For years, Republicans and Donald Trump have built their political identity around one simple promise: America First.

The phrase is everywhere. It is on the speeches, the campaign signs, the flags and the merchandise.

But patriotism is not a costume. And putting a flag pin on your suit does not make your policies patriotic.

At some point, Americans have to look past the slogans and ask a much more important question:

America First for whom?

Because if America First means prioritizing American workers, American families, American communities and the resources that belong to the American people, then much of what we are watching deserves serious scrutiny.

America’s national debt has now surpassed $40 trillion. The debt has accumulated under mostly Republican presidents with Trump adding more debt than anyone. This means Americans are inheriting an slave economy for future generations while sell out politicians in Washington continues making decisions about what foreign countries American money should go. (Reuters⁠)

And while Americans are being told that government must be disciplined and that ordinary people must accept sacrifices, the United States has committed enormous resources abroad.

The Trump administration backed a $20 billion currency-swap arrangement with struggling Argentina, essentially providing an emergency financial lifeline to the failing right wing country. (Council on Foreign Relations⁠)

Israel continues to receive billions of dollars in annual U.S. security assistance, including the longstanding $3.8 billion annual package under the current agreement. (Israel Policy Forum⁠

Americans have every right to ask:

What are this sell out politicians doing for the people at home?

Because economic security is supposed to be part of the American promise, too.

Hundreds of thousands of job cuts have still been announced in 2026, with technology accounting for nearly a third of announced cuts through July. AI has been cited as the leading reason for job cuts for five consecutive months. (Challenger Gray Christmas⁠)

At the same time, Americans are watching an economic transformation in which enormous amounts of wealth are being generated by technology and corporations while ordinary workers are increasingly worried about whether their jobs will still exist tomorrow.

That brings us to another question:

What happens to the physical wealth of America?

Because America’s wealth isn’t just money.

It is land. It is forests. It is water. It is wildlife.

It is the natural resources that generations of Americans inherited and are supposed to pass on to the next generation.

And that inheritance that patriot Americans fought for is increasingly being treated as something that can be opened up for private foreign exploitation.

The Trump administration is now moving to rescind the 2001 Roadless Area Conservation Rule, which protects tens of millions of acres of national forest from road construction and certain forms of logging and development. The current proposal would eliminate those protections across approximately 45 million acres covered by the rule. The administration argues that doing so will give forest managers greater flexibility to address wildfire risk and forest health. Critics warn that removing the protections could expose some of America’s remaining undeveloped forests to increased roadbuilding, logging and other development. (USDA⁠)

Whatever one’s position on forest management, the stakes are enormous.

These forests are not empty spaces on a map.

They are watersheds.

They are wildlife habitat.

They are recreation areas.

They are part of local economies.

They are places where Americans hunt, fish, hike, camp and experience something that cannot be manufactured in a factory or recreated by a corporation.

This public lands is our American heritage.

That is American’s wealth, too.

And once a wild public landscape are fragmented by roads and foreign exploitation, we cannot simply undo the damage decades later.

Then there are America’s wild horses and burros.

The Bureau of Land Management manages these animals on millions of acres of public land across the American West, and the federal government itself describes them as living symbols of the historic and pioneer spirit of the West. (Bureau of Land Management⁠)

Yet the Trump administration’s proposed budgets have sought to remove longstanding restrictions related to the slaughter of wild horses and burros, prompting animal advocates to warn that the change could make it easier for animals removed from public lands to end up in slaughter pipelines. (Humane World for Animals⁠)

For many Americans, especially across the West, these animals are more than a management problem.

They are part of the mythology, history and identity of the American frontier.

So when we talk about America First, we should be talking about protecting America’s heritage—not treating it as something a traitor President can give away to his rich foreign friends.

And this same question is now emerging around one of the biggest economic transformations of our time: artificial intelligence and data centers.

The Trump administration has made accelerating data-center construction a federal priority. A 2025 executive order directed agencies to accelerate permitting and development of data-center infrastructure and specifically called for identifying ways to facilitate the use of federally owned land and resources for these projects. (The White House⁠)

This matters because data centers aren’t simply office buildings.

They require enormous amounts of electricity.

They require water.

They require transmission infrastructure, roads and other public infrastructure.

And as the AI industry expands, communities across the country are being forced to confront the question of who pays for that enormous demand on America’s resources.

If public land and public resources are mobilized to help private corporations build the infrastructure of the AI economy, Americans deserve to know exactly what the public receives in return.

Why is Trump giving away the people heritage lands ?

Why can a traitor president give away the heritage previous generations fought for to any rich foreigner in the present without any criminal consequences?

Why can Trump kill or destroy our heritage and American identify and congress can’t stop him?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who gets left holding the bill of all his traitor acts?

That is the fundamental question behind all of this.

Our public lands are not disposable inventory saved for any rich foreigner who likes them.

They are not for corporate warehouse.

They are not simply raw material waiting for whichever company or foreign has enough money to buy sellout politicians to gain access.

They are an inheritance for all Americans.

The mountains are an inheritance.

The forests are an inheritance.

The rivers are an inheritance.

The wildlife is an inheritance.

The open spaces of the American West are an inheritance.

And the natural resources beneath and flowing through those lands are part of America’s national wealth.

They belong to the American people.

Being America First should therefore mean protecting that inheritance.

It should mean making sure American workers benefit from American economic growth.

It should mean making sure American communities benefit when corporations use American resources.

It should mean protecting American water.

Protecting American forests.

Protecting American wildlife.

Protecting American public lands.

And protecting the economic future of the people who actually live here.

Instead, what Americans increasingly see is a political system where enormous corporate interests have access to enormous public resources while ordinary Americans are expected to accept layoffs, rising costs, mounting debt and declining economic security and quality of life.

Whatever value America creates should not simply be extracted from American communities and converted into private wealth for corporations, investors or wealthy interests—whether domestic or foreign—while ordinary Americans are told to sacrifice and accept 40 trillion of debt for future generations.

That is not what I understand “America First” to mean.

Being America First is more than hugging a flag like a pendejo.

It is more than wearing a flag pin.

It is more than giving speeches about patriotism.

It is more than telling Americans that everyone else is the enemy while corporations and powerful foreign interests are actively worsening their quality of life, diminishing their democratic institutions, and attacking Americans constitutional right they don’t like .

Patriotism is a responsibility not a pretty aesthetic to gain support for your campaign.

If you claim to love America, you should want to leave Americans with more—not less.

More opportunity. More security. More prosperity.

More public resources. More clean water.

More protected land. More economic power for working people.

And a better country for the generation that comes after us.

So Americans should stop judging politicians by how aggressively they wave the flag and start judging them by what they do with the country and their futures.

Because you can call yourself America First.

You can wear the flag pin.

You can give patriotic speeches.

You can wrap yourself in the language of American greatness.

But if your policies repeatedly put private and foreign interests ahead of the public, treat American resources as gifts for the rich, and leave ordinary Americans carrying the costs—

then Americans have every right to ask whether you are actually putting America first.

America First should mean protecting America for Americans.

Not giving pieces of our inheritance to the highest bidder.

And if politicians cannot understand the difference, perhaps the problem isn’t that Americans have stopped believing in America.

Perhaps the problem is that the people claiming to put America first have forgotten what America actually belongs to.

Us.