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alexjn.bsky.social
alex nguyen
@alexjn.bsky.social
5.6K followers 1K following 41 posts
journalist, fact checker | recently @motherjones.com, @cir-union.bsky.social | labor, housing, race and ethnicity, politics | occasional posts on good art

Email: alexajn@proton.me
Signal: anguyen.91
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alexjn.bsky.social
This is from my last story as a fellow at Mother Jones. As someone who arrived at journalism via career switch, I've used it as a vehicle to reflect on questions in my own life—namely, what family, community, and solidarity mean to me. A little on the ones I’m most proud of below:
Screenshot of a section of a Mother Jones piece published on August, 4, 2025. “I’ve spent a good deal of time covering the Trump-era political and cultural battles in Asian American communities. Within those debates, Tang Williams sits at the far-right end of the spectrum—a gun-owning former Libertarian who rails against undocumented immigrants while tweeting conspiracy theories about the Chinese Communist Party. But you can hear echoes of her views from immigrants across the country, including from some members of my own family, who came to the US from Vietnam in the years following the Vietnam War. It was clear that Tang Williams could relate to my family and that she understood a good deal of why I had reached out to her—to examine the seemingly stark difference between how they see their own immigration experience and how they view the experiences of many other people of color in America. They persevered through war and authoritarian regimes, fled their homes, started a new life from scratch, and struggled for upward mobility. But they believe they’re now paying for a system designed by Democrats that redistributes their earnings.”
August 4, 2025 at 3:06 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
She told me that Democrats and “communists” punish legal immigrants by prioritizing those who are undocumented and creating a “victim mentality” through providing people economic “handouts.” She has become increasingly popular as a far-right influencer on X, where she asserts this rhetoric.
Screenshot of Lily Tang Williams’ X post on March 10, 2025, that shows her sitting in the driver’s seat of her Tesla: “It’s Tesla, baby! I bought it to support ⁦@elonmusk⁩ ⁦@DOGE⁩. We, the free people must defeat the leftists/Marxists/communist mobs or they will destroy America!” Screenshot of Lily Tang Williams’ X post on July 8, 2025, of her standing next to her brother in a Walmart: “My brother waited 13 yr to come here with my sponsorship after background check, health screening, in person interviews & paying the fees. He has worked nonstop to support his family. If we need workers, let legal immigrants come in quicker & work. No amnesty! No free handouts!”
August 4, 2025 at 2:34 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
Earlier this year, I explored the historical context of cuts to programs like Medicaid. The left needs to revert "entitlements" to their original meaning by proving how the government can better the lives of regular folks. That can only be done with real policies www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Mother Jones article about DOGE cuts to entitlements: Entitlements originally had a different meaning. When Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted Social Security in 1935, the program was pitched as “social insurance,” one that Americans “earned” and were “entitled” to. But Republicans have flipped that meaning by associating these programs with notions of dependence: lazy people asking for handouts—an “entitled” culture.
May 12, 2025 at 3:23 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
“While [Trump] has us looking at policies of hate, discrimination, and prejudice, what he’s doing is distracting us from the real picture,” Jonathan Smith, President of the NY Metro Area Postal Workers Union said. “It’s about rich versus poor. It’s about haves and have nots.”
Jonathan Smith, the president of the New York Metro Area Postal Workers Union, speaks in front of a crowd of USPS worker, retirees, and supporters at the APWU's Day of Action in Manhattan.
March 20, 2025 at 5:55 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
Flyer from the American Postal Workers Union
Flyer from the APWU saying, "Hands off our Postal Service!"
March 20, 2025 at 3:25 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
At the Metro APWU Day of Action today in Manhattan outside the James A. Farley Post Office. Postal workers and supporters are demanding that the US Post Office is not for sale. "Whose Post Office? The people's Post Office!"
March 20, 2025 at 3:21 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
@vanessawilliamson.bsky.social from @brookings.edu told me about the history of modern entitlements. During the New Deal, they were "social insurance" that Americans "earned" and were "entitled" to. But this changed:
Passage from Mother Jones article on DOGE and entitlements: Entitlements originally had a different meaning. When Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted Social Security in 1935, the program was pitched as “social insurance,” one that Americans “earned” and were “entitled” to. But Republicans have flipped that meaning by associating these programs with notions of dependence: lazy people asking for handouts—an “entitled” culture. Passage from Mother Jones article about DOGE and entitlements: The 1960s solidified anti-entitlement ideas amid a backlash to the civil rights movement, notes Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution. “By 1967, most of the stories about welfare and the poor were illustrated with pictures of Black people,” she told me. This laid the groundwork for Ronald Reagan to huff in 1987 that “millions of Americans became virtual wards of the state” through government assistance.
March 11, 2025 at 3:06 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
We wrote about this earlier this year—DOGE trying to cut entitlements despite promises from the Trump administration that they would not. It's no surprise though as this is typical GOP rhetoric.
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Passage from Mother Jones article on DOGE and entitlements: Musk has offered the same logic that undergirded past calls for cuts: Tough love is good for the poor. He agreed in an October town hall on X that Trump’s policies would deliver “temporary hardship” but “ensure long-term prosperity.” Here, he sounds much like former House Speaker Paul Ryan, whose Path to Prosperity budgets proposed scaling back Medicare and Medicaid and repealing the Affordable Care Act to offset tax cuts for the wealthy, and like former Rep. Matt Gaetz, who said in 2023 that he did not “think hard-working Americans should be paying for all the social services” of “couch potatoes.”
March 11, 2025 at 3:06 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
Mark Dimondstein, the president of @apwu.bsky.social, warned me in January about the right-wing threat against the Postal Service. It's not about efficiency—it's about funneling services that belong to the people into the hands of billionaires. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
APWU President Mark Dimondstein says in an interview with Mother Jones: "To me, DOGE is a question of billionaire oligarchs trying to figure out how to get more money into their private profits. So all of this stuff about efficiency is really a cover for that, and that also carries over to those who want to privatize the Post Office. The Post Office takes in about $80 billion a year in revenue. Those on the private side of the industry want their hands on that money because when it’s in the public domain, they can’t use it to generate private profits."
March 5, 2025 at 10:27 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
Dimondstein wanted to reframe the conversation—what could be accomplished with an expanded USPS?
The Post Office can do and should do a lot more than it does. There are all sorts of opportunities for expanded services. There’s new opportunity for financial services—tens of millions of low-income people are either unbanked or underbanked. In many parts of the world, people do basic banking and financial services through a public postal service.
February 21, 2025 at 1:37 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
For @motherjones.com, I wrote about how Musk and Trump's DOGE is just a Big Tech version of the tired GOP goal of attacking poor folks by blaming an "entitlement" culture. But it wasn't always this way—during the New Deal, Americans earned these "entitlements."
www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
Entitlements originally had a different meaning. When Franklin D. Roosevelt adopted Social Security in 1935, the program was pitched as “social insurance,” one that Americans “earned” and were “entitled” to. But Republicans have flipped that meaning by associating these programs with notions of dependence: lazy people asking for handouts—an “entitled” culture.
January 23, 2025 at 4:10 PM
alexjn.bsky.social
December 3, 2024 at 6:48 PM