The Gestapo Meme That Became a Trump Executive Order

Ihren Ausweis, bitte!”  

Show me your papers!

You’ve seen it in a dozen World War II movies. Some menacing German officer in a Hugo Boss trench coat stops the family/spy/hero/refugee to demand citizenship papers. 

And now, it’s baaack! Trump’s Executive Order 14399 requires Americans to “show me your citizenship papers” to vote.

But you can fight this Nazi-fication of our elections. Start by watching this 4-minute video from Palast Investigative Fund Fellow Edward Ward, second in our series Jim Crow Reloaded.  

This week, the Supreme Court temporarily enjoined another Trump Executive Order that would have blocked the Post Office from sending you your ballot unless you’re on the citizenship list.  

But this new obstruction to mail-in voting remains a real threat in the form of individual Red states adopting their own show-me-your-papers laws.

Now, here’s the problem with giving ballots only those on the US citizenship list. THERE IS NO CITIZENSHIP LIST. America is not Russia, North Korea nor Nazi Germany (not yet, knock on wood!). Americans don’t like to be tracked and numbered, and we don’t have Apple tags implanted in our heads (not yet).

Trump knows there’s no citizenship list: he wants the power to create the list from selected databases. How? There are only three proofs of citizenship: a passport, an original birth certificate or naturalization papers. And he knows (or Stephen Miller knows for him) who doesn’t have a passport. I can tell you that not many of my homies in Pacoima go skiing in the Alps.  

And who can’t find their original birth certificates? Trust fund babies don’t worry about their papers carefully kept for them by their trustees. 

The Social Security Administration has a partial list, but it excludes millions of citizens (I’m one).

That’s why Ed Ward is explaining the citizenship ID game — and how to beat the vote suppressors at their own game.

Watch this episode, pass around the link, sign up to our non-partisan Save Your Vote campaign, the Palast Fund’s partnership with RainbowPUSH, NAACP Atlanta, the Transformative Justice Coalition, and the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project’s Latino Mobilization.

Then make your tax-deductible donation to finish the Jim Crow Reloaded series. The 6 remaining episodes are filmed and ready to go but we need launch funds, especially to provide the media and technical material for our partner groups. But my credit card is maxxed.  

Your generosity can stop the slide to Gestapo election tactics.  

And if you’re in a very generous mood and contribute $5,000 or more, we’ll proudly list you as a producer of an episode of your choice.

So, join us now, or before you know it, it will be “Achtung, baby!”