Footnotes - A Letter to America
1 Ths claim is made by multiple people. See: Tone, Tyler."Inside the Trump administration’s extortion-industrial complex," Fire, 30 July 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.thefire.org/news/inside-trump-administrations-extortion-industrial-complex.; Fields, Ashleigh. "Jeffries says White House trying to ‘extort’ $230M from DOJ," The Hill, 1 February 2026. Retrieved from: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/5717300-jeffries-slams-trump-extortion-doj/; David D. Kirkpatrick. "Trump’s Profiteering Hits $4 Billion," The New Yorker, 31 January 2026. Retrieved from: https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/trumps-profiteering-hits-four-billion-dollars
2 Americans for Tax Fairness. “Billionaire Political Spending Has Skyrocketed: Spending by U.S. billionaire families in presidential election years, 2000 – 2024.” Graph. Retrieved from: https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality.
3 Retrieved from: https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality. Net personal wealth (U.S.), Graph.
4 Retrieved from: https://inequality.org/facts/wealth-inequality, citing Federal Reserve.
5 Sanders, Bernie. “Two Americas, the people v. the billionaires,” U.S. Senate, 27 December 2024. Retrieved from: https://www.sanders.gov/op-eds/two-americas-the-people-vs-the-billionaires.
6 The likelihood of American children earning more than their parents has dropped from 90% for those born in 1940 to around 50% for those born in the 1980s. “The American Dream is Fading: Only half of children today grow up to earn more than their parents
Opportunity Insights. Retrieved from: https://opportunityinsights.org/national_trends/
7 Michael, Casey. “The Oligarchs Pushing for Conquest in Greenland:Trump’s fixation on filching the island territory from Denmark may seem like the demented ravings of a mad king. But to a cohort of plutocrat weirdos, it makes perfect sense,” The New Republic, 13 January 2026. Retrieved from: https://newrepublic.com/artcle205102/oligarchs-pushing-conquest-greenland-trump
8 Shotter, James. “Kusher sets out $30bn ‘New Gaza” vision: Palestinian enclave will offer ‘amazing opportunities,’ Davos told,” Financial Times, 23 January 2025.
9 Retrieved from: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DT1F-rtDx4t/?igsh=YTk1ZmF6cW500DBr
10 “U.S. Government to Take Cut of Nvidia and AMD A.I Chip Sales to China: In a highly unusual arrangement with President Trump, the companies are expected to kick 15 percent of what they make in China to the U.S. Government,” The New York Times, 10 August 2025, Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/technology/us-government-nvidia-amd-chips-china.html
11 Chauhan, Harsh. “President Donald Trump Just Delivered Incredible News for Nvidia Investors,” Motley Fool, 10 December 2025. Retrieved from: https;//www.fool.com/investing/2025/12/10/president-donald-trump-just-delivered-incrediblen/
12 Common Cause. “Congress made over $635 million in stock trades while Americans Struggled – See who Traded Most,” 12 December 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.commoncause.org/articles/congress-made-over-635-million-in-stock-trades-while-americans-struggled-see-who-traded-the-most/#:~:text=10.,Total%20Volume:%20$79.83%20million0
13 “UAE Spy Sheikh, AI Chips, $500M – Trump Crypto, Monetizes Presidency, Adam Schiff Exposes,” APT News. Retrieved from: https://youtu.be/6LmzspisHHw?si+dHvjrjLQAv_N9fXw
14“I think that if we have to rename totalitarianism, the word ‘logocracy’ would be better than ‘ideocracy.’ There is no longer any rule of an ‘idea,’ no matter how perverted it may be, but of the logical process itself which could be deduced from the idea as its logical premise.” Quoted in: Totalitarianism: Proceedings of a Conference held at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1954) edited by Carl J. Friedrich, 134.
15 Arendt, Hannah. “Totalitarianism in Power,” The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York: Median Books, 1951), p. 458.
16 Langfitt, Frank. "Trump is dismantling democracy at 'unprecedented' speed, global report finds," NPR, 3/20/26, Retrieved from: https://www.npr.org/2026/03/20/nx-s1-5754021/trump-democracy-autocracy-dictatorship-reports
17 Arendt, Hannah. “Totalitarianism in Power,” The Origins of Totalitarianism (Cleveland and New York: Median Books, 1951), p. 458.
18 Declaration of Independence
19 Ward, Ian. “The Online Right’s Favorite Nativist Slogan is Gaining Traction in the Real World,”Politico, 31 July 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2025/07/03/heritage-american-jd-vance-online-right-phrase-0048172 and Liu, Wendy. “J.D. Vance and his Theory that Not all Americans are Created Equal,” Post Alley, 7 August 2025. Retrieved from: https://www.postalley.com/2025/08/07/jd-vance-and-his-theory-that-not-all-americans-are-created-equal
20 James Fontanella-Khan, Myles McCormick, and Christian Davies.”Trump shakes corporate America with run of ‘Maoist’ interventions: Executives braced for more shockwaves as they expect president’s policy diktats to intensify for 2026,” Financial Times, 17 January 2026.
21 Sale, Kirkpatrick. Dwellers in the Land: The Bioregional Vision (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1985), 138; citing F.J. Turner, The Significance of Sections in American History, Holt, 1932, reprint 1950); The United States, 1830-50, Holt, 1935, reprint 1958; American Sociological Society Papers, Vol. II, 1908; and see, Bennet, James D. Fredrick Jackson Turner (Twayne, 1975).