President Donald Trump and his administration are abusing and spinning the traditional language of political decency to launder their radical new goals, with two legal scholars explaining for The Hill how this warping of reality is almost literally "Through the Looking Glass."
Writing for the outlet on Sunday, legal scholar David Wippman and historian Glenn C. Altschuler detailed the administration's last-minute spending of federal human rights funds on far-right pet causes "far removed" from anything that has ever been the purview of U.S. foreign policy.
"On Sept. 30, with just hours left to allocate the money in its human rights fund, the State Department directed most of it — more than $175 million — to conservative causes, many of them far removed from the traditional priorities of U.S. foreign policy," Wippman and Altschuler explained. "The recipients are not dissidents, journalists or persecuted minorities. Instead, the Trump administration has chosen to support allegedly persecuted whites in South Africa; combat supposed 'democratic backsliding' by European allies; and challenge judicial institutions in Brazil accused of censoring conservatives. One program seeks to promote Western 'civilizational values' by assisting opponents of the European Union’s 'supranational and bureaucratic overreach' and restrictions on extremist political speech."
The pair explained further that even as Trump has removed the U.S. from many mainstream global human rights initiatives, his administration has continued to co-opt the language of human rights conversations to express its new aims, creating a dangerous spin meant to warp reality and meaning to its whims.
"Nowhere is this more visible than in the State Department’s revamped annual Country Reports on Human Rights Practices," they explained. "Instead of focusing on torture, extrajudicial killing and political repression in authoritarian states, the reports now emphasize restrictions against 'hate speech' and extremist political parties in democratic countries, including France, Canada and Germany. Attention has been drastically curtailed to violence against women, racial and ethnic violence, gay and transgender rights, government corruption and environmental justice."
They added: "Meanwhile, the administration has largely ignored human rights violations by many pro-Trump authoritarian governments. The report on El Salvador, for example, makes the demonstrably false claim that there are 'no credible reports' there 'of significant human rights abuses.'"
On the domestic front, the approach is much the same, with the administration's much-discussed crusade against "DEI" attempting to invert the perception of programs meant to aid historically marginalized, instead painting them as marginalizing white people and men.
"The day after returning to office in 2025, President Trump issued an executive order denouncing diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in government, academia and the private sector — not simply as illegal but 'dangerous, demeaning, and immoral,'" the pair explained further. "His administration dismantled such federal programs and barred them among federal contractors. He challenged race-conscious policies in higher education and private employment and launched investigations of institutions that continue to pursue diversity initiatives. After rescinding affirmative-action guidance dating to 1979 that had encouraged employers to improve opportunities for women and minorities, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission invited white men to file workplace discrimination complaints."
This entire push to force the language of legitimacy to fit their own aims has a distinct literary corollary, Wippman and Alstschuler concluded.
"In 'Through the Looking Glass' [by Lewis Carroll], Humpty Dumpty insisted to Alice that 'when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less,'" the pair wrote. "The Trump administration seems determined to claim the same prerogative for its mean-spirited and damaging approach to human rights. That said, here’s hoping all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can put human rights together again."
