempts to quash them — reportedly left some of their relatives too fearful to attend the elementary school’s graduation.
Gratts is in the city’s Westlake District, where immigration raids Friday led to a showdown between demonstrators and law enforcement agencies that persisted throughout the weekend. Altogether, at least 56 people were arrested in the L.A. area. In Downtown Los Angeles, near Westlake, the sight of blazes on several blocks — after riot police lobbed flashbang rounds at crowds, and protesters set off fireworks and torched cars — called to mind the wildfires that ravaged the region at the start of the year.
A man shouts into a megaphone outside Los Angeles City Hall during protests over federal immigration enforcement raids on June 11.
President Donald Trump on Sunday deployed the National Guard in this deeply blue city that opposes his mass deportations policy, a move that critics — including former Vice President Kamala Harris — argued intensified confrontations between protesters and the authorities. Commuters driving to work on Monday morning saw what remained of the clashes — self-driving Waymo cars burnt to crisps and graffiti tagged all over downtown businesses and buildings.
Schools are still reeling from the raids and the unrest, with commencement ceremonies set to continue this week.
Officials acknowledge that many families in the district — which includes an estimated30,000immigrant students — plan to sit out commencement because of concerns about immigration enforcement. LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho described that decision as “a heartbreak” during a news conference Monday.
“I’ve spoken with parents who’ve told me that their daughter will be the first in their family to graduate high school, and they’re not going to be there to witness it because they have a fear of the place of graduation being targeted,” Carvalho said. “What nation are we? Who in their right mind would accept that reality?”
Fears have been stoked by unfounded rumors such as the one that emerged on Friday that an immigration raid took place at Gratts’ graduation. “The claims that immigration enforcement activity arrived at the school and during the event are false,” an LAUSD spokesperson told The 19th.
The superintendent, an immigrant from Portugal who was formerly undocumented, said the district is taking steps to protect each graduation site, whether on or off campus. The school police will “establish perimeters of safety” around graduation locations and intervene if any federal agency tries to disrupt the ceremonies, Carvalho said.
“We’ve instructed our principals to not create lines, to not restrict access,” he said. “As soon as [families] come, they will enter the venues where the graduations are taking place, reducing the risk for them while on the street waiting to get in. We also have authorized the principals to allow parents to remain at the venue for as long as it takes should there be any immigration enforcement action around the area where the graduations are taking place.”
School police will also remain on site well after the ceremonies end to allow parents to exit safely. And, in limited capacities, the district will create opportunities for families to watch their children graduate via Zoom.
Carvalho said that the recent raids and unrest happened at the worst possible time, given that over 100 graduation ceremonies will be taking place throughout LAUSD Monday and Tuesday, the last day of school. Still, he said the district is prepared to protect students, staff and families.
“Every child has a constitutional right to a public education,” he said. “Therefore, every child and their parent has a right to celebrate the culmination of their educational success.”
United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), the woman-led labor union representing Los Angeles Unified educators, has also spoken out against the immigration enforcement that took place in Los Angeles last week.
“The ruthless targeting of hard-working people by ICE and law enforcement agencies is not only unjust but cruel,” the union saidin a statement pinned to its Instagram page. “They are using violence and scare tactics to detain people who are simply trying to live and support their families. We will not stand for this.”
On Monday, United Teachers Los Angeles organized a rally to stand up for immigrant communities and to protest the arrest of union leader David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union (SEIU) – United Service Workers West and SEIU California. Huerta was arrested Friday while observing an immigration raid at a Los Angeles garment factory. He has been charged with felony conspiracy to impede officers and could face up to six years in federal prison if convicted.
“We need more people to continue to be loud about these attacks by ICE,” the Los Angeles teachers’ union said. “History has taught us that we cannot afford to stand idly by while our community members are being ripped away from their schools, homes, neighborhoods and workplaces.”
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, the nation’s second-largest teachers union, also expressed her outrage over Huerta’s arrest, the detainment of immigrant workers and Trump’s decision to mobilize the National Guard against protesters.
“It is no coincidence that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained David Huerta and raided the site of a known worker center — and we, alongside the entire labor movement, are demanding his and others’ immediate release,” Weingarten said in a statement. “The assault on Los Angeles contradicts all this country stands for. We are a nation made stronger by immigrant workers, stronger by the unions that represent them, and stronger by the rule of law.” Huerta was released from custody Monday afternoon.
Kamala Harris criticized the violent repression of mostly peaceful protesters in Los Angeles, singling out Trump for his role in the unrest that ensued. Harris has lived in L.A.’s Brentwood neighborhood since marrying Doug Emhoff in 2014, though she was largely based in Washington, D.C., as vice president.
“Los Angeles is my home, and like so many Americans, I am appalled at what we are witnessing on the streets of our city,”she said in a statement. “Deploying the National Guard is a dangerous escalation meant to provoke chaos. In addition to recent ICE raids in Southern California and across our nation, it is part of the Trump administration’s cruel, calculated agenda to spread panic and division.”
The White House, meanwhile, took aim at the protesters, as well as California Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, both Democrats.
“Radical left lunatics are taking to the streets of Los Angeles —attackinglaw enforcement,hurling projectilesat police cruisers,burningvehicles, andshutting downfreeways — because the Trump administration is removing violent criminal illegal immigrants from their communities,” the White House said in a statement Monday. “Democrats like Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass should be thanking President Trump for stepping up and leading where they refused — and for ridding their streets of criminal illegal immigrant killers, rapists, and gangbangers.”
Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, sued the Trump administration Monday over its deployment of the National Guard, arguing that doing so infringed on the state’s sovereignty.
Los Angeles school leaders say they’re prepared for the Trump administration to escalate immigration enforcement, including on campuses. In January, Trump lifted restrictions on immigration enforcement in “sensitive locations,” including schools, churches and hospitals. The policy change has led parents across the country to pull children out of class. During Carvalho’s address on Monday, he said that two federal vans were parked near schools.
“No action has been taken, but we interpret those actions as actions of intimidation, instilling fear that may lead to self-deportation,” he said. “That is not the community we want to be, that is not the state or the nation that we ought to be.”
LAUSD is urging parents or guardians who see immigration activity to contact their school or call the district’s Family Hotline: (213) 443-1300.
The following guest post was written for Daily Kos by Margaret Huang, president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Pride Month kicked off with a spirit of defiance this year as major companies backed away from sponsorships and support of LGBTQ+ celebrations. This departure—which marks a stark change from how companies have championed Pride in recent years—signals how hard-right extremist groups have managed to push their once fringe beliefs into our daily lives.
Since President Donald Trump took office, we’ve seen a larger pattern of retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion in sectors from education to health care to the corporate world. The cultural headwinds facing DEI did not blow in overnight. As the Southern Poverty Law Center’s new “Year in Hate and Extremism” report details, this shift is part of a long and coordinated strategy by hard-right extremists to reshape American life and infiltrate politics and governance.
What began as a small and vocal minority of people mobilizing during the pandemic to censor classroom discussion, ban books, fight mask mandates, and impose a white, Christian supremacy in schools, quickly gained a foothold of influence in the political discourse. Local and state officials, especially in the South, took up the mantle—and messaging—of these groups and began trying to enact their dangerous ideology into law.
Florida was a leading incubator in which these policies took shape. Groups like Moms for Liberty, founded in Florida in 2021, and Citizens Defending Freedom led a campaign to destabilize, defund, and dismantle public school authority under the guise of “parental rights.” They aligned with state officials who pushed through new educational standards that whitewash and rewrite history. The standards, for example, require courses in African American history to include language that some enslaved people benefited from slavery. They also sought to shut down drag story hours, ban discussion of LGBTQ+ identities in the classroom, and deny gender-affirming medical care for young transgender people. Following Florida’s lead, copycat legislation was soon proposed by lawmakers in states across the country.
The hard right has since expanded its targets from K-12 schools and public libraries to DEI programs of any kind. As our report details, by 2024, proposed laws to dismantle DEI programs were sweeping the nation. These measures restricted discussions of race and gender in college classrooms and cut funding for diversity personnel and offices, impacting 212 college campuses in 32 states. Companies also increasingly faced legal challenges and pressure from lawmakers and political candidates to drop their DEI programs. Last year, Walmart, Boeing, John Deere, Lowe’s, Ford, and many more announced they would scale back their efforts.
Lawmakers have not only pulled their agenda of exclusion but also their tactics straight from the playbook of hate and antigovernment extremist groups. By spreading disinformation, peddling conspiracy theories, and preying on people’s fears and uncertainty, they seek to deepen divisions and rouse suspicion of any effort to make spaces more welcoming for all.
These tactics were particularly evident in the 2024 elections as the political right increasingly moved toward an authoritarian, Christian supremacist, and patriarchal social order. One of the main groups driving that shift is Turning Point USA, whose primary strategy is sowing and exploiting fear over the false conspiracy that white Christians are under attack from immigrants, LGBTQ+ people and civil rights activists. The group’s founder, Charlie Kirk, often spoke at Trump campaign rallies, and has asserted, “You cannot have liberty if you don’t have a Christian population.”
With the election of Trump, this extremism now has an ally in the highest office in the nation. What was once considered a fringe agenda in the modern era is the blueprint from which the country’s president—and the MAGA movement—is operating. It comes as no surprise then that ending DEI has been one of the administration’s top priorities. Shortly after being sworn in, Trump shut down federal diversity programs and hiring initiatives. In March, he signed an executive order attempting to rewrite history and restore monuments and memorials to the Confederacy.
The president and his allies both inside and outside the administration have drummed up such a climate of fear and retribution around DEI that some leaders would rather abandon their efforts altogether than become the administration’s next target. That’s why now is the time to shore up our resources and build coalitions and networks of support like never before. While the backlash to DEI has been swift, more than six in 10 people in the U.S. believe these values are essential for a thriving democracy. All of us must link arms and hold our ground—knowing that our strength is our vibrant and multiracial society. We must not only celebrate but together preserve our nation’s most sacred principle: out of many, one.
President Donald Trump has deployed thousands of National Guard members and Marines to Los Angeles in an attempt to quell protests against ICE’s unconstitutional immigration raids.
And as protesters exercising their First Amendment rights are met with a sea of active military personnel, a question has popped up across the country: How much power does the U.S. military have against its own citizens?
“There doesn't seem to be a perfect match between what the administration has stated that they've authorized these National Guard members or Marines to do, and what they are actually doing,” Joseph Nunn, legal counsel of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, told Daily Kos.
U.S Marines stand next to members of the California National Guard outside of a federal building in Los Angeles on June 13.
Of course, the legality behind Trump’s actions has been a topic of contention over the past week. Typically, a sitting president would have to invoke the Insurrection Act to deploy military members within the United States. But Trump has found a sneaky backdoor through the Title 10 orders.
Under Title 10 USC 12406, the Trump administration can deploy active military units if the United States is being invaded by a foreign nation, if there is a rebellion against the government, or if Trump is unable to execute the law with regular law enforcement.
But it was actually Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth who tried to justify the use of this bypass maneuver by claiming that the protesters fit the justification for a “foreign invasion.”
Even so, without invoking the Insurrection Act, the military is supposed to be limited in what it can do. Then again, as Nunn told Daily Kos, when put in an active area of duress, the situation can quickly escalate.
“The administration has put forth this theory that is rooted in … protecting federal property,” he said. “Guarding federal property or protecting ICE agents still puts military personnel in a position where they could be interacting with civilians in a sort of law enforcement capacity, and that's, you know, legally dubious.”
In other words, military members may not be authorized to physically engage or arrest protesters without the Insurrection Act, but when directly placed in a situation where they may need to do so, the lines become blurred.
“This is not how we do things in the United States,” Nunn added. “In the United States of America, we deploy the military as a last resort when civilian authorities are overwhelmed. That's not the case here.”
Black Music Sunday is a weekly series highlighting all things Black music, with over 260 stories covering performers, genres, history, and more, each featuring its own vibrant soundtrack. I hope you’ll find some familiar tunes and perhaps an introduction to something new.
On the third Sunday in June, wecelebrate Father’s Day, and as we pointed out for Mother’s Day back in May, good “fathering” doesn’t always come from a biological dad. It includes loving uncles, step-dads, grandads, godfathers, and mentors.
I often think of the days when I danced with my dad, which always evokes sadness because I miss him, and joy for having had him in my life. I play the title song from Luther Vandross’ last album, “Dance With My Father,” on those days.
Born in New York City to Luther Vandross Sr. and his wife Mary Ida, Luther Ronzoni Vandross grew up surrounded by the city’s rich culture. Raised in Harlem and later the Bronx by parents with backgrounds as vocalists with gospel and big band ensembles, Vandross developed a strong ear at a young age. He learned to play piano by ear by following along with records and honed his vocal stylings by listening to various vocalists. As a high school student, he organized vocal harmony groups, which became a significant training ground where Vandross developed his velvety-textured tenor voice. Over his teenage years, Vandross developed his balladeer showmanship by watching top-tier performers on stage at the Apollo Theater and performing on the venue’s stage himself during Amateur nights. He briefly attended Western Michigan University before transitioning into a full-time music career that saw him quietly take over mainstream American music and culture, infusing it with his elegant “camp” aesthetic.
[..]
His body of work, specifically his love songs, was integral to the American soundscape of the late twentieth century. His songs were definitive examples of Quiet Storm music’s smooth, jazz-influenced romantic ballads that dominated late-night urban radio programs. Throughout his career, he kept a busy schedule releasing music and touring. His last studio album, Dance with My Father, released in 2003, featured Vandross’s powerful musical homage to his father. The autobiographical title track song commemorates Vandross’s happy childhood memories of dancing at home with his mother and father in a way that resonated with audiences. The song earned Vandross several awards, including a Grammy Award for Song of the Year. This final musical chapter in the fifty-two-year-old’s career featured him working alongside jazz musicians like Nat Adderley, Jr. and young rising music icons including Beyoncé Knowles.
Speaking of Beyoncé, she created a major stir when she performed “Daddy’s Lessons” with the Dixie Chicks at the 2016 Country Music Awards:
As rumored, Beyoncé took the stage at the 50th Annual Country Music Awards, but the queen wasn’t alone. For her Lemonade country hit “Daddy Lessons,” she enlisted the help of country group sensation The Dixie Chicks.While it was confirmed that Beyoncé would perform on country’s biggest night, no one was sure when the iconic singer would actually appear on stage and which song she would sing. “Daddy Lessons” was the obvious choice, but you can never be too sure with Bey.
Rumors also hinted that the singer would take the stage with the Dixie Chicks, who’d covered “Daddy Lessons” earlier this year. Just as all of Black Twitter was about to give up on the show, Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks took the stage and fans went into full chaos mode. Undoubtedly, it was a stellar performance that will go down as one of 2016’s biggest moment. Well done, Beyoncé and the Dixie Chicks, you all truly slayed
The daddy in “Daddy Lessons” teaches his daughter to fight. In encouraging her to “be tough,” learning how to shoot his rifle, riding motorcycles duded up in classic vinyl and leather, the father encourages his daughter to both defend herself and to take care of her mother and sister—that is, to take the place as the head of the family, a place usually reserved for sons.
When Beyoncé’s and the Chicks’ voices meld in harmony with those lines about the father, gun and head held high, there is glory and dignity in this image, and I picture someone who might be immortalized on a statue in a small-town square or, well, in a country music song. Except, of course, this is a Black daddy. And armed Black men are not usually the subjects of patriotic statues or most country songs. We are reminded of this daddy’s Blackness both sonically and visually in the Lemonade visual album. At the opening of the visual, as the rhythms bring us into the song, we hear a chorus of male hoots and snaps and yeahs and gruff “go go gos!”—sort of a downhome version of the Black male voices on Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On.” (In the version of “Daddy Lessons” performed with the Dixie Chicks, the background “yeehaws” have a different resonance, with a heightened female vocal presence.) As the trumpet solo begins, we watch a circle of young Black men, hanging out together, dancing, joking, and laughing in front of a corner store. We see a closeup shot of a young Black girl on a stoop, watching, thinking, and listening. The video then cuts to Beyoncé in a puffy-sleeved country-style dress cut in West African fabric. She sings and dances next to a seated Black man in a cowboy hat, a snappily dressed elder playing a red electric guitar. This sonic and visual fabric of male support bolsters Beyoncé’s storytelling and figures Black men as collaborators as well as listeners.
Beyoncé’s song recollects “Daddy” with affectionate nostalgia but also a questioning eye, one that acknowledges his human failings, his whiskey in his tea. When she sings:
Daddy made me fight
It wasn’t always right
But he said, “Girl, it’s your Second Amendment”
In that “but” is the sense of struggle, of weighing two different versions of morality, one supported by Daddy and the Constitution, the other, her own.
[...]
Fatherhood has long been a sore point in the Black community, where the history of rape and the breeding and selling of slaves made family structures difficult to sustain. But we have also always had other versions of family in the Black community, models that have been devalued and criminalized by white culture, or that just go under the radar: daddys who don’t live with their “baby mamas” but who are deeply involved in their children’s lives; daddys and mamas who live together but aren’t married; women-led households, multigenerational households, queer families. Maybe all of these could be considered queer, especially in the eyes of the law.
Here’s the full visual video which Royster analyzes:
I remember when you used to take me on a bike ride everyday on the bayou
(You remember that? We were inseparable)
And I remember when you could do no wrong
You'd come home from work and I jumped in your arms when I saw you
I was so happy to see you (I was so excited, so happy to see you)
Because you loved me, I overcome, yeah
And I'm so proud of what you've become
You've given me such security
No matter what mistakes I know you're there for me
You cure my disappointments and you heal my pain
You understood my fears and you protected me
Treasure every irreplaceable memory and that's why
I want my unborn son to be like my daddy
I want my husband to be like my daddy
There is no one else like my daddy
And I thank you for loving me
Daddy, daddy, daddy
In 1980, Grover Washington Jr. recorded a romance song written by Bill Withers, William Salter, and Ralph MacDonald called “Just the Two of Us,” which also featured Withers on vocals. It inspired actor and rapper Will Smith to shift the romance to love between a father and son.
From the first time the doctor placed you in my arms
I knew I'd meet death before I'd let you meet harm
Although questions arose in my mind, would I be man enough?
Against wrong, choose right and be standin up
From the hospital that first night Took a hour just ta get the carseat in right
People drivin all fast, got me kinda upset
Got you home safe, placed you in your basinette
That night I don't think one wink I slept
As I slipped out my bed, to your crib I crept
Touched your head gently, felt my heart melt
Cause I know I loved you more than life itself
Then to my knees, and I begged the Lord please
Let me be a good daddy, all he needs
Love, knowledge, discipline too
I pledge my life to you
In 2020, Panama Jackson wrote for The Root an article titled “30 Days of Iconic Music Video Blackness With VSB, Day 21: Will Smith, 'Just the Two of Us'”:
Having spent considerable time searching for both songs and videos displaying positivity in the name of fathers, I gained a newfound appreciation for this song’s existence. The message is important. There’s been this longstanding myth that black men are allergic to fatherhood. And I realize that everybody doesn’t have a great relationship with their father; some have no relationship at all. My own family isn’t immune from this. I was fortunate enough to grow up with my father who managed to be a role model for me, and I’m also surrounded by a slew of friends who are active present and happy fathers so Father’s Day, for me is usually celebratory.
Will’s video features his son and shows pictures and scenes of other men, with the majority being black men, being fathers with their kids and I can appreciate that. So on this Father’s Day, Will’s video that demonstrates a version of black life where the fathers are present and accounted for, with purpose and intention, is the pick. That’s what fatherhood looks like for me and is what I want my kids to see and what I will show them as long as God allows. I’m not sure Will knew in 1998 that by 2020 he’d still have one of the few music videos celebrating fathers and fatherhood, but here we are. And that makes it iconic.
As a side note, in 2001, Smith and award-winning author, artist, and illustrator Kadir Nelson published a children’s book, “Just the Two of Us.”
Last, but not least, is a tribute to a stepfather, “Color Him Father,” which was released by The Winstons in 1969. They were an interracial R&B band from Washington, D.C.:
x
Just a great Soul track!
Hailing from Washington D.C., here’s The Winstons - Amen, Brother (Color Him Father, 1969). A fab instrumental that’ll leave yer feet & hips fighting for space on the dance floor!
The song became one of the biggest R&B hits of the 1960's, selling a million copies and reaching number 1 on the R&B chart and number 7 on the national charts in 1969.
It also went gold, an achievement awarded by the Recording Industry Association of America on the 24th July 1969.
A native of Wadesboro, Spencer played tenor saxophone with Otis Redding and Curtis Mayfield. But it was with the funk and soul band The Winstons that landed him on the charts with the song “Color Him Father.”
Spencer wrote and sang that song, and he won a Grammy for it in 1969 for R&B Song Of The Year.
On the backside of the “Color Him Father” record was the song “Amen Brother,” which has a heavily sampled drumbeat known as the “Amen Break.” Although used widely in hip-hop, The Winstons were never paid for the sample.
“I had nothing after the record. I had a high school education and a Grammy, which had no value,” Spencer told WFAE back in 2017.
The Winstons was made up of both Black and white musicians, and Spencer’s brother Rodney said record promoters wouldn’t put their picture on any promotional items.
“They would not promote his record showing an integrated group – Black and white,” he said.
There are lots more songs to play today, many of which I’ve posted here in the past. Hope you’ll join me in the comments section below for more, and please post your favorites!
We all know dads' tastes are just as diverse as, well, non-dads, so when it came time to choose today's Sweets I decided to hone in on one specific dad: mine.
So, here 'tis: Father's Day Sweets for my dad, Jim Yates. But the rest of you can feel free to look, too. :)
Hey, Dad, remember that time the neighbor's little boy snuck in to our house, grabbed your guitar, and dragged it down the sidewalk? Ah, good times.
Also, I don't think your guitar looked quite this cool:
Submitted by Kathy H. and made by her sister, Carol V.
And remember how you'd take me for rides on your motorcycle? The turns always scared me, but I loved having my very own kid-sized helmet, and the thrill of climbing into the seat behind you, hanging on for dear life, and thinking maybe my parents weren't quite so embarrassing, after all.
Although, come to think of it, your motorcycle wasn't this cool, either:
It's possible you've blocked this from memory, but you really did teach me to drive. In our ancient green Toyota pickup, no less, with a floor stick shift.
It took me years to figure out what you did for a living. All I knew was you worked at a big, intimidating office/factory and you wore a suit every day. (Btw, you're, uh, some kind of project manager/engineer type, right?) I still remember the first time you asked me if your tie went with your shirt; it made me feel so important, that you'd ask for my opinion. Actually, I still feel that way, any time you ask.
And for the record: that tie + that shirt = perfect.
Remember when I came home crying because all the kids were making flashy, expensive models for a school project, and I didn't have anything flashy OR expensive? You sat me down and asked me what I'd like to do. Then we went to Skycraft Surplus (remember that?). In the end, I couldn't have been more proud: my project board's little Styrofoam car had real working headlights!
To this day, I clearly remember "The Sociological Impact of the Lightbulb" - because my Dad helped me build it.
Remember Starbuck and Midnight, our pet miniature goats? We must have been the only family in an Orlando subdivision with two goats bleating in the backyard. I still can't believe you bought them for us. Heh.
We'd pile into our old green pickup, and you'd sing "Greasy Grimey Gopher Guts" and "On Top of Old Smokey" along the way. Thanks to you I still love the smell of sawdust and grease that hits me every time I walk into our local Home Depot - and today I rock my own tool belt.
One night I peeked into the living room to see what you and Mom were laughing about, and there on the TV was a curly-headed man in a long scarf bouncing into a blue police box.
Soon we were all watching together, just like we watched Star Trek and Night Court and Monty Python together. The next year you brought us to my very first convention - a Doctor Who convention.
(I like to think my geeky lineage came full circle when John and I brought you and Mom to Dragon*Con - thus starting a yearly tradition, perhaps?)
When we were little, you seemed to take sadistic glee in waking Ben and me with loud jazz music, water, or banging suddenly on our bedroom doors - but I'll never forget the time you woke us with "Who wants to go to Disney World?!"
You never set limits on my future, Dad. When I wrote lousy poetry, you submitted your favorite to a national magazine - and you were more disappointed than I was when it wasn't printed. When I thought I wanted to be a professional clown, you got brochures for Ringling College. When I first introduced you to John, you asked if we'd set a date yet.
You taught me to pursue my dreams, marry only for love, and to always finish my Brussels sprouts.
Happy Father's Day to the rest of you dads out there, too! May all your children grow up to make you proud - when they're not publicly embarrassing you on the Internet, of course.
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